“What the hell was that?” I ask.
“An emergency,” Matt says in the car on the way home.
“She was crying when we got there and crying when we left. We didn’t actually do anything to help.”
“It helped. Sometimes you feel like crap and you just don’t want to be alone.”
“I don’t think I’d want five people hanging around watching me cry like that.”
“It’s not always like that. That’s just Janna. She’s a crier.”
I’m supposed to be able to cry, I think. It’s normal to cry when someone dies.
Snow falls in sheets outside the window. The car heater’s blowing and the radio’s blurring softly, and Matt has his hands tight on the wheel, peering between the wiper blades at the disappearing road.
“Since we don’t talk about it, I guess we’ll never know what it was about.”
“Sometimes you just want someone there with you, like I said. But it’s not too hard to do the math on this one.”
He waves his hand at the windshield. Out the window, the swirling snow flurries. It’s not really too bad, if a bit heavy for the season’s first snowfall. Just a few days ago we were sitting out on the porch, enjoying a crisp autumn evening.
“When it snows it’s hard for her,” Matt says. “Like how you feel about drinking.”
“What?” I say.
Matt looks at me funny. “You get all tense and freaked out around booze. You didn’t know?”
“Because I don’t drink?”
“You act like it’s a religious thing, but you’re not that religious. It’s about your sister.”
For a moment it’s just the snowfall, the heater, the blur of the radio. Him calling me “not that religious” strikes an uncomfortable chord. How can he see that? As far as the world is concerned, Kermit Sanders is the poster child for Christian teenhood. My face is literally on one of the testimonial recruitment ads that our church runs in the school paper. There’s a blown-up copy of it in the church lobby, too.
“So, you think she’ll be all right? Janna.”
“Sure. Like I said, she’s just a crier.”
“I never cried,” I admit.
“People deal with things differently. Patrick likes to hit things. Celia makes weird art. Simon’s a computer geek; I don’t know what the hell he does.”
“Ha.”
“Trust me. Someday you’ll have an emergency. And we’ll come.”
“Do you have emergencies?”
“Naw.” Matt grins. “I’m invincible.”