The Harder the Fall

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “Now, are you happy with the color you chose?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Hello?” a girl’s voice comes yelling from the front of the salon. “Hello! Like, is anyone working here or what?”

  Then another girl’s voice says something that sounds like “God, they don’t even have a receptionist. This place is lame.”

  “Oh, hello!” Sharon yells, jumping up from the nail table next to me. Well, it’s not exactly next to me. In fact, it’s actually so far away that Ellie and I haven’t even really been able to talk. But whatever. Who needs to talk when they’re getting their nails done? Ellie and I have enough time to talk at school. And after school. And before school. And anytime she’s over at my house.

  I glance over my shoulder to see who’s come into the salon. I hope it’s some older girls with a lot of money who are going to be coming here a lot. Something tells me that Sharon is going to need the business. Of course, if the girls have a lot of money, I doubt they’re really going to be coming to Sharon’s Haircuts. They’re going to go to the salon in the mall. That place has massaging chairs.

  But it’s not a bunch of high school girls. It’s Madison Baker. And her best friend, Katya Rusoff.

  Ugh.

  “You know that my brother has no idea what he’s doing, right?” Lyra asks. She’s standing over the nail table, peering down at my hand. “Seriously, he wouldn’t know how to do nails if he was the last person on earth.”

  That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the last person on earth need to do someone’s nails? If you were the last one on earth, you’d have way more important things to worry about. Like, you know, how you were going to get food.

  “Time to start painting your nails,” Micah announces. He takes the cap off the bottle of nail polish. But somehow the top slips out of his hand, and as he goes to pick it up, he fumbles the bottle. “Oops,” he says, grabbing it right before it tips over. A big smear of purple nail polish goes all over his hand.

  “Sorry,” he says. Two red spots appear on his cheeks. He’s blushing! How cute!

  “God, my brother is such a loser,” Lyra says, rolling her eyes.

  “That’s okay,” I say to Micah. “Don’t worry about it.” He’s wiping his hand with a tissue, which isn’t really doing anything except smearing the nail polish even more. Little bits of tissue stick to his skin.

  “Um, you might want to use nail polish remover,” I say, pointing to the bottle.

  “On my hand?” He looks surprised.

  “See?” Lyra says, shaking her head. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “It’s okay to put the remover on your hand,” I say. “It will get that right off.”

  Micah should definitely stick to giving hand massages.

  “So, we have some clients here already,” I hear Sharon saying to Madison. “So you’ll have to wait. But we have a lot of magazines for you to read, and there’s some bottled water in that little fridge over there.”

  “Do you have Perrier?” Madison asks.

  “No, but we have Poland Spring,” Sharon says.

  I turn around just in time to see Madison wrinkle up her nose. Her eyes meet mine over the counter. “Oh,” she says, “it’s you.”

  Wow. Talk about being rude. “Hello, Madison,” I say, deciding not to stoop to her level, even though if anyone has the right to be rude, it’s me, since she was flirting with Brandon earlier today.

  “Hello,” she says. Then she whispers something to her friend Katya and they giggle.

  I look over at Ellie, who gives me a look like What is that about? I shrug. But even as I’m doing it, I kind of have a weird feeling in my stomach. Is Madison being so snobby to me because she likes Brandon? But that’s impossible. Isn’t it? I mean, I’ve never even seen them talking to each other before today. Of course, I liked Brandon before I had even really talked to him. In fact, I had a big crush on him just from staring at the back of his neck in math class. Brandon has a very attractive neck.

  Ellie opens her mouth to say something to Madison, but I shake my head at her. I don’t want her to start anything in the middle of the salon.

  “Hey, that’s that girl from your math class,” Lyra says. “I think she likes your boyfriend.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “I’m really sorry,” Micah says as he finishes removing the rest of the nail polish from his hand. “I guess I’m just clumsy.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “Really, it’s not a big deal.”

  He gives me an embarrassed smile and then proceeds to start giving me the slowest manicure in the history of manicures. Seriously, every stroke of the nail polish takes forever. I guess he’s trying to make sure he does a good job, but it’s not really working. My nails are getting a little bit smudgy, even though he’s trying to be careful.

  Ellie’s manicure is done, like, twenty minutes before mine, and she comes over to stand near me, looking over my shoulder while Micah works.

  Which doesn’t help. I’m supposed to be asking Micah questions about Lyra. I mean, that’s the reason I came in here in the first place. I didn’t even want my stupid nails done, and I certainly didn’t want to run into Madison and have to spend my whole afternoon in this ridiculous salon.

  “Be careful,” Ellie keeps saying to Micah. Which is actually making him even more nervous. Every five minutes he holds my hand up to show his mom, who’s sitting at the other nail station, doing Madison’s nails. She tells him he’s doing a good job.

  “There you go!” he says finally. “All done!”

  I haven’t even had a chance to ask him one question about his sister. Talk about a wasted trip.

  But what can I do? I pay for our manicures, and then there’s nothing left to do but leave.

  When I get home, my dad is waiting for me in the living room. I texted him to let him know I was going out with Ellie after school, and he texted me back to tell me it was fine. Other than that, we haven’t talked since yesterday’s scene at the apple farm.

  I try to quickly grab a snack from the kitchen and sneak upstairs to my room, but he calls my name when my foot is on the first step.

  “Kendall!”

  “I’m home, Dad,” I say, stepping up onto the second stair. “I’m just going upstairs now to get started on my homework. I have a lot of it, and so—”

  “I’d like to talk to you first,” he says.

  “Can it wait until after dinner?” I ask. Or, like, until never? “I really do have a lot of homework.”

  “No,” he says.

  I sigh and then walk back down the stairs.

  When I get to the living room, my dad’s sitting on the couch, looking all serious.

  “Sit down,” he says.

  I take a seat in the chair across from him. Neither one of us talks for a minute. I’m waiting for him to say something, and I guess he’s trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that he’s going to say. Although he probably should have planned that out beforehand. Everyone knows that before you have some big emotional conversation, you should decide what you want to say. Otherwise the conversation has the potential to turn into a big mess.

  “First, I want to say I’m very sorry for what happened yesterday,” my dad says. “Doing what I did in front of everyone like that . . . well, it wasn’t right of me. I should have talked to you about it first.”

  “If it was so wrong, then why’d you do it?” I ask.

  He sighs. “Well, Cindy was getting upset with me, because she felt as if I was keeping my relationship with her a secret from you.”

  “Um, you were keeping your relationship with her a secret from me.”

  “I know.”

  “So she kind of had every right to be mad.” How can my dad be so clueless? I mean, seriously, think about it. He was treating Cindy like some kind of secret girlfriend or something. That’s so not cool. I would kill a guy if he did that to me.

  “I know,” he says. He leans forward, and I can see how to
rn he is. “She was getting upset with me because we planned to tell you at the apple farm, but then I kind of lost my nerve. Cindy thought I was using Brandon being there as an excuse.” He shakes his head. “So we ended up getting into a fight while you two were in the corn maze.”

  He looks at me like he’s waiting for me to forgive him. But he’s not getting off that easily.

  “So you had to give her a promise ring in front of everyone? You couldn’t have just taken me out to dinner and broken the news to me gently?”

  He shakes his head. “The promise ring wasn’t meant to happen that way.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen in front of everyone?”

  “No. The promise ring was supposed to be given to Cindy later, in private. Cindy was offered a job in Virginia last week, and she’s been thinking about taking it.”

  “So you were going to give her a promise ring to show her that you were serious about her, even though you hadn’t told me that you guys were dating.”

  He nods.

  I cross my arms over my chest. “Why were you so afraid of telling me that you guys were together?”

  He thinks about it. “I don’t know. I guess I was afraid of your reaction.”

  “So you decided you’d lie to me instead?”

  “I didn’t look at it as lying,” he says, looking uncomfortable and squirming a little on the couch. “At first I wanted to make sure this thing with Cindy was serious before I went and told you we were dating.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know how you feel about her.”

  “And how is that?”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “Dad, I didn’t like her because it seemed like she thought you guys were, like, an item. And as far as I could tell, you weren’t. So I thought she was a little crazy.” I remember all the times Cindy was nice to me and I thought she was just doing it so she could get closer to my dad. It turns out she didn’t have to be nice to me to get closer to my dad. She already was closer to my dad.

  “Oh.” My dad runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. “I really messed up,” he says. “I know that after your mother—”

  “Dad,” I say quickly, cutting him off. The last thing I want to talk about is my mom, even if avoiding the topic means having to forgive my dad a little faster. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” He leans forward on the couch. My dad’s a big guy, six foot two, and he hardly ever shows any emotion. It’s weird to see him so upset about this.

  I sigh. “Look,” I say, “I’m not thrilled about what happened yesterday, obviously. You shouldn’t have lied to me. But Cindy makes you happy, so I guess I’m okay with it.” It’s only a half-truth. I mean, I’m not completely okay with it. But I guess I’m as okay with it as you can be when your dad lies to you about dating someone and then gives her a cheesy promise ring in front of you and half the town.

  He lets out a sigh of relief. “That’s incredibly mature of you, Kendall,” he says. “And I really appreciate it. Hopefully, now you and Cindy can get to know each other a little better.”

  Oh, yeah. Sounds like a real hoot.

  “Sure.” Not. “But now I really should get to my homework.”

  I give my dad a hug and then head upstairs to my room.

  I lay out all my books on the bed and am just about to get started on my math when Brandon texts.

  Hey, what r u doing?

  About to start homework, u?

  Missing you.

  I blush, and am just about to text back that I miss him, too, when Lyra appears.

  “Aww,” she says, reading the texts over my shoulder. “How adorable.” And then she rolls her eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, quickly exiting out of the text screen. “Don’t you know it’s impolite to read over someone’s shoulder?”

  “Relax,” she says, like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. “I wasn’t spying on you or anything.”

  “Oh, really? Then what were you doing?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Good.” I nod and then cross the room to my dresser and pick up a bottle of nail polish remover. Obviously, I’m not going to be getting any work done, so I might as well start redoing my nails. Micah made them a complete and utter mess. I scan my nail polishes and pick out a purple so dark, it’s almost black. It’s not my favorite color, but it looks sophisticated when I wear it with the right outfit.

  “That color’s way too dark,” Lyra says. “You should go for something a little lighter. Like me.” She holds out her hand. Her nails are perfectly manicured and polished in a gorgeous baby blue.

  “You should have been the one who gives manicures,” I say. “Your nails look amazing.”

  She nods. “I think that’s why my mom opened the salon,” she says. “I was always into doing my nails.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her.

  “You’re surprised?” She’s sitting next to me on the bed now, and she leans over and watches as I begin removing the polish from my pinkie.

  “Well, yeah,” I admit.

  “Why?”

  “I dunno.” I finish with the pinkie nail and go back for more remover. The bottle wobbles a little bit, and I reach down and grab it just before it tips over. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have been secretly judging Micah when he knocked over that bottle of nail polish. Of course, he had a much better arrangement than me. He was at an actual table that’s set up for people to do nails on. I’m on my bed, using my social studies book as a shelf. Which, come to think of it, definitely isn’t the smartest thing to do.

  “Because you think I’m a nerd?” Lyra narrows her eyes at me and pushes her glasses up her nose.

  “No.” I shake my head. “You just seem like you’re more into school than fashion.”

  “I didn’t say I was into fashion,” she says. “I said I was into cosmetics. Fashion constitutes the things you wear.” She frowns. “Of course, makeup can be an integral part of someone’s look. Especially when—”

  “Well, whatever,” I say, cutting her off. I’m not really in the mood for a lesson on the history of fashion. If I want to find out about fashion, I’ll just watch Project Runway like a normal person. Or that other show, Design Star. I’m done removing the old polish from my nails, and so I reach for the bottle of nail polish.

  “You know, you should make sure you paint the middle of your nail first,” Lyra says. “That way, if any of the color bleeds out, it won’t go on your skin.”

  I try it. It works. “Thanks,” I say.

  “You’re welcome.” She sighs and then moves away from me so that she’s sitting with her back up against the wall. She pulls her knees up toward her chest. “Can we talk about how this works?”

  “How what works?”

  “Well,” she says, “you’re supposed to help me move on, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So obviously I have some unfinished business.”

  “Right.” I don’t want to be rude, but for someone who’s supposedly so smart, she’s taking a long time to catch on to this whole thing. It’s actually not that complicated. I help her figure out what she still has to take care of, then I help her take care of it, and then she moves on. When you think about it, I’m the one who has to do the hard part. I’m the one who has to do a bunch of detective work for a complete stranger.

  All she has to do is sit there and try to figure out what kind of unfinished business she might have. Of course, this can be difficult for ghosts, since they often have a hard time remembering things from when they were alive. But still. Sitting around and waiting for your memories to come back is so not the same as actually having to go out and do things. It’s really not fair.

  “So what’s my unfinished business?” Lyra asks.

  “I don’t know. You really don’t have any idea what it could be?”

  She shakes her head and bites her lip.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  She turns her body halfway arou
nd so that she’s gazing out the window. “I’m sure.”

  She’s lying. I can tell. I’ve dealt with enough ghosts to know that when they say they have no idea and get a look like that on their face, they usually have at least some idea of what might be keeping them here. But usually it’s something too painful for them to face.

  “You know,” I say, picking my hand up and blowing on my nails. “The more you can tell me about what was going on in your life when you died, the quicker you can move on. And trust me, where you’re going is much better than just sitting around here all the time.”

  I don’t really know if this is true. I mean, I have no idea where she’s about to go. But something tells me it’s a good place. Otherwise why would these ghosts have to take care of their unfinished business? Taking care of business seems like the kind of thing you have to do before you move on to somewhere good. Not the kind of thing they make you do before you get sent to a miserable eternity.

  “I don’t remember anything,” she says, still staring out the window. And then, after a few moments, she disappears.

  I sigh.

  Great.

  Looks like I’m going to have my work cut out for me with this one.

  Chapter

  6

  I wake up the next morning in an inexplicably good mood. I mean, honestly, what is there to really be upset about? My dad and I have kind of sort of made up, and even though things aren’t completely settled, I feel like they’re definitely on the right track. Mrs. Dunham didn’t come into my room last night, and anytime she doesn’t show up, I consider it a good night. (For a while she was appearing constantly at, like, two in the morning and moving things around in my room. Which just goes to show how totally upset she is, since for a ghost to have that kind of power, they have to have a lot of energy built up inside them. And something tells me her energy definitely isn’t the positive kind.)

  My dad makes me banana French toast with pecan maple syrup for breakfast, and even though I know it’s probably because he feels guilty, it still tastes delicious. I know that at some point he’s going to bring up this whole thing with him and Cindy again, but for right now I decide to just enjoy the carbs.