Ask the Passengers (25 page)

I don’t have a lot of love to send right now. Or maybe I’m being stingy. My heart just isn’t in it, so I get up off the table and into my car and start driving toward the college town where Donna lives. I don’t remember how we got to the Gamma Alpha Psi house, but I’m sure if I drive around enough, I might find it.

By the time I get on and off the turnpike, I’m starving, so I go to a drive-thru and then cruise the fraternity and sorority houses looking for those familiar Greek letters. It’s about
noon. The sidewalks are busy with students. I stop to eat my bacon double cheeseburger and watch them. I think:
That will be me at this time next year.

I’ve been so caught up in Dee and Kristina and our secrets and now this whole mess that I’ve forgotten my entire future. No Ellis. No Mom and Dude. No Kristina bossing me around. Not even Dee if I don’t want her in my life. I will hear scholarship news in the next few months. My grades rock. I should be concentrating on
me
.

College kids look happy. And free. After I crumple the uneaten part of my burger in its wrapper and stuff it into the bag, I realize my future is only a few months away, and I will be one of the free, happy people. And then I start the car again and head for the turnpike. I turn up the music to block out the sound of my own thoughts. When I get to Unity Valley, I pull over into the Legion Diner parking lot and I text Kristina.
You coming back any time this decade?

She texts back.
On our way now. Should be back by dinner.

I park in the fairground parking lot hidden behind Kristina’s house and abandoned since the last fair of the season. I walk to Kristina’s back porch and sit on the swing, and I start thinking about what Kristina said. And I decide that I’m done being a pushover.

“What a surprise!” Mrs. Houck says when she finds me sitting on her back porch. She’s got a suitcase in either hand, and after she says this, her face makes a frown. The kind of frown I’d
have expected from a mother who thinks I corrupted her daughter. Then Kristina shows up as Mrs. Houck jiggles her key into the back door.

“Dude. You can’t live here. I already told you that,” Kristina says. She’s joking, so I figure this must mean she doesn’t know how much I want to kill her right now.

“We need to talk,” I say.

She nods and goes back to the car to get more things. “Let me get the rest of my stuff,” she says. Her smile has disappeared. She must know why I’m here. I use my finger’s imaginary marker on her back as she walks up the path to the driveway.
LIAR LIAR LIAR
, I write down her back. When she gets back with her last bag and a pillow, she says, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

I get up and pace. I see Mr. Houck is not in the car. Strange. I thought they went as a family. Then I hear Mrs. Houck whisper-yelling through the open door. I don’t hear what she says. I don’t care what she says. I trace the word
LIARS
onto the side of the house. I face out toward the big barn they have as a garage, and I write it in imaginary letters twenty feet high.

“So?” Kristina says.

“Wanna take a quick ride somewhere?” I ask.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here, I guess.”

“Do we have to?” she asks. “I have to unpack.”

I have to pack. I have to unpack.
These are things that never mattered to Kristina before Tuesday.

I face her when we reach the driveway. “If you want, we can sit right here,” I say.

She sits down on the ground. I sit down next to her.

“So I heard the big lie you told about me, and I can’t understand why you’d do it.”

She looks a mix of surprised and ashamed. “I—uh—I’m not sure what you mean,” she says.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

She sits silent for a while then says, “I didn’t tell any lie.”

“Really?” I’m surprisingly calm. “You didn’t tell your mom a lie, which she then told the whole town? About me dragging you to Atlantis… almost against your will? That lie?”

She acts surprised. “What? I never said that!”

“Dude. You told my mom to her face. You said it. And I think you made it up because you can’t handle not being the perfect little Unity Valley Homecoming princess anymore.”

She smirks at me.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well, what did you lose? Nothing. That’s what you lost.”

“I lost my sister, my mother—who believes you and your mom and not me—and my father. And my best friend, who would rather lie about me to save her skin.”

“You still didn’t lose nearly as much as me.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What did you lose? You weren’t even in school this week to hear anything! And your little lie made you the victim of Astrid Jones’s evil gay plot to get you out to a bar, right? Isn’t that how you wanted it to play out?” I yell. “And it worked perfectly! Good job,
Kristina Houck. Mission accomplished. You set up your best friend after she kept your secret for over two years, and then you lost her. Nice job.” I get up and dust off my butt.

I start walking toward the fairgrounds to my car. “Wait!” she yells. She’s following me. “Wait!”

“Did you lie about me or not, Kristina?”

She stands there dumbfounded. I get in my car and drive away.

I approach Dad after his evening toke.

“I need a sick note for today,” I say. “I totally skipped school.”

He looks at me and shakes his head and smiles. “It just keeps getting worse with you.”

“Nah. Today was just the day off I should have had on Monday. I want to get back.”

“Where’d you go?” he asks.

“Nowhere special.”

I hand him the blank absentee card, and he scribbles his signature on it, and I slip it into my backpack before I go to bed.

When I walk through the kitchen to get to the stairs, I look into the living room and see that Mom is still ironing.

I WAKE UP LATE
on Friday and rush to the bathroom to wet my hair and brush my teeth. In the hall, I meet Ellis wrapped in a towel. When she sees me, she grabs the front of the towel and pulls it up to her neck and scurries into her room quickly, as if I’ll become aroused at the sight of my own sister in a towel.

I don’t have enough gross words in my gross vocabulary to describe how gross that gross thought is. Gross.

While I’m brushing my teeth, I think about how our sisterhood deteriorated. I blame Mom. Of course. But as I look at myself in the mirror, I see some other stuff. My snubbing her when she decided to be a small-town girl. Me deciding she didn’t need me anymore when she got old enough to stop
watching
The Wizard of Oz
. Me not inviting her when Dad and I would make stuff together. Me deciding that Mom would always like her more… and having it reflect on her instead of just on Mom.

So maybe I helped it happen. Maybe we’d be closer. If I told her the truth, she’d probably accept me eventually, and we could just be sisters again.

None of this changes the fact that what she just did was gross.

The janitor took pity on me and cleaned off the wall above my locker, even though I can still see the flecks of red crayon embedded in the crannies of the painted cinder blocks. I know it makes me a horrible person, but after Ellis’s grossness this morning, I kinda wish it was still there.

“They closed down your bar,” I hear from behind me. It’s Jeff Garnet. “Did you see in the paper today?”

I take a deep breath. “It wasn’t my bar. And no, I didn’t see that.”

“Well, they closed it, and they arrested the owner, I think.”

“Huh,” I say. “I guess that’s what you get for serving underage kids.” What else am I supposed to say? I turn around so he’s not talking to my back anymore.

“I’m really sorry, Jeff. About everything. I shouldn’t have lied to you. I was totally wrong, and I—”

“It’s cool, Astrid. I mean, I think you’re really nice, you know?”

Oh, man. I am so not nice. I am the opposite of nice when it comes to what I did to Jeff Garnet. I want to say
I am scum
because I feel like scum. But before I can, he talks again.

“Your mom called my mom last night,” he says.

I just stare at him like I’m totally scared of what he’s going to come out with next. Because I am.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah. Sorry about her. She’s nuts.”

“She asked my mom to talk to me about how you just made a mistake and went there so you could drink and dance and stuff. Is that true?”

“Yeah, kinda.”
No, not at all.

“She wanted to know if I’d go out with you again.”

“Oh, God,” I say. “I’m really sorry. Just ignore her. She hasn’t been able to locate her mind-your-own-business medication for years.” I think my cheeks are actually purple. They physically hurt.

He’s fidgeting as though he’s actually about to ask me out again. I can see his leg going all jiggly. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I’m kinda going out with Karen Koch now,” he says.

Do I look as relieved as I am?

I say, “I am so happy to hear that! You guys are perfect for each other. God! She’s been into you for a long time.”

I send my love to Jeff Garnet.
Jeff, I love you. Not in that way, so don’t even try it. But I love you since you’ve been standing here talking to me like a normal person for more than a minute. I hope Karen totally lets you in her pants, okay?

“Cool. So we’re cool?” he says.

“Totally. And thanks for coming to talk to me. You’re the first person who’s talked to me for more than a few seconds in a whole week.”

“Shit—you know it’ll blow over. Everything blows over around here.” We nod at each other. It makes me feel better. Then he says, “But that Justin and Kristina thing was a bit hard to take, man. I can’t believe they lied like that. And I used to change next to him for gym all the time.” He makes a cringing, concerned face.

“Don’t worry. He’s not into you.”

“Yeah, but still. It’s weird,” he says. “I hear he’s in jail now.”

I shake my head. “Don’t believe what you hear.”