I'm Not Her (13 page)

Mom’s tears pour down her cheeks, dripping onto Kristina’s back. Dad stands next to them. His eyes are glazed. My mom continues to cover Kristina’s body with her own. They rock back and forth, not saying a word. Just moving. Crying. I watch my parents, feeling detached, as if I’m watching a bad after-school movie special plagued with overacting.

I want to leave the room, run, but can’t make myself move. I want to sneak out, slip outside unseen. I remember being a kid and staring at people who were different until Mom whispered that it was rude. I remember seeing a woman at the swimming pool as Kristina was trying to teach me to dive. Kristina would do a perfect dive, time after time, trying to get me to follow her lead.

The woman had a stump for an arm. I’d stared and stared at the stump, horrified and fascinated, until Mom told me to stop staring and start diving. I kept sneaking peeks though, wondering how it felt to have no arm. How she could swim and what she thought about when she looked at people with two arms.

Did she miss the one that was gone?

Dad’s still home when I’m getting ready for school, and he waits, telling me he’ll drive me. I don’t think anyone in the house slept a wink and my body is so tired it hurts to move, so I take him up on his offer. I hope that Kristina slept all right at the hospital and that for once, the exhaustion of cancer and medication offer some relief for her.

Dad is home but Mom’s packed up and gone before I even get up. I guess now that dreams about Kristina’s Olympic volleyball team future are spent, Mom is finally ready to stop pretending everything is okay. She can’t even daydream about the perfect grandkids Kristina will give her one day. All she has a chance for now are my second-rate ones. If that ever happens. It seems pretty unlikely at this point in my life.

On the car ride to school we’re mostly silent, but as we approach the street where he’ll drop me off, he glances sideways at me.

“How are you doing, sweetie?” he asks. I can’t remember the last time he used that term for me. Since I was a little girl.

I lift a shoulder and stare out the window. Cars pass by us, people going on with their lives, unaware that my sister’s entire future has been crushed.

He clears his throat and I glance back to him. His face is contorted; he’s holding in tears. It twists my insides like the word games we used to play when we were younger would do to my tongue. He spurts and brings up a fist to his mouth, coughing, his other hand tight on the wheel.

“I’m sorry,” he sputters.

I reach out and touch his hand, but he takes it from his mouth and re-grips the steering wheel.

“For what, Daddy?” I ask. Now it’s my turn to use pet names long discarded.

“For not being stronger. For not handling this better. I want to do better. It’s just…” He clears his throat. “It’s difficult,” he says and his voice hardens, almost angry.

I nod. He pulls up to the curb then, and stares out the window. I wait for a moment, hoping he’ll say more but he doesn’t, so I open the door.

“I love you, Tess,” he says, still focused on something outside the front window. “You and Kristina both.”

“I know,” I say softly. “Bye, Dad.” I close the door and watch as he pulls away, driving quickly as if he can’t wait to leave me behind.

Inside the school, I head toward my locker and some people stare at me with wide, curious eyes, but lots smile and say hi. The popular ones are confident enough to walk right up and ask me straight out how Kristina is doing. I mumble and keep going. All this attention is overwhelming and draining, but I force myself to keep it together, smiling and pretending to make sure no one forgets how much they like her. Kristina. Not her stupid infected leg. Maybe I’m more like my mom than I thought, because faking a personality isn’t nearly as hard as I’d imagined. It surprises me how I manage small talk and it makes me wonder if it was in me all along.

When I turn the last corner toward my locker, someone is standing in front of it, waiting for me. I hold my breath for a second, thinking it’s Melissa coming to apologize, telling me it was all a mistake. But it’s not. Melissa’s no longer my person. Instead it’s Clark Trent who smiles when he spots me and, without thinking, I grin in return.

“Superman,” I say to Clark.

He pushes up his glasses and his cheeks turn a cute color of pink. “That’s getting old,” he says in a voice that says it’s okay with him anyway.

He steps out of the way so I can open my locker.

“You’ve been assigned to protect me?” I ask in a dry tone, but smile.

He laughs. “I guess,” he says and then waits while I get my books.

We’re both such brilliant conversationalists.

“You ready for our test?” he asks.

I stare up at him and then close my locker door and put on the lock. “Test?”

He lifts an eyebrow. “In English. On soliloquies?”

“Today?”

“You’re kidding, right? Mr. Pepson told us to study on Friday.”

“I totally forgot.” I lean against the lockers. It should be a level-four tragedy but I can’t muster up the energy to register it as one. It pales in comparison to my sister’s day.

“Well, I mean, you should talk to Mr. Pepson. I’m sure he’d understand. You know. Under the circumstances.”

“I’m not going to use my sister’s cancer as an excuse to get out of things,” I tell him, and my voice is sharper than I intended.

“You know,” he says and looks away, “the Honor Society isn’t the be-all, end-all.”

And just like that it’s over.

“I didn’t get in?” I say quietly. It’s not really a question, but a statement. I swallow a sizeable lump in my throat. My dream of being on the elite team of brainiacs slips right out of my fingers. It’s so unfair I want to cry. It should have been easy for me. It should have been a given. Instead Kristina got sick and I got sidetracked and now…

“They posted the members on the board outside Mr. Pepson’s classroom. You should talk to him about it. I mean, it’s not really fair. There’s still time left in the semester for you to get your grades up.” A few people trickle past us, but for once they ignore me. Two geeks talking about Honor Society.

“It’s more than just grades,” I say softly. “I didn’t choose a service project and, well, there was the time I had the meltdown in front of Mr. Meekers.”

I push off the locker. I’ve also been trying to focus on my art project, but I don’t tell Clark that.

“It’s crap,” Clark says.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. You’re being punished.”

“For what? For Kristina’s cancer? Not likely. No, I haven’t met the requirements. They’re stated in black and white. Marks. Leadership. Volunteerism.”

“But it’s circumstantial. They should take it into consideration.”

I don’t want to go there. My problems don’t even compare to my sister’s.

“What about Melissa?” I ask instead.

Clark looks away and then shakes his head, a quick no. “I guess she didn’t have the right personality or something.”

Despite everything, I feel worse for Melissa. She’s the one who wanted it so badly. In the end she needs it more than I do now. I’ve got other things to worry about.

I start walking and Clark easily matches my stride, using his bigger body to protect me from prying eyes again as we head down the hallway toward class. People stare, but I kind of like having him as a personal bodyguard.

Without asking, he starts filling me in on his definitions and theories on soliloquies, trying to prep me for the exam. As he talks, his glance kind of sweeps around as if he’s sending warning signals to the kids staring at me. It works, because no one approaches with prying questions.

I look around to see if Melissa is watching me, hiding out, but don’t see her anywhere. My heart dips. She really is gone. I focus on Clark and try to listen as he attempts to cram my brain with information for the test.

A few weeks ago I would have had a fit that I didn’t study, but I know I’ll be okay. Shakespeare is a geek-love of mine and I can pull off a test about soliloquies. It won’t be a perfect score but I’ll manage. I actually look forward to burying myself inside an exam.

The fact that Clark is helping me out strikes me as kind of funny, since I was supposed to be his competitor for the top freshman. I’m out of the game now.

We walk around a corner and approach a group of seniors, and I duck my head but not fast enough to see Nick standing off to the side, watching me. He smiles and it’s sexy and mysterious and I think about him asking what I’m doing after school.

“Tess!”

The entire group of seniors is staring at me. My invisible shield is permanently down. I forget Nick’s unasked question.

“How’s it going?” I squint and see that Devon made the shout-out. He smiles and lifts his hand in greeting. Like we’re buds. “You see the Seekers hockey game on TV last night?”

I shake my head but don’t answer.

Unlike the rest of Great Heights, I don’t worship the college hockey team. On the nights when they play at home, the stadium spotlights light up the sky. Every game sells out and is treated with the enthusiasm of a championship game.

Devon walks over and even Clark seems to shrink down a little. “Well, even if you don’t like the college team, you should at least come out and see the high school team play. Go, Great Heights High, right?”

It’s not about me, I remind myself. It’s about Kristina. They want me to be her voice. Keep her whole.

“Yeah, maybe,” I lie, because that’s what they want to hear.

“Kristina loved watching me play hockey,” he says. “Almost as much as I loved watching her play volleyball.” He laughs. “You know. Those little spankies…” He stops and his face turns bright red.

Yeah. She might not look as cute in her little spankies soon. And he doesn’t even know the truth of it yet. An overwhelming desire to start crying consumes me but I shove it down.

“It’s okay,” I say softly, because he didn’t mean anything. He wants to believe she’ll be back, just the way she was before. But it’s the sort of stupid, insensitive thing that is going to be a part of her life now, and I want to wail for her.

Clark must sense the shift in my mood because he uses his big body to block me and starts talking overly loud about soliloquies and he walks me away. I’m barely managing to not melt into puddles on the floor. I can’t do this today. I don’t want her friends being nice to me. I don’t want to be nice to anyone else. I can’t handle it. Today I just want to make it through.

***

After school, when I walk inside the house, it’s quiet. My guess is Mom is at the hospital with Kristina so I head for the kitchen and start searching the pantry for a snack. I pour milk on a huge bowl of Cap’n Crunch and, as I’m chewing, I feel someone watching and look up.

Mom leans against the wall watching me. She’s got a glass in her hand. It tinkles with ice. I look closer and my eyebrows shoot up. Amber. I can smell the peaty stench from where I sit. Scotch on the rocks? I try to remember if I’ve ever seen her drink except the occasional one she nurses at parties.

“You’re eating that horrible cereal again,” she says. Her Southern accent is pronounced. She tilts her glass and polishes off the rest.

I look around the kitchen as if someone will miraculously appear to save me from what is happening. My heart beats like hummingbird wings. The mom I know doesn’t slink around swilling drinks in the afternoon.

“How’s Kristina?” I ask.

“Fine. That boy came to her room today. Jeremy. She asked me to leave. She isn’t my same little girl anymore.”

“Well, how could she be?” I ask.

She takes a step toward me, but loses her balance and giggles. She reaches for the wall with her free hand, but misses it and stumbles.

I put the spoon down as quietly as I can. “Mom? Are you okay? You want me to call Dad?”

“Your dad. Why? What’s he going to do?” She pouts as if she’s going to cry. “When’s the last time he bothered to come home to talk? He’s too busy working or playing golf.”

My mom doesn’t talk about Dad behind his back, no matter what. My butt melds to the chair. I don’t know this person wearing my mom’s body.

“I guess that’s the way he’s coping?” I say, defending him even though I’m plenty angry with his disappearing act too.

“What about me? When do I get to hide?”

“Uh, Mom?” I say and stop. I want to tell her she has been, but frankly she’s scaring me.

She wobbles to the fridge, stands on her tiptoes, and reaches for the cupboard above it, and pulls out a bottle of Scotch. She unscrews the cap and weaves back to the table, sloshing a few ounces in her glass, spilling some on the floor.

“What, Tess?” she snaps. “What do you want?”

I stand up and push back from the table, and reach my hand out to take the glass from her, but she pulls back and lifts the glass to her lips. Then she laughs but it’s a hollow sound, and I feel the vapors of desperation in the spittle that lands on my arm.

“Stop it!” I yell. I’m not emotionally equipped to handle this.

“Stop what? Drinking?” She lifts her glass, saluting me, and then finishes it and jiggles around the remaining ice cubes. “All gone.” She begins to laugh.

“Stop it,” I repeat, shaking my head, but she starts moving, stumbling to get past me. She walks like a zombie.

“Cut it out!” I yell.

“Cut it out?” She stops moving and stares at me. Her eyes are bloodshot and her makeup is smudged.

“Don’t you see, Tess,” she says and she speaks slowly, over-enunciating her words. “They
are
cutting it out. Your sister’s leg. They’re cutting out the cancer and taking off your sister’s leg.”

Tears leak from my eyes. “This is why Dad says you don’t drink.”

She swings around. Her free hand whacks me on the side of my face. The pain is instant but it’s masked by shock. My mom has never laid a hand on me. Not once.

“You’re the one who this should be happening to,” she says, and her voice slurs, dripping with her visit to the dark side. “You’d rather sit around all day drawing pictures, like a five-year-old. Your sister had a future in volleyball!”

She starts to run away but she trips and falls to the floor. Her head droops to her shoulders and she folds into herself and weeps. My heart feels like it’s been forced through a shredder, physically broken. I gasp and turn to leave her, crumpled and crying, a mess on the kitchen floor.

“Tess,” she calls, her voice pitiful and repulsive.

Queasy from her words mixing with the smell of Scotch, I tear out of the house as she continues to weep and call my name. Bile rises in my throat.

I run to the garage, jump on my bike, and pedal.