Chapter Sixteen

IT’S GOING DOWN

On Sunday morning, I write a note to Hannah.

Hannah,

From the second I arrived, you’ve been hostile. What’s your problem? Other than the fact that you’re rude and a slob? Do you think that I actually want to be in the same room as you either? It’s not my fault my dad decided to marry your mom!

I’m sick and tired of everything about you, because it’s all about you, isn’t it? I know you go through my stuff. Well, it’s stopping now.

I’m going to throw all of your stuff in the garbage where it belongs.

Lily

Wait! There’s no way that I can send that. I rip it up, write a new letter, and slip it inside a book in my backpack. It says,

Dear Hannah.

STOP DIGGING IN MY BACKPACK!

The only way you could find this note would be to go through my stuff. Feel free to tell your mom and my dad. That way they’ll know too. Please do it. I want you to.

Sincerely,

Lily

I place my backpack on the floor at the foot of my bed, and then I walk to the kitchen to get a snack. I can’t wait for Hannah to discover my note. She’s on the couch, sketching. I wait for her to head into our room. Only she’s not moving.

It’s like watching a pot that never boils.

So I decide to distract myself by practicing my flute. When I go back into my room, I see a mess. Wrappers from my backpack litter the floor, along with my notebooks and water bottle. Someone has clearly been rummaging through my backpack!

I go to accuse Hannah, but I remember she just left for swim practice. How convenient for her.

When I check the rest of the contents in my backpack, I see that the note I wrote to Hannah is still there. However, it’s now smudged.

Wow! She’s really even more of a slob than I thought. If I searched her stuff, I would put everything back exactly as I found it.

When I go to check my phone to text Keisha about this, my phone isn’t in the side pocket of my backpack where I usually keep it. It’s not in any of my pockets.

I can’t believe Hannah would steal my phone!

I look everywhere for it. The floor. The couch. The kitchen table. The bathroom.

It’s nowhere.

I want to text Hannah that this is way too low, but I can’t because I don’t have my phone!

It’s one thing to prank and annoy me, but outright theft?! I guess this is her version of payback for Pajama Day.

What if Mom wants to chat with me? What if Keisha is texting me? Or even Reese to talk about the witch’s brew?

“Where’s my phone?” I scream in frustration, and Maisie trots over. She sniffs my hand. I can tell she’s worried. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Maisie. The other person who lives in this room did. In a big way.”

That’s when I decide it’s time for me to go through Hannah’s backpack. At the bottom of her pack, I retrieve her social studies textbook. She has a test Monday, but hasn’t studied yet, which comes as no surprise, since she always crams.

Well, no more waiting until the last moment this time. I stuff the textbook into the very back of her closet, and it’s immediately swallowed by mounds of clothes, papers, books, and shoes.

Maybe I shouldn’t have hidden it that well. But I can’t help that Hannah’s side of the closet is such a junk pile. Serves her right for hiding my phone, since she knows how much I rely on it to check for texts from Mom.

After I’m done moping, I go and email Mom on the computer in the kitchen. I tell her how I’m starting to get nervous about the pie contest. I suggest that we bake the apple pie together via video chat. Well, more like her watching me bake. I also let Mom know more about the Fall Festival. I write:

The Haunted House has been a lot of work but also fun. Can’t believe it’s coming up next Friday!

The prop list is crazy: baby dolls to turn into zombies, rags that we can dye red, a sound effects tape with screams, moans, chains, heavy breathing, screech owls, and maniacal laughter. You should see the funny gravestones a few of the boys have been working on. Somehow they’re funny and creepy at the same time. It will be part of a larger scary cemetery, where we have talking skulls that chatter and howl. We bought cobwebs that we’ll string up everywhere, so it will look all spidery.

Next to my cauldron, I’ll have dry ice so it will look like there’s steam rising off the poisonous brew. We have a fog machine that will add to the atmosphere. Also, we’re putting black sheets up on all the walls to keep things dark and spooky. Plus, we will use flickering lights to get everyone messed up. We’re also going to make it cluttered and maze-like.

Just like Hannah’s side of the room, but I don’t say that part. But I definitely learned from her how to clutter things up!

On Monday morning, I start feeling guilty about my textbook prank. Maybe it’s because, right before breakfast, I find my phone wedged between seat cushions on the couch.

Of course, I know Hannah hid my phone. I don’t sit on that side of the couch, only she does. But still. Having my phone back makes feel a little less angry.

Nevertheless, right before we leave for school, I don’t tell Hannah her textbook is sitting in the back of her closet. Not that she’s looking.

When I get to school, I confess my guilt to Keisha, who doesn’t make me feel worse about the textbook. Still, I know she hasn’t exactly approved of our sister battle.

“I really shouldn’t feel too bad,” I say. “It’s not as if Hannah didn’t just hide my phone. And it’s not exactly like she’s been nice. Everything’s all about her. She never stops to ask me about anything. Well, she does, at the very end of a conversation, right when she conveniently has to go.”

“Yeah, well, some people are like that,” says Keisha. “It’s all about them.”

“People like Hannah deserve to learn a lesson.” At least, that’s what I tell myself. And Hannah really does do all her schoolwork last minute, which accounts for her uneven grades. She crams for her tests and quizzes and gets anywhere from a D to an A. All of her papers are written the night before, and yet, somehow, she stills manages to pull off a B range or even an A-minus sometimes.

During pre-algebra, Luke brags that he beat Keisha doing our timed problem sets.

“I’m done!” Luke yells out.

I wasn’t even close to finishing.

“Do you have to yell it out?” says Keisha. “And you were barely first, Luke. I just finished seconds after you.”

“Actually,” says Luke. “I do need to shout it out. Because you’re slow, and I’m not.”

“I am not slow,” declares Keisha, who’s a math whiz, in addition to be an ice-skating whiz. “And not only was I fast, but I bet I was more accurate than you.”

I give Keisha a high five. “Nice one!”

For the rest of the day, Luke’s boasting gets to me. Why do some people have to put other people down to feel good about themselves?

When I’m walking to social studies, I ask Reese about it.

“In math, Luke can be such a jerk. He’s always boasting. He’s your friend. Can you please explain?”

“He needs self-certification,” says Reese.

“What? I’ve never hard of that.”

“I mean, self-validation. He just needs it. It has nothing to do with any of us.”

“Really? He seems so confident.”

“My mom’s a therapist, and she says that whatever people say, it’s usually all about them. If they call you something, it’s because they’re feeling that way. And if someone’s truly confident, they don’t need validation.”

That made me think about Hannah. Sometimes she’s so frustrated with her art. Other times, she compliments herself. Was she secretly super insecure and just needs validation? It was hard to believe but possible.

What is even harder to believe is that the Fall Festival is now just four days away! This Friday! After school, my committee meets in the gym, and we begin to construct the Haunted House inside of a huge supply closet that’s the size of classroom. It’s filled with cones, balls, Hula-Hoops, and other gym stuff, leaving the rest of the space vacant. This allows us to construct temporary walls using the school’s supply of rolling whiteboards, which we cover with black cloth and tarps. After creating a maze of rooms, we will fill the various spaces with creepy props. It’s tricky taping down all of the cords to the various chattering skulls, so nobody trips, as well as the cord to the sound system.

When I get home from school, I watch a couple of videos from Ethan’s YouTube channel, and they’re surprisingly cringe-y. They’re mostly him playing some video game while he loudly crunches on chips, saying how awesome he’s doing. I switch to watching videos on baking pies. I want to watch the experts, to see if there’s anything else that I can learn. I’m surprised at how much Mom has taught me. One baker says it’s really important to buy fresh organic fruit, while another says it’s all about the art of the crust. Right now, since I can’t get Dad to take me to the orchard, I’m going to have to get my apples from the grocery store. Still, they have really good apples in Tacoma, and they’re often trucked in fresh that day.

After I do some language arts reading, I go to the living room to work on teaching Maisie how to sit and to stay. This is only after I watched some dog training videos, which were super helpful.

When Hannah comes into the room, she doesn’t say a word to me about her textbook or her test. Instead, she says, “It’s time for Maisie to spend some time with me.” Then she proceeds to give Maisie a treat, even though she didn’t do anything to deserve it.

“You’re spoiling her,” I say.

“I’m being nice.”

“Nice? What do you know about that?” I realize my voice is raising. “All you know is disorganization and chaos!”

“And what do you know about being non-judgmental? Little Miss Perfect!”

“Girls, you need to dial it back right now,” says Dad from the kitchen.

“Absolutely,” says Kimberly. “I won’t stand for screaming.”

I wait for them to follow through on some kind of punishment.

A chair scrapes on the floor. It’s not like I can say anything about my phone, not when I hid Hannah’s textbook.

“Lily, I think you need some time off in your room,” says Dad.

Reluctantly, I plod to the bedroom and sink down into my bed. Right now, I just feel like a bad apple.

In my room, I think about my words to Hannah—about her being disorganized. That was one of my Mom’s main beefs with my dad. That he wasn’t responsible and just flitted from one thing to another because of his lack of his ability to live his life to a schedule or have any organization. Some of it was true and some of it was harsh because my dad is creative and a dreamer. I remember one really bad argument involving door slamming and Mom cracking some clay pot Dad had just made.

My throat aches at the memory. Mom was taking all of these classes, which we couldn’t afford. Plus, Dad had just lost his sales job. At that point, he hadn’t had a job in almost four months, and he was taking a ceramics class instead of having a “real job,” so it was bad.

Now Dad has his own video business, and a new wife, so it’s different. But still. Between work and house hunting, he doesn’t have time for anything else, like apple picking or noticing that his stepdaughter is passive-aggressive, or more like just plain aggressive.

It wasn’t a good thing to tell Hannah she was completely disorganized. Dad definitely took it the wrong way.

And it’s really weird how she didn’t mention her social studies test. In fact, she was strangely silent about it, which makes me nervous.

What could she possibly be planning next?