“I guessed about the phone call,” I blurt out. “Mom didn’t tell me.”
“That’s a pretty uncanny guess.” Dad glares at me.
“It’s true! I … ” I hesitate for a moment, then realize I have something to say. Something important. I stand up again. “That Sunday, when we were over at their house for dinner, I helped Auntie Mina clean up. When we were in the kitchen … ” I swallow, hard, past a lump in my throat. “I saw a bruise on her shoulder. She said it was an accident, but … ”
“Oh, God—” Mom chokes off whatever she was going to say. My dad stands up straight again, his face dark with rage, and clenches his fists at his side as if he’s trying not to hit something. I shrink back, despite myself.
He’d never hurt anyone. I don’t think he would. Maybe he’s planning to make an exception for Uncle Randall.
“Deb.” Now he sounds deadly calm, despite the expression on his face, his tense body language. “You’re right. If I go over there now, I might make things worse. Or I might just kill him outright,” he adds in a not-very-quiet undertone. “But—”
“Dad!” Now I’m yanking his arm as he starts to walk purposefully back toward the kitchen.
“I’m not going anywhere, Sun. But,” he says, shaking me off, “I am going to pick up that phone and call my sister.”
Mom follows us into the kitchen and sits at the table, massaging her temples. “Fine. But if Randall picks up, you are not going to yell at him, you are not going to threaten him! Please promise me you’re just going to talk for now.”
Dad stops. He sighs, then nods.
I don’t say anything, but I pull up a chair next to my mom and press the heels of my hands into my forehead. Since the moment I ran through the front door, nothing has seemed quite real. Just when I was getting used to everything that’s changed, my life feels strange and unfamiliar again. Even our kitchen, with the same green-striped curtains and boring beige countertops we’ve had since I was a kid, seems like someone else’s kitchen. I hunch over, picking at a shoelace. Then my new shoes remind me of Mikaela and I don’t want to think anymore.
I snap back into focus at the soft beep of the phone’s “talk” button. My dad is holding the cordless, pacing back and forth as he waits for someone to pick up on the other end. I lace my fingers together and twist them tightly until my knuckles pop.
“Mina,” my dad finally says, his whole voice a sigh of relief. My hands instinctively relax. “You’re okay?” It’s a question, not a statement. Mom and I sit there waiting. I hold my breath and sit as quietly as I can, though there’s no way I can hear what Auntie Mina is saying on the other end.
“Okay, well, we were worried about you.” My dad’s voice barely hides his tension.
“Why? You know why!” He sounds incredulous now. “You called Debby again. And Sunny said—” He breaks off after my mom shoots him a warning glare. There’s silence on our end for a moment. I don’t know if Mina is talking to him or if they’re both just sitting there saying nothing.
“But, today when you talked to—okay,” he finally says, quietly. “Well … ” He seems at a loss, lost, his eyes sad now instead of angry. “Just—if anything else happens—if you—we’re here, Mina.” I look away, stare at the patterns of texture on the ceiling, confused. It seems like Auntie Mina is blowing him off, telling him nothing’s going on. But we all know that isn’t true.
“Are you sure there’s nothing we can do? Do you want me to come get you? You can stay here until … as long as you want.”
There’s another long pause.
“Okay. Oh … Okay. Call if you need to. Yep. Bye.”
“Oh, honey—” Mom jumps in as soon as Dad hangs up. “There’s something very wrong here. It doesn’t take a genius or a psychic to know it.” I fidget. Tears pool in the corners of my eyes. “I think Randall must know she said something to me,” Mom continues. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you the first time she called.”
“He’d better not hurt her again or he’ll have me to answer to,” Dad says, as if he’s an action hero who can solve everything with a good kung fu scene: Dorky South Asian Professor Man! Beware his hairy knuckles of fury.
“Oh, honey, really. But I’m at a loss. She asked us not to interfere. Even though we can see how bad things are,” my mom says grimly.
“But what if she only said that because Uncle Randall was listening in?” I put in, stretching my legs out in front of me. My parents look at me, startled, as if they’ve forgotten I’m here. I’m surprised my mom’s feminist training isn’t rearing its head, that she isn’t going on the warpath with Ms. magazines in hand to rescue Auntie Mina from oppression. I guess things are more complicated when it’s happening in your own family.
“Oh, Sunny,” my mom says, and sighs. “I hope you’re wrong. I have faith in your Auntie Mina, that she’s strong enough to tell us if and when she needs us. In the meantime, let’s keep an extra close eye on her, okay? All of us.”
I can’t help wondering if that’s true—or if she’ll just suffer in silence. Like Shiri, who didn’t even feel like she could talk to me, who took it all out on herself.
And then I wonder: What if I’d been able to listen in on Auntie Mina’s house somehow? What if I’d been able to stop Uncle Randall before he hurt her?
My mouth goes dry. If Shiri had been able to underhear, if she’d known her dad was like that … why didn’t she make it stop? Then I realize: in her own awful way, she did.
fifteen
I pull the blankets up to my chin; then I break into a sweat, my skin crawling with heat, and kick the covers off again. Five minutes later, I’m cold. A lone annoying bird wakes up early and starts squawking in the tree outside.
It’s four a.m.
I haven’t been able to sleep, despite tea, despite Pixie snoozing at my feet, despite soothing music and candles and exhaustion. My thoughts keep bubbling up, making me toss and turn. When I do start to fall asleep, I doze fitfully, dreaming about being smothered in voluminous Wiccan robes, half-waking when I think I hear Shiri or Auntie Mina calling out for me, waking fully just long enough to realize it’s only a dream.
At breakfast, I force down half a bowl of granola cereal. The rest of it turns to soggy mush as I sit there trying to avoid my parents’ eyes. In our silence, we all know what isn’t being said. On top of that, there’s everything else that happened to me last night, before I got home. After Mom’s one outburst about me not calling when I left the solstice party, she didn’t ask about it again. And I can’t help feeling sorry for myself, not that I want to talk about it.
It’s like Shiri’s absence tore a hole in our family; but that hole, instead of gradually going away, is like a black hole, expanding to take up more and more space.
I can’t bear to sit here anymore, watching my mother sigh over her coffee while my dad stubbornly reads the same page of Backstage magazine over and over, so I dump the rest of my cereal in the garbage disposal.
“I’m going to make a phone call,” I mumble, heading for the stairs.
Closing the door of my room, I pick up my phone from where it’s lying on my desk. If I don’t talk to someone about something … I feel a throbbing start in my temples, and I dial a number I haven’t dialed in a long time.
It rings three times, then he answers.
Singing.
“Here comes the SUN, do-do-do-do, here comes the SUN, and I say, ooh yeah, it’s all right, ner ner ner ner ner nerrr—”
“STOP. Now.” I interrupt Spike’s painful ruination of the Beatles song he always used to tease me with, only to hear his mom’s faint Georgia twang in the background.
“Spencer, is that Miss Sunny you’re torturing with your yowling? Sweet girl. Say hello to her for me. It’s been ages.” Hearing her voice makes me a little sad.
“So, the elusive Little Miss Sunshine herself,” Spike says, sounding muffled like he’s chewing on something. “My mom says hi. As you probably heard.”
“Yeah,�
�� I say, cautiously. “Look, do you have a few minutes? Are you eating or something?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “I mean, sure, I have a few minutes. I just grabbed an extra piece of bacon. I’m done eating.”
“You’re never done eating,” I scoff, before I can stop myself.
But Spike laughs, and I hope that means things are still okay between us, more or less. “Like you’d know,” he says. “You’ve missed at least three barbecues. For all you know, my eating habits have undergone a complete transformation.”
I grimace. “Sorry. I should have called sooner.” I look out the window at the leaves fluttering against the grayish-blue sky.
“Yeah. Well, I could have called, too. You know I don’t call people, though.” His tone is light, but sort of brittle. “Plus I figured you were busy with your new friends,” he adds pointedly.
“Oh, God, Spike, I—” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat. “Listen, everything is crazy right now. I don’t know what to do. I had a huge fight with Mikaela after this party, and then I found out that Cody—she and Cody—I don’t know. Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
He’s silent for a minute and I squeeze my eyes shut, wondering if anything I just said made sense.
“I thought things would be simpler if I just started fresh,” I add. “But they’re not.”
“Sunny … you know I’m not good with this kind of thing.” Spike’s voice sounds pained. “I mean, why are you telling me all this?”
Almost in a whisper, I say, “Because maybe you were right. About them.”
Silence.
“And I’m … sorry I was such a bitch about it. That wasn’t fair.” Saying those words feels like I’m forcing out broken glass, but I can’t help thinking about what Spike said, that he didn’t trust Cody or his friends. I feel my chest constricting, like I’m about to cry.
“Oh,” he says. “Well, yeah, I heard some rumor about Cody getting arrested last year. But I don’t even know if it’s true. And I don’t really know the rest of those people. I recognize one or two, I guess.” He pauses. “You seem pretty buddy-buddy with that one girl, the short one with the braids. Is that who you’re talking about?”
“Yeah. She told Cody something that should have been a secret. She shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m so stupid.”
“So what’s this big secret?”
It sounds ridiculous, trying to tell him what happened without telling him about underhearing. It makes the whole thing seem insignificant. But I’m not ready to tell him everything yet, so I decide to lie.
Not a huge lie. Just a little one. A rearrangement of the truth.
“It’s just … there’s been a lot going on in my family since Shiri died. Her mom—my Auntie Mina—has been having some marital problems. Her husband is kind of … ” I swallow, and then I say the word I’ve been avoiding. “Abusive.”
“Uh huh,” Spike says, sounding uncomfortable.
I cross my fingers. “Anyway, I was telling Mikaela about some private stuff, and she told Cody, and … I found out last night at a party that she told him. Then we had a big argument about it and I’m pretty sure she never wants to talk to me again.”
“Sunny.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to have to be honest here.”
“Okay.” I sit forward, hunched, hugging my knees.
“Listen, and think about it. How many times did Cassie blab something you or Elisa or I told her to the rest of the group without even blinking?”
“Uh … ” I don’t want to think about Cassie. Is he trying to upset me?
“Remember the time she told everybody in our bio class about that pool party at James’s house, when Mike sneaked in on Elisa in the bathroom while she was changing into her bathing suit and ran off with her bikini top? And then Cassie couldn’t stop laughing about it?”
“Yeah,” I say, sullenly.
“Do you really think Elisa wanted her to talk about that? And the time Cassie told Jenny Alvarez that my voice didn’t finish changing until the end of freshman year?” Spike continues. “I was in love with Jenny Alvarez. That was a completely cold thing to do. But that’s just Cassie. You can’t tell her anything. She has boundary issues.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t have any boundaries,” I say, and we both laugh a little, awkwardly. “But what does that have to do with this?”
“I’m just saying, Cassie told your ‘secrets’ to everyone on a regular basis, and you guys were still friends. I don’t see why it’s such a big drama just because what’s-her-name’s doing it.”
“But—” I stop. This secret—it isn’t like other secrets. But I can’t tell him. Not yet. Now that we’re finally talking again, like we used to, I don’t want to make things weird.
“Fine,” I force out. “I guess I’m being melodramatic. Thanks.”
“Just call me Dr. Phil.”
“Whatever.” I sigh. “Dr. I-Have-No-Sympathy.”
“Oh yeah—I’m still having my New Year’s Eve party this year. My mom said to tell you. You should totally come. Oh, and brriiing beeer,” he adds in a stage whisper.
“Uh huh.” We both know the likelihood of me showing up is pretty low, but I’m touched. “Well … thanks,” I tell him. “If I don’t make it, tell everyone I said hi.”
“Sure thang, sweet thang,” he says, sounding like the old Spike again.
I hang up and put my head in my hands.
When I tried to explain my fight with Mikaela to him, it seemed so petty because I couldn’t tell him the real reason for it. And telling him about Mikaela liking Cody would only have made it sound worse, like I was a jealous third wheel, like it was just a fight over a guy.
On top of that, he made me sound like a pushover be-cause I always used to go along with whatever Cassie said. And he’s right. I did used to go along with it, used to laugh even if I didn’t think it was funny. Am I being a hypocrite? Why do I expect so much out of Mikaela, when I always forgave Cassie? I’m not sure I understand it myself. I guess I’m not the same person anymore.
A while later—I’m not sure how long—I’m awakened from a doze by the doorbell. I look at the clock next to my bed: 4:15. The afternoon sun is already low, shining the last of the weak winter light through my window. I wonder who’s here. I yawn and stretch my neck, stiff from falling asleep half-sitting up, and head downstairs.
I’m halfway down when I see my mom and dad open the door. Framed against the bare branches of the oak tree in our front yard is Auntie Mina, her face pinched but set with determination. Nobody says anything. Then the silence is broken with a loud thud, and I jump. It’s a black suitcase, heavy and overbalanced, tipping over onto the front porch. Auntie Mina’s suitcase.
From Shiri Langford’s journal, May 20th
I had a fight with Brendan. We’ve never fought before. I forgot to call him to tell him tennis practice was going late and I wouldn’t be able to meet him at the falafel place. I forgot. I honestly did. I was just playing so hard and knew I had the practice set in the bag and I forgot.
I tried to tell him. I got falafels and brought them by his apartment and he wouldn’t even talk to me. He just sat there silently. I pleaded with him, begged him to talk to me. He finally said he waited an hour before he decided I’d blown him off. Was I with someone else?
I can’t believe he would think that.
I fell apart. Then he apologized. His last girlfriend cheated on him. When I heard his thoughts the first time, all those months ago, he was feeling so betrayed and so vulnerable, and now I realize it was about her. I should have realized. I should have known. It’s my fault.
sixteen
Mom and Dad lunge for Auntie Mina, all three of them talking at the same time. Mom hugs her, gently, and my dad holds her at arms’ length, looking her up and down as if he’s examining her for injuries. Maybe he is. I creep down the last few stairs and stare at her hard, as if I can figure out what happene
d just by reading it in the lines of her face, the wrinkles of her disheveled blouse.
Auntie Mina looks up at me briefly. Her gaze is steely, and I feel a surge of hope.
She says to my parents, “I don’t want to impose, but … ”
“Don’t be silly,” my mom says. “Here—come sit and have a cup of tea. Of course we’ll help. Of course you can stay.” She slides an arm around Auntie Mina’s shoulders and steers her into the kitchen. My dad grabs the handle of the enormous suitcase.
“Sunny,” he says, sighing. He lugs the suitcase inside and sets it in the front hallway. Frown lines crease the middle of his forehead as he glances at me distractedly. “Could you please check the guest room? And put out another towel.”
Resentfully, I rush through prepping the guest room and go back downstairs to the kitchen. Dad glances at me as I pull up a chair. Auntie Mina is sitting next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, tears running down her face. My mom hands her a clean dishtowel and she wipes her face absently. I desperately want to ask what’s going on, but my mom shoots me a quelling look. I bite the inside of my lip.
There’s a long silence.
“We’ll do everything we can,” my dad finally says. “We can get you a new cell phone if you’re worried about him harassing you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Auntie Mina says, straightening a little. “He just needs time to cool off. He didn’t hurt me.” My dad looks at her hard. An unspoken this time hangs in the air. “It was just an argument. But I’ve had enough.”
“Mina, the guest room is yours for as long as you need it,” my mom says. “We can talk more about the trial separation tomorrow. Just relax now.”
“Thank you,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. I’m not sure what to do, so I push the mug of tea closer to her. She grabs my hand, grips it almost desperately.
“Sunny, I should thank you, too. I know this must be disruptive for you. And so close to Christmas.”
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