Then I Met My Sister

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  Mom peers past me. “I’d rather be in hell with my children than in heaven without them.”

  My throat tightens. I study her face as if I’ve never seen it before. She looks small and fragile. And sad. I want to reach out to her. Will she let me touch her?

  But in the instant that I lean toward her, her eyes refocus, as if she’s coming out of a trance. “Well,” she says briskly, “better get my laundry done.”

  She reaches for her basket.

  “Hey, Mom,” I say abruptly.

  “Yes?”

  I pause. I don’t really have anything to say. I just don’t want her to go. So I ask, “Did you used to belong to a lot of clubs?”

  Mom laughs at the sudden detour into more mundane territory. “Why would you ask that?”

  I shift my weight. “Aunt Nic was mentioning some club you used to belong to. A book club, maybe?”

  Confusion flickers in Mom’s eyes, but then she nods. “Guilty as charged,” she says. “I guess I was something of an extrovert when I was younger. I kind of outgrew that.”

  “Why?” I press. “Why would you stop doing things that you enjoyed?”

  She looks annoyed. “Honestly, Summer, life’s not about enjoying yourself all the time.”

  Whatever mood I’d caught Mom in five minutes earlier has officially passed. She’s back.

  My face flushes, and then Mom’s eyes soften. She reaches out and gently squeezes my arm. “I didn’t mean to snap,” she says, then takes a deep breath. “Okay. Why did I quit joining things. Let’s see. I got my realtor’s license when you started kindergarten, and that’s kept me plenty busy, as you know.”

  I nod. Her eyes stay locked with mine. She’s not finished.

  “You know,” she says softly, “I used to think I had it all figured out. If I do A, then I can count on B. But you can’t really count on anything. Control is just an illusion.”

  God. It is possible to have a conversation with my mother. Have I just never really tried before?

  Mom looks in my eyes and smiles wearily. “I don’t mean to bore you with my philosophizing, honey. Actually, I don’t do much of that anymore, either. Kind of like the book club, I guess. Some things just … fade away.”

  She pats my arm, her fingers cool against my skin. Then she picks up her laundry basket. “Now, honey, please, I’ve got to get my laundry done.”

  “Okay.” That’s all I say.

  I don’t tell her what I’m thinking: Sorry, Mom, but I don’t believe you’ve changed as much as you think you have.

  Eleven

  “For you.”

  I glance up from my history book and see Gibs standing in front of me holding a dandelion.

  “For good luck on your history test,” he clarifies.

  I smile, take the dandelion, blow the tendrils playfully in his face, then pat the space next to me on the picnic bench. He sits beside me.

  “I’ll miss jock patrol,” I tell him wistfully.

  I’ve long since blown off the cafeteria scene at school, preferring the solitude of the picnic table under a magnolia tree by the gym. I used to sit here alone reading a book during lunch, but Gibs has been joining me since we became friends. We observe sweaty athletes filing out of the gym in their basketball shorts and muscle shirts, or watch the drill team or cheerleaders practicing on the lawn, and feel infinitely above it all as we make corresponding snotty remarks.

  Well, I should clarify. Gibs doesn’t feel infinitely above anybody (he’s the most humble guy I know), and he seldom makes snotty remarks. But he’s a good enough sport to laugh at mine. Jock patrol is the highlight of my day, thanks to Gibs.

  “I’ll miss it, too,” he says. “But I’ve already reserved this picnic bench for senior year. And we can hang out this summer, right?”

  I fake-pout. “Mom’s sentenced me to hard labor, remember?”

  Gibs’ eyes narrow.

  “My aunt’s flower shop,” I remind him.

  “Oh, right. How often do you work?”

  I shrug. “I don’t go back until Saturday. But after school is out, Aunt Nic will probably start giving me weekday hours. I’m sure we’ll have time to hang out, though. Just you, me, and my raging allergies.”

  Leah Rollins and Kendall Popwell walk past the gym in shorts and cheerleading T-shirts, offering fluttery waves as they approach Gibs and me. Both girls’ hair is flat-ironed into sleek, smooth submission—Leah’s brown, Kendall’s bottle-blond. Kendall is prettier but Leah is skinnier, and thinness trumps all in their circles. Besides, Leah’s always the center of the universe, so Kendall just sort of orbits around her. I cringe, recalling my stint as Orbiter-in-Chief.

  Gibs waves back gamely.

  “How’d you do on the Chaucer test?” Leah asks him.

  “Okay, I think,” Gibs says.

  Kendall snorts. “‘Okay’ probably means an A plus in Gibs’ world,” she says.

  He’s brushing off the compliment, explaining that Chaucer was really tough for him (yeah, right), but I’m not paying attention. A slow boil is simmering in my chest. I hate to sound petty, but it really chaps my ass that Leah and Kendall are reading Chaucer with Gibs in honors classes while the headiest reading they do in their spare time is Cosmo. I know, I know … I have no one to blame but myself for not being in those classes (I really could crack a textbook now and then, other than during finals). But honors courses should require thinking an original thought once or twice in your life, shouldn’t they?

  “Summer?” Leah says, and I realize she’s repeating herself.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say. “What?”

  “I asked what you’re studying.” She’s inching closer, to peer at the history book I’m holding.

  “History,” I say.

  “Yeah, but which one?”

  Snothead. She loves rubbing my C-list academic standing in my face.

  “Ms. Pilcher’s class, right?” Kendall volunteers helpfully, making it clear that yes, that’s the class one tier up from remedial.

  “Right,” I say evenly.

  “Isn’t Brice Casdorph in that class?” Kendall asks.

  Touché. He’s the one who was just arrested for vandalism.

  “Mmmmmm,” I reply.

  “So your final is today?” Leah asks.

  “Mmmmm.”

  “Well … good luck with that.”

  I manage a fake smile as they walk away. “Bitches,” I murmur under my breath.

  “What?” Gibs asks earnestly. “What did they say?”

  I roll my eyes. “You don’t get girl vibes at all, do you?”

  He studies my face for a few seconds, then pulls a knee against his chest. “So,” he says, changing the subject, “what’s the latest with Shannon?”

  Aaaahhh, Shannon. I’m tempted to tell him that I’ve been too busy with finals to think much about her, but the truth is, I’m nothing short of obsessed. Did you kill yourself, Shannon? Please tell me you didn’t kill yourself. I can’t quite bear that thought. And what other secrets might you harbor? Anything that might, oh, I don’t know, totally screw with my mind?

  Every morning on the way to school, I drive past the tree she hit—three blocks up the street from our house, a few yards past the stop sign after the right turn, past three ranch-style houses and around a little curve, right before a park just half a mile from the high school …

  I’ve always known which tree it is (Mom and Grandma still place flowers there), but I never thought much about it until I started reading Shannon’s journal. Now, that stupid giant oak tree practically taunts me, casting its gnarled branches like an arthritic Satan, looming over me like a gray, wizened wraith. It creeps me out to see kids playing near it on the swings and merry-go-round.

  Thank God school will be over in a couple days and I won’t have to drive past the tree again until senior year starts. But I can’t avoid Shannon’s journal. I haven’t read any more of it since the night I opened it; finals actually feel like something of a godsend for once,
an excuse to stay busy. But I can already feel her words luring me back, like the branches of that tree.

  “Have you read any more of the journal?” Gibs asks.

  “No,” I say. “And maybe I won’t.”

  He considers my words, then nods sharply.

  But he knows. I can see in his eyes that he knows.

  I’m not fooling anybody.

  You’d figure I’d have big plans tonight, since I’ve just finished my last day of school. But you’d figure wrong. Gibs is at a Habitat for Humanity meeting (should I admit how much I miss him?) and I have to work at Aunt Nic’s shop tomorrow, so I am actually calling it a night at the embarrassingly respectable hour of ten p.m. But not before I take a deep breath and reach for the journal I’ve tucked under my mattress. “Hi, Shannon,” I say sleepily, then turn to her next entry.

  Saturday, June 5, 1993

  I sneaked out last night to see Chris. I’ve perfected my system: Dad checks the locks at ten o’clock every night, then goes to bed. Mom stays up to watch another hour of TV, then starts the dishwasher and calls it a night.

  The dishwasher is pretty quiet for the first ten minutes or so, when it’s filling up with water. But then, the water starts churning and the motor sounds like bullfrogs on speed. That’s when I make my move, slipping downstairs and out the sliding glass doors. From that point, I walk across the deck and tiptoe down the stairs into the back yard, Then all I have to do is duck when I pass Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom window, unlatch the gate, run down the side of the yard, and walk a block down the street, where Chris is waiting at the stop sign to pick me up.

  Dad has caught me a couple of times sneaking back in, but he just shakes his head. Who is Dad to lecture me about sneaking around?

  Chris and I are tossing around the M word. Crazy, I know. I didn’t even have my first date until eleven months ago! While all my friends were flirting and pairing up from, like, seventh grade on, I was starting petitions to improve crosswalk signage. So who knew I’d fall so hard and so fast for my first real boyfriend? He wants to go into his dad’s welding business as soon as we graduate, so if I stay in town for college, we can get M’d right away. (I can’t even bring myself to write down the word!) Chris says the M word stands for ‘maybe later,’ the stinker. But he’s just kidding. Did I mention that Chris is the greatest guy in the free world? God, I love him so much.

  In other news, Mom has blackmailed me into seeing a shrink. She said she’ll take my car away if I don’t. My first appointment is Monday. I think I’ll mess with his mind by telling him I talk to trees and can make things spontaneously combust. No need to get into the messy truth that Mom is a control freak who thinks she can live my life.

  She’ll love the whole M plan. Maybe Chris and I will even live in a trailer. We’ll have barbecues on Saturday nights and serve squirrel. She can wear her pearls.

  I wonder if she bribed the shrink to install a computer chip in my head so she can program my life.

  I shake my head slowly as I prop myself up on my elbow. Marriage? At seventeen? To a loser she had to sneak out of the house to see? No wonder Mom hired a shrink.

  I know Mom’s a control freak, Shannon, I think. Nobody can relate to that better than I can. But, God, you’re an idiot. No offense. And while I’ve got your attention … would it kill you to spell out exactly what’s up with Dad?

  Would it kill you. I’ve got to watch my figures of speech.

  Twelve

  Ah-choo.

  I stab the stem of a crocus, pinning it into a foam wreath with gleeful intensity. Take that, you sneeze-maker.

  Aunt Nic walks back to the work table and glances anxiously. “Oh, Summer, honey … all I need you to do is bring the flowers from the fridge to the work table. I’ll do the arranging.”

  I laugh at her. “Don’t worry, Aunt Nic, I wasn’t going all Better Homes and Garden on you. I was just goofing around.”

  She smiles. “I’m sure you’ll be helping me arrange flowers in no time. But it’s only your second day.”

  I unpin the crocus from the wreath and toss it back into a pile with the others. “A girl can dream,” I say.

  What a place to spend my first official day of summer: Allergy Alley.

  I don’t really mind. I’ve always loved my Aunt Nic, and I guess there are worse things than hanging out with crocuses (croci?), even if they do assault my histamines.

  Still, I can’t get Shannon’s journal off my mind. A thousand questions float through my head, and I wonder which ones Aunt Nic can answer. I decide to ask her the safest of them—which is still one of the questions Mr. Kibbits wouldn’t answer.

  “Did Shannon hate Mom?” I ask.

  Aunt Nic picks up a crocus and fingers its satiny stem.

  “No,” she says in a small but firm voice. “She loved her.”

  I suck in my lips. “She’s got a real hate-fest going on in her journal.”

  Aunt Nic smiles wryly. “I kind of got that gist from the first couple of pages. That’s why I couldn’t show it to your mother. It’s why I couldn’t keep reading.” She eyes me warily. “How much have you read?”

  I tuck a hand into my jeans pocket. “Just a few pages. I need to kind of … pace myself. This isn’t the Shannon I was expecting.”

  Aunt Nic’s eyes flood with remorse. “Oh, honey. Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to you. I didn’t mean to disillusion you.”

  I shake my head impatiently. “It’s okay. It’s real. It’s who she was. What is it with our family, having to sanitize everything and make it all sparkly and antiseptic?”

  Aunt Nic fingers her necklace. “Shannon was everything we told you she was—sweet and fun and loving and adorable, all of those things. She was just going through a rebellious phase. No matter what her journal says, please don’t think that’s the whole story. I changed that girl’s diapers, Summer, just like I changed yours. I knew her. You have to believe me. She was an angel.”

  I grit my teeth and fling my hands in the air. “She wasn’t an angel. Thank God I’m finally figuring that out.”

  Aunt Nic sighs. “Aren’t all kids angels in their own families?”

  I clench my fists. “No! I’m not.”

  She presses her palm against my cheek. “But you are! You are to us. That’s what being in a family is all about.”

  I step back from her touch. “That’s what being in our family is all about—being fake. That’s what Shannon was rebelling against. That’s why she hated Mom.”

  Aunt Nic thinks for a second, then crosses her arms. “Did you know that Grandma made your mother and me wear matching dresses until we were, like, twelve?”

  I smile in spite of myself. “I’ve seen the pictures. Tragic.”

  Aunt Nic’s eyes sparkle. “We rebelled around the time we were in middle school. But we loved it when we were kids. I don’t have children, so I know I’m no authority, but … I think parents can be just what their kids need at some points in their lives, then not be what they need at other points.”

  She pauses for a moment, intertwining her fingers. “Yes, your mom is a perfectionist,” she continues. “But frankly, so was Shannon. It worked great when Shannon was little. It was only when she got older that the perfectionism thing started driving her crazy. It was Shannon who changed, not your mother. Your mom couldn’t quite keep up.”

  I shake my head. “If Shannon didn’t mind Mom being a control freak when she was little, it’s just because she was too young to know better. Mom should have let her be her own person.”

  Aunt Nic rubs the crocus stem again, looking wistful. “I don’t know,” she says softly. “I’m sorry Shannon was frustrated, but I kinda feel for your mom. Raising Shannon … it must have been like having a job that you do really well for years and years, then suddenly, with no warning, the rules change, and everything that used to work doesn’t work anymore.”

  “But once Mom could see it wasn’t working, why didn’t she change?” I ask, my voice insistent. “She didn’t e
ven change for me.”

  Aunt Nic’s jaw drops. “She completely changed for you! You’ve been a rebel since the day you were born. How could you have gotten away with that if your mother hadn’t changed?”

  I open my mouth to respond, then close it and shake my head in resignation. I don’t think Aunt Nic gets the problem with Mom—that she always gives me so much to rebel against.

  The door jingles as a customer walks into the flower shop. Aunt Nic smooths her shirt as she turns toward the front of the store.

  “Hey, Aunt Nic?” I call.

  She glances over her shoulder. “Yeah, honey?”

  “If I have other questions, can I ask you?”

  She smiles. “You can ask me anything.”

  My eyes follow her as she walks away. I wish Mom was as easy-going as Aunt Nic. God, I’d settle for her being as easy-going as Queen Elizabeth.

  “Well, hi there!” I hear Aunt Nic chirp, up by the counter. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen you, Leah!”

  I raise an eyebrow. Oh, God. Leah.

  I sigh and walk toward the front, too.

  “Hi, Summer,” Leah says with a stiff little smile. “You’re working here?”

  I nod. “How about you? What’re you doing this summer?”

  She shrugs. “Volunteer work, cheerleading camp. Oh, and Beta Club stuff. Hey, speaking of which, are you going to the conference in August?”

  “I’m not in Beta Club,” I remind her.

  “Oh, right. Hey, how do you think you did on your finals?”

  I dig my nails into my palms. “Okay.”

  She offers a fake smile. “Great! Good for you! Wasn’t it sweet of Gibs to help you study?”

  I wrinkle my nose.

  “And if we’re lucky,” Leah says, “it kept him from studying too hard for his finals! I’m still in the running for valedictorian, but these honors classes—phew! I mean, I’m sure they’re no tougher than your classes are to you … I mean, everything’s relative …”

  “Mmmmm. Say, are you still dating Justin?”

  Leah’s eyes fall, and I actually feel a little guilty. Word has already spread that Justin dumped her a couple days ago.