She frowned. “No! No.”
I believed her. Because her doing that—showing me the text right away and asking what she should do—it told me that things were different now. And if they were, if she looked to me to be the big sister again the way I thought I wanted her to, then I’d have to consider that before deciding exactly how to handle the next moment, and the one after that.
“Ask him what it is,” I said. I wanted to see how he’d lie, and I wanted her to see it. To prove my point one more time.
She hovered her thumbs over her phone, then typed. In a few seconds, his reply came.
just some business papers and stuff
Dixie showed me.
“I told you,” I said quietly.
Then he added:
it’s important tho. how soon can i get? can you leave school early?
“He probably just doesn’t want to say anything about it over text,” Dixie said, but without the urgent defensiveness she’d had the night before.
“Dixie . . . here.” I reached for the phone; she pulled it back. “Fine, you do it,” I said. “Call him. Ask.”
The warning bell rang. People began to get up and file out of the cafeteria.
Dixie stared at her phone a few seconds, then sent another text. “I asked if I could bring it to him. Instead of him picking it up. I asked him where in the house he left it.”
The cafeteria was almost empty, and the final bell rang. I stood with my tray, aware of the lumpy lightness of my backpack. “He’s going to lie,” I said. “He won’t want you to touch it or see it. He won’t want you to know what it is.”
Her phone buzzed and she hunched away from me so I wouldn’t try to read over her shoulder. I threw out what was left of my brownie, bused my tray. “What did he say?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She shoved her phone into her pocket and stood, heading for the door.
I followed her. “He lied.”
“It wasn’t even him.” She walked faster and then threw her body against the cafeteria door where it exited to a courtyard with picnic tables.
I tried to catch up with her, worried she’d buckle and tell him we’d found it. I got close enough to grab her jacket. I yanked it off one of her shoulders and took the phone out of her pocket before she could stop me.
“Don’t, Gem!” She flailed and grasped but I saw the message anyway.
maybe I didn’t leave it there after all. need to check around here first. forget it and never mind ok? i’ll get in touch in couple days after mom calms down lol
She succeeded in getting the phone away from me. “Don’t. Do that.” Her voice shook. She straightened her jacket. “If Mom hadn’t gone so crazy on him last night, he probably would have explained everything.”
“We were with him for however many hours from the time he got to school yesterday. He could have explained it anytime.”
“He wanted Mom to be there.”
“Dixie, he—” I stopped myself. It didn’t matter. None of this mess with Dad mattered. I didn’t even care how he got the money or why he got it or what he planned to do with it, wrong or right, illegal or legit. I didn’t care about any of that.
She was waiting for me. Waiting for me to tell her what we should do, like when I’d have the paper bag packed full of picnic stuff for our games. Survival rations.
Where are we going? she used to ask.
And I was the one to tell her.
I slipped my backpack off, checked to make sure no one was around, then stepped closer to her. “Look,” I said, and unzipped the backpack just enough to show her what was inside.
She peered in, then moved away from me, glancing over her shoulder and all around. “Why’d you bring that to school! You said we were putting it back under the bed! The bag was there this morning when I looked. You said—”
“Come with me.” I zipped the bag up, slung it over my shoulder.
“Wait,” she said. “Come with you where?”
The assistant principal would come through on her postlunch sweep of the campus any minute. I didn’t have time to outline to Dixie something she should already understand. I crossed the courtyard, away from her and toward where the fence opened to the street, my heart in my throat, worried I’d made the wrong decision. If I’d gone with my other plan, I would have had a head start and it would have been hours before she, or anyone, figured out what I’d done.
“Where are you going?” Dixie called after me.
“I don’t know.” I kept walking. I needed to get off the school grounds.
“Gem, wait. Wait!”
A bus to downtown was a block away, headed toward the stop in front of the school. I turned to Dixie. “Let’s get on this bus,” I said. “Let’s just get on this bus and . . . talk.”
She looked angry, betrayed. “Why should I?”
Because Mom said I had to look out for you; because of the picture in my bag of us, you in the stroller, me pushing you along; because, right now, this is the chance.
I glanced at the approaching bus.
And because if you don’t, you’re going to call Dad and tell him what I’m doing.
“You trust Dad more than you trust me?” I asked. “Which of us was always there for you?” The bus heaved to a stop in front of us. “Get off at the next stop if you want. I just want to talk to you.”
The doors sighed open. I stepped on and tried not to move too quickly, act too desperate, be afraid. Dixie hesitated long enough that the driver leaned over and said, “I’m on a schedule, hon.”
Dixie climbed on after me. The doors hissed closed. We lurched forward.
12.
WE SAT in the back. Dixie didn’t get off at the next stop, or the next, or the next, but she refused to look at me. There were only a few other people on the bus, all clustered in the front.
“Okay, so talk,” Dixie finally said.
I put my hand in my pocket, felt for the edges of my pack of Haciendas. “If Dad doesn’t check back on the apartment for a couple of days, like he said, then we have some time.”
“Some time for what?” she muttered to the window.
“Time. Time to decide, or . . . whatever we want.”
She turned to me. “Decide? We already decided. We decided to leave it where it was and pretend we hadn’t found it.”
“I said ‘for now.’ That’s what I said.”
After a second she said, “You’re really stupid, Gem. You know that, right?”
Stupid would have been if I’d left the money at home with Dixie when I’d gone to school that morning.
“I mean, you think you’re going to start some new life and Dad’ll just let you take it and you’ll live happily ever after?”
“I don’t think that.” Not the ‘happily ever after’ part. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
She looked away again. “And what about Mom?”
I didn’t want to think about Mom or talk about Mom or worry about Mom. Mom should have been the one worrying about us, like Mr. Bergstrom had been trying to tell me, and I didn’t fully get it until I watched her throw away the food, until I saw her disappear on us once again when we needed her most.