Miss Rastin laughs again.
“But we need help,” I say, and I feel like crying all of a sudden, because I can’t believe how hard it is to ask for this. And what a relief, too. It’s a huge relief to just admit I can’t do this alone. “I need help.”
Miss Rastin’s face softens. She swallows hard and lets me hear her real voice again, not her social worker voice.
“Okay, Annie,” she says. “I’ll think about how to help you, and I’ll do my best. But that’s if everybody in your family wants to do the work, too, and I gotta tell you, that’s a big if. I can’t promise you anything.”
I smile at her for real, because she’s stuck with me and I’m stuck with her, but at least we’re going to try.
My parents are allowed “contact with the endangered children” again and the cops let them out of their bedroom so they can join the rest of us in the kitchen. After the cops and the social worker leave, Miri comes home. So we’re all here. There’s plenty of yelling. And crying. And people telling each other how sick to death they are of this family. Half of us think therapy might work, and the other half just space out and stare at the walls, wishing they were anywhere but here.
Yup. My family staying together is a big, fat IF.
Chapter Thirteen
Miss Rastin comes to see me every Tuesday and Friday at school.
We walk around the soccer field and talk all through free period at the end of the day. Most of the time, talking about my family problems with Miss Rastin feels like how my mom cleans. Piles of stuff get moved from one room to another so you can scrub under them a little, but none of the junk ever gets thrown out. But sometimes she really shows me something I didn’t even know was there. Like with my counting. She explained to me how that was just a way I kept my brain busy and quiet so I didn’t have to face the truth. She said my whole family lived in denial, and my counting was how I dealt with the fact that no one was talking about the abuse.
We talk a lot about denial. It’s tough to explain once you’ve made it through to the other side of it, but I imagine denial is like a Jedi mind trick. Except it’s your mind that’s doing it to you, and instead of saying, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” denial waves a hand and says, “There is no mess here and that beating never happened,” and the rest of you goes on about your day like it’s the truth. Only it isn’t. And pulling a Jedi mind trick on yourself has some pretty serious side effects. One’s called post-traumatic stress disorder.
Miss Rastin told me I have it, but that I can work through it now because I’m not repressing my emotions anymore. I told her I’ve stopped counting, and she said it was because I’d stopped living in denial and I’ve accepted that I’m an abused child. I don’t know if that’s totally true or not, because I always thought abused children were starving and in the hospital or something, and I was never like that.
Miss Rastin also said my mom needs as much help as us kids do. But that’s something I’ve always known. In a lot of ways, I think my mom is the one who needs help most of all. Now I’m just worried that she won’t really get it, because you have to ask for help for it to work. I don’t know if my mom has ever really asked—she sort of got pushed into it when Nora ran away and got caught by child services. Now Mom has to be in therapy or they’re going to take Nora and me away. We’ll see what happens. I want Mom to get better, but I don’t know. The house got cleaned up right after all this stuff started happening, but I can already see her starting to make those piles again. It worries me.
But the hitting has stopped. Fay isn’t torturing Nora anymore, but they still hate each other. Mom apologized. I forgave her and said that I never really blamed her in the first place because I never did. It was never her. I hugged her and she hugged me back and that was her, or at least who she always meant to be. She smells so good. Powder and lemons.
Another good thing is Miriam came home. Well, she sort of came home. She goes to group therapy with the rest of my family now. She’ll never really come home again, I know that, but she’s trying, so I consider that to be a good thing. If there’s one thing I’ve always known being the youngest Bianchi, it’s that you’ve got to take what good you can.
Miss Rastin says that we’ve only been doing this therapy thing for a month now, and it’s going to take much longer than that to make real progress. When I asked how long, she sort of smiled at the ground and changed the subject, so I’ll probably be in therapy for a long time.
Today’s the last day of school, and when I ask Miss Rastin where we’ll meet next Tuesday, she tells me that we won’t. It’s been decided that Nora and I are no longer “in crisis” and we can shift to group therapy on Wednesday nights with my whole family now.
I try to picture one therapist listening to all of my family’s problems at the same time and I laugh. It’ll be a zoo.
When our time’s nearly up, I realize that this is it for Miss Rastin and me.
“You’re a good person,” I tell her. “Take care of yourself.”
She laughs and shakes her head at me. “You know, Annie, I’m not worried about you. You’re going to do Great Things.”
I know her well enough now to hear her punctuation. Why do people talk to me in capital letters?
She walks me back inside early so I can say good-bye to all my friends before summer starts. It doesn’t really bother me that everyone knows I have a social worker. No one treats me any differently than they did before, and I think that’s on account of Kristin and Jordan. Kristin includes me in everything the girls do, and she won’t let anyone say a bad word about me, and Jordan … well, he takes care of the boys. Not sure how he does that, because he told me not to worry about it.
I’m going to miss school mostly because summer is never a break for me. But I like the last day of school because of how happy everyone is and how nice they are to each other. Everybody really notices each other and they say they’ll miss each other and it makes me wish this were the way it was all the time.
Jordan smiles when he sees me come back with Miss Rastin, and he walks me to my bus line.
“What’s the matter?” he asks me when he notices how quiet I am.
“Just thinking about my destiny,” I say.
“Did you figure yours out?” he asks.
“Not yet,” I say. “But I’m thinking about it.”
“Me too,” Jordan says. “But I guess that was Mrs. Weiss’s point. I guess she just wanted us to start thinking about it.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I smile because he just made me feel so much better.
Jordan’s quiet for a while, but in a thinking way and not in a clammed-up way. “Come to my baseball game tonight,” he says.
“Yeah, I like baseball,” I say. Then I remember. “But it’s Friday. I may have to go on a date with one of my sisters.”
Jordan gives me this totally horrified look, and I laugh. “Not on a date with my sister, but on my sister’s date with her.” I explain the rules for dating a Bianchi girl. When I’m done, Jordan frowns.
“You’re the youngest, right?” he asks. I nod and he says, “So what are your parents going to do when you start going on dates?”
I think of all those guys trying to feel up my sisters, Stan being the first to come to mind, and almost gag.
“Why would I ever want to go on a date?” I say. “Especially since if I do get a weekend night off one of these days, I’d much rather spend it with you.”
Jordan looks confused for a second, and then he rolls his eyes and smiles. “Good,” he says, but I don’t get what’s so funny to him.
“Call me when you find out if you’re coming,” Jordan says right before we head in different directions.
“I don’t have your number,” I say. He gives it to me, and I have no need to add all the numbers together to find out if they are divisible by three. I think about it, but I don’t need to do it the way I used to. I don’t know, Miss Rastin. I’d call that real progress.
�
�Do you want me to write it down?” he asks.
“I can remember seven digits, Jordan. Especially since the first three are exactly like mine.”
He smiles. “What’s your number?” he asks. I tell him.
We stand there for a second, eyeing each other. I wait, then let the other shoe drop: “Do you want me to write it down?”
He shakes his head like I’m driving him crazy and turns away to go to his bus line. We’ve both gone about three steps when he turns back around and says, “You can call me whenever, you know. All summer. You can call me whenever you want. Like, when you get home from the farm and stuff.”
I shift from foot to foot. “But what if your parents answer?” I ask.
“Why would my parents answer my phone?” he asks.
It takes me way too long to figure it out. “You have your own phone?” I blurt out. “Like, your own line and everything?”
“Yeah. In my bedroom,” Jordan says with a shrug.
It’s like WrestleMania in my house every night to see who gets to use the phone first. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to make a phone call without an egg timer in my face and an angry sister standing in front of me with a hand on her hip.
I notice Jordan looks serious again. “Annie? Why would it matter if my parents answered?”
“Because they don’t like me.”
He looks away. “It’s not you. They don’t know you,” he says quietly. “Just call me later, okay? I don’t want to spend half the night looking up into the stands to check if you’re there or not.”
“I will,” I say. I realize I mean it. “Hey, Jordan?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
He looks confused. “For what?”
I start to remember all the things I should be saying thank you for to him, and what comes out of my mouth is pretty much the lamest one. But it’s also the easiest to say.
“For helping me look for my sister.”
“That was a month ago,” he says, like he can’t believe I’m bringing this up right now.
“Well, I figured it took me two months to apologize for embarrassing you in the cafeteria, and it only took me one month to say thank you for being a good friend, so it’s like I’m getting better at this, right?”
Jordan looks at me for a while. “You’re welcome,” he says. And then we walk to the buses that take us to different sides of the woods.
Nora is already waiting on our bus. The ride home is quiet. As the bus stops in front of our house and Nora and I get off, I can see that the front door’s open. Halfway across the lawn I can hear my brother, JP, talking in the kitchen. He says something that makes everyone laugh.
Nora and I stand outside 17 Snow Lane. I look at her and smile, and she smiles back at me. I don’t know what my destiny is. I don’t know if my family is going to make it or not. But we’re going to try.
Acknowledgments
I have to thank Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel at Feiwel and Friends for guiding me and getting this book in shape. It’s hard for any writer to see the forest when she’s in the trees, doubly so if she’s lived in the trees her whole life. There is a certain amount of existential angst that goes along with telling a story partially based on your own childhood. When asked tough questions like, “What’s the point of that?” it makes you stop and wonder what was the point of that major milestone in my development? Not a comfortable place to be, and Liz and Jean edited me ever so gently and wisely.
My writing lives on top of two rocks—my husband, Albert Leon, and my agent, Mollie Glick. They hold me up so I can pour myself out.
Finally, I thank my family. We have all been each other’s heroes and each other’s villains. We’ve saved each other and abandoned each other countless times. We’ve done our best and our worst either to, or in front of, each other. And all of it, good and bad, hilarious and downright ugly, has left me with enormous gratitude that you are mine.
About the Author
Josie Angelini is the internationally bestselling author of the Worldwalker trilogy and the Starcrossed series. She earned her degree in theater, with a focus on the classics, from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Originally from Massachusetts, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two ancient shelter cats. Visit her at josephineangelini.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Josephine Angelini
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
mackids.com
All rights reserved.
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Angelini, Josephine, author.
Title: Snow Lane / Josie Angelini.
Description: First edition. | New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2018. | Summary: In 1985 Massachusetts, fifth-grader Annie wants to shape her own future but as the youngest of nine, she is held back by her hand-me-down clothing, a crippling case of dyslexia, and a dark family secret. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017017594 (print) | LCCN 2017035722 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250150912 (EBook) | ISBN 9781250150929 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Family life—Massachusetts—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Dyslexia—Fiction. | Massachusetts—History—20th century—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.A58239 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.A58239 Aah 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017594
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First hardcover edition, 2018
eBook edition, January 2018
eISBN 9781250150912
Snow Lane Page 13
