I stood by the church doors, stunned. Did traitorous cousins go to hell? Or would I be the one going to hell for that lie? Didn’t it need to be a huge lie to send you to hell? What was worse—where you said it or what you said? No one tells you the lie categories or what the punishments are, but surely they can’t all be the same.
I stood by the doors so Mom could see me—I knew she’d be looking for me by then, and sure enough, her eyes were scanning the crowd by the doors. I waved at her, mouthed bathroom and jiggled my thumb toward it, and she nodded and turned back to her conversation.
I hid on the steps behind the door until Eleni came back. It was more than fifty-six seconds. More like a minute and a half. I was worried my mom would come and find me and that would be that. But she was still outside talking.
“Why didn’t you come?” Eleni asked in a hard voice when she arrived beside me.
I pulled her on to the steps. I was still annoyed by what she’d just said to me in front of Anastasia. “Because who cares about stupid soccer players?”
“I do, actually.”
“Oh yeah? More than figuring out our problem?”
“Obviously not, but it can wait one minute.”
“No, it can’t. We might only have this one minute to talk, and you ran off. That’s not very respectful, is it? Not to Yiayia’s spirit or God’s mood or our serious family crisis.”
“I didn’t run off! I went to meet Pani. Why do you get so moody every time Anastasia’s around? She’s my friend as well, you know.”
All the hairs on my body stood on end. Friend as well?
As if Anastasia and I were…what…equals? I wasn’t just Eleni’s friend! I was her cousin. I was her twin!
I’ve never passed out, but I swear I nearly did then.
I got up and walked away like I’d just been knocked out, with Eleni saying to my back, “I can do what I like, Lexie. You’re not the boss of me.”
I screwed up my fists and she must have seen me do it because she yelled, “He’s a soccer player!” Which annoyed me even more.
I stomped over to my mom who was talking to someone about Yiayia. My eyes were stinging with tears, and I was furious. How could Eleni say that? This wasn’t about Anastasia, even though she was nnnggghhh, or even about soccer. This was about keeping our family together, and family meant everything to us. Well, to me, anyhow. And it was about our unbreakable bond—which, on second thought, wasn’t quite as unbreakable as I’d thought.
After church, Pappou summoned us all to his house. We hadn’t been there together since they talked about the necklace and the will. They sat Eleni and me down at the table. I didn’t even look at her—I stared at a spot on the table and scowled.
Mom was by the fridge with her arms folded, definitely not talking to Aunt Soph. Aunt Soph was near the table, definitely not talking to Mom.
But Aunt Soph definitely wanted to talk to us.
She pulled up a chair with a hellish screech. She’s shorter and thinner than my mom and she dyes her hair brick red, but otherwise they look the same. She leaned so close, that I could see the tiny holes in the skin at the side of her nose. Her hazel eyes were serious, blinky, and tough.
“Girls,” she said in a prime minister voice. “When did Yiayia tell you she wanted Eleni to have the necklace?”
Eleni tensed up. Even though we’d had an argument, her hand moved automatically to the side to take mine, but I kept my hands firmly on my lap.
“It was after…Uncle Dimitri’s engagement party,” Eleni said in a quiet voice. She peeked at me, but I kept my hands down, clamped together, so she drew hers back toward her slowly, and I was glad she was hurt.
“Go on,” Aunt Soph said.
“She…um…” Eleni sounded terrified. “She let us see it. Just for thirty-seven seconds…and that’s when she told us.”
“What did she tell you, Eleni?”
“That when I was a baby she wanted me to stay alive so she…made a deal with me. And with God.”
“What kind of deal?”
“That if I was a good girl and didn’t die, she’d give me the necklace. And because I didn’t die, she said a promise is a promise, and she was going to give it to me.”
Aunt Soph leaned back and took a deep breath. Then she turned and with her jaw jutting out, she looked at Pappou and my mother. “You see?” she said coldly. “I’m not making it up.”
The clock ticked, but the pause between each second felt like a century. Everyone in the room was silent. The furnace turned on and off again, like Yiayia was trying to say something, but I didn’t understand what it was, because I don’t speak furnace language.
“Lexie,” my mother breathed. She was pale and had dark purple shadows under her eyes, and her hair had gone a little frizzy. She looked kind of bizarre, as if someone had flicked a switch in her head and turned normal Mom off and someone else on. I didn’t like it. “Lexie, is that true?”
I knew I had to say yes or nod or something, but I was too scared. It was as if the earth was cracking in two with Mom on one side and Eleni on the other, and I had to choose who to jump to. If I said yes, Mom wouldn’t be able to take it, and I didn’t want to hurt her any more than she was hurting already.
But if I said no? I thought of what Eleni had just said to me and my back prickled. Friend as well? You’re not the boss of me? Huh.
So I whispered, “I never heard Yiayia say that.”
Silence.
The fullest, loudest silence I’ve ever, ever heard.
I could feel Eleni’s eyes drilling holes in me, but I stared straight ahead. Pappou coughed into his knuckles but didn’t speak, and I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Dad’s eyes were on me, and Pappou’s, Uncle C’s, Aunt Soph’s, Mom’s, God’s, all the angels’, the icons’, and somewhere up there, Yiayia’s. And right beside me, Eleni’s. Eleni who said things that hurt me so much, I could barely breathe. Eleni who didn’t think of me the way I thought of her.
Aunt Soph gripped the table with her hands until her knuckles went white. “Wait,” she said, shaking her head. “Wait.” She leaned forward, frowning. “You didn’t hear it, or Yiayia didn’t say it?”
They were all staring at me and somehow I felt stronger, so I said, “I didn’t hear her say that.” Deliberately and clearly.
Mom gasped. Bodies shifted in chairs, feet shuffled, and Dad and Uncle C muttered something to each other in low voices.
Under the table, Eleni’s small, pale hand tugged on the hem of my T-shirt and she whispered, “What are you doing…?”
I looked at her with victorious eyes, but all around me I could feel the sky unhinging.
“Knew it,” my mother said through tightly-touching teeth. “Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.”
Creeeeaaaak went the sky.
“But…but you were there when Yiayia said it!” Aunt Soph spluttered.
“Eleni, she was there, right? Lexie, just tell your mom what Yiayia said that night—”
“Enough,” my dad barked. He held out his big bear hands and lifted me to my feet. “Enough. You’ve got your answer. Lexie, go with Mom. I’ll get the others. We’re going.”
In whale song, Eleni said, You did hear Yiayia say that. Why are you saying you didn’t?
Because, I replied firmly in whale song, I can do what I like. You’re not the boss of me. And anyway, you were the one who told me to lie.