"Did we get paid?" Bert asked.
"Had to comp half," she said. "The price of chaos. Probably should bother me, but frankly, I'm too pregnant and exhausted to care. Who has the keys?"
"I do," Bert said. "I'll drive."
The silence that followed was long enough to make me want to peer over the edge of the roof again, but I stopped myself.
"I don't think so," Delia said finally.
"Don't even," Monica added.
"What?" Bert said. "Come on! I've had my permit for a year! I'm taking the test in a week! And I have to have some more practice before I get the Bertmobile."
"You have," Wes said, his voice low, "to stop calling it that."
"Bert," Delia said, sighing, "normally, I would love for you to drive. But it's been a long night and right now I just want to get home, okay? Next time, it's all you. But for now, just let your brother drive. Okay?"
Another silence. Someone coughed.
"Fine," Bert said. "Just fine."
I heard a car door slam, then another. I leaned back over to see Wes and Bert still standing at the back of the van. Bert was kicking at the ground, clearly sulking, while Wes stood by impassively.
"It's not a big deal," he said to Bert after a minute, pulling a hand through his hair. Now I knew for sure that they were brothers. They looked even more alike to me, although the similarities—skin tone, dark hair, dark eyes—were distributed on starkly different builds.
"I never get to drive," Bert told him. "Never. Even lazy Monotone got to last week, but never me. Never."
"You will," Wes said. "Next week you'll have your own car, and you can drive whenever you want. But don't push this issue now, man. It's late."
Bert stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Whatever," he said, and started around the van, shuffling his feet. Wes followed him, clapping a hand on his back. "You know that girl who was in the kitchen tonight, helping Delia?" Bert asked.
I froze.
"Yeah," Wes answered. "The one you leaped out at?"
"Anyway," Bert said loudly, "don't you know who she is?"
"No."
Bert pulled open the back door. "Yeah, you do. Her dad—"
I waited. I knew what was coming, but still, I had to hear the words that would follow. The ones that defined me, set me apart.
"—was the coach when we used to run in that kids' league, back in elementary school," Bert finished. "The Lakeview Zips. Remember?"
Wes opened the back door for Bert. "Oh yeah," he said. "Coach Joe, right?"
Right, I thought, and felt a pang in my chest.
"Coach Joe," Bert repeated, as he shut his door. "He was a nice guy."
I watched Wes walk to the driver's door and pull it open. He stood there for a second, taking a final look around, before climbing in and shutting the door behind him. I had to admit, I was surprised. I'd gotten so used to being known as the girl whose dad died, I sometimes forgot that I'd had a life before that.
I moved back into the shadows by my window as the engine started up and the van bumped down the driveway, brake lights flashing as it turned out onto the street. There was a big wishbone painted on the side, thick black paint strokes, and from a distance it looked like a Chinese character, striking even if you didn't know, really, what it meant. I kept my eye on it, following it down through the neighborhood, over the hill, down to the stop sign, until it was gone.
* * *
Chapter Three
I couldn't sleep.
I was starting my job at the library the next day, and I had that night-before-the-first-day-of-school feeling, all jumpy and nervous. But then again, I'd never been much of a sleeper. That was the weird thing about that morning when my dad came in to get me. I'd been out. Sound asleep.
Since then, I had almost a fear of sleeping, sure that something bad would happen if I ever allowed myself to be fully unconscious, even for a second. As a result, I only allowed myself to barely doze off. When I did sleep enough to dream, it was always about running.
My dad loved to run. He'd had me and my sister doing it from a young age with the Lakeview Zips, and later he was always dragging us to the 5Ks he ran, signing us up for the kids' division. I remember my first race, when I was six, standing there at the starting line a few rows back, with nothing at my eye level but shoulders and necks. I was short for my age, and Caroline had of course pushed her way to the front, stating clearly that at ten-almost-eleven, she didn't belong in back with the babies. The starting gun popped and everyone pushed forward, the thumping of sneakers against asphalt suddenly deafening, and at first it was like I was carried along with it, my feet seeming hardly to touch the ground. The people on the sides of the street were a blur, faces blowing by: all I could focus on was the ponytail of the girl in front of me, tied with a blue grosgrain ribbon. Some big boy bumped me hard from the back, passing, and I had a cramp in my side by the second length, but then I heard my dad.