Peas and Carrots (14 page)

“Stay out of my room,” Hope warned, backing away until her legs hit the bed behind her. Her heart was pounding, but she refused to panic. She was a talker, not a fighter, yeah, but she had rights, too. If Dess stepped one foot into her room, laid a hand on her, just one—

“I'm not
in
your room. I'm in the bathroom.”

Hope crossed her arms. In her baggy white sweats, she felt like a polar bear, but without the protection of vicious teeth and claws. “Well, close the door if you need the bathroom. I don't have to talk to you.”
You rat-faced stick chick.

“You do unless you want me to tell Foster Lady you're talking trash about my mother—”

“She wouldn't believe you.” Hope lifted her chin. She hoped this was true.

“Think she won't?” Dess gave her an evil smile. “Your mom's dumb as a big fat box of bricks. She's dumb as
you.
All I have to do is tell her you aren't being
kind—
”

“Don't you talk about my mother, you, you—”
Hope's fury ignited. Her brain felt packed with angry words, each jostling for their turn in her mouth. “You won't ever be half the person she is. My mother is good, and smart—a lot smarter than you,” she managed.
You vicious yellow-haired harpy.

Dess gave another smile that was mostly a sneer with uptilted lips. “Oh, sure, Foster Lady's totally onto me. That's why she's making me nachos.”

Hope ignored this, fists clenched. She had to stop this now. She should just…walk away. Take a deep breath and walk away. That was unrealistic, though, with Dess standing there, sneering at her—

Hope sucked in a breath and tried for calm. “What's really wrong, Dess?” She moved aside her books and perched on the end of her bed, careful not to cross her arms. She tried a small smile, which she felt wavering. She dug her fingers into the bedpost. “Let's get this all out in the open. What do you want?”

“Nothing you've got, Hopeless,” Dess said. “You run your big mouth, but you don't really know nothing about my family, do you?”

Hope threw up her hands as heat roared into her chest. “I know
your mom's in jail,
Dess. But you know what? I don't
care.
Seriously,
I don't give a rat's ass.
I've been nice to you, nice like you don't deserve, and all you can do is call me stupid, and talk crap to me about
my
mom? I'm done. I. Am.
Done.
”
Skinny little gutter-mouthed troglodyte.

Dess recoiled, hands raised in mock terror. “Ooh, Nice Girl's
done.
I'm scared.”

Hope talked louder. “The thing is,
you're
completely stupid. At first I thought, ‘Okay, she's had a bad life, give her a break, so what if she doesn't want to hang with you? Maybe she has issues with black people. Maybe she might not want someone black to buy her coffee, which is
dumb,
because coffee's coffee, but what 
ever.
' But then, Dess, you leave the coffee shop and freak out, and I didn't laugh at you. I just tried to be nice, and I've
kept
trying to be nice, and all you can say is—”

Dess interrupted, practically breathing fire, “My life is
fine.
And I'm
not
racist, so shut up! Just because I don't want to hang with some stupid heifer who—”

“Stop calling me heifer, you skinny stick!”
Hope shrieked.

“Well, stop being such a stupid dumbass!” Dess roared back. “Why you trying to call me a racist? I don't have a problem with my own blood!”

Hope flung out her arms. “Oh, dear
Lord.
Did I call you a racist? Nooo! I said you
might have issues with black people
! What I'm
calling you,
Dess, is
evil.
You are rude and evil and mean. You're stupid and fake, and vicious and ungrateful and
evil.
” Hope's voice grew more shrill with each repetition.

“Oh, so I'm mean,
boo-hoo-hoo.
It's better than being a big, fat, ugly,
stupid
princess. You're such a princess, you don't even know!” Dess snarled.

“Princess?” Hope stared, disgusted. “You're crazy—you know that? Who's the one acting all high and mighty?” she sputtered. “You're such a
fake,
you don't even know what's real. How am I a princess? The only one acting like a royal
B
around here is
you
!”

Dess shrugged jerkily, then focused on picking at her nail polish, her jaw tight. “I know what's real, Hopeless,” she managed. “You're stupid. You don't know anything.”

“Don't you ‘Hopeless' me, Odessa
Dessturbed
! Odessa
Desspicable
!” It was a lame comeback, but Hope hated being called Hopeless. “If I have to be
stuck
with you till your crazy mom decides she
wants
you, you better stop calling me—”

“
Shut up!
You don't know
shit
about Trish, so just
stop
talking!”

“Stop talking?
You're
the one who came into
my
room!
You
started it!”

“Well, it's
finished now
!” Dess bellowed, slamming the bathroom door.

Hope screamed at the closed door and kicked it several times. That troll-faced, raccoon-eyed, tone-deaf, gutter-mouthed, faking little
freak
! Hope stomped around the room, breathing heavily, kicking the wastepaper basket, the wall, and the bathroom door again. She wished it was Dess's
head
she was kicking. That girl
totally
had it coming. Totally.

From next door, Hope heard similar crashes and booms, and for every crash she heard, Hope made one louder. It was weirdly satisfying, like getting the last word for real. When she stubbed her toe on the corner of the bed, she swallowed a curse and limped to sit on the bed, sitting stiffly.
Ow.

Then she heard a muffled voice shouting her name.

“Hope? Dessa?
Hope!
”

Crap.

Pretty much all of the rules for foster sisters had been completely broken. You weren't supposed to scream at your foster siblings. You weren't supposed to fight with them. You
definitely
weren't supposed to call them names, or kick their walls, or wish you could kick their heads.

A sharp knock on her door. “
Hope. Harmony. Carter!
Answer me!”

“Yes, Daddy.” Hope opened her door and stood in the hallway, licking her lips. Her father was usually a soft touch—usually—but when he shouted her name like that…Hope knew she was in trouble. She cringed as he scowled at her.

Her father breathed noisily, his nostrils flaring. “What. Is. All. This. Shouting?”

“I— We're fine.” Hope looked down in shame. Nothing was fine, of course, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Fine? It doesn't sound fine.” Her father appeared rumpled in his pajama shirt and jeans, and he was holding Jamaira tucked against his chest without her sling, which meant they'd gotten him out of bed. He scrutinized Hope's face, then looked over her shoulder as Dess's door clicked open. “There you are, Dess. What's going on here? Do you need arbitration?”

“What, like a lawyer?” Dess asked, sounding amused—cool and calm, even. “No, Mr. Carter. It was just a little argument.”

Hope turned and glared at the other girl. A
little
argument? Oh, wasn't
she
just turning on the charm. Dess was so
two-faced,
so totally, ridiculously fake, just like the blond in her hair. Didn't Dad
see
?

“A little argument, huh? There's nothing ‘little' about all the hollering I just heard. If you girls need a listener for both sides, I can do that. There's no need to shout when you can talk.”

“Dad, I don't—”

“No!” Dess blurted. “I mean—um—”

There was a little silence. “We can work it out, Dad,” Hope said finally. She felt her shoulders hunch under his frown.

“I expect you can. I expect you can also work it out
civilly.
Both of you know the rules. No more of this hollering and name-calling and carrying-on.
I will not have that in this house.
”

The last words were so hard and sharp-edged that Hope recoiled and deflated a little more. “Sorry, Dad,” she said in a small voice. Her father hated shouting. He'd grown up with parents who shouted and threw things when they were angry. Hope knew better than to scream like that—that wasn't what they did at home. At school Mr. Workman had told Hope she had an
exceptional
vocabulary. Hope knew she could have told Dess where to go using four-syllable words and without raising her voice once—if she hadn't gotten so pissed that her brain had shut off. Hope wished she knew why it was so easy for Dess to get to her. She was the one with the advantages here—the family, the mom who was home, the father who was
not
in jail, who was staring at her just then with his mouth a thin, tight line.

“Sorry, Mr. Carter,” Dess said, sounding subdued.

Hope gave Dess a narrow-eyed look.
Suck-up.
She used her most mature voice. “We'll work it out, Dad. I apologize for shouting.”

Her father let out a long sigh. “All right. Both of you probably need to raise your blood sugar. Come and eat,” he said, and waited as Dess preceded him up the hallway. Hope, taking a step to follow, slumped as her father barred her way. She sighed, anticipating his additional dressing-down. This
so
wasn't fair. Dess had
started
it.

“So you want to tell me what this was about, young lady?”

Hope shifted uncomfortably. “No, Dad.”

He shifted impatiently. “Hope, I know you're struggling to adjust to the changes going on. I know it's tough sharing space with someone your age, but first you snoop in private papers and now you're screaming and carrying on. Your mother and I expect better of you.”

Hope's eyes stung as she staggered beneath the weight of his disappointment. It wasn't
fair.
Dess had started everything, but only
she
was in trouble. Wasn't she allowed to be hurt? Wasn't she allowed to be mad? She said, a little bitterly, “I know what you and Mom expect, Dad.”

Her father gathered Jamaira closer to his chest and stared at Hope a long moment. Eventually he sighed and looked away. “Go on and eat. Since you two obviously aren't working on any project anymore, you've got time to help get the groceries and wash the cars when you're done.”

Hope sighed. She knew punishment detail when she heard it. “Yes, Dad.”

Shopping with her father was an exercise in efficiency. Usually Hope, her father, and her mother each had their own list and their own area of the store. They split up, each with a cart, and then reconvened in the checkout area fifteen minutes later to consolidate their haul and go through the self-check. It worked: Hope didn't have to stand around sighing, bored stupid while Mom read
every single word
on ingredient labels; Dad could talk to strangers without embarrassing everyone; and an hour and a half's worth of shopping was usually crunched, all told, into a half hour, if Mom could help and Austin wasn't whiny or Maira didn't need a diaper change in the middle of everything. Since a few weeks ago, when they'd had to go
back
to the store to return a pack of gum that Austin had walked away with, Hope and her father had been doing the shopping by themselves, and Mom had been keeping Austin's sticky fingers at home.

“Okay,” Dad was saying, whipping three small sheets of yellow paper from a sticky pad. “Dess, you're on ‘baking' through ‘cans.' Hope, you've got ‘toiletries' through ‘frozen.' I'll take ‘dairy' through ‘produce.' Okay—twenty minutes, ladies.”