Twisted Fate (11 page)

“Hey!” I said.

She turned around and dropped the brush, totally startled. I laughed.

“Argh! How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t sneak up on me!”

She thought I was doing it on purpose and I can’t blame
her really because it’s totally the kind of thing I would do on purpose.

“How was school?” I asked.

“Good.”

“Do you have to work?”

“Why? Do you want the room to yourself? Is Declan coming over?”

“No,” I said. “I thought we could hang out.”

She looked at me warily and turned the music down.

“We,” I said. “You and me. I’m serious.”

“What do you want, Syd? I was going to bake muffins later anyway. You don’t have to pretend to want to hang out with me to get some, you know I always give them to you.”

“Hey. I’m serious,” I said.

“Is something wrong?” She frowned and looked at me, worried.

“No!” I said. “Not at all. It’s just . . . I was talking with Richards.”

“I know, I heard you get called down to the office.”

“Right. Whatever. Just listen to me, okay? I was talking with Richards and she had all this stuff to say about how girls think they have to act certain ways, like be good or bad, and I was thinking about us. I thought maybe . . . I thought maybe we should spend some time together. Because maybe we’re making each other the way we are. Maybe we’re not really opposites but we just think we have to be or something. I don’t know.”

“I’ve never thought I was any certain way,” she said. “I’m just being myself.”

“Right right right!” I said. “But when we act like ourselves, we’re acting in some way that is expected of us and there are generally two ways that girls are expected to act, right? I don’t know. I think I finally got it figured out.”

“What out?”

“The way we are!” I said. “Like this.” I grabbed her iPod off the speakers right in the middle of Amber Carrington’s sappy melodic whining, “I want you to staaaaaaaayyyyy.” And I took my iPod out and scrolled down to the Distillers’ song “The Hunger.” Brody Dalle belted out her raspy punk shriek over the screaming guitar and heavy drums. “Don’t goooooooo!” she screamed.

“See?” I said. “It’s the same song.”

She had her finger in her ears, but she started to get a little smile on her face. “That is NOT the same song!” she yelled, laughing a little.

“It is though,” I told her. “It’s the same thing going on. And look around the room,” I said. “The stuff we like is not all that different. We just like it served up in a different way.”

“Are you really high?” she asked.

I turned down the music. “No,” I said. “But I ran into Graham and
that
kid is on some serious drugs.”

She frowned. “He’s got a prescription for his learning disability,” she said.

“How do you now that?”

“Because I was talking to him about stuff. About moving
and Virginia and starting school and all that. If you didn’t have detention every night you might get here when he’s working on his car after school and you could talk to him too.”

“Okay. Well, anyway.” I didn’t want to get distracted by Graham again so I kept on talking about what was important. “What do you think about what I’m saying?” I jumped up on the bed and turned up the Distillers again and grabbed her hairbrush and screamed into it along with Brody Dalle. “Don’t go!”

She laughed. “You sound like you did when we were little and Mom and Dad would go out for the night.”

I nodded and started laughing too. “C’mon, Al, let’s build a fort and get some ice cream. We’re just fine without them.”

She shook her head at me and looked like she was about to cry. Then finally she said, “Syd, you’re nuts,” and got up on the bed with me and we both started jumping and dancing and shouting, “Don’t go!”

And I couldn’t stop laughing. I was having fun with my sister for the first time in years and years. We didn’t need to be apart at all. We could really be like this. I tore my Tony Hawk poster down from my side of the room and went over and hung it over her bed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t think he’s hot!” I yelled over the music.

She rolled her eyes. “Please, Syd,” she said in a mock-sophisticated tone that sounded just like our mom, “I may not skateboard but I’m not
blind
.” She handed me a
thumbtack and pulled the top of the poster up so it would be perfectly straight.

Then she went into her closet and she got out Sparkle Pig. The stuffed animal we used to fight over when we were little. He was a little pig in a T-shirt that had glitter writing on the front that said “Sparkle.” She tossed him to me.

“Seriously?” I asked

“I know you said you hate him now. But, uh . . . actually . . . I know you don’t.”

I made Sparkle Pig dance up to her and scream “Don’t go!” and then flopped down on the bed. “Sparkle Pig, you are mine,” I said to him and set him on my pillow. “Mine and mine alone.”

I tossed him back over to Ally, but he just landed on her bed.

“Ally, listen,” I said. “I think you and I should really be unified. No more fighting. No more attitude. We’ll be stronger that way. Richards is right.”

I remember how she looked at me then; like she was scared and confused. She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. I thought she would be happy that I had figured some things out. I thought she would be happy I wasn’t acting like a bratty little punk and wanted to hang out with her. But the way she looked . . . it was like I just told her she had a month to live.

“But we are together,” she said. “Aren’t we?”

S
yd came home late as always because she had detention and I was already doing homework in our room. Daddy had a meeting with some folks at the harbor and Mom was shopping.

When we were little kids and they would be gone for a long time, we used to make up plays. I would always be the princess and she would be the witch. Or I would be the damsel in distress and she would be the mad scientist. I would be Wendy and she would be Peter. The only time she wanted to be a good guy is when she wanted to be Pocahontas.

When our parents came home we’d show them the play we made up and they would laugh. One time when I was eight, they went away for the entire day to some boat auction and we made up a play about two orphans that had everything in it: songs, dancing, jokes, costumes. It was
mostly Syd’s idea. She was really good at coming up with characters. We went through our parents’ closet and put on their clothes. Syd wore Dad’s shoes with one of our princess dresses and clomped around and we fell on the floor laughing so hard.

I remember Mommy marveling at us: “How do you do those different voices?!” Sometimes I wished we could still play those games together.

Syd dumped her books on the bed and then opened the window and fished out a pack of cigarettes from the bottom drawer of our dresser.

“Can you stand by the window if you’re going to smoke?” I asked her. I had long given up on telling her about lung cancer and the general grossness of smelling like an ashtray.

She moved closer to the window and didn’t argue or have some snappy comeback, which is when I realized something was wrong. Syd rarely did anything you asked. Maybe for Declan and Becky, but not for me or Mom or Dad. She looked out the window into the little woods.

“You okay, sis?”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke and nodded, then shrugged. She went over to the speaker and took my iPod off right in the middle of Rihanna’s “Stay” and then put hers on. Something with a lot of yelling.

“I saw that kid Graham over by the skate park,” she said.

“Cute, right?” I ignored the fact that she just took my
music off because I was so used to it and because I honestly didn’t care that much.

She looked up and grinned in spite of herself, gave a little nod.

“Cute, but weird,” she said.

“I think he’s just shy,” I said. “I walked home with him the other day and he seemed all right.”

“You did? What did he talk about?” she asked.

“Movies. How he spends more time on making them and working on his car than anything else. How he likes to build things. I had to ask him a million questions; otherwise I think he’d just walk along saying nothing, looking at everything. I think he really needed someone to talk to though, like he’s looking for a friend. I guess things were rough when he was living in Virginia. He had this one best friend, Eric, and they made all these movies and then I guess Eric’s parents sued his parents or something and now they don’t even talk.”

Syd’s eyes grew wide. “Whoa, I wonder what Graham did.”

She had that expression she gets when she’s strategizing. I’ve seen it plenty, like when she’s trying to figure out how to take just the right amount from the liquor cabinet without getting caught. Or how to sneak out to meet Declan. “You should try to find out what he did.”

I sighed. “Maybe he didn’t do anything,” I told her. I came over and sat on her bed—something I rarely do, but I did it
right then because I felt like we were really getting along.

She stubbed out her cigarette and then went into our bathroom to flush it.

When Syd is worried she tries to look tough, so I knew just by looking at her something was really bugging her. Not that I’d seen her worried too many times. She can go months without studying or read really upsetting things or see them on TV or listen to our parents argue and she never gets worried. I guess worrying is my job, so when I saw her eyebrows furrow like that I paid attention.

She said, “Doesn’t Graham seem like the kind of kid who’s going to come to school with a Bushmaster rifle? You know, the rich, white, spaced-out loner type? That’s always the kind of kid who ends up really doing damage.”

“You’re the rich, white, spaced-out loner type,” I said, and poked her in the side.

She laughed. “Yeah, well, takes one to know one I guess.”

“You have a crush on him?”

She shrugged. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do.”

She seemed so sad and resigned when she said it. And suddenly I thought, Wow, Syd’s jealous of more than just my job. And she’s trying to be good about it. I mean that really threw me for a loop, because Syd is, like, never jealous. Of anyone. Mean? Check. Snotty? Check. Competitive? Check. Check. Check. But jealous or insecure about a boy? And trying to be reasonable? Not my sister. As crummy as
she could act sometimes, she never liked it when girls got all hung up on boys or fought over them. And she had never cared before about any boy I’d had a crush on. Didn’t even pay attention to them. She always just thought they were nerdy or preppy or not her type. But this was not like her. It was confusing and honestly annoying. My feelings for Graham were strong. He wasn’t some boy I just wanted to fool around with.

I told her, “I like him, Syd. Maybe he’s more your type, but
I
actually like him. And you can’t tell me who to date. Besides, you already HAVE a boyfriend.”

“Declan is not my boyfriend,” she said. “And that’s not what this is about, you moron. Something’s off about him. If anyone can tell, I can.” She didn’t sound angry, just really worried, and I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg—somehow making fun of me.

“I’ll make my own decisions,” I said. And she looked shocked. “I’m my own person, Syd. You and I are not the same in any way. And we never will be. And besides, I’m older than you.”

Syd may be smart but she is still immature. She’s overly emotional. Sometimes you have to just tell her how things are. “You and I are not unified on this at all. And I’m not going to fight with you. We are not coming together on this.”

She glared at me.

“No,” she said. “You don’t know how to fight. You just leave it up to me.”

W
ell, it was terrible, but his dad was some bigwig up at BAE Systems. That place that makes drones for the war—surveillance drones I guess, some big technology firm. There were folks here who wanted him tried as an adult. He was lawyered up before he even left the hospital—he had a fractured collarbone, a cracked rib, some cuts and bruises. Split lip. He was practically untouched considering. Lawyered up and a juvenile, so his name never appeared in the papers. No one ever knew. The DA was fuming. Other parents were horrified. I mean, we had a real situation. And what could I do? I knew my place in that town like everyone else. Knew where the money was coming from. We didn’t even call him into the station. We went by his house in an unmarked car as a courtesy.