Marlene dropped Scarlett a devastating look over her shoulder.
“Why are you home?” she said. “Where’s your guy? Did he dump you or something?”
There is a limit to everything, and Scarlett had reached it.
“You know what?” she said. “It isn’t always going to work. Not everyone, for the rest of your life, is going to care that you used to be sick. You’ll have to act normal, like the rest of us. Because if you don’t, everyone will just think you’re evil and miserable. I’m not even sure they’d be wrong.”
Even as she was saying them, Scarlett was regretting the words. They were true, but they landed like a hammer. Marlene’s face, which usually looked slightly contemptuous, begin to sag. At first, Scarlett felt a kind of relief that she’d finally made a point with Marlene. Then Marlene began to cry. Scarlett held her stance for a moment or two. She went over and tried to sit down and put an arm around her sister.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Look, Marlene…”
She got a push off the couch. Then Marlene really began to wail.
Scarlett went back to the Orchid Suite and sat on the bed. Her phone sat there, its screen depressingly blank. No call from Eric.
It took about fifteen minutes for the general alarm to be sounded and the footsteps to come to her door. Those were her mother’s. She let herself in after a sharp knock.
“What did you say to Marlene?” she asked. “Did you tell her she was evil?”
Obviously, she already knew the answer. Why was she bothering to ask?
“Scarlett, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking what everyone thinks,” Scarlett said. “She’s rude. She does things that other people can’t get away with. She’s eleven. I couldn’t act like that at eleven.”
“She isn’t like you. And you thought the solution was to call her evil?”
“It just came out,” Scarlett said.
“You know what she’s been through.”
“That was over four years ago. And what—no one is ever allowed to tell Marlene she’s wrong? Other people aren’t going to care that she was in the hospital once. No one is going to want to deal with her.”
There was too much truth here, seething under the surface. It wasn’t a fun truth, but it could not be denied. There was little to be done, though. Scarlett was already inside. She was already stamping brochures. She had practically grounded herself. Her mother didn’t even sign off on it with a “I’m disappointed in you, Scarlett,” the most meaningless and chilling of parental rejoinders. She just left the room.
Lola knew all the details by the time she arrived home. She let herself into the Orchid Suite quietly, wearing an infuriating expression of placid righteousness.
“Don’t,” Scarlett said.
“I wasn’t,” Lola replied, going to the dresser to take off her pink stud earrings. She pulled her hair up into a knot, changed into shortie pajamas, applied moisturizers and toners, and generally did everything but give herself highlights until Scarlett couldn’t take it anymore.
“Fine,” she said. “I lost it. I told her off. You’re going to say that she actually really likes me, aren’t you? That she really admires me, and I’ve just jumped all over her and crushed her.”
Lola turned, still rubbing something into her face in a light circular motion.
“No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think she really hates you, but she definitely doesn’t like you. She probably will when she’s like, twenty, but then again, maybe not. Some siblings hate each other for life.”
On that note, she settled into her bed to read one of her brochures.
“Spencer’s home,” she added, crisply flipping a page. “He looks as miserable as you do.”
“I don’t care.”
“Oh, stop it, Scarlett. Hanging out with these theater people has made you dramatic. Go down there, open the door, and sit on him until you’ve talked this out.”
“He’s probably locked it.”
“So knock.”
“What if…”
“Go!” Lola said. “You can’t be fighting with all three of us at once. And don’t come back until you’ve fixed it.”
She sounded serious enough that Scarlett found herself getting off the bed and walking robotically down the hall toward the Maxwell Suite. Lola had that kind of presence, if she really wanted to use it. That was how she managed to become one of the top salespeople on Bendel’s makeup floor before she got herself fired.
Spencer’s door was shut, but there was a light on underneath. Scarlett reached up to knock, but then recalled his strange reaction that afternoon. The smug look, the odd laugh…it made her angry and uneasy all over again. She turned and went back to the Orchid Suite room, but the door had been locked.
“That was way too short,” Lola called from inside. “I’m serious. Go and talk to him.”