TWENTY-TWO

Angie’s email program opens right up. She has folders for personal stuff, business stuff, and her charity work. I look in the personal first, since I’m pretty sure that’s the most appropriate. The charity one is tempting, but I know I’m just being a cynical dick when I think that. Adopting a child isn’t charity toward the kid any more than brushing your teeth is charity toward your mouth. But it’s not exactly comfortable living in a world that believes the opposite to be true. The things I’ve heard over the years have ranged from how lucky I am to live with the Henrys, to being asked straight-faced if it’s easier knowing my mother didn’t willingly give me up. To which I answered: (1) How would I know that? and (2) No.

Most of the email correspondence I find is from Malcolm and Angie’s family members. This includes Grandma Karlsson. We haven’t seen Grammy K in years. She stopped traveling after Grandpa Karlsson’s stroke, which has been just fine by me, if you want to know the truth. Angie also has a ton of emails from her friend Penny Parker, whom I hate. Penny’s loud and rude, and worst of all, she’s not half as funny as she thinks she is. She always insists on comparing me to her son Dane every time she comes over. It’s like a 4-H competition that I’m destined to lose. This is because Dane, who’s two years older than me, is perfect. He’s currently a freshman at a nearby college where he plays lacrosse, has a hot-ass girlfriend, and never deals with things like idiopathic cataplexy or anxiety or a psychotic drugged-out horse-murdering sister blah blah blah, you get the picture. Dane’s doing fine on his own, so I’m not sure what the point of making me feel awful about myself is. But there was some trouble between Cate and Dane a while back, which is why Penny does the comparison thing—to make herself feel better. Whatever. For all you hear adults talk about how insecure and attention-seeking teenagers are, I think they’re the ones with the real issues.

Among the emails from Penny complaining about her tennis game and her divorce settlement and whether or not Dane’s girl comes from a good enough family, I don’t see anything from my sister. I quickly browse through her other folders, but there’s nothing in those, either. The only folder I haven’t looked in is the trash. I click on the icon. Sort the messages and search for …

I inhale quickly.

There they are.

Three messages all from wildcatnevin24@gmail.com with receipt dates from the past three weeks.

All have the same subject line:

the owl and the goddamn pussycat

I look at the oldest email first.

My chest burns.

It’s about me.