This is WAR (21 page)

“Hey, hey, not so fast.” She felt his sweaty hands circle her waist again
.

Before she could protest, he’d lifted her onto the table next to Willa
.

“Woohoo! It’s about time you got her up here. Nice work, Gregory!” Willa shrieked and giggled while Sloane stood next to her, unable to shake the paralyzing feeling of hundreds of eyes on her. In reality, no one had stopped dancing or had even noticed her standing next to Willa
.

“Here, this will help you relax.” Trip slipped a tiny white pill into her hand
.

She glanced down at its round, white form. It looked almost exactly like the narcolepsy pills she’d given to Rory for his sister. If she remembered the definition, she might have thought it ironic. But she didn’t, so she just pretended
to swallow the pill but tossed it over her shoulder into the crowd of writhing bodies instead
.

Trip hoisted himself onto the table and started moving against Willa with the music. Sloane watched as he jokingly told her to “open wide.” She watched as he placed the pill on her tongue. Watched as Willa swallowed it with a bright smile
.

Sloane slid down from the table, resigning herself to babysitting duty again. Not that she really minded. Babysitting her friend was easier than pretending to be cool and smart and whatever else she was supposed to be
.

She felt an arm pulling on her elbow
.

“Hey, have you seen my …” Madge noticed Willa dancing on the table, took in her bloodshot eyes and watched her sway dangerously with Trip. She sighed heavily and again turned to Sloane. “Great. That’s just great. How long has she been like that?”

“On the table? Or wasted?” Sloane asked the first two questions that popped into her head and regretted them as soon as she saw Madge roll her eyes. She was in one of her moods
.

“Willa! WILLA!” Madge shrieked over the pounding beat
.

No response. Then again, if Willa were ignoring her stepsister completely, it wouldn’t have come as a huge surprise to Sloane. The two had been arguing lately. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but something had shifted between them. They didn’t laugh together the way they used to
.

Madge reached up to grab her sister and drag her down from the table, but Willa shook her arm away. “Leave me alone, Madge. I’m actually having some fun for once.”

“You think this is fun? You’re making a fool of yourself.” Madge shouted over the music, and again, Willa pretended not to hear
.

“James!” Willa squealed
.

She hopped off the table and leaned dangerously toward Sloane who placed her hands on her shoulders, stabilizing her. “He’s going to kiss me,” Willa slurred. “I can feel it.” She squeezed Sloane’s hand. “This is it, Sloaney. This is my night.”

Sloane patted her shoulder awkwardly. She needed some air. Now that Madge had taken over as babysitter, Sloane did her best Houdini and headed out the nearest exit. She was good at disappearing when she needed to. She’d duck out of dances at school and linger in the bathroom, wander upstairs at parties only to sit on the edge of a bed in a quiet room. She’d even leave movies early, walk the dark sidewalks surrounding the theater and slip back in before the credits rolled
.

Tonight, she managed to find a spot on the lower deck that was relatively quiet and settled into one of the cushy lounge chairs. The stars were bright in the summer sky. In that moment she felt small, tiny. It was comforting in a way. If the universe was infinite, that meant she really could be unnoticeable. After years of obsessive parents hovering over her, Sloane relished the thought of fading away into nothingness
.

And as if someone was trying to prove her point or maybe test her theory, Willa and James ran out onto the deck in front of her. They didn’t even glance at Sloane’s chair in the shadows. When Willa reached up onto her tippy toes to kiss James in the moonlight, she didn’t feel Sloane’s eyes on her. And when Trip helped them into a small motorboat together, neither of them turned. Not even when Sloane stood up and began yelling at them to wait. They were drunk; it was late. They’d get themselves killed. No … Willa and James took off into the night oblivious to the girl in the shadows begging them to stay
.

Sloane got up to go find Madge or Lina or someone who could help her figure out what to do next. She heard the fireworks exploding in the distance as she scoured the faces in the crowd for her friends. But it wasn’t until long after the last burst—when she found a soaking wet James Gregory and pale-looking Lina cowering in the exact same chair where she’d hidden an hour earlier—that she knew something had gone very, very wrong
.

Chapter 24

It was exactly 5.34 miles from the Ames-Rowan house to Hawthorne Lake.

Madge knew this because she and Willa made their dad drive it once when they were in seventh grade so they’d know the exact mileage of their daily bike rides. Madge remembered sitting in the Jag, watching the odometer creep upward, Willa’s twelve-year-old voice cheering the needle on. Willa had burrowed her head into the seat of the car, as if she still couldn’t get used to the smell of expensive leather. She’d grin from ear to ear when Madge’s father would ruffle her blonde hair—as if to remind her that he was real, solid, and that he wasn’t going to disappear like her biological dad.

At first Madge had been jealous of the way her father doted on her stepsister. But in the third grade, Willa had dedicated her first novel,
My Only Home
, (illustrated with Crayolas and handwritten in careful cursive) to her new stepsister, Madge. It was basically a love letter to Madge and her dad, with the names changed. That day, a tiny piece
of Madge’s heart that had frozen after her mother died, began to thaw. Willa had this way of making people melt. Now that she was gone, Madge wondered who would soften the grief that crystallized there now.

So instead of waiting around for someone else to save her, Madge was doing her best to save herself. Her body screamed at her to stop running. Her pounding, frozen heart begged her to slow down, but Madge kept on, the key on the chain around her neck pinging against her chest. One foot in front of the other. Her legs cut through the thick July air, so humid it felt like she was running through the middle of the lake.

So close
.

Madge had almost tasted their blood. Maybe Sloane was right. Maybe she should give up. She knew they were never going to win, but she’d never lost before Willa died. Not really. She was captain of the debate team, student council president, and an all-state tennis champion. Failure was not on option. Not for Madge. And definitely not when it came to making things right for Willa.

Her lungs burned, and her tank top clung to her stomach, drenched with sweat. She jogged past Magnolia Park and saw the water fountain wavy in the heat near the playground. She imagined how good the cool water would feel on her lips, trickling down her throat, but she was almost home. She’d left the Club determined not to stop. And just as determined, Madge jogged right past it.

People make a lot of assumptions when your sister dies. They assume your life is a mess. They assume your parents’ lives are falling apart. They can almost smell the quiet on you. They hear it in the rasp of your voice; they feel it in your desperation for human contact. They observe your borderline compulsive need to surround yourself with people who help
you learn to forget instead of ones who force you to remember. When your sister dies, people look at you like you died, too. In a lot of ways they’re right, Madge realized. She was dead. All the important parts of her, anyway.

A grim smile twisted Madge’s lips when she turned onto her street and saw her stepmother’s Porsche parked in the driveway. It was one of the many things Carol Ames-Rowan not-so-subtly hinted that she wanted or needed or had to have. Madge’s father wasn’t in the business of saying no. And his yeses were over-the-top, like some cheesy commercial for doting husbandry. There’d be a new car in the driveway with a red bow around it or a scavenger hunt to find the bracelet Willa’s mother had been drooling over that month. In the year before Willa died, Madge’s credit card had been declined, and the money from her bank account drained. It wasn’t difficult to identify the blue-eyed, blonde-haired root of the problem. But miraculously the Ames-Rowan’s financial crisis disappeared right along with Willa. Or maybe her father had just figured out how to hide his problems better.

Carol and Willa had been a package deal, so Madge had always managed to hide just how much she loathed Carol. Well, most of the time. But now that Willa was gone, there was a new friction between the two. Madge realized that most days she felt like some kind of hate-seeking missile, just looking for the right person to target and destroy. Still, she couldn’t help herself. So when she tore into the kitchen after running the 5.34 miles home from the Club, the perfect target sat right in her line of fire.

“Honey! What’s happened?” Carol dropped the magazine she was reading and stood. “I’ve tried calling.”

Madge rolled her eyes and turned toward the laundry
room for a towel. “I just went for a run. Call off the search party, Carol.”

“It’s almost a hundred degrees outside. Are you crazy?” Her stepmother grabbed a bottled water from the fridge and held it out to Madge.

“I was at the Club. No one could drive me home,” she lied. Her friends had insisted on giving her a lift, but she’d remained steadfast as she pulled the sports bra over her head and laced up her running shoes in the locker room. She needed to clear her head. She wouldn’t have cared if it were a thousand degrees.

Madge twisted the cap off the water but only allowed herself a tiny sip. It was a game she played, even when Willa was still alive. Minimal gratification. She’d download a new favorite song, but wouldn’t allow herself to listen to it. Or she’d bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies and ration a tiny corner of a warm cookie as a reward. Watching her friends devour the rest took willpower. Playing with deprivation made her stronger. The wanting. And not having.

Carol eyed her with worry or anger or both, and Madge felt a fresh rush of satisfaction. That clinched it. She wouldn’t drink the rest of that water. In fact, she wished she had the energy to run another lap around her neighborhood. That would really piss Carol off.

“How are the girls doing?” her stepmother finally asked, retreating back to her magazine at the table with dead eyes.

Several weeks ago, Madge had overheard Carol whispering with her father that if she could just get Madge to open up to her that maybe she’d stop being so angry all the time. Classic Carol: she believed
she
could solve anything. What her stepmother didn’t understand—would never understand—was that Madge wanted to be angry. She needed the anger.
As long as she was angry, she didn’t have time to wallow in grief. She didn’t have time to think about the empty room next to hers or the way her sister’s flip-flops were still tucked under Madge’s bed in exactly the same position she’d left them more than four weeks ago.

Only now, she couldn’t help but think about Willa, because Carol was sitting in her chair. She’d claimed it without explanation since Willa’s death, like it had never been anyone else’s. Something about the sight of her stepmother’s bony ass in that chair set Madge’s blood on fire. Carol usually had a magazine or a book, but Madge knew she wasn’t reading the pages. She’d watch as the shell of a woman stared into space, the same page displayed in front of her day after day after day. In her dead daughter’s spot at the table.

“Madge? I asked you a question.” Carol didn’t look up from the unread page. She sounded more like an annoyed babysitter than a stepmother, which pretty much summed up their entire relationship.

Instead of responding, Madge took a tin from the counter drawer and placed a mint delicately in her mouth. First she flattened the mint on her tongue. Then she twirled it once to the left, twice to the right, and flattened once again. She continued this rhythm as she shut the lid with a satisfying click. It was her post-Willa routine. Anytime she started to feel like she might lose it, she put a mint in her mouth. The reason was simple: they reminded her of Willa’s funeral. Carol and her father had practically force-fed them to her the entire time she stood in the ridiculous receiving line at her sister’s wake. To Madge, the round little peppermints tasted of tears and strangers’ hugs and her sister’s ashes all rolled into one. Whenever she needed a reminder of what she was doing or why she had to keep going, she’d pop one
in her mouth. Nothing like the taste of death to light a fire under your ass.