Tommie was in my room when I got home.
“Look,” she said, when I threw my backpack on the bed. She came at me from behind my open door, surprising me. “We gotta talk.”
I clutched at my chest.
Swallowed a scream.
My heart hammered at my ribs, knocking to get free. “Does my momma know you’re in here?” I asked. “Did she let you in?”
“I told you,” Tommie said, and she settled on the bed, making herself comfortable. “I told you the back latch can be jiggled this way and that and I can get in here on my own.”
I shut the bedroom door so Momma, who was putting Baby Lucy down for a nap, wouldn’t hear me. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s easy,” Tommie said.
“No,” I said. My blood was just-like-that at full boil. “It’s wrong. Against the law.”
“How do you figure?” Tommie’s hair was not mussed at all. I patted at my own head, felt the tangles and craziness, then dropped my hand.
I stepped close to her. So close I could smell something on her. Something I didn’t recognize. Something that wasn’t exactly pleasant. I took a step back.
“This.” I waved my hands, pointing at the room. The new paint job, I could see when I took a closer look, had traces of pale pink coming through. How could that be? Me and Momma had put on a primer first. Sherwin-Williams had a thing or two to explain. I kept waving. “This is my room.”
Tommie, who had been pushing at her cuticles, looked at me. Startled, I’d say.
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
I sat on the bed, far enough away that I couldn’t smell her.
“Yes. It. Is.”
“This is my room,” she said.
I stood and so did Tommie.
We eyed each other.
We were a foot apart. Hands balled into fists. Both of us.
“And Justin is my boyfriend,” Tommie said. She jabbed at my chest, not quite touching me.
“Who?”
“Justin.”
That guy from the party? I’d seen him today. Had we even spoken?
“What do I care about that?” For some reason I felt dizzy. Pukish.
Worried.
“You,” Tommie said, and she took a step closer to me. I moved back toward the door. Why had I closed it? “You are ruining my life. Taking it over. And I”—she took another step. I backed up again—“am sick of it.”
I swallowed three times before I could find my voice, which was buried somewhere right near the chicken and veggies.
“You need to leave.” The words were whispered. Almost not there. Ghosty.
“Why should I?” Tommie said. “You should go.”
“JimDaddy,” I said, “gave me this room when me and Momma moved in here.”
Tommie turned, twirling, arms raised like a ballerina, and floated to the window.
“He won’t speak to me,” Tommie said after a long minute where I considered on running down the hall to Baby Lucy’s room and asking Momma to get a stick or a broom or something, anything, to get this girl out of my room.
But her words slowed me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“My daddy,” Tommie said. “He stopped talking to me about three years ago.”
Icy water feelings dripped all over me.
Did he?
I couldn’t breathe.
This was not good.
The words arranged themselves in my head in capital print like something from a novel. I knew what had happened.
A TERRIBLE DIVORCE.
Or
HE WAS AN ADULTERER.
Did Momma know?
Aunt Odie’s newest creation knocked on my tonsils.
Somehow, JimDaddy the Builder had gotten rid of his wife and his daughter and who knew who else. Perhaps he was
A MURDERER.
My blood got all cloggy.
“I better go,” Tommie said.
Relief filled me and I caught my breath.
She left the room, the house, without making a sound.