“Let’s sit down,” I say.
Ethan hesitates, then lets go of my arms and pads uncertainly toward the kitchen table; we sit next to each other, knees grazing. My stomach twists into knots. I don’t even know where to start.
I focus on the condensation on a glass of water on the table so I don’t have to look at him. “There’s a lot I need to tell you. But first I need you to promise me you won’t bitch about how stupid I am. I already know.”
“Okay…,” he says carefully.
I take a deep breath and fill him in on everything. When I get to the part about Tucker trying to trap me in his room, his jaw clenches so tight I worry his teeth will crack. He takes in the red marks on my arms, but he doesn’t speak, just keeps so still and silent that I want to shake him—tell him to yell at me already, say I told you so. I was wrong to ask him to be quiet. This is worse.
Finally I get to the end of the story.
“Say something,” I beg him. I hate the way my voice comes out like a prayer. “I know you probably hate me right now, and this is all really crazy and stupid of me, but I just thought—”
He pulls me into a hug, and my words die away. I didn’t realize how badly I needed this, someone to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay, until I feel my tension melt into him. He presses my head into his neck, and I breathe him in.
I suddenly become aware of how intimate our embrace is. He just broke up with Savannah five seconds ago. I can’t do this. I pull away so fast my knees bump the table and the glass knocks over, dumping water into his lap.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” I jump up from the table.
“It’s okay, it’s fine.” Ethan stares uselessly at his soaked lap.
I grab a dry dishcloth from the sink and blot at the mess, then realize how awkward it is that I’m dabbing at his crotch and hand him the rag.
“We can hang it outside to dry,” I offer. “I’ll get you something to wear.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll fit in your jeans.”
“I meant my mom’s stuff, asshole.” I grin and go to Mom’s room, looking for her baggy plaid pajama pants, but they’re not in any of her drawers. Of course—it’s laundry day tomorrow. I drop to my knees in front of the giant pile of family laundry Mom has all set to the take to the Laundromat and dump out the basket. I’m digging through the clothes when I see it.
A pair of black pants with a ring of duckweed around the knees. I gingerly pick it up. They’re Jenny’s pants.
There’s only one way Jenny could have gotten duckweed on her pants: if she was near the swamp, maybe kneeling in the mud to watch us swim to the island and back.
Jenny. My Jenny. My own sister, a part of the Society.
My entire body goes numb. Sound funnels away, and suddenly it all comes flooding back.
We were at IHOP five years ago, having breakfast after blood work at the hospital. Jenny was bumping a Princess and the Frog action figure over the table, and Mom was trying to flag down the waitress to order a coffee. She was wearing a red dress. I remember that, because she looked so pretty with her hair pulled up and her earrings showing. It was a happy day, a normal day.
Jenny said she wanted to marry Prince Naveen and have fifteen kids, and I said she was stupid, that fifteen was too many. I would have two, and I would name them Frankie and Lagoona, like the characters on my favorite TV show. Mom got quiet then, and I didn’t really get it. Until later.
She came into my room that night and sat on the end of my bed. She told me I was dying. That I wouldn’t marry. Wouldn’t have kids. She cried, and I stared at her crumpled-up face, the mascara streaking down her cheeks. I’d known I was sick—of course I’d known—but I didn’t understand what it truly meant until that moment. The world spun out of control, everything I knew breaking up, sucking away, shattering into a million pieces, and I was frozen in the middle of it all, helpless to stop it. Mom tried to hug me, and I lost it. I kicked and screamed, threw a lamp against the wall. Mom begged me to stop, but I couldn’t. I told her I hated her, and in that moment I did. She was my mom—my family. She was supposed to protect me from the bad things, and she’d let me down.
And now all those feelings are back. The shock, the hurt, the rage, the betrayal. A toxic swirl of emotions.
Jenny—my own sister.
“It’s okay,” Ethan says from the doorway. “I can just use a hair dryer or something….” His words trail off.
“It’s Jenny,” I say. “She was the person at the swamp.”
“What?”
I spin to face him, holding the pants up with heavy arms. “She has duckweed on her pants, Ethan.”
Ethan’s lips part in shock.
I drop the pants and stagger up, pushing past him.
“Wait, where are you going?” he calls.
“To find Jenny.”