Family Storms (26 page)

I certainly didn't want to feel sorry for her, but I couldn't get myself to say anything nasty, either. I was waiting, probably hoping for her to do or say something that would drown any sympathy I could possibly have for her, but she sobbed and then wiped her eyes and sat up.

“What I hate about him, my therapist, is how low he makes me feel without saying anything. It's like he's become a mirror.”

“Mirror?”

“Yes, a mirror in which I see myself differently. I see what I've become to the people I love, how much I've hurt my parents.”

She took a deep breath and looked at me silently for a long moment.

“I hated you the first day my mother brought you here.
I wanted to hate you forever, but my therapist pointed out that I was doing that to make myself feel better. If I could hate you, I could live with what I did much more easily, but hate doesn't ease the pain or stop the nightmares, and you've been … been far nicer to me than I would have ever been to you if the situation was reversed. In fact, I've tried hard to get you to hate me even more.”

“That's true,” I said. She wiped away some more tears and smiled.

“When my mother put you in Alena's room and gave you Alena's things, I really hated you, but you've never taken advantage of it. I complained. Oh, I complained to both my mother and my father, but I saw it only brought more pain to them, so I stopped complaining. When I did that and when I talked about you with my therapist, I realized I was trying to hate you for being so much like Alena.”

“Why would you hate me for that? Didn't you like your sister?”

“Of course I liked her. I loved her.” She looked away and then turned back. “I wanted to be more like her, wanted to have my parents believe that and see that, but I couldn't, and then you came, and you could. My therapist made me realize all this.”

“I'm not trying to be like anyone,” I said.

“You don't have to try. You just are.” She sighed, lifting and dropping her shoulders. “My mother doesn't know how close Alena and I really were. There were many, many nights when I went to her when she was sad and when she came to me. I hated that she got so sick. I hated everyone who was healthy. I even hated my parents for not giving
her healthy genes, and I especially hated the world and God. Yes, I wasn't there as I should have been when she was dying. I couldn't face it. I wasn't strong enough.

“Maybe you can't believe this, but I was looking forward to being her older sister, to guiding her through the dangerous channels we all pass through as girls. I wanted to be there for her when she had her first boyfriend. I hated being left an only child. I hate it now. Everything I've done to displease my parents was done in anger.

“So,” she concluded, “I have the nightmares.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. I really did feel sorry for her now. “But what can I do?”

“You can help me,” she said quickly.

“Me? How could I help you?”

“You're just about Alena's age, what she would have been now. Maybe you'll let me be your older sister.”

“Sister?”

“I'm not saying I won't still suffer. I can't ignore what I've done. Your limping about is clearly in my face every day, no matter what I do to forget, but as my therapist says, maybe it's better to confront what I've done and not try to ignore it.”

“I'm not sure I know what to do,” I said.

“You don't do anything, silly. I do it all. You're being kept like a prisoner here, and it's all my fault. You should enjoy being a teenager, too. I'll take you to places, to the malls, movies, parties.”

“Parties?”

“I want all my friends to know you are part of my family now. I'll admit I have a selfish motive. I want to stop feeling
terrible and having these nightmares, and I want people who think I'm so terrible to see me as a better person. If you're with me, they will. Well?” she asked when I said nothing.

Maybe I was very much like Alena. Maybe I was incapable of hate and being mean, and maybe my being with Kiera would change her. I tried to think of it as a selfish thing, too. I would enjoy living there more if we weren't at each other's throats.

“It's all right with me,” I said.

She smiled and reached out for my hands. “Let's make a pact, then,” she said. “Let's swear that we'll try to be like sisters.”

“Okay,” I said.

She squeezed my hands gently, and then she let them go and fell back to her pillow. “Do me a favor,” she said.

“What?”

“Just return to your room and play the clarinet for a while. Will you?”

“Play my clarinet?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you. It will put me to sleep, a good sleep,” she said, and closed her eyes.

I stared at her a moment, and then I left, feeling as though I was the one who might begin to have nightmares.

20
New Friends

O
ddly, that night, I thought I played the clarinet better than I ever had. It was as if Alena possessed me for a while and had me do it well enough to help her older sister get through her own darkness. Afterward, I went to sleep feeling contented, too. I felt safer knowing that Kiera needed me.

For the first time, she was up before me in the morning. She knocked on my door, which was already different behavior for her. Usually, she would just burst in as if I didn't have any right to privacy, especially in her dead sister's suite. I thought it was Mrs. Duval and that I had overslept and was missing breakfast, but I saw it was early.

“Yes?”

Kiera peeked in first. “Hi,” she said, and entered. She was already dressed in a pink and blue tennis outfit and wore a blue wristband. I had never seen her look as fresh and as buoyant this early. She practically bounced over to my bed.

“Get up, get up!” she cried. “We're having an early, simple breakfast, and then I'm going to teach you the fundamentals of tennis so that eventually we can play doubles. I've had all sorts of professional lessons, as you can imagine, so I'm qualified to give instruction. I'm not terrific, but I'm pretty good, better than most of the girls in my circle of friends, for sure. And it won't take you long to be as good as, if not better than, them, too.”

“I've never played tennis.”

“That's the point, silly. That's why I want you up and out there with me this morning.” She smiled coyly. “I have a few friends coming over to play later, swim, and have lunch. I got my parents' permission,” she added quickly.

“Really?” I said, feeling a little excitement but not rushing to get up.

“I know what's troubling you. Stop worrying about your limping. You get around pretty quickly when you want to, and you'll see that in doubles, you don't have to move that fast, anyway.”

“But I can't expect to be too good at it, good enough to play with you and your friends.”

“So? None of us is going to be in any tournaments. It's just for fun. Stop arguing. If you're going to call yourself a March, you have to live up to the March reputation for self-confidence, if not downright arrogance. My father happens to be an excellent tennis player. My mother, however, is a professional sideliner.”

“Sideliner? What's that?”

“Someone who sits on the sidelines, silly,” she said. “She worries about breaking a fingernail even more than I do.”

I couldn't help but laugh with her, even though it felt wrong to make fun of Mrs. March. Kiera was so lighthearted and happy, I didn't want to ruin her mood. I had gone to sleep wondering if everything she had said and claimed she wanted was just words that would drift away with all of the broken promises I had heard in my life, but this morning, that didn't seem to be happening.

I started to rise, and she went to the closet.

“Alena had a very cute tennis outfit that should fit you,” she said, and began to look for it. While she did, I went to the bathroom and prepared to get dressed. She was waiting with the outfit when I came out, and she stood there watching me try it on.

“You have a pretty good figure for your age,” she said. “With the right clothes and makeup, no one would say you were only fourteen. I didn't have boobs and a rear end like that until I was sixteen.”

Her comments brought unexpected heat to my face. I caught my image in the closet wall mirror and saw that my cheeks were crimson. It wasn't that I never thought of myself as becoming a woman. I used to worry about it when Mama and I were living in the streets, in fact, because I had not gotten my first period. I expected that our poor diet would have an impact on my development, perhaps stunting me. When my first period came, I was excited and told Mama. She had looked at me and started to cry.

“I can't be happy for you,” she had said. “Not now.”

But I wanted to be happy for myself.
I'll be all right after all,
I thought. Mama had once had a beautiful figure, and when I looked at myself from time to time, I dared to think
I might get to look just like her, like she was before this had all happened to us.

Kiera laughed at the way I blushed. “You're embarrassed, aren't you?”

“No,” I said, but not very convincingly. “Don't you ever think of yourself as being sexy?”

“Not really.”

“I bet you never really had a boyfriend, did you?”

“Not the way you mean,” I admitted.

She sat on my bed and looked at me. “The way I mean? What other way is there?” She smiled. “One of the first things I wondered about you was what happened to you living on the street. I mean, what happened to you sexually.”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “My mother and I were rarely, if ever, separated, day or night.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn't have been so terrible if you had some experiences, but on the street, you could pick up some diseases, I'm sure.”

“I was only thirteen when we went on the street.”

“I lost my virginity at fourteen,” she replied casually, and then leaped to her feet. “We'll talk about all this later. Let's get to breakfast. There's a lot to do before they get here.”

I followed her down to breakfast. Everyone was surprised to see Kiera up so early, but it was the look on Mrs. Duval's face that nearly made me laugh. Not only was it because both Kiera and I were wearing tennis outfits, but also because there was a new tone of excitement and friendliness between us. Mrs. Duval's eyebrows rose, and
she hurried back to the kitchen to say something to Mrs. Caro, who found little ways to observe us at breakfast, too.

Afterward, Kiera took me out to the tennis court, and with more patience and expertise than I ever imagined she would have, she began to teach me the fundamentals. We were out there for nearly two hours before we took a break to have something cold to drink. I didn't know if she was deliberately hitting the ball softly back to me the whole time or if that was as good as she was, but even with my limp, I found I could do decently for someone playing for the first time. She continually complimented me.

“I knew you could do this,” she said. “In fact, you're doing a lot better than I did when I picked up a racket. My father was so frustrated, I thought he would give up on me. I guess he did. He hired professionals.”

We sat at the pool cabana and sipped Mrs. Caro's famous homemade lemonade. Despite how well we were doing together, I remained on the lookout for some sign, some remark, something that would reveal that Kiera was just being nice to me to please her parents. Nothing like that occurred. In fact, she seemed even more interested in our being closer, and she was more willing to be honest with me than she had been the night before.

“I watched you all during these first months at school,” she confessed. “I saw how badly your classmates were treating you, especially those snobby girls. In the beginning, as you know, I was hoping that would make you so unhappy that you'd want to leave no matter what my mother promised you.” She laughed. “I was always complaining about you to my friends.”