“What? What do you mean? You never even see me around guys.”
“Like Napoleon at the deli? Giving you sandwiches. And you get rides to school and I don’t know what all else. You always have money.”
“Are you calling me some kind of whore?”
“No. Forget it.” I hung my new coat in the closet to dry, and my hoodie, too. I took off my boots and peeled off my socks; my little toe was red. I got my phone out. “Show me how to put Kip’s number in here.”
“Do it yourself.”
“This phone is different than the one I had before. Anyway, you have it. The place mat.”
She sighed and leaned over to pick her jeans up and dig in the pocket, then tried to throw the scrap of paper at me. It fluttered to the floor between the beds. I retrieved it and figured out how to save the number while Dixie turned on the TV and flipped channels.
“Why did you turn our problems into a joke like that?” I asked. “With Kip?”
“I didn’t.”
“Saying I kidnapped you and you’re a victim and all of that.”
“Maybe I am a victim. Maybe I should call the police.”
She wasn’t going to do that and we both knew it. While she kept flipping through channels, never settling on anything, I stared at the ceiling, picturing the money I’d thrown out. Probably that bathroom garbage with my jacket in it had been emptied by now. Probably hours ago.
I’d have to let go of it. I’d have to let go of a lot of things.
“I’m sorry I let you keep thinking Kip was a guy,” I told Dixie. “I’m sorry for what Mom did to you.”
“She didn’t do anything to me,” Dixie muttered.
“Well, you’re mad at her. And taking it out on me. Like I was mad at Dad and taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”
I rolled onto my side so I could see her.
“I don’t want to do that anymore,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Be mad at the wrong people.”
I wished she’d say something, that it was okay or she understood. I wished we could talk, in a close way. She kept her eyes on the TV, though, and I rolled onto my back again.
I wondered if she’d ever forgive me for this whole mess. Everything that happened, it was only because we wanted our parents to be better, to know how to take care of us. We could at least try to forgive ourselves for wanting that.
21.
WE BOTH dozed off. I woke to the sound of rain pattering against our window. Before I opened my eyes, I couldn’t be sure where I was, or when, or with who. I thought I could smell pine trees.
“Are you awake?” I asked, eyes still closed.
Dixie answered after a second. “Yeah.”
“Do you remember that time we went camping with Mom and Roxanne?”
There was a long pause, and right when I’d given up on her answering, she said, “We had to eat those cold hot dogs all weekend.”
Mom and Roxanne had wanted to get us out of the house while Dad did a weekend detox. Roxanne borrowed a tent from one of her boyfriends and we drove in her beat-up hatchback to this camping place over two hours away, near Port Angeles. We walked the tide pools and Roxanne put a rough pink starfish in my hand. It undulated, mysterious and strange, against my skin. At night, Mom and Roxanne tried to get a fire started so we could cook out, but they didn’t know what they were doing and the wood never caught.
I opened my eyes. “What else do you remember?” I asked.
“Cold marshmallows and Hershey bars and graham crackers.”
Deconstructed s’mores, Roxanne had called them, after we tried and failed to roast the marshmallows over her lighter.
“What else?” I asked, turning to see Dixie. “Not only about that trip. About anything else. About us. Good things.”
She rolled over, too, so we faced each other. Her hands were tucked under her cheek. That’s how she’d lie when I’d read to her before she could read on her own. “I remember going to a school recital that you sang in. I was little. Mom and Dad took me to hear you.”
I’d forgotten that. It was probably second or third grade. My teacher that year believed in the importance of music for “at-risk” kids, and didn’t seem to think twice before calling us that to our faces.
“You could sing, Gem.”
“Really?” I’d had a short solo. Something from the musical Annie.
“Yeah, you were good. Dad had me on his lap and he said to Mom, ‘She can sing.’”
I tried to remember if he’d said it to me. “Are you making that up?”
“No!” Dixie laughed, then suddenly stopped. “No. I know I lied about the Ferris wheel, but I wouldn’t lie about this.”
“I never did any singing after that, though. I wonder what kinds of stuff we would have done if Mom and Dad hadn’t been . . . like they were,” I said. “Don’t you wonder? Maybe I’d be doing school plays. Maybe you’d be in a band.”
She smirked. “What would I play?”
“I picture you as a lead singer.”
“I was thinking tambourine.” She propped herself up to see the clock on the nightstand between the beds. It was a little after four thirty. We’d napped for maybe an hour. Dad was probably leaving more messages on Dixie’s phone. I imagined the screen lighting up somewhere at the bottom of the Sound.
Dixie moved to a sitting position at the edge of her bed and stretched her arms overhead. The nap seemed to have erased our fight about Kip and everything else, and I didn’t want to mess with the fragile peace. Especially since in the back of my mind I knew this would probably have to be our last day together. I would take more money out of the backpack, or find a way to disappear with the whole thing.
She got up and walked across the room in her underwear, then bent over to get a dry shirt out of her bag. I watched her, and was surprised by something I’d never seen before.
“Is that a tattoo?”
“Oh. Yeah,” she said.
“When did you get that?”
“The day after I got my fake ID. That was another reason I wanted one.”
“Can I see?”
She came over to me with an armful of clothes and turned her back. I lifted her shirt. It was a star, just a simple star, above the back of her left hip. I touched it.
“Don’t tickle me.”
“You used to draw stars just like this all the time, on your notebooks, and around our heads whenever you drew us. Remember?”
“I guess.”
“Did it hurt?” How had I not noticed it before, sharing a room like we did? She must have been trying to keep me from seeing.