3
Jojo
“What do you mean they might have found your sister?”
I glance at my best friend, Makayla. We’re standing on the corner of State and Freret, waiting for the light to change. We’re walking to school together, just like we have since elementary school, only now we actually get to walk alone, without our parents. We’re both fourteen.
She wrinkles her nose. Makayla might be the prettiest fourteen-year-old ever. She’s biracial. Her dad is Haitian. Her mom’s white. Makayla has her mother’s blue eyes, her dad’s dark hair, and skin that’s somewhere between the two of them. I tease my dad all the time about wishing he was Haitian. I mean I’m pretty, sure, but I’ll never be beautiful like Makayla.
“I thought some perv decapitated her and buried her in the bayou,” Makayla says. “You said he buried her head in one hole and her body somewhere else so no one could ever identify her.” The traffic light changes and she looks both ways before we step off the curb.
We wait for a car that runs the red light and then start across. “I never said that.”
Makayla doesn’t respond, even though I probably did tell her that. People don’t argue with you about your dead sister. Not even best friends. It’s amazing the stuff you can get away with when people realize you’re the girl whose sister was kidnapped at a Mardi Gras parade.
I walk beside Makayla in the crosswalk. There’s a cute guy on a scooter with a red lunchbox on the back stopped at the light. I make eye contact, smile, and then look at the street in front of me. I’m just learning the whole flirting thing. Sometimes it feels really good, but sometimes I just feel like an idiot. It’s an idiot kind of morning, I guess. “That’s just what we always thought happened,” I tell Makayla. “It’s what the police think happened.”
“But your mom never thought she was dead.” She glances at me. “Didn’t she go to a medium or something and try to talk to her, and the voodoo lady said Georgina wasn’t dead and that was why she couldn’t be contacted?”
I make a face at her. “Now you’re just making stuff up. There’s no way my mom went to a voodoo lady.” I probably told her that, too. I don’t remember. I know Makayla’s mom has been to a psychic. “Mom goes to Mass, like, three times a week. She doesn’t believe in voodoo or magic or even fate. She believes in the Holy Trinity.” I do the quotations thing with my fingers, then tug on the hem of my skirt; I’ve had another growth spurt. If my skirt gets any shorter, you’ll see Christmas. That’s what my grandmother used to say when she meant lady parts. Of course I never quite understood that because I always wear panties. I can’t ask her because she died two years ago. Cancer in her Christmas.
I glance at Makayla. We’re dressed identically: a skirt, white collared shirt, and navy blazer with the Ursuline Academy emblem over our hearts. Pink Jelly Donut lip gloss and Kerouac Black eyeliner. Just a little eyeliner, not enough for any of our teachers to call us on it. “This is what my eyes look like, Miss Gerard. They’re the eyes the Holy Father blessed me with.”
I stop at Makayla’s house every morning to put on makeup because her mom doesn’t mind. She just says she’s not getting into it between me and Mom, which is totally letting me get away with it. Mom would notice if I was wearing lip gloss and eyeliner. She’d see it. She’d smell it. She notices when I roll my socks instead of folding them. She knows when I have a religion quiz. She knows when I’m getting my period before I know it. The term “helicopter mom” was invented to describe Harper Louise Broussard.
“Your mom always thought she wasn’t dead is my point.” Makayla steps up on the curb on the other side of the street. “Remember that time when we were at Rouses and she left the grocery cart full of groceries with ice cream and everything in it and made us get in the car? We had to follow that guy and his daughter all the way to Kenner because your mom thought she was Georgina.”
I don’t say anything because I don’t remember it. Not that I’m saying it didn’t happen. It’s happened more times than I can count. At least she didn’t call the police that time. That I would have remembered because I would have died of embarrassment. Because that has happened to me before, too.
“Mom says she found Georgina in a coffee shop in Mid-City,” I say, keeping any emotion out of my voice. Mostly because I know that the things I’m feeling aren’t what I’m supposed to be feeling. I’m supposed to be thrilled, ecstatic, overjoyed. I’m none of that. Mostly I’m just annoyed. And I don’t believe it. Not for one sec. It’s just my whacked-out mom being whacked-out. “Near her office.”
“Did you see her?”
I don’t answer.
Makayla pulls on the sleeve of my blazer. “Jojo, did you see her?” I guess she’s all excited for me. “Do you really think it could be Georgina?”
“Mom took a picture of her with her phone.”
“Does it look like her?”
I make a face like that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, because it is. “I was, like . . . three months old when she was kidnapped.” I pick up the pace. “How would I know what she looks like?”
“You know what I mean. Does she look like you? Like your mom?”
There are other girls on the sidewalk ahead of us. Ursuline students. I spot Ainsley Royce and seriously think about crossing the street. I can’t deal with her bitchiness this morning. We used to be good friends but she got mad because I wouldn’t work on some lame science project with her last year and now she doesn’t talk to me. It used to upset me that she doesn’t want to be my friend, but I’m over it. Dad says this kind of thing happens as you get older; friends come and go as you find your place in the world. Of course he’s never been a teenage girl and he’s never attended a Catholic school for girls, but I try to cut him a break once in a while.
“Does she?” Makayla is being pushy, which is weird because she’s usually pretty good at reading my moods.
“I don’t know!” Ainsley glances over her shoulder at us and I lower my voice. I really don’t want to talk about this with Makayla for about a hundred reasons. But I know she won’t leave me alone until I tell her everything she wants to know. Or at least something. “Not really. I mean . . .” I exhale. I don’t want to talk about Georgina. I don’t want to think about her. People have been talking about Georgina my whole life. Everything in my house, with my mom in particular, it all revolves around Georgina.
“I guess she kind of looks like me. A little,” I confess, “but with Dad’s hair. It was hard to tell. Mom’s not that good at taking pics with her phone.”
I have my mom’s looks; we’re blond with green eyes. Dad has dark hair, dark eyes, and he’s not super white, like Mom and me. The Broussards have been here since the whites ran the Choctaw Indians out and made this city on the banks of the Muddy. There’s this old song I like that calls the Mississippi “the Great Big Muddy.”
“So what’s going to happen now?”
I slow down so we don’t run right up under Ainsley’s skirt. Which is definitely shorter than it’s supposed to be. Shorter than mine. I hope Miss Gerard catches her. Mrs. Blocker is always nice about it, but Miss Gerard is pretty sure that a uniform skirt half an inch too short will get a virgin pregnant before lunch. I smile to myself, thinking Ainsley’s probably going to get an after-school detention. She’s with these two girls that are the biggest snobs in the ninth grade, Suzanne and Carly. Makayla says they deserve each other.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I tell Makayla. “A DNA test, I guess. To see if my mom popped her out or not.”
“Wait.” Makayla stops and grabs my arm. “This is for real.”
I look at her blankly. “No, it’s for fake.”
“Your sister?” She almost whispers the word.
I start walking again. “We’re going to be late.”
“We’re not going to be late.” She catches up with me. “Jojo, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You might have a sister. You know how much I’ve always wanted a sister?”
“You can have her.”
“Jojo, don’t you—” Makayla cuts herself off.
I don’t know what she was going to say. I don’t want to know. But I doubt she was going to say how sorry she was that my life, as I know it, could be about to end. We walk in silence for another block. We’re almost to school. The street is busy. Cars dropping off girls and the usual morning traffic.
When Makayla speaks, her tone is gentle. And kind. She’s a way better person than I am. “Jojo, I know you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared. It’s just that . . . I have a perfectly good life as an only child. What’s going to happen if it really is her? I mean, it’s not, but what if it is? Am I going to have to share my bathroom? Because I’m not sharing my bathroom.”
“Jojo, your mom still cries for her at night. Your parents divorced because—”
“My parents divorced because my mom wouldn’t stop acting crazy in grocery stores.” We’re in front of the school now. It’s a big brick monstrosity that takes up a whole block. It’s, like, the oldest girls’ school in the country. Dad’s mom went here. Georgina was going to start nursery school here the year she disappeared. I never had the choice to go anywhere else when Dad said Mom couldn’t keep homeschooling me. I mean, it’s okay, but because of her, I didn’t even get a choice. A lot of things in my house are the way they are because Georgina got herself kidnapped.
“When will the results come back?” Makayla asks me.
“What results? Can I copy your English homework? I didn’t do it.”
“The DNA test. When will you know if this girl your mom saw in a coffee shop is Georgina?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Mom got a call from the police this morning saying that the girl she saw at the coffee shop might be her.” I shift my backpack on my shoulder. If we don’t hurry up, I’m not going to have time to copy her homework in the bathroom and I’m going to be in so much trouble with Miss Gerard. She not only checks skirt lengths, but she checks homework, too. Every single freakin’ day. “The cops told her it takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours for the test to come back from the lab. But it depends when they get the blood or spit or whatever to the lab and then the weekend is coming up, so . . .” I stop and look at her. “So, I guess I’ve got at least through the weekend before this potential sister comes and ruins my life that she’s already ruined.”
Makayla laughs. “You’re such a drama queen. Come on, let’s get your homework done.”
She walks past me and I just stand there for a minute. For some crazy reason my throat is tight, like I might cry. Because Makayla is right: I am scared. What if the coffee shop girl really is Georgina? She’s so much a part of my life, of Mom and Dad’s life, dead. If she really is alive, will that make me dead?