Silence is, in fact, golden.

Golden as the sun, punching through the barricade of clouds on Friday morning. Funny, my skin’s just fine, it’s my life that’s being fried alive. That’s the way I feel, sequestered all day yesterday “to recover” and now cornered in the back seat of my parents’ Volvo sedan, silent and hidden under the thickest blanket Mom could find at home. Because my parents can’t reschedule the conference call addressing global pandemics like Ebola and because there is no safe spot for me in the boathouse, our parents made the executive decision that my sister will miss crew practice today. The wails. The wails!

“Wait,” says Roz, leaning toward the front seats, where our parents are rehearsing their call strategy. “How am I supposed to get to crew for the next two weeks? And back home? Or from now on if the tinting doesn’t work?”

Curious about how they’re going to answer that, I lower my blanket shield. Mom and Dad exchange glances at this unexpected question, not a surprise, because most of my sister’s transportation questions have been dealt with by yours truly since the fateful day I passed my driver’s test. Dad must have lost the ro-sham-bo of meaningful stares with Mom, because he is the one who answers: “Plan B. The bus.”

“The what?” Roz looks genuinely confused.

“The bus.”

On the Scoville scale of anger, Roz reaches the habanero level: blistering. She hisses at me, “You’re ruining my life.”

Do my parents say anything? Well, yes, if you count their mild, “Rosalind. Honey.”

I hadn’t known what a relief it would be to retire from being my sister’s keeper. I huddle under the blanket again.

Roz starts furiously (literally) texting, punctuated with sporadic muttering: “You know, some people want to be crew captain by their junior year.” Then, “How does anyone expect me to be crew captain if I don’t show up on time at practice every day, every season, every year?”

Meanwhile, I sink deeper in silence, shrinking from any real and imagined fractal of light. The sun grazes the tips of my fingers. I yank them back under the cloak of darkness because I don’t want a single hint of a rash, not even the subtlest reddening of my skin before school. Then, what would I do next? I wipe the sweat off my nose. Boiling, I’m boiling alive under this woolen tent for one.

Finally, after an eternity and a half, we reach Liberty. I lower the blanket and drink in fresh air as we pull in front of the Quad, the square surrounded by the main office and chapel turned performance hall. The square flanked by the redbrick library and science buildings. The square occupied by Aminta and Caresse, sitting at the bake-sale table.

The bake sale.

My stomach craters.

“Whoa!” Roz snickers at Aminta in her steampunk outfit, complete with a stovepipe hat, and Caresse in her latest creation, an eggplant-colored maxi dress with a cowboy hat. “What are they wearing?”

I have eyes only for the empty bake-sale table.

The bake sale, where I was supposed to provide the cookies. The Minecraft Creeper cookies still on our kitchen counter, individually wrapped and tied with maroon ribbons and labels that read: GEEKS FOR GIRLS AROUND THE WORLD! The bake-sale table decorated with my articles and a six-foot-long banner.

Our Volvo barely has time to stop before I bolt out of the car, tugging my messenger bag after me.

“Hey, Viola!” Aminta waves to me. “You’re here!” (Finally!)

Caresse stands up, eyebrows furrowed. “Where are the cookies? Everybody’s been waiting for them.”

“I’m sorry!” I try to explain the morning: Losing my driving privileges made me lose my memory.

“It’s okay.” Aminta nods emphatically. “You have a lot going on.”

Caresse half-shrugs and studies the tips of her boots. No one gets mad at the Sick Girl.

“I’ll ask my parents if one of them can drive the cookies over,” I say, knowing that the chances of that are nil, but I walk back to the car. Mom’s already rolled down the window, shaking the blanket like a matador as if anyone can miss seeing it. The conference call has started, but both of my parents are mouthing to me while gesturing: Go inside! Hurry!

Not until I salvage this second bake sale for Geeks for Good. I whisper to Mom, “Can you go home to get the cookies? Please?” For good measure, I take the blanket from her, as if I’m really going to drape it around myself while I’m in class.

She shakes her head regretfully, but then her mouth shapes into a victorious smile. “Auntie Ruth!”

But no, I don’t want to see Auntie Ruth. Her guilty texts alone drown me in her anxiety—I am so so so so soooooooo sorry! What would her in-person presence do to me?

“This is no big deal,” Aminta assures me as my parents drive away. “Maybe you really should get out of the light?”

I’ve become the ghost of bake sales past, haunting unwanted.

 

After a story breaks, reporters will race to get the story out. It’s fast and (usually) straightforward. They’ll describe just the bare bones. But be prepared for misinformation.

—Lee & Li Communications

Inside the War Room: The Crisis Management Playbook