“Maybe she just needs something to do,” I replied. It was good that Mom had something to keep her occupied because there wasn’t anything we could act on to make our situation better. We were stuck! We were just waiting.
The waiting was hardest on Dad. Almost a whole month had gone by, and he seemed more and more lost. He had run out of chores, too. Either that, or part of him just gave up. He slept late and puttered around the house. He never touched his clarinet. Both he and Mom dropped out of community orchestra. Eventually, I stopped practicing, too, because there was no one at school to direct the band or the orchestra.
Even though he was home all day, Dad didn’t lift a finger to help with supper. One day, he even forgot to take the hamburgers out to thaw, and it was the only thing Mom had asked him to do. I thought it was a real comedown for him when he started watching television—at first, old movies and episodes of Stargate, and later, anything that was on. And then, he started taking afternoon naps. One time he locked himself in his bedroom and fell so deep asleep he didn’t hear me knock.
One of the only things I looked forward to during that time were e-mails from my sister at college, which never failed to make me laugh. Her e-mails, and my cat.
My job at the barn kept me going, too. My own problems seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to most of the kids who came for riding therapy. Some of them couldn’t tie their own shoes, or put one foot in front of the other. There was one little boy who couldn’t even sit up on the horse. Mr. Hibbard, one of the volunteers, had to grab him by the back of his shirt to keep him upright while he went around the ring on Daisy Mae. The great thing about the riding, though, is that it gave those kids such a boost. It was fun for them, and I don’t think there was much fun in their lives. Plus, it must have given them such a sense of accomplishment riding around the ring on a big horse.
Even Alexander finally got his courage up and sat on Misty for the first time. He was so pleased with himself he practically burst. Quietly, so as not to scare the horse, we all cheered and patted our hands together. We made him promise to try riding around the ring next time. “You stay,” he said, pointing a finger at me. It was the first time I’d ever heard him say a word.
“I’ll be right here beside you,” I assured him. On days like that, when I walked home from the barn, it was hard to feel sorry for myself.
My sister called home from Indiana during this time to tell us her exams were over, and not one of us let on what had happened to Dad. We didn’t want to drag her down, too. She was excited because a friend at college had invited her to go to Chicago to see a play.
Then Detective Daniels stopped by one night.
“I’ve interviewed all three of those girls again,” he said. “They stand by their story, one hundred percent.”
My mother sucked in her breath.
Dad didn’t say anything.
We understood that his visit was a warning: to get ready for what was going to happen next. We all knew something had to happen. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next, for the day I came home from school and couldn’t find my father.
Dad’s car was in the yard, but he didn’t answer when I called. He wasn’t in the backyard. He wasn’t in the garage. The television was off. Right away I had a bad feeling about it.
I started checking each room, the laundry, the music room, and when I entered the bathroom, I stopped. On the counter by the sink were two empty sleeping pill bottles.
“Dad?” I called out as I scooped up the empty bottles.
My heart started pounding.
“Dad! Answer me!”
I felt like I was in a horror movie as I ran from one room to the next, searching, and all the time dreading what I might find. I kept telling myself that my father wouldn’t hurt himself. He wouldn’t do something like that because of what those stupid girls did.
Would he? Would he do that?
“Daddy, where are you?” I hollered, rushing down the hall.
19
Claire
“I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO talk to you, Jenna,” I warned. I didn’t even open the door all the way. “And I’m not allowed to have anyone over when I’m babysitting.”
Jenna stuck her head in anyway and widened her eyes. “Like I’m really dangerous?”
I glanced at the clock and saw that my parents weren’t expected home from their party for another three hours.
“Claire, come on!”
I sighed and stepped back. “All right. But just for a little while, okay?”
Jenna squeezed herself in. “You are such a dweeb sometimes, you know it?”
Softly, I pushed the door closed and locked it.
When I turned around, Corky and Izzy ran up to us.
“Hey there!” Jenna greeted them. I have to admit she’s really great with little kids, and both Corky and Izzy loved her. Izzy was in her fairy princess outfit and waved her wand at us. “I turning you to frogs,” she kept saying until we both had to crack up.
But Corky wasn’t talking. He stood behind me quietly until Jenna bent down and said, “Hey there, Cork!” Beaming, he held up a big rubber elephant for her to see. “Wow!” Jenna responded. “Where’s the baby?”
We had a whole bin full of jungle animals, whole families of different kinds. Corky ran off to find the baby elephant, and Izzy trailed behind him.
Jenna straightened up and put her hands in her back pockets. She was wearing a pretty new V-neck top with colored stripes, and crisp new white capris. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wore three sets of sparkly green rhinestone earrings that matched her eyes and some of the green stripes in the shirt. I felt pretty dumpy beside her in my cargo pants and a baggy sweatshirt that had a hot chocolate stain on it.
“Those kids are so cute,” Jenna said. “Is Corky still collecting corks? And how’s he doing anyway?”
“No, he doesn’t collect corks anymore. He’s onto rocks. And actually he’s doing pretty good. He’s been on a special diet ’cause of his allergies, and we think it’s helping. He doesn’t get so ornery. Or do things over and over, the way he used to.”
Jenna knew what I was talking about. One night when she was at our house, my brother sat on the kitchen floor opening and closing the cabinet door under the sink for, like, an hour.
We followed the kids down the hall toward the family room, where Izzy was curled up on the sofa in her sparkly dress, sucking her thumb and already engrossed in an Elmo video.
“How’s your new school?” Jenna asked.
“All right, I guess.” I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t want her to know how much I liked the new school and how I was going to swim club the next week. I even had a new navy blue tank suit for it. It was in a bag in my room, with new goggles and silicone ear plugs.
Jenna leaned over and whispered, “Can we go up to your room for a minute?”
“I guess so,” I said. But when we got there, I didn’t want her to see my new swimming stuff, so I grabbed the plastic bag off my bed and threw it in the closet, like I was making places for us to sit. Then I sat cross-legged on my bed.
Jenna pulled out the chair at my desk. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up an index card. She read out loud what I’d written: “Violence is any mean word, look, or act that hurts a person’s body, feelings, or things.”
“Just a saying,” I told her. I picked up my stuffed platypus and hugged him. “It’s on the bulletin board in my new social studies class.”
“How come you wrote it down?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t tell her how deeply I had thought about those words. Like I didn’t realize that just saying something could be considered an act of violence.
Jenna put the card to one side. “So, have you heard?” She had this sly little grin on her face. “Matt Lewis and I are going out.”
“You are?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but inside I was thinking, What a creep! Matt Lewis with his spiky hair and his Goth clothes?
Jenna stroked her ponytail, which
had fallen over her shoulder. “Yeah, he’s really, really nice.”
So Suzanne and I had already been replaced by Matt Lewis. A boyfriend. Was that what she came over to tell me? To rub it in my face that she had a boyfriend now?
“We won’t be together long though,” Jenna continued, examining her fingernails, like she was already bored being at my house. “ ’Cause we’re moving, my dad and I, to Pennsylvania, near my grandmother in Lancaster.”
I leaned back againt my pillows and stared at her.
Jenna paused. And then the shocker: “I just want you to know I’m sorry, Claire. I never thought it would go this far.”
She didn’t have to explain any more. I knew she was referring to the enormous lie we had told about Mr. Mattero. “Me neither,” I said quietly.
“We can’t say anything now. Right?”
“Right.” I nodded, agreeing with her. We had to keep our mouths doubly shut because it would be so incredibly embarrassing now.
“I mean, can you imagine if we told everyone what happened? Mr. Mattero would probably choke my dad to death on the spot!” Jenna laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. “Either that, or he might grab one of us or something. God, it would be wild. It would be awful!”
I shook my head, and I wasn’t laughing. “We would never have to say anything in front of Mr. Mattero. He would never even be in the same room as us unless we were in court or something. That’s what Detective Daniels said.”
“He told you that?”
“A couple times.”
Jenna sat up and scowled. “What? Did you ask him about it, Claire?”
“Chill!” I said, staring right at her. “I didn’t ask him anything. It’s what he told me. He said no kid would ever have to come forward and tell the truth with a bunch of other people in the room—especially not Mr. Mattero. He said it would be too whatchamacallit—intimidating.”
Jenna sank back in the chair at my desk and fiddled with a paper clip. Neither one of us said anything. One by one, I folded the felt feet of my platypus under his belly.
“Whatever,” Jenna finally said. “I just feel sorry we did it because now we’re all split up. Plus, you know, one of the main reasons I did it was to get my mom to come back, and it didn’t work.”
I put my platypus down. “What do you mean?”
She smiled sarcastically. “Can you believe it? I actually thought my mom would feel so bad about it that she would come home. But look what happened—it backfired. She didn’t come back, she left!”
I frowned at her. “I thought it was to get out of Mr. Mattero’s boring music class. And to get back at him—for you not getting the Wendy part in Peter Pan.”
Jenna sighed. “It was . . . a little bit, I guess.” She put the paper clip down. “But it’s a good thing I didn’t get that part. I’m not a very good singer.”
“Jenna!” I did not find that funny, although really, it didn’t much matter what Jenna’s reason was. Suzanne and I went along with her because we were friends and because Jenna asked us to—and yeah, the truth is maybe I wanted a little attention from my mother, too. But that’s not why I did it. The absolute main reason was the friend thing. We never once thought it would create all these problems or that anyone would get hurt.
“The whole thing was pretty stupid,” I said. I plucked at a loose thread in my bedspread. “We never should have said those things about Mr. Mattero.”
“Oh, Claire!” Jenna sounded disgusted with me. “Who cares what happens to Mattero? He’s such a creep. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why I wasted my time on you.”
“Excuse me. Wasted your time?” I asked, a little stunned at that statement. “Is that—”
“You know what?” She threw up her hands. “I don’t care about anything anymore. Why should I? My mom doesn’t care about me! For a whole year, she was seeing that guy when she told us she was flying. I mean, what a liar! All those times she went to Hawaii and brought us those nuts?”
“The macadamias?”
“Yeah! She bought them at the grocery store!”
My mouth fell open a little.
“I hate her so much! She never cared about me. She never even bought me half that stuff I was always showing you guys.”
Pause. “She didn’t?”
“No.”off
“Then where’d all that stuff come from?” I asked, although I don’t know why I bothered because I think I knew the answer.
Jenna slumped back in my chair and turned to stare at the wall. Her shoulders moved a little, like she was crying. I don’t know, I was mad at Jenna, but I felt sorry for her, too. I think she was really messed up by her mother.
I got up off the bed to get her a Kleenex just as Corky ran into my room. He held a gray horse out to Jenna, and she recovered so quickly I wondered if she really had been crying.
“Hey there, buddy,” she laughed, then sniffed, “that’s not an elephant baby!”
I think we were both glad to be distracted.
Corky snatched the horse back and ran from the room.
“He carries that thing around with him all the time now,” I told her.
“Why?” Jenna wiped her cheeks, and I could see they were wet. “Is he into cowboys or something?”
“No, some girl at this place where Corky takes riding therapy gave it to him.” I lowered my voice in case Corky was outside the door. “It looks just like the horse they want him to ride, only he’s too scared.”
“Ahhhh . . .”
Pretty soon after that, Jenna got up and left. I was glad.
A week or so later, I heard she was gone. Moved to Pennsylvania with her dad, just like she said.
But I still don’t think it’s fair. How she missed all the fallout.
20
Melody
“CADE!” I SHOUTED, running to meet my brother as he drove up after school. “I can’t find Dad!”
My brother does not panic easily. He frowned at me through the open window and didn’t even soften the radio in his car. “So? Maybe he’s takin’ a walk or something.”
“Dad doesn’t take walks. And look—” I held out the empty bottles of sleeping tablets.
Cade raised his eyebrows and turned down the music. “What’s that?”
“I found them by the bathroom sink.”
The expression melted from Cade’s face. He turned off the ignition. “What? You think he overdosed or something?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. At the same time, it hit me that I hadn’t checked upstairs in the house. “Maybe he’s taking a nap,” I suggested, hoping that’s all it was—a nap—even though it didn’t explain the empty bottles.
“Mellie, wait!” Cade called as I ran back toward the house.
But I was not waiting for my brother.
Inside, I flew up the stairs and raced down the hall to where his bedroom door was closed.
“Dad!” I called, rattling the knob on the locked door. “Dad! Are you okay?”
No answer.
Cade rushed up behind me.
I pounded on the door. “Daddy! Are you in there?”
When he didn’t answer, my brother and I looked at each other.
“Cade, I’m so afraid of what Daddy’s done!”
Cade shook the door, too, but nothing happened. “Dad!” he called out, even louder than I had.
When there was no response, Cade ordered me to “stand back.” Then he turned sideways, lifted his right shoulder, and threw his weight against the door. Nothing. He tried again but the door didn’t budge.
Next, Cade took a step backward, lifted his foot, and kicked the doorknob. His heel smashed the knob off, and it clattered to the floor. Slowly, the door squeaked open.
When we rushed in, we saw my father sprawled facedown on his bed.
“Daddy!” I screamed.
Cade ran over and shook his shoulder.
I held my breath.
“Dad, are you okay? Are you okay?” Cade kept asking.
I
brought my hands down. “Should I call for help?”
When Cade didn’t answer, I rushed to the other side of my parents’ bed, but their cell phone wasn’t where it usually was on the nightstand. In a panic I swung my head around, searching. “I can’t find the phone!”
“Dad!” Cade called.
I spotted the phone on the floor and picked it up.
But Cade yelled, “Wait, Mel!”
I looked up to see him holding up an empty vodka bottle.
And Dad moaned.
“He’s drunk,” Cade said. “Drunk as a skunk.”
“Daddy’s drunk?” I uttered in disbelief. I brought the phone down. I had never seen my father take a drink, let alone be drunk.
“Hey? Whas goin’ on?” Dad asked sleepily. He tried to push himself up on his elbows and open his eyes, but they kept closing. He looked at Cade, then slowly turned his head toward me. What little hair he had was rumpled, and he wore a dumb, rubbery expression on his face.
“Dad, we thought you overdosed or something,” Cade said. “Mellie was just about to call 911.”
Dad pushed himself to a sitting position beside Cade.
“D-don’ do that,” he said.
“But what about these empty bottles?” My voice shook. I thrust the two empty containers toward him. “I found these in the bathroom downstairs.”
My father hung his head. “Yeah.” He took in a breath and blew the air out. “I dumped ’em out. I dumped ’em in the toilet.”
“What?” Cade seemed perplexed.
But I caught on right away. “So you wouldn’t take them, Dad?”
He covered his eyes and didn’t answer.
I left the room—I had to get out—and went downstairs to make coffee. In all the movies I had ever seen, drunk people sobered up with coffee. While it dripped, I paced the kitchen, still in shock over what my father had done—and almost done. Then, when the coffee was ready, I poured it into a mug, added milk and sugar, and took it upstairs, walking carefully so as not to spill it.
“Don’t bother,” Cade said, meeting me in the hallway. “He’s dead to the world.”
What Mr. Mattero Did Page 13
