Exposed (24 page)

“Chan?” Devin knocks on the bathroom door, but I ignore her.

Why
does
Lauren have a screen concealer?

Who told her about it?

Am I being Mom, thinking Lauren’s too stupid to figure something out on her own, just because she’s eight?

Who told her about it?

God, I’m definitely being Mom. I might as well just march out to the garage and ask Lauren who put that idea in her head.

Devin knocks again. “Chan, are you okay?”

I mean, I heard of screen concealers before Paul, but never really looked into it until he sent me that link.

Same site.

Who told
Lauren
about those concealers?

The screen concealer’s a coincidence.

But the big question isn’t just how Lauren found out about the pink puppies. No. The big question’s the one Devin asked.

What is Lauren up to?

What’s Lauren using that screen concealer to hide?

I heave again. “Chan, I’m so not above breaking down this door.” Now Devin sounds annoyed. “One good kick, I swear.”

I can’t say anything. I can’t talk at all. I feel raw and hollow and rolled up in a little ball.

Reason this out. Just calm down and think it through.

Lauren has a little boyfriend. David, that’s his name, right? They probably e-mail. That’s all. She’s hiding e-mails to David. I’m just freaking out because—because
—

Because of what I’m doing.

Because of Paul.

Heat boils through me, and this time when I heave, stuff finally comes up. My fingers dig against the toilet seat, and I feel like half my body’s hurling into the bowl.

Maybe I’m not okay
.

Outside, Mom and Devin talk. I don’t catch much other than, “nervous,” “Regionals,” and “paper looks good enough.”

I have to get a grip.

If I don’t get my act together, Mom’ll ask more
questions than I can answer. And if I freak out and start running my mouth all over the place, I’ll lose everything—for me
and
Lauren.

The voices move away from the bathroom.

Mom’s probably walking Devin out. Lauren’s music is still blasting. Back to “Edelweiss,” which totally makes me want to scream.

I could go to the garage and ask her about the screen concealer, but she might flip out, and then the whole Mom problem would blow up in both of our faces.

Screw it.

Maybe I should just go straight to Mom.

Yeah, so she and Dad can lock me in my closet (with no electronic devices) and feed me through a hole in the door until I get out of high school.

Not happening.

Bit by bit, I get my stomach under control.

When I think I can handle it, I flush, get up, wash my face, then rinse out my mouth. When I grab for the towel, I catch sight of my pale, freckled face in the mirror.

I imagine some perv staring at my face, at my bare chest. Some ugly, drooly old goat, getting off over a video of
me
.

Back to the toilet.

Not okay, not okay, not okay.

This time, I stay through four rounds of “Edelweiss” and two rounds of that weird little good-bye song.

When I finally get it together enough to come out, Mom’s waiting in the living room. She gets up immediately when I come into the room, zips across the floor, and hugs me so tight she smashes my face against her crumb-covered cooking smock.

“You all right?” she asks when she finally lets me breathe.

“Yeah,” I say, and I’m surprised at how hoarse my voice sounds. “I think I just need to—just, I—I need to—”

“Lie down. Right now.” She rubs a hand over my hair. “Honestly, honey, you and Lauren are both so stressed out I think I’ll make doctor’s appointments for both of you. Maybe you need vitamins.”

I don’t argue.

Which obviously surprises Mom and worries her even more.

“You go on upstairs. I’ll print that paper out for you and get it organized, and I’ll bring you some crackers and soup and soda up later.” She kisses me on the cheek. “Sugar-free soda.”

“Thanks.” I squeeze my eyes shut as the music in the garage changes again.

Mom lets me go and heaves a sigh that rivals any I’ve ever heard from Lauren. “And we’re giving that a rest, too,” she says through clenched teeth as she starts for the garage door.

I run upstairs before the fight breaks out.

I know I need to talk to Lauren—but I don’t know just when I can do that without causing a major catastrophe. But first, there’s someone else I need to talk to.

Only, a few hours later, locked in my room with Mom’s soup and crackers, with Paul in chat on the B-3k, I just can’t ask him.

He’s being so sweet, so himself, so totally Paul as he talks to me, and I can just imagine those dark eyes and that handsome smile.

How can I ask him if he’s been perving my little sister?

My
eight-year-old
sister?

No way. Paul’s not like that. I do know him after so many hours of talking to him.

The screen-concealer thing, that has to be a fluke.

Besides, I can’t do that to him, ask him that question. I can’t do that to our relationship. But, for the first time since we started talking, I sort of blow him off, using the paper (finished, printed by Mom, waiting on my desk) and Regionals (too much to think about, too too much) as an excuse.

I go to bed early, but I leave on my desk lamp and I make sure to leave my door open. And I fall hard asleep, with no dreams at all.

Until Lauren nudges me and starts crawling into my bed.

When I open my eyes and squint at the clock, it’s after 2 a.m. Either she stayed up late or slept longer
than usual—but here she is, just like I knew she would be.

“Tell me my story,” she says, all quiet and sleepy.

I let her get in, wait for her to settle down, then give her shoulder a little pinch and shake. “Hey. Wake up a sec. I need to ask you something.”

“I’m not a hey,” she mutters sleepily. “I’m a Lauren.”

Hearing that chokes me up for a second. An old game Dad used to play with us, calling us animal names or kidding names or silly names, and waiting for us to answer like Lauren had answered.

My sister’s
eight
. She still plays that game with Dad.

“Lauren, I’m serious.” I give her another pinch and shake. “Open your eyes.”

She does, but I can tell she’s still not completely awake.

“What?” she mumbles as she rubs one eye with her knuckles and scratches her belly with her other hand.

“Downstairs on the computer, that puppy game—I mean, screen concealer. Who told you about that site where you downloaded it?”

Lauren stops scratching and rubbing her eye. I might be imagining it, but I think she just stiffened up a little. “Nobody. I found it on my own.”

The tone of her voice, the look on her face—am I
that
obvious when I lie to Devin? Oh, God. I probably am, aren’t I?

After taking a slow breath to make sure I sound calm,
I say, “Look, if it was your boyfriend, David, that’s fine. I just need to know, okay?”

Lauren squints at me in the low glow of the night-light. “Nobody told me,” she insists. A lie, again. “I just don’t want Mom seeing everything I do.”

Another centering, calming breath. I try again. “Lauren, is there anything I need to know about David? A secret or something? You can tell me anything. I won’t rat you out to Mom, I swear.”

Now she’s totally awake, and even in the bad light, I can see she’s starting to get angsty. “You’re being weird,” she says and pushes away from me. “I’m going back to my own bed.”

“Wait.” I try to catch her arm, but she pulls away from me and calls me weird again.

In a few seconds, she’s out my door and walking down the hall, her little feet making squeegee-noises on the wood floor as she goes.

I lie there wide-awake for probably half an hour, maybe more, before I get up, make my way to the Cave of Doom, and sit down beside Lauren’s bed.

A few minutes pass, then a few more, and a few more. Lauren’s easy, regular breathing lets me know she’s totally asleep again.

I rub my stomach like Lauren did and wonder if Mom ever feels this way when she’s worrying about us so much. Is this awful, gut-digging sensation what makes Mom act so freaky and neurotic all the time?

If it is, I’ll have to hate her a little less even when I’m furious with her. Maybe a lot less.

For the rest of the night, I just watch my little sister sleep, like my being beside her might keep anything bad from happening to her, or erase anything bad that might have already happened.

I can’t think of anything else to do.

Devin and I turn our American lit paper in to Haggerty Wednesday morning, and go first with our pre sentation. Devin doesn’t stumble over the poem she recites, and I don’t let myself hesitate in exposing our radical theories about Emily’s hermetic life and shunning of marriage.

The whole time I’m talking, my stomach hurts, and I feel dizzy. Worse, I feel achy and fevery, and my legs keep tingling. Burning, actually, all along my thighs, and higher, in bad places. And I know exactly what that means.

Herpes outbreak.

God, not now.

But why?

Am I getting sick? A cold or the flu or something? I always have an outbreak when I get sick. But maybe it’s too much stress. That will definitely do it, too. Staying up all night staring at Lauren probably didn’t
help anything. I need to remember to take a second pill when I get home tonight or I’ll be too miserable to compete by tomorrow.

When we finish, Haggerty absolutely beams at us. “Looks good, girls,” she says, though her sharp eyes linger on me.

After class, she stops us at the door and asks, “You feeling okay, Chan? Hope you didn’t stay up to all hours working on this.”

Devin gives me the talk-fast eyebrow, and I shake my head. “No, ma’am. We were actually done early this time.”

Devin flashes a majorly nervous grin.

Haggerty glances back toward her desk, where the paper’s sitting. “I’ve already looked at the first few pages. Definitely first-class work. Glad to see you back in top form, Chan.”

She pats my shoulder and I want to jerk away from her touch and vomit. It’s all of a sudden, and I don’t have a clue why. It’s just weird, getting compliments on my work or anything when down inside, right under my skin—and at home, in the dark Cave of Doom—everything seems to be messing up completely. Like, crashing straight to the ground. All my energy leaves me. All the good things inside me seem to drain out to the floor and just dry up to nothing at all.

All through world history and geometry, I keep thinking about Lauren, about what I saw and how she acted when I tried to talk to her.

What’s the right thing to do? What’s the
responsible
thing?

Should I say something to Mom?

Should I have risked asking Paul if he’s somehow spoken to Lauren?

I definitely should have pushed my sister a little harder, made her tell me what she was hiding. But she seemed so little and tense and close to snapping in half.

Right, wrong, responsible—this is all screwed up.

Before physics, Devin stops me in the hall. “You better go to the nurse, honey. You look like you’re about to fall out right here, right now.”

“I can’t get sick. Regionals are—”

“Exactly. We’ve gotta leave at the armpit of dawn, and you better go get some sleep and get copacetic before we get on that bus.”

“Mom’s at work and Dad’s out of town. I don’t have a ride home.”

“Then lie down in the nurse’s office and I’ll tell the Bear. She’ll drive you home in a heartbeat.”

Oh, joy.

The urge to be sick starts all over again, but I go to the nurse’s office and tell her I think I’ve got an outbreak starting, and that I feel like crap. She puts me on her couch and leaves a message with Mom, and about five minutes later, the Bear sweeps in to whisk me home in her big-ass dual-axle tank of a white pickup truck. All she needs is big tires and she could outdo any of the truck-freak boys at school.

The Bear’s so vierd sometimes. Thankfully, she doesn’t talk much, not until we get close to my house.

“You have vorked very hard for tomorrow, Chan.” She turns onto our road and keeps her eyes straight ahead. Today, she has on lavender silk sweats, and her black hair’s pulled back like usual, only loosely, fastened with a brown leather tie. “Vork is finished now. You should … enjoy. Stay focused, but enjoy. You are still just a girl.”

“Regionals are important,” I say. God, my throat feels sore. “I need to win. I want to win. It’s like you said—redemption. Plus a lot of other stuff.”

“Yes, but do not let your nerves make you ill.” She pulls into our driveway, stops the truck, shuts off the engine, and turns to look at me. “Perhaps I say too much sometimes.” She gestures with one hand. “Put on too much pressure. I am sorry.”

I shake my head. “You’re fine. I’m pressuring me, not you.”

Well, sort of true.

Do I even know how to be completely truthful anymore?

I don’t need to think about that or I might hurl before I even get out of the Bear’s truck.

“Is there more?” the Bear asks, just like she’s reading my mind. I
hate
it when she does that. I hate it worse when Mom does it, though.

It takes all the energy I don’t have, but I manage to give her a questioning look and say, “More?”

“You know.” She gestures again, and her expression pinches into tense worry. “Bigger problems. You can tell me.”

I don’t answer. I just can’t. My hand inches toward the door handle.

“Vhen I vas a girl,” the Bear says, “
Coach
meant everything. Mother. Sister. Friend. Leader. I have tried to be that, for you and my other girls. You know this, no?”

“No. I mean, yes.” I hate it when she does that
no
thing, too. At the moment, my brain’s actually starting to hurt along with the rest of my body.

The Bear gazes at me for a time without saying a word. Then she nods and says, “Go rest. I vill see you in the morning.”