The Waiting Sky (2 page)

2

B
y ten o’clock that night, I’m sitting outside in a plastic pool chair at a Days Inn. We’re still in Oklahoma. I think. Nothing about the flat-packed plains beyond the pool’s edge or the long line of lights on the freeway says for sure, one way or another.

A breeze picks up and ripples the water. The pool is empty—it closed an hour ago—and I’m the only one around, which is a good thing. If legions of kids were still swimming, screaming, and splashing water at each other, the dull throb above my left temple would be even worse.

The hailstone knocked me out for only a second, but my brother still called off the chase and made me go to an urgent care clinic. While the remaining four Torbros sat in the parking lot, we saw a doctor who told me to call him if I got dizzy or nauseous or couldn’t remember stuff. But ultimately he said I was fine; it was just a nasty bump on the head.

I glance up as Victor files by, just on the other side of the pool’s metal gate. In the glare of the motel’s lights, I can see he’s carrying Polly. One of her dials is cracked, and I want to call out to him—to ask him if Polly’s going to be okay—but I decide against it. If Polly
is
broken, he might try to blame Hallie for it. And then I might try to defend Hallie, which could lead to a fight, and getting into it with Victor might not be the smartest idea ever. Even in the low light, I can see the pale scar that runs from his temple to his jaw. It’s the kind of scar that you get in a bar, where a piece of a broken beer bottle slices through your skin, or at least that’s what I imagine. Best to get news about Polly from someone else later, I think.

My phone buzzes, interrupting my thoughts. I pull it out and stare at the text.
Hope ur ok. I am thinking abt u.

I stare at Cat’s message until the letters blur. I try to text back, but my hands shake so hard, I almost drop the phone.

Cat.

The accident.

I can still smell the dusty interior of our battered Honda that day, when my mom drove Cat and me home from the mall. I can still see the way the sunlight lit up Cat’s cornflower-blue eyes when she talked about the cute guy in the food court. I can feel the silky fabric of the scarf I bought at the mall’s resale boutique. A vintage piece for sure, probably 1920s was my guess, and a steal at five bucks.

And then.

And then the screech of tires on blacktop, the shrill sound of the horn, Cat and me getting pitched forward so hard, our seat belts locked.

We were in the middle of an intersection. My mom had run a red light.

“Mom!” I cried as a car with the right of way sped past our hood. Another horn blared. My mom tried to gun it, but cars were still speeding around us.

“What the hell?” my mom yelled.

Time slowed way down. A little squeak escaped Cat, who was staring out her window, watching a truck barrel straight toward her. All I could make out was a grill and glinting chrome.

In the space of a half second, a thousand thoughts ignited my frontal lobe.
My mom is drunk. We are stopped in the middle of an intersection. A truck is coming toward us. Mom’s reaction times are slow. We’ll be lucky if she hits the accelerator by the time the truck is on top of us.

Finally, my adrenaline kicked in. “Go!” I screamed, hitting my mom’s seat so hard her head snapped forward. “Drive now!”

Somehow, Mom’s pickled brain responded. We jerked into motion as another car swerved around our front, its horn thundering. I thought I smelled burning rubber, and wondered if it was our tires, or the tires of the truck that was now so close, I thought I could see the wide eyes and open mouth of its driver.

We were moving, but the truck still clipped our rear, shattering the back windshield. Glass came raining down on Cat and me in razor-sharp drops. The Honda spun around again and again. I remember thinking there was an earthquake happening, and what a funny time for that to occur—in Minnesota, no less, where we weren’t supposed to have them. It wasn’t until later I realized the whole car was shaking with the tremor of the truck’s ginormous wheels, inches from running us all over.

When the world stopped spinning and shaking, the car was on the other side of the intersection—facing the right way, of all things. As if nothing had happened.

Except, when I looked out the now-missing back windshield—where scraps of glass clung to the edges like those stalagmites we learned about in fourth-grade geology—I saw the truck that had rammed us was jackknifed in the middle of the intersection. Two more cars had come careering to a halt at odd angles around it.

I looked over at Cat, my mouth open. Blood was trickling down her face from her left eyebrow, where a piece of glass the size of a bottle cap was wedged in her skin. There was a sour taste in my throat, and I wondered if it was the taste of fear. “Cat—”

My voice faltered. There were no words for this. Cat’s eyes, round and wide, found mine. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. It wasn’t until two drops of blood landed on the seat fabric that I realized I was hurt, too. I had no idea where, though. I couldn’t feel anything.

My mom grunted, then shook her head like a prizefighter after taking a right hook to the temple. The next thing I knew, we were moving.

Cat gargled something. She whipped her head toward my mom, then back at the accident scene. The car was shuddering and vibrating, its jacked-up back end trying to keep pace with the front.

Cat grabbed my hand. “She c-can’t leave,” she stuttered. “It w-was an accid-d-d-ent.” Cat’s jaw trembled like she was freezing cold.

My mom couldn’t hear her, or was pretending not to. The accident scene was getting farther and farther away.

We passed a few cars where all the drivers had their eyes trained on the truck in the middle of the intersection. They didn’t even notice us. They had no idea we were the cause of the mess they were staring at—and were driving away.

As soon as she could, my mom swung onto back streets, weaving in and out of quiet neighborhoods to stay off the main roads. Cat gripped my left hand with both of hers. With my right hand, I took my vintage scarf and held it just below the cut in her eyebrow. Blood stained the fabric bright red.

“M-m-make her go back,” Cat whispered. “This is
wr-wr-wrong.
”

My insides twisted. How could I tell her I understood what my mom was doing? “We don’t have any insurance,” I imagined myself saying. “We can’t afford it. If any of those people sued us, we’d lose everything. Plus, if they gave my mom a Breathalyzer, she’d never pass . . .”

But of course I couldn’t say that. So instead, I just held the scarf to Cat’s skin and let her blood color the fabric, then my hand.

It wasn’t until we pulled onto Hawthorne Boulevard, Cat’s tree-lined street, that my mom finally spoke. “Is your mom home?” She pulled over in front of Cat’s neighbor’s house, a three-story Tudor that could probably fit our entire apartment in its garage.

Cat shook her head no.

“Your dad?”

No.

“Your little brother?”

“All a-a-at the s-soccer g-g-g-ame,” Cat managed to say.

“Okay,” my mom said. She smoothed back her blond hair—the color and texture of straw—and licked her lips. She eased the Honda into Cat’s driveway and put it into park, but still left it running, probably because if she turned it off, it might never start again.

She got out of the car and came around to Cat’s side, where she had to yank on the door—once, twice—before it would open. “C’mon, sweetie,” she said to Cat, her voice honeyed with reassurance. She held out her hand, but Cat didn’t move.
Take it,
I begged her silently.
My mom will say all the right things. She’ll convince you this is all okay
. When Cat finally grasped Mom’s fingers, I exhaled a little puff of breath and followed them into the house.

Within minutes, Mom had Cat in the downstairs bathroom, seated on the edge of the marble tub. She’d rummaged around for rubbing alcohol and tweezers, and was extracting the glass from Cat’s skin. “It’s fine, just fine,” Mom kept saying over and over, like a mantra.

“See, Cat?” I imagined myself agreeing. “No biggie.” But I didn’t dare say anything—not with Cat’s lower jaw thrust out like that, a mixture of anger and hurt on her face like I’d never seen. So instead I stayed frozen in the bathroom doorway, scared to get too close, scared of what Cat was thinking, scared of where this was all headed.

Cat’s cut was deep and raw. If she needed stitches, there was no way Mom was going to say so. Her eyes were sharp as she cleaned out Cat’s cut, put a huge gauze bandage on it, and taped everything down. She can sure snap out of a binge when she needs to, I thought.

“Okay, then,” Mom said, leaning back on her heels. She patted Cat’s knee like this had just been a scrape on the playground. “I know you’re a little shaken up, but physically you’re fine.”

A corkscrew of Cat’s black, curly hair fell into her face, but she didn’t push it away. She just clenched her fists as Mom used the same reasoned tones she did when she was on the phone with the electric company or the landlord, trying to get our power back on or an extension on our rent.
It’s all a misunderstanding, see? We’re all good people here. Sometimes things happen, but that doesn’t mean we need to go to any extremes. Right?

“You should rest, take a nap, and maybe have some tea or something. You’ll be fine. We’re all fine.” Mom stood and wiped her hands on her faded jeans. That was that.

Cat blinked like she was trying to process what my mom was saying. Like she was still trying to piece together how we’d gotten here—with blood spattered on her white tile floor and glass pieces clinking in her antique silver trash can. “Except,” she said slowly, “except what about the other people back there? What if they were hurt? What if they needed help? You just drove away.”

Cat’s eyes found mine. “Jane,” she said, like she was just now registering me standing in the doorway. Her teeth started clattering again. “Your f-f-face,” she said. “You’re cut too.”

I put my hand up to my cheek and felt shards and dried blood against my fingertips. I jerked as if I’d touched a live electrical current.

“Jane’s fine,” my mom said, her skin illuminated from the gilded light above the vanity. It softened all her edges and angles, and she was so pretty just then, with the hollows in her cheeks filled out, and the shadows around her eyes nearly gone. She looked like she did after she came out of rehab a few years ago, actually. Not that her sobriety lasted.

Cat shook her head slowly, her shock beginning to fade. “No, she’s not fine.
This
is not fine. It’s not
okay
. You—you almost killed us. Because you were drunk. You picked us up and you drove the car
drunk
.”

Mom’s eyes flashed with fear, just for a moment. Her full, red lips paled. “No, honey. That’s not it. We were in an accident, but everything’s okay now. You’re just shaken up is all.”

Cat looked at me, and I swear to God she saw all the way
through
me—all the way down to that cold ball of fear anchored in the pit of my stomach. The fear that she understood the truth about what had gone down: that I
knew
the second we piled into the Honda that my mom was wasted. But rather than say anything, I’d let her drive us around drunk because speaking the truth out loud was so completely humiliating. And now, here we were, post accident, and it was
all my fault.

Cat stood and pushed past Mom, unbalancing her. Mom wobbled until she found the edge of the sink.

“Jane,” Cat said, “this is crazy. This is so completely
insane.
” Cat touched my face like she was going to try and get some of the glass out, then dropped her hand.

All I could do was stare at her. Insane didn’t even begin to cover it. “The only reason I’m not on the phone right now to the cops,” Cat continued, “is for
you
.” She glanced at my mom, whose face was ashen. “But if I find out anyone is dead? I am turning your mom in. People—we could have—that truck almost . . .” She took a breath. “I know you cover for your mom all the time. And, fine, I’m going to do it too. This
once
. As long as no one died out there. Because I love you. Because you’re my best friend. But never again, Jane. Do you understand me? If she ever comes within an inch of hurting me, or you, or anyone else again, I’m going to have the cops over here, and I’m going to get my dad’s lawyers over here and make sure she gets locked up for as long as possible.”

My mom let out her throaty everyone-is-getting-worked-up-over-nothing laugh. “Cat, honey—”

Cat wheeled around. Her heart-shaped face was hard with anger. “
Don’t
. Don’t you dare argue with me after what just
happened
. And after you had the nerve to ask me who’s in my home so you can use it to clean me up in secret and hide what you
did
.”

My mom held up her hands. Her long nails arched over the top of her fingers. “Sweetie, calm down. This won’t ge—”

“NO!” Cat stamped her foot. Her skin was crimson with cuts and anger. “You have a problem, Amanda. And you can’t deal with it. So you know who deals with it? Jane. Don’t think we don’t see it. We
all
see it.”

I wanted to sink down onto the cold tile and cover my ears.

“She comes to school exhausted every day. Why? Because she’s up paying bills and working. She eats ramen noodles all the time because you’re out spending money at the bar. You think my mom has her sleeping over here constantly just for fun? It’s to get her away from
you
.”

I tried to stop the tears rolling down my face because the salt stung the wounds in my cheeks and chin.

Cat turned back to me. “Enough with helping your mom,” she said, her voice trembling. “Please, Jane. In the end, you’re only making it worse. Okay? Do you hear me?”

I did the only thing I could do. I nodded, even though my mom was right there and we knew that if I didn’t help her, we’d both be living out of the now-ruined back of the Honda.

“We’re leaving,” my mom said, brushing past Cat. The clack of her heels echoed like gunfire in the marbled bathroom. “Jane. Let’s go.” She held her head high as she walked through the foyer, out the front door. She didn’t slam anything like I thought she would. She simply left.