No One Needs to Know

by Amanda Grace

  So I get to walk home.

  Alone.

  Zoey

  I’m in the kitchen, my arms covered in bubbles as I scrub the last dirty pan, when the door flies open and Carolyn bursts in. I twist around to yell at her—there’s already a hole in the drywall from the door knob—but when I see her, I freeze.

  Tears are streaming down her face, her nose is bright red and snotty, and she’s got a black eye.

  Someone gave my ten-year-old sister a fucking black eye.

  I rush over, water and soap creating a trail behind me, and reach out to touch her cheek. She flinches away, but I follow her and wrap her up in a hug. “Oh Carolyn, what happened?”

  “T-t-t-t,” she stutters, choking through the tears.

  “Take a deep breath,” I say, rubbing her back.

  She obliges, raking in big lungfuls of air as her trembling shoulders calm. I wait in silence, my arms still wrapped around her, until she’s ready to talk, and then I lean back and rest on my heels.

  “Talia hit me,” she says.

  Talia. Of course it was Talia. The girl has been bullying my sister since the first day of class, when Carolyn showed up in her favorite Littlest Pet Shop T-shirt, which apparently is so not cool at ten years old. Every day, there’s another story of Talia hurling insults at Carolyn.

  And no one seems to give a shit.

  “At school? Why didn’t a teacher call me or Mom right away? Or help?”

  “It was after. When I was waiting for the bus.”

  “She just ran over and punched you?”

  “She was bothering me all day,” Carolyn says, her words coming out in hiccups of breath. “She kept calling me a baby, telling me I cry like one too. I told Mrs. Bryant, but she never does anything!”

  My heart twists and my stomach clenches and I want to kick something or punch someone or scream at the lousy teachers at my sister’s school.

  If we didn’t live in the Hilltop neighborhood—or if only Carolyn could get a scholarship to Annie Wright like I did—she wouldn’t be stuck at such a crappy school. Or if we could just move about a half mile away, to where the assigned school is anything but Hilltop …

  If only, if only, if only.

  This is why I haven’t committed to a college yet, haven’t even started the applications. Because when it comes down to it, I’m probably going to end up getting some kind of full-time job after graduation, just so I can kick in a little more toward rent and get us the hell out of here before something even worse happens to Carolyn.

  I can’t leave her like this.

  I won’t.

  “At least it’s Friday,” I say, wiping away her tears. “You don’t have to deal with her for a couple of days. We’ll figure something out, okay? I promise.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” my sister says, the desperation in her voice mirroring the emotions swirling in my stomach. “Don’t make me go back.”

  The lump in my throat grows a mile wide, but I muster the ability to smile in a way I hope is reassuring.

  “Come on,” I say, standing. “Let’s go watch cartoons. I’ll let you spoil dinner with some popcorn.”

  She sniffles again, then wipes her eyes and follows me the three feet it takes to get to the living room, where she flops down onto the couch. I go to our adjacent bedroom and dig through the stack of DVDs sitting on our battered dresser. I got them all for ten bucks at a garage sale, and we’ve seen all them, but it doesn’t matter. Any cartoon featuring an animal is fine with Carolyn.

  Two and a half hours later, she’s smiling, or at least as well as she can without wincing. The bag of frozen peas she’s been using to ice her face has mostly melted, which I guess means it’s halfway to being ready for dinner.

  I’ve sat next to her on our ratty couch this whole time, despite feeling like I could climb out of my own skin. When the door creaks open and my mom walks in, still wearing the blue polo shirt and apron that comprise her maid uniform, I jump off the couch and signal her to meet me in the kitchen. Since the lights are low and the TV is still on, my mom walks right past Carolyn without noticing her eye.

  She drops her purse on the table, her eyes trained on mine like she knows I’m about to drop a bomb.

  “Carolyn got hit again,” I whisper.

  Her face pales and she glances over her shoulder. “Is she okay?”

  “Does a black eye count as okay?”

  Mom’s jaw drops and she freezes for a moment, then spins and starts toward the living room, but I grab the ties on her apron and yank her back.

  “Don’t freak out. She’s calmed down now,” I say, glancing over her head to be sure Carolyn’s not watching. “But this isn’t working.”

  “What’s not working?”

  “This!” I hiss. “We can’t live here if it means sending her to Hilltop Elementary.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” my mom says, the weariness creeping into her voice. “If we could afford to move, we would have done it already.”

  “She barely survived last year. This year is worse. We need to move,” I say. “If we can find a place on the other side of Division, she’ll be able to go to—”

  “We can’t afford to rent over there. You know that.”

  “I’ve been saving a little money. I could help with the deposit.”

  “And then what?” Mom asks, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table. “It doesn’t help to move in if we can’t keep up with the rent.”

  “Can’t you scrape together enough to get us to June? After I graduate, I’m going to work full time—”

  “You’ll end up like me,” my mom says, her voice falling. “You can’t just start working, Zo. That’s not what we’ve always talked about. You need to focus on you, and college.”

  “How am I ever going to focus knowing Carolyn’s still here?”

  “It’ll help her if you help yourself first.”

  “By the time I get a degree and can get a real job, she’ll be sixteen and the damage will be done. That school is going to ruin her. I don’t even like walking through these neighborhoods, and she spends all day here!”

  “What do you want me to do? I’ve been applying for better jobs all over town. No one even calls me,” Mom whispers, rubbing her eyes.

  “You’re going to have to do better,” I say, reaching for my hoodie. “I gotta get out of here.”

  I shove my arms through the sleeves and then slip out the back door before my mom can protest. If I spend one more minute in that house, I’m going to go crazy.

  I zip the front of my sweatshirt as I find the sidewalk and head down the hill, away from the crappy Hilltop neighborhood, the place we’ve lived for the last few years. I turn onto Tacoma Avenue, meandering past the courthouse and the strip of bail bond stores, past McDonalds, and then a few blocks later, I finally hit Division. This one road stands between Carolyn and a new elementary school, but who am I kidding? It’s a road and a pipe dream away.

  My mom’s been working as a hotel maid for so long, I don’t think she knows how to be anything else.

  I don’t have a destination, so I just keep walking—past the sprawling Wright Park, where Carolyn spent half her summer playing in the waterpark sprinklers, and then over to a Chevron gas station. Inside the brightly lit store, I fill a hot chocolate, pay for it at the register, and then I’m outside again.

  There’s a bench next to the ice freezer, so I sit down, sipping at the drink, trying to decide what I’m going to do next. I can’t go home. I’ll go nuts inside those four walls, which are more of a cage than anything else could possibly be.

  Stars twinkle to life, but I’m the opposite. I feel like I’m dimming. Day by day, minute by minute, the pages in my book are being written, and they all point to the same ending: stupid, crappy job like my mom; crumbling, shitty house forevermore. Maybe if I’m lu
cky I’ll marry some deadbeat like she did and send my own kid to a gang-riddled, underfunded school.

  I don’t know how to change it, though. I can graduate with honors from Annie Wright, maybe get a little bit of a scholarship for college, but my mom’s wrong. Me leaving won’t help Carolyn, not in time to make a difference. She’s too sweet, too soft, to survive in that school much longer.

  A deep rumbling makes me glance up. I see a dark blue pickup, something from the sixties or the seventies, pulling up to the pumps. It sparkles and gleams under the bright station lights. Two guys climb out of the cab, one of them dressed in a royal blue and gold letterman’s jacket from Stadium High.

  I pretend to be super interested in my hot chocolate, but as they approach the doors, I glance up. The boy in the letterman’s jacket looks over at me, flashing an easy, megawatt smile as he enters the store.

  I’m hot from the inside out. He has pretty, warm blue eyes and messy brown hair, and I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to run my hands through it.

  I’m still sitting there, nursing my hot chocolate, when the bench creaks and he’s sitting next to me, leaning back and stretching his legs out in front of us. My eyes linger on his DC sneakers and baggy jeans.

  They’re more skater boy than jock, totally at odds with his jacket.

  “What’s up?” he asks, like we’re friends, like it’s a normal thing to do.

  “Um, nothing?”

  “Why are you sitting at a gas station all by your lonesome?”

  I smirk, glancing over at him with amusement. “Is that the sort of thing that works for you?”

  He blinks. “What?”

  “That line,” I say, crossing my arms. “Do girls fall at your feet?”

  Grinning, he says, “Generally, yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You’re unimpressed,” he says.

  “Oh no, I’m incredibly impressed.”

  He laughs. “I meant it, though. What are you doing just sitting at a gas station?”

  I lean back on the bench, my shoulder touching his, my legs stretched out like his are, except mine don’t reach the edge of the walkway. “Nothing better to do.”

  “Well, we’re headed to my house to play pool. You can join us.”

  Whoa. This guy is forward. “How do I know you don’t have a dungeon or a torture room?”

  He pretends to ponder my question. “I mean, we only own the penthouse. I guess there could be a dungeon somewhere in the building.”

  “Penthouse?”

  “At Point Ruston? Down by the water?”

  Pretty boy has money.

  “I know it,” I say. I saw a flier, once, blowing in the wind near Annie Wright. Those condos start at five or six hundred thousand dollars, for little one-bedrooms without a water view. The penthouse must be well into the millions. “But I don’t know you.”

  “That’s cool. Just thought I’d offer. You look … ” His voice trails off and his eyes sweep over me. My face heats up as I wait for him to finish his sentence. “Bored.”

  Oh.

  The door behind him swishes open, the same ding-ding that I’ve been listening to for the last several minutes. Ding ding, another minute of my pathetic life burned up waiting for something to change, to give, but it never does.

  “Ready,” the other guy says, and then pauses when he sees me sitting next to his buddy.

  “Last chance,” he says, standing up. “Unless a gas station is more your thing for Friday nights. I mean, maybe it’s a better option. I can’t promise you Twinkies and disgusting hot dogs.”

  Against every logical fiber of my being, I find myself standing. Following him. Climbing in the truck.

  It’s only when we pull away that I realize I don’t even know his name.

  Olivia

  I stoop down and pick up my discarded iPod, which was tossed aside in favor of some indie punk song that’s blasting from the surround-sound, vibrating so hard it’s rattling my eardrums. I grit my teeth as my brother’s little skater buddy, Rusty, swings a pool cue around like it’s a baton, circling the table and surveying the few balls left on the felt.

  I didn’t even know they were home until I walked out of my room and saw Rusty pouring himself a drink. Apparently my brother’s in his room or something. Judging by his total lack of urgency to talk to me, he hasn’t even realized he stood me up. Instead, he was hanging out with this slacker doing god knows what.

  Rusty takes a shot, then lets out a big whoop when one of the balls streaks toward the pocket.

  “I’m going to get something to drink,” I announce, even though the idiot probably doesn’t care. I spin on my heel, my shoes clacking as I exit the room. When I’d realized the house was under invasion, I’d promptly changed from my yoga pants and T-shirt to a cute argyle mini and heels, though god knows why. I don’t want to impress Rusty. He probably has the IQ of a monkey.

  I stalk to the kitchen, disappointment and anger and the ever-present tension boiling in my stomach as the music dies down behind me. I’m staring into the fridge, trying to decide between a Diet Coke and another Xanax, when something clatters behind me.

  I straighten my sweater, brush my hair back over my shoulders, and turn around, prepared to take on my brother.

  But it’s not him.

  “Surprise, surprise,” Zoey says, grinning from ear to ear.

  My stomach sinks. She is the last person I want to see right now.

  “I guess I should have put two and two together,” she says. “In my defense, ‘Reynolds’ is a common name. I had no idea you two were related. And, you know, personality wise, he’s kinda your opposite. Less bitchy, and more—”

  I clear my throat and she stops. “And I had no idea you knew my brother.”

  “I don’t,” she says.

  “Then how do you know his last name is Reynolds?”

  “His letterman’s jacket,” she says.

  I turn back to the fridge, reaching for the soda. The ball’s in my court, but I can’t decide what to do next—how to handle the interloper in my kitchen.

  So what if she was almost right with her stupid challenge. She still doesn’t know what was in my fist in the bathroom. Doesn’t know I can barely survive without anti-anxiety pills.

  She doesn’t know me at all.

  “Want a drink?” I hold out the soda.

  “Got something hard to mix it with?”

  “Whiskey,” I say, pointing to a bottle on the counter, presumably something Rusty dug out of our parents’ collection.

  “Perfect.” Zoey plops down on the stool at the other end of the granite island, reaching for the bottle and one of the glasses left out. After dumping the whiskey into the cup, she holds her hand out, awaiting the can.

  I hand it to her, and it takes her only a moment to pour it into the glass and take her first sip. She closes her eyes for a moment, as if savoring it, before looking at me again.

  “Soo … how long have you been Liam’s sister?” And then she giggles, like the joke is hilarious, and I wonder if maybe she’s had a few drinks before this one.

  “Wow, you’re sooooo funny. You should be a comedian.”

  “Nah. I’m sure you’ve got me figured out—I have no plans of rising above the working class. Really more of the factory worker type. It’s a shame I didn’t live in 1790, like my character. I think I could really master a loom.” She takes another swig of her drink. “But I bet that doesn’t compute with you. You’re probably thinking, what—Harvard Law? NYU Medicine? First female president, guaranteed to inspire world peace?”

  I stare at her for a long moment, completely unamused. I’m not smart enough for any Ivy League. My parents used to harp on me constantly, that I wasn’t living up to my potential, that I needed to spend more time on homework if I had any hope of meeting their
expectations.

  I suppose that’s one upside of their absence. They travel so much—mostly for work, sometimes for fun—that I don’t have to hear their nagging. I guess they gave up on me and are pinning all their hopes on Liam, who achieves A’s as naturally as he throws the football.

  “Why are you in my kitchen again?”

  “Waiting for your brother. He wanted to take a shower,” she says, taking the last big gulp of her drink. When she sets the glass down, the ice rattling in the empty cup, her deep red lipstick glistens. Her cheeks already look pink, the alcohol setting in. “Apparently he was skateboarding. After football practice. Maybe he’s into sports or something?”

  “Oh.” I narrow my eyes. That’s why Liam blew me off? To go freaking skateboarding with his buddies? Isn’t football enough for him? “And you’re telling me he didn’t use his famous line about showering together to conserve water?” I ask. “I guess he’s not too interested in you.”

  She grins, not the reaction I’d expected. It’s a real, genuine smile, and it transforms her features from hard and unapproachable to complete girl-next-door. It’s almost like the moment the curtain is peeled back in The Wizard of Oz and you realize you were never really meant to see the Wizard at all, that seeing him ruins the carefully crafted image he created.

  “He tried. I declined.”

  I blink. “Hmm … you might be smarter than the last three.”

  She laughs, not even partially offended by my insinuation that his girlfriends are a dime a dozen.

  I shouldn’t be so rude, but I can’t believe he picked Zoey over me. I mean, he always does this—gets a girl and gets infatuated for a few weeks—but she’s not really his type.

  “So, if you’re so smart, why are you after Liam?” I ask, waiting for the next round of entertainment. At least this conversation is better than watching Rusty play pool in the other room. “Because he’s not going to commit, you know.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not like I’m looking to be some guy’s Happily Ever After. I’m cool with Happy For Now.”