I laugh even though the sound of it hurts.
I feel the last little wisps of anger go out of me as I remember a free period Jessa and I shared when we were both new in high school. It was in the school cafeteria, where all underclassmen spent their study halls. Early on we staked out the corner table behind the vending machines. Optimal territory for whispering, plus we could get a Vitaminwater whenever we wanted without having to ask permission. Partly because of the vending machines but mostly because Jessa has been gorgeous and perfect forever, freshman boys would circle our table like summer gnats. Matthew Biltz in particular had a five-hundred-ton crush on Jessa. With ears like teacup handles and a chronic case of BO (the consequence of an uncircumcised penis and frequent masturbation, Ashley Griffin was heard to speculate), he leaned on a mean sense of humor to get girls to look at him. He’d drift over to our table on the pretense of buying a SunnyD and, because he loved Jessa, he’d turn his mean on me to attract her. Slamming shut my trig textbook, tweaking my bra strap through my T-shirt, shooting rubber bands into my ponytail, pulling his eyes down and to the side like mine. Moves worthy of Casanova. He’d do this each free period until the day Jessa invited him to sit with us, to spread out his work so the supervising teacher would think we were studying together. The wattage of his smile could’ve powered an auto plant, until Jessa took a huge swig of Vitaminwater, leaned over, and emptied a warm and gelled mouthful right onto his classroom-issued copy of The Merchant of Venice. Matt used his spit-rippled book the rest of the semester, because what boy would dare complain and let it be known he’d been slapped down by Jessa Price?
I don’t approve of book abuse. But he never bothered me again.
Jessa tips her head onto my shoulder. “Who needs boys, anyway?”
Resting my cheek on the top of her tangled hair, I try to smile. “Definitely not us.” I tuck my hands into the pockets of my coat and feel the crunch of butcher paper.
“What is that?” Jessa asks as I pull out the folded drawings.
I figure it’s time. Together, we peer down at a skeleton, a cloaked vampire, a bull-headed minotaur. Probably from Mom’s how-to-draw books; she’d clearly tended toward the monsters. The lines are clean and confident, except for a shakier sketch of a girl among them. Her facial features are undecided upon, fingers and shoes unfinished. Scrawled in the bottom corner, in numbers that match Lil’s handwriting on the Post-it Note: Sidonie Faye, 1991. Mental math tells me my mom was fourteen when she drew this . . . what would you call it, a self-portrait? I trace one finger over the still-greasy pencil of a werewolf’s claws.
“She was really good,” Jessa whispers.
“She was something,” I whisper back.
“Okay, so . . . now what? We know your mom was working in an eye doctor’s office five years ago, right? So we make a whole bunch of appointments in Connecticut?”
“No.” I rise carefully from the bench with the beginnings of an idea. “But maybe we do need a grown-up.”
TWELVE
“Come on, make one phone call in your big-boy voice,” Jessa pleads through the white cloud of her breath. “It will take you two minutes, and then you can go back to teaching grown adults how to fall down a hill. Do it for Im!”
I inspect a piece of lint on the sleeve of my coat, unable to look Chad in the eye. The blurred memory of him over his playing cards, the sympathy on his face, makes my skin feel too tight.
“It’s not like I don’t want to help you, Imogene.” He frowns, pushing off the hood of his jacket and stomping the heavy powder off his boots in the doorway of the lodge. He’s just come off the Blue Triangle course at the Marple Slopes, a little more than an hour northwest of Boston.
The lodge seems crowded for a Monday, everybody in their bright zippered ski gear, swish-swishing as they raise their arms, clomping heavy-footed in their boots toward fake log tables. This is how other kids spend their February breaks: riding ski lifts up the slopes, inhaling Cokes and French fries, hurling soaked ski gloves at each other like nylon grenades. Chad guides us to a quieter spot by the garbage cans outside the Marple Grill. The smell of meat and sauerkraut curls around us, and though I thought the long drive had given me time to regroup, I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Jessa looks similarly grossed out. Raising a pale eyebrow wet with snow spray, Chad scoffs, “Not feeling so awesome, are you? Let it be a lesson. You go sailing with the Captain, sometimes you get thrown overboard. Next time, listen to me.”
“Ugh, never mind, Chadwick,” Jessa says, clearly wrestling her gag reflex under control. “Just please do it?”
“Can’t you tell me why I’m lying on the job? Is this . . . is this about last night?”