The Good Sister Page 19

  “They all have their moments. I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on. You go back and play in the dirt for a while.”

  Jen flashes her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Frankie.”

  Backpack dangling from one hand and jacket tied around her waist, Emma walks quickly along the road leading to her development.

  I should have just left everything at school.

  It’s much too warm for down, and there’s nothing in the bag but a pack of gum and the eye makeup she snuck out of her mother’s drawer this morning. But if her parents see her come home empty-handed, they’ll start in on her about keeping better track of her belongings and about her grades and how she could do much better if she’d bring her books home and spend her weekends studying like Carley does.

  Then again . . . maybe they won’t be so quick to hold her sister up as an example now that Carley has fallen from grace.

  In any case, Emma opted to transport everything back home again on this sunny Friday afternoon, and when she gets to the house, she’ll put the backpack on her back and hunch over as if it’s filled with heavy texts. Then maybe her mother will leave her alone.

  But she won’t be home for a while. First, she has another stop to make.

  After passing the low brick wall that marks the entrance to the development, she makes a turn, walks past several large homes in various states of construction, and turns again. Here, the pavement ends abruptly at what will eventually be a paved cul-de-sac lined with houses that have yet to be built. Right now, it’s a gravel road bordered by dozens of tree stumps and large, overgrown lots marked off in string and posts, with a dense thicket down at the end.

  Emma can see Gabe waiting for her there, leaning against a tree, shrouded in long, late, afternoon shadows.

  Hating that she’s suddenly nervous, she does her best to put some swagger into her stride.

  “Hey,” she calls, swinging her bag like she doesn’t have a care in the world, “what’s up?”

  “Not much.” He watches her approach, and she realizes he’s smoking a cigarette.

  And that surprises you because . . . ?

  She should have guessed he smokes. It goes with the whole dark, dangerous image he’s got going on. And he looks sexy doing it.

  But the nuns are always talking about how smoking is deadly. Plus, Bridget’s uncle, who was even younger than Dad, was a heavy smoker and he just died of lung cancer.

  I don’t want Gabe to die. I’m in love with him.

  Maybe she should tell him cigarettes cause lung cancer, just in case—

  No, he probably knows that, right?

  Yeah. Everyone knows. She shouldn’t remind him.

  “C’mere,” Gabe says, and the hand that’s not holding a cigarette reaches toward her.

  Should she tell him, before this goes any further, that she’s supposed to be home from school right about now?

  She tried to walk twice as fast as usual to free up some extra time, but her mother’s going to notice if she’s not home in, like, fifteen minutes.

  Not a lot can happen in fifteen minutes.

  Can it?

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” She moves closer.

  He snakes his arm around her neck and kisses her. He tastes like tobacco, but in a good way, and she no longer cares about anything but this.

  Breaking off the kiss, he pulls back and looks at her.

  She tries to think of something to say. Her heart is pounding.

  “How was your day?” pops out of her mouth, and she wants to cringe. She’s always blurting out stupid things, like her mother.

  No. Don’t think about her right now.

  “It sucked,” Gabe says. “How was yours?”

  “It sucked.” Not really, but . . .

  “I bet your sister’s day sucked even more.”

  “My sister?” Emma blinks.

  “Yeah. I saw her Peeps page. She said she wishes she was dead.”

  “Why . . . How did you find her on Peeps?” The first question that came to mind also applies, though. Why did he find her on Peeps?

  Why would he care about Carley?

  “I plugged in her name and it popped up,” he says in a duh tone.

  “How do you even know her name?”

  “Um, because it’s the same as yours?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. Not her last name.” Frustrated that he’s talking to her as though she’s an idiot, she explains, “She just uses Carley Theresa—that’s her middle name—on her Peeps page.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since she was born.”

  “She’s had a Peeps page since she was born?”

  “No! I mean ever since she’s had one—for, like a year or something—she’s always used just Carley Theresa on it.”

  “Yeah? You sure about that?”

  “I should know—she’s my sister.”

  He shrugs. “Okay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean okay. What else would I mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She watches him look down at his cigarette and take a drag.

  He’s obviously losing interest fast. In the conversation. In being here. In her.

  But then he stubs out the cigarette with the toe of his boot and looks directly at Emma again. “So you want to go into the woods, or what?”

  Relieved, Emma tilts her head and flashes him what she hopes is a sexy smile. “Sure.”

  As he grabs her hand and leads her toward the shadows, she thinks about what he told her about her sister’s Peeps account. There must be another Carley Archer on the Peopleportal site. It’s not that uncommon a name, is it?

  Unless . . .

  What if Gabe’s right? What if, after all her prissy warnings to Emma about using her real name online, she went and changed her own account to do the same?

  Like it even matters. It’s not like she ever posts anything interesting—mostly just lame quotes from supposedly famous people Emma never heard of and cheesy pictures of fuzzy kittens and daisies, stuff like that.

  Then again, Carley seems to have changed lately. Maybe her Peeps page—if she’s really behind the one Gabe found—has changed, too. Maybe now she’ll back off whenever Emma does something the slightest bit wrong.

  First thing I’m going to do when I get home is call her out on it, Emma decides—then thinks better of that.

  No. Carley might just change her settings and block me the way I did her. Better to just check it out and not let her know I know.

  QT-Pi: gotta go in a min my aunt just got here

  Angel 770: your mothers sister?

  QT-Pi: yeah she has 4 but the 1 whos here now is the best

  Angel 770: family with 5 girlsssss? HAHA!! Ever read The Virgin Suicides?

  QT-Pi: ???????

  Angel 770: book abt messed-up family w 5 sisters who all want to kill themselves

  QT-Pi: do they?

  Angel 770: not telling read it AWESOME BOOK

  Carley shifts her weight uncomfortably, not sure how to react to that overenthusiastic reply. Maybe Angel forgot that her best friend just committed suicide. Or maybe the book has a happy ending and she’s thinking it’ll cheer up Carley.

  Whatever. She hears footsteps coming up the steps and down the hall now. A few minutes ago, when she heard a car door slam outside and saw her Aunt Frankie through the window, she had to fight the urge to run down there and give her a huge hug.

  Any other day, she would have.

  But today, she’s not interested in seeing or talking to anyone.

  Well, anyone other than Angel. She was so glad when her online friend popped up this morning to keep her company. Otherwise, it would have been weird and lonely, staying home from school when she’s
not sick and there’s no blizzard outside—although, in the grand scheme of things, she’s relieved that she wasn’t forced to endure school today, of all days.

  Spring Fling is tomorrow. The other girls would have been talking about what they’re wearing, and who’s going with whom. The decorating committee, during their free periods, would have been hauling the gigantic, glittery floral decorations from the storage locker in the basement through the halls to the gym for its annual transformation into a colorful enchanted garden.

  When Carley was first elected freshman princess, she pored over photos other girls had posted online of Spring Fling in years past, picturing herself posing this year among the oversized plywood daffodils and gigantic tissue paper butterflies suspended from the ceiling.

  Yes, it was much better to be here at home, especially with Angel to keep her company. She was surprised Angel herself wasn’t at school today, but she reminded Carley that they’re on different schedules. She said she doesn’t even have to be in homeroom until noon East Coast time. When noon rolled around, Carley expected her to sign off, but she said she’d decided not to go today.

  wont ur mom make u? Carley asked, surprised.

  The answer was simply: no

  Angel doesn’t like to talk about her mom, she noticed. Or her dad. Or even her sister. Back in the beginning, she said she has one sister, but hers is, like, ten years older.

  There’s a knock on Carley’s bedroom door, and Aunt Frankie’s voice calls, “Hey, guess who?”

  Carley quickly types gtg—got to go—into her computer and closes the screen without waiting for Angel’s reply.

  As she gets off her bed, she sees herself reflected in the mirror on her closet door and cringes. She’s still wearing the sweatshirt she put on when she came home yesterday afternoon and her hair is still matted from last night’s restless sleep. She didn’t even bother to brush her teeth or wash her face this morning.

  Not much she can do about it right now. She crosses to the door, opens it, and is immediately enveloped in Aunt Frankie’s arms.

  “I’ve missed you, babe. Are you okay?”

  Caught off guard by an unexpected wave of emotion, Carley opens her mouth but finds it impossible to push any sound past the lump in her throat.

  Aunt Frankie pulls back to look at her, then reaches out to gently push a clump of hair back from Carley’s forehead.

  “Hey,” she says. “I’m so sorry about everything. Your mom told me.”

  Carley swallows hard and manages to ask, “You mean that I cheated?”

  Aunt Frankie nods. “And about Nicki. I can’t imagine how you felt, losing your best friend to—”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “What?”

  “She wasn’t my best friend. I mean, she was—before—but not anymore. Not in a long time.”

  “Since . . . ?”

  “Since last fall.”

  Since she went off to a different school and got a whole bunch of new friends and started criticizing me and making fun of me in public, and blowing me off in private.

  “That sucks.”

  Aunt Frankie never minces words. It’s one of the things Carley loves most about her.

  “Want to see what I brought you?” she asks, reaching into her duffel bag. She pulls out a white gift bag with lavender tissue—Carley’s favorite color—poking out of the top and hands it over.

  Inside is a stuffed purple kitten with a long tail and big green eyes that look real.

  “Thank you, Aunt Frankie.” She tries to dredge up some enthusiasm. “She’s so sweet.”

  “What are you going to name her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You always come up with the perfect names for your stuffed animals.”

  “I know. I will. I just . . . I’ll have to think about it.”

  Carley walks across the room and sets the kitten on the window seat between Noodle the plush snake and Haberdasher the tuxedoed penguin.

  Through the glass, she can see Mom below her, on her hands and knees, planting flowers.

  It would be so nice, Carley thinks, to be her. She doesn’t have to worry about any of this stuff—school, or friends, or what she looks like, or what people think of her.

  But even when her mother was her age, she probably didn’t worry. She was popular enough to be Spring Fling princess sophomore year, and she had a boyfriend—his name was Mike, Carley knows. Not because her mother told her, but because Nicki did.

  “My mom is really good friends with your mother’s old boyfriend,” she said once.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This guy, Mike. We ran into him around last Christmas when we were shopping at the Galleria, and he invited my mom to lunch to catch up, and sometimes they still see each other.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “That my mom hangs out with some guy? They’re just friends!” Nicki said quickly—too quickly.

  “No, I mean it’s weird that my mom has some old boyfriend.”

  “Yeah. My mom said they had a super bad breakup, so, like, she didn’t want me to bring him up to you or your mom. But, like, I always tell you everything, so—just don’t mention it to your mom.”

  “I won’t,” Carley promised, and it was easy not to. She doesn’t even like to think about her mother—even as a teenager—dating, or caring about, or breaking up with, some guy who isn’t Dad.

  Behind her, Aunt Frankie asks, “So you hadn’t talked to her lately?”

  “Mom?”

  “Nicki.”

  “Oh. Um, no. She went to public school. I’m at Sisters. The only place we’d ever run into each other would be Mass, and she didn’t go that often.”

  “What about on the phone? You didn’t talk on the phone?”

  “We texted. But not after—I mean, we kind of had a fight.”

  “In person?”

  “No . . .”

  “On the phone?”

  “Kind of.” She quickly explains to her aunt that nearly all of her interaction with Nicki since school began had been written—the final drama unfolding in texts and online. Not that that’s unusual.

  “Hardly anyone I know uses the phone for anything other than texting,” she says, and Aunt Frankie nods.

  “It’s a different world, that’s for sure. Communications technology, social media—pretty ironic phrasing, I think. You guys have so many ways of getting in touch now, but it makes you antisocial, if anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kids are much more isolated these days than we ever were. It must be kind of lonely, growing up that way.”

  Carley is about to agree, but then she thinks of Angel, quickly becoming her new best friend. “Not really. I’m not lonely. I have friends.”

  “At school?”

  “At school,” she lies, “and, like, all over the place.”

  “Online?”

  “All over. So how have you been?”

  “Fine. What about—”

  “How’s Aunt Patty?”

  “She’s good. You—”

  “I wish she could’ve come with you.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s working. Do you—”

  “She works, like, all the time.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way. So—”

  “How are Dorito and Funyun?” Those are Aunt Frankie’s cats.

  “They’re fine. Okay, I get the hint.”

  “What hint?”

  “You’re not in the mood to spill your guts to your old aunt. Got it.” She heads for the door.

  “Wait—Aunt Frankie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep interrupting. I just . . .”

  “I know. Don’t worry. I’m going to go take a shower and wash off the road dust—and Chee-tos dust—and then we’ll go out to dinner. And
you can tell me about all this stuff that’s been going on . . . or not. Okay? I’ll listen if you want to talk, and if you don’t . . . I’ll talk. You listen. Sound good?”

  It does, actually. Really good.

  Carley smiles. “Yeah. Deal.”

  Aunt Frankie leaves the room, and she starts to open her laptop again, then changes her mind and goes over to the bookshelves.

  Maybe it’s time to give the Internet a break for a while.

  Getting to her feet at last, Jen straightens with a wince and brushes the garden soil off the knees of her jeans. Her back and shoulders are killing her after kneeling and digging for hours, but the bare patch has been transformed into a colorful flowerbed.

  The hard physical work and fresh air were cathartic enough that she didn’t even dwell on Carley’s problems the whole time, or wonder how things are going between her and Frankie inside the house.

  Now, though, she’s ready to go find out. She needs to check her e-mail, too, to see whether Sister Linda got back to her. Maybe she can shed some light on the situation.

  She peels off her gardening gloves, grabs the empty black plastic cell packs and her trowel, and starts toward the open garage door.

  Behind her, she hears jingling dog tags and someone calling her name.

  Amy Janicek is waving from the curb, where she’s walking Thayer, her yellow Lab. Glad to see her, as opposed to one of the more talky, gossipy neighbors who will want to chat and linger, she waves back.

  “How’s it going?” she calls, and is surprised when Amy—who, though not standoffish, usually keeps a polite distance—beckons her closer.

  Jen doesn’t know her very well. Her kids are younger, twin seven-year-old boys and a nine-year-old daughter, all of whom go to Saint Paul’s. Carley told Jen how well behaved they are; how they brush their teeth and fold their clothes without being told, put their games away neatly with all the pieces intact, and consider baby carrots and cut-up fruit a treat.

  “Wow. They sound like perfect kids,” Jen said mildly, trying to keep the edge from her voice. “Their mom must be a great mom—or at least, she must run a really tight ship.”

  “She’s kind of proper—but she’s really nice and normal,” Carley added hastily, as though fearing Jen might equate proper with abnormal and not nice.