A SLOW ACHE WAS BUILDING in my chest as I rode my bike away from Bargain Mart. Past the school, with its Spirit Rock that never ceased to make me feel like the shittiest sister on the face of the earth. Then past the gas station where that graffiti was still taunting me, even hidden around the back of the building where I couldn’t see it. As I pedaled on, I wished hard that I had somewhere else to go but home.
I regretted not going to the beach with my friends. I was going to be feeling sad and crappy anyway; it would’ve been nice to at least feel that way in a different setting.
I rode my bike down all the familiar empty streets, alongside the fields and small farms and sparse houses where nothing was ever out of the ordinary. I pedaled out a steady pace—not too slow, not too fast—one that I knew would get me home right as it would become too dark to see.
Something was different when I approached my house. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, and then I realized: It wasn’t my house that was different; it was my neighbor’s. There was an extra car in the driveway, extra lights on in the house.
It’s so pathetic that I know that.
Even more pathetic, it actually made me feel excited for a second, the thought of something, anything, being different.
I left my bike on the front lawn and tried not to make too much noise as I entered the house. Someone had left the kitchen light on for me. Mom, probably. It was barely even nine p.m., and they’d already sent themselves to bed.
I understood, in a way. It was still weird to be at home without Mallory, because when she was here, she was always doing something interesting, talking about something fascinating, keeping us entertained with her daily revelations, her quirky observations. When she was around, you could almost forget how screwed up our family was, even back then.
But there’s nothing like a tragedy to shine a spotlight on all of our already-weak places, like fractures in a bone that never quite healed. Some families might pull together in their grief and become stronger, but with mine, it just seemed to strain all those places that wanted so badly to snap.
I opened the fridge, and there was the lunch I’d packed this morning. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I opened the crumpled brown bag, unwrapped my cheese sandwich, and ate it in silence, peeling the crusts away, as I always did. Mallory used to think I was weird for doing that. “Why don’t you just cut the crusts off when you make it?” she would ask me every time I ate a sandwich.
I shrugged and whispered, out loud, “I don’t know.”
Just then, I thought I heard footsteps creaking up the basement stairs. I stopped chewing so I could listen. Nothing. I swallowed. Then I heard the sound again, only this time the steps were retreating. Dad. He was probably coming up to use the bathroom. I almost wanted to call out, let him know it was just me in here. But I didn’t.
So, I sat alone in the kitchen, the crunching sound of the little goldfish crackers between my teeth amplified inside my head. The whole rest of the house was dark. Dad was down in the basement with his tiny TV. Mom was upstairs in her bedroom with her romance novels. Our dog, Roxie, was no doubt in Mallory’s bedroom eternally waiting for her to come home each night.
We couldn’t even blame our current state of affairs on Mallory. I still remember how my parents sat me and Mallory down and explained it, as if we were children. They said it was no one’s fault. But we knew exactly what had happened: Dad had cheated on Mom. Whether it was a one-time thing, like he swore, or a relationship, as she insisted, it didn’t matter. It was over. And everything that our lives had been before was over too.
They said they hadn’t been happy in a long time, which was news to me—I’d thought they were really happy. I’d thought we were all happy. But Mallory wasn’t surprised. She had seen something I hadn’t. They said they were going to put our house up for sale; they were going to go their separate ways. They said we’d spend equal time with both of them. And they loved us.
Then they did all kinds of repairs and updates on the house that they’d been putting off for years. Replaced the leaky roof, updated the plumbing, redid the kitchen, and renovated the inside of the old barn. New vinyl siding on the house and professional landscaping. They dropped the price, and dropped the price again. But it never sold, and now neither of them could afford to move out without the money from the house. So, Dad moved into the newly finished basement, and Mom had the new master bedroom with the walk-in closet and the claw-foot tub she’d always wanted.
Mallory and I were supposed to share the barn, but it became hers. Her studio. Her sanctuary. She had her art. She had her dreams, her plans. Me, I never had much of a plan, didn’t have dreams, at least not the kind you need extra space to make come true. My dreams were more nebulous, less concrete. Did I want to get out of this town someday? Of course.
But it’s hard to figure out what you’re supposed to be when you’ve never even really known who you were in the first place—that was something I’d realized only recently. Something I didn’t think my friends would understand. After all, I looked the same and dressed the same and talked the same as I always had. But I wasn’t the same.
I crumpled up my brown bag and threw it into the garbage can under the sink. I took my sneakers off so I wouldn’t make any noise as I walked up the stairs to my bedroom. As I passed Mallory’s room, Roxie looked up quickly, then set her head back down on the blanket at the foot of the bed and sighed.
I closed my bedroom door silently, peeled off my grimy Bargain Mart T-shirt, and got into my pajamas. I walked over to the window, like I did every night, even though the view never changed.
It was too far to see clearly, but the door on the second floor was wide open; light from inside the room spilled out onto the wooden deck. There was someone out there. I watched for a while, but they didn’t move.
I turned off my light, fell into bed, and stared at the ceiling, listening to the silence all around me. I really should’ve gone to the beach, I thought as I closed my eyes.