“Cliff said she’d planned to tell you,” Quinn said. “And me too. She just didn’t get the chance.”
Great, and now her eyes were burning. Refusing to cry, Tilly pulled out her phone for a diversion. And of course, the one time she didn’t have any texts . . . Out of desperation, she opened Snapchat. She had three friends. Katie snapped daily pics of her stupid cat in baby clothes. And then there was Melanie’s close-up selfies that all looked the same with her ridiculous, overglossed pout.
Dylan didn’t Snapchat at all.
Terrific. She’d actually rather be in school taking her biology exam and she hated biology.
Hated.
Hated.
Hated.
But this was worse. Her mom had told Tilly about the cancer three months ago but had neglected to mention being terminal. Or that Tilly had a sister. And then there was the biggie—she’d up and died. It wasn’t fair. Any of it. She wanted, needed, everyone to just go the hell away and leave her alone.
She switched over to Instagram, but that was equally unsatisfying. Still, she went through the motions of thumbing along and was doing a great job of ignoring Quinn when she caught sight of a post from one of her mom’s friends. It was a throwback picture of the two women together, beaming wide.
She had to close her eyes, but the image of her mom’s coffin being lowered into the ground still came.
“Tilly—”
“You really didn’t know about me either?” she asked, eyes still closed.
“No. If I had . . .”
Tilly opened her eyes and met Quinn’s matching deep blue ones, wanting to hear . . . well, she wasn’t sure. Something to make her feel better. “What?” she asked. “What would you have done?”
Quinn opened her mouth but then closed it with a helpless shake of her head, like she wasn’t sure.
“So you came here now to what, then?” Tilly asked. “Appease your curiosity? Well, you’ve done that. So I guess I’ll be seeing you around sometime. Or whatever.”
“Tilly.” Quinn’s voice sounded as unsure as Tilly felt. “I’m in uncharted waters here too. But we can at least try, can’t we? It’s never too late to make up for lost time.”
But it was. The past couldn’t be changed. Her mom was dead and going to stay that way. She looked at her phone again, opening Facebook because she was that desperate for a distraction, even though no one she knew used FB anymore except old people. “I’ve gotta get back to school.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“No, it’s not far,” Tilly said. “I’ll walk.”
Quinn looked hurt at that and Tilly told herself she didn’t care.
“How about I pick you up after school?” Quinn asked. “I could take you to dinner.”
“I’ve got dinner plans.”
“Breakfast before school tomorrow then,” Quinn said with enough hope in her voice that it almost hurt to listen to her. “Before I go back to L.A.”
Right, because Quinn wasn’t here to stay, just to get a good look at the freak show. That worked for Tilly because she didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to feel good about anything, even finding a sister, which she’d always secretly wished for.
Quinn started to say something else but a bee dive-bombed and she squeaked instead, and began waving wildly at the air with her free hand. “Ohmigod!”
“Stop moving,” Tilly said. “It won’t bother you if you just ignore it.”
“I can’t, I’m allergic!” She let go of her death grip on her branch and used both hands now to shoo the bee. “Ouch!” she yelped and slapped at her forehead. “I’m hit, I’m hit!”
“Hey,” Tilly said. “Careful, you’re going to fall out of the—”
Quinn fell out of the tree. Since she hadn’t gotten very far up there, she didn’t have all that far to go, but she hit the ground hard and lay still.
Tilly stared down at her, looking for a sign of life. “You okay?”
No answer. No movement either, and Tilly’s heart just about stopped. “Quinn?”
Quinn’s eyes were open, staring blindly at the sky. Then her mouth moved a little. Kinda like a fish who’d just flopped out of its tank and needed to get back in the water.
“Shit,” Tilly said. “Damn. Fuck . . .” Nice going, you get a sister and kill her all in the same day. She came out of the tree house, slid down the tree trunk, and then jumped, landing next to Quinn’s prone body. “Hey. Hey, you all right?”
More nothing from Quinn, although her fingers twitched.
“Okay, I’m calling 911,” Tilly said and pulled out her phone. She’d never done this before, but the dispatcher was calm and that helped. She gave their location and then bent over Quinn again. “An ambulance is coming.”
Quinn’s fingers were still moving, like she was trying to get something out of her pocket.
“Please say something,” Tilly begged. “Did you break your neck?” Then she realized there was a big red dot in the middle of Quinn’s forehead.
She really had been stung by the bee.
Quinn managed to pull whatever she’d been looking for from her pocket. “Open it,” she wheezed.
Tilly stared down at the tampon-size cylinder with a bright orange cap.
“It’s an EpiPen.” Quinn’s voice sounded strangled, like she couldn’t get enough air.
And Tilly remembered her sister’s earlier words. She was allergic to bees. Tilly took the EpiPen and stared at it. “What do I do?”
Quinn was working the button and zipper of her jeans, then struggling with pushing them down her thighs past a pair of Wonder Woman undies.
Then she grabbed the EpiPen back and stabbed herself in the thigh with it.
Tilly had to close her eyes because needles weirded her out, but almost immediately she could hear the difference in Quinn’s breathing. Which made her realize Quinn had been wheezing for air because her throat had started to close up. “Oh my God.” She leaned over Quinn. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” she said thickly, like her tongue was swollen. “If you help me get my pants up before anyone gets here.”
“Too late.” Cliff crouched at their side, lending his hands to the cause.
Tilly would have been mortified—Wonder Woman? Really?—but Quinn just laughed a little.
“Better than my Hello Kitty thong, I guess,” she said.
“Seriously,” Tilly said. “You should stop talking.”
The ambulance whipped into the park, lights flashing, sirens wailing.
“We don’t get a lot of action here,” Cliff said apologetically.
“But I’m fine,” Quinn was still saying thirty minutes later at the hospital.
She wasn’t fine. Anyone could see that she felt like she’d been hit by a Mack truck and she was still having the shakes from the letdown after the huge adrenaline rush of the EpiPen injection.
Tilly stood at her side, half out of worry for the woman she was determined to hate with all her being since it was the only thing that deflected the pain of her mom being gone, and half because if she’d gone back to school, she’d have had to take the dreaded biology test. “You really okay?”