A snort slipped out, and I pressed my lips together to prevent further outbursts.
“What’s so funny?” Ethan asked, leaning in to get a peek at my phone. “Who are you talking to?”
My thumb slid to the power button. The texting was innocent and friendly, but I still felt uncomfortable about it. Like I’d been doing something wrong. “No one.”
He grinned evilly and made a grab for my cell. I shoved his hand away and tried to stuff the phone back into my coat pocket, but he managed to get his fingers around it before I could safely stow it. “Ethan,” I said, laughing as I snatched my phone back, “quit being such a pest. You’re worse than Tobias.”
He nudged my knee with his. I nudged him back, then poked him in the shoulder. He raised a hand to poke me back, but I ducked out of the way before he could make contact. I was stronger than him, and faster, and still an inch or so taller too. I could take him in a fight.
“What has gotten into you two?” His mother’s voice sliced through our scuffling. “You’re behaving like children.”
I let go of Ethan’s collar, which I’d grabbed to keep him still while I smacked him in the head, and sat up straight. Mrs. McCrae was gaping at me in horror, as if she couldn’t figure out why her children associated with the likes of me. She’d always looked at me that way, actually. Aubrey never admitted it one way or the other, but I often sensed that her mother saw me as a bad influence, too immature and ordinary for her talented, brilliant kids. Maybe she had a point.
Ethan and I mumbled halfhearted apologies, and the three of us went back to quietly waiting. Fortunately, Aubrey finished a few minutes later and made her way over, results in hand. We all stood up to greet her.
“Well?” I asked, searching her face. She still looked pale, but it was more of a relieved kind of pallor.
“I passed!” She waved the paper around and smiled. “Almost a perfect score. I only missed one question.”
“Aubrey, that’s amazing!” I pulled her in for a quick hug. “I knew you’d kill it.”
“Congrats,” Ethan said as they slapped hands in a celebratory high five.
Mrs. McCrae came up behind us, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Which one did you miss?”
Aubrey’s smile slipped a notch. “Oh. Um . . . one of the road sign identification ones. I got it mixed up with another one that looked really similar.”
“Well,” her mother said with an airy smile, “let’s hope you don’t make the same mistake when you’re on the road.”
My hand itched to clobber her. I knew Aubrey and Ethan were used to this sort of reaction from their mother, but it must have felt awful, having your parents focus on the one tiny thing you did wrong instead of the hundreds of things you did right.
“Can we go now?” Ethan asked, his shoulders settling back into a slouch. The festive mood had been completely sucked out of the atmosphere.
“I have to go get my temporary license,” Aubrey said in an overly bright voice, trying to recapture some of the cheer. It didn’t quite work.
Mrs. McCrae’s cell phone rang from inside her purse. She dug it out, glanced at the screen, and then pressed it to her ear as she walked toward the exit. Ethan and I stayed behind to wait for Aubrey, watching as the woman behind the counter directed her to stand in front of a green screen for the license photo. Aubrey obeyed, her mouth twitching like she wasn’t sure if she should smile. Before she could make up her mind, the flash from the camera lit up the screen, capturing her moment of doubt.
eleven
Senior Year
I WAKE UP LATE SATURDAY MORNING FEELING sluggish and tired, like I hardly slept at all. This has been happening more and more lately. For most of last year, I suffered through insomnia. Now I can go to bed early, sleep a solid ten hours, and still wake up feeling like shit.
If I mention this to my parents, they’ll probably think I’m depressed. And if they think I’m depressed, they’ll ship me off to the doctor, who will put me on antidepressants like the ones I was on for six weeks after Aubrey died. The ones that made me so dizzy and foggy and nauseated, I had to quit taking them.
I’m sure there are better medications out there for me, the perfect pill that will balance my brain’s serotonin levels and make me feel happy. But maybe I don’t get to feel happy.
I sit up in bed, my back aching with the movement, and inhale. The scent of bacon has started wafting up the stairs. If there’s anything that will get me out of bed this morning, it’s bacon.
Downstairs, my mother and brother are sitting at the kitchen table, eating pancakes and the aforementioned bacon. I head over to the counter and grab a piece off the paper-towel-lined plate. It’s still hot, but I chomp into it anyway.
“Good morning,” Mom greets me as she cuts into a pancake. “How did you sleep?”
“Fine,” I say, then turn and snatch another bacon so she can’t see the dark circles that greeted me in the bathroom mirror a few minutes ago. I look zombified.
“Pancakes are here on the table. Come sit down.”
I stay where I am, leaning against the counter. “I’m not very hungry.”
“Just one.” She points to a chair with her fork. “A couple of slices of bacon isn’t breakfast, Dara. You need to eat.”
Irritation flares through me, but I keep my voice low and calm. “I’ll eat something else later. Okay?”
Mom sighs. Tobias stops dipping his bacon into a puddle of maple syrup and glances back and forth between us, his freckled face strained. A chunk of his hair sticks straight up from sleep and I want so much to go over and smooth it down, smooth those worried creases out of his brow, but I don’t do either.
“Okay, fine,” Mom says, standing up with her plate. “But if you’re not going to eat, then you’re going to help me clean up this mess.”
I open my mouth to tell her I wasn’t the one who made the mess so I shouldn’t be the one to clean it up, but the determined set of her jaw stops me. She’s hell-bent on pushing me to do something this morning.
Wordlessly, I swallow my bacon and start loading the dishwasher. Mom wipes the stovetop while Tobias lingers at the table, slowly drinking his apple juice. We clean in silence for a few minutes, but it’s a silence even heavier than the slab of greasy pork fat in my stomach.
Finally, Mom joins me at the sink and says, “So. How do you think school’s going? In general, I mean. Are you starting to readjust?”
I scrape a glob of pancake batter off the spatula I’m rinsing. “I guess.”
“Have you reconnected with any of your friends?”
Ah. And there it is. The question is delivered so casually, as if it had only just occurred to her. A week has passed since Dad came home and saw me in Ethan’s car, and ever since then, I’ve been waiting for her to bring it up. My father obviously told her about it right away, but since Dad doesn’t talk to me any more than he has to and Mom is still following Dr. Lemke’s be-patient-and-follow-Dara’s-lead advice, I thought I might be off the hook.