Not So Goode

by Jasinda Wilder

  Not So Goode

  Jasinda Wilder

  Contents

  1. Charlie

  2. Crow

  3. Charlie

  4. Crow

  5. Charlie

  6. Crow

  7. Charlie

  8. Crow

  9. Charlie

  10. Crow

  11. Charlie

  12. Crow

  13. Charlie

  14. Crow

  Epilogue

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  Also by Jasinda Wilder

  Charlie

  A panicked call from my sister in the middle of the night.

  I‘d ended the call, thought about my course of action for a hot minute, and then I’d thrown a bunch of things together, knowing in the back of my mind that I might not be back in Boston for a while. If ever.

  And then here I was, on the highway to New York state, at seven-forty in the morning.

  Call it serendipity.

  I was on my second large cup of gas station coffee, and I’d already eaten two bear claws. Between the caffeine and the sugar, I was pretty buzzed. I didn’t normally indulge in junk food like this, but I wasn’t normally woken up at three in the morning by a hysterical sister begging me to come rescue her…from what I wasn’t entirely sure.

  I called Lexie again once I was on the freeway, headed to Sarah Lawrence College where she was a student—I’d managed to talk her into going back to bed and getting some sleep, but still hadn’t gotten any kind of concrete details from her about why she was so upset.

  So, to recap, at 3 a.m. my middle sister, Lexie called me, sobbing hysterically and begging me to come rescue her. This was unusual in many respects, as Lexie simply did not cry, ever, no matter what. She never ever asked for help, no matter what, and she would not accept help from anyone, about anything, ever. She was vehemently, obstinately, comically independent, and had been since she was a little girl. She’d broken her ankle on the trampoline once, when she was seven or so, and had refused Dad’s help—she climbed down off the trampoline, gritting her teeth as hard as she could, refusing to even sniffle. She had hobbled on her own to the car and had refused a hospital wheelchair. At no point had she allowed so much as a single tear to fall. My second sister, Cassie, was much the same, but she was a little less stubborn about it than Lex. Cassie would show emotion, but explosively. She pent it up and kept it shoved down until one little thing would set her off, and she’d rage and stew, and then it would be over.

  Lex? She was pure ice, all the time, at least when it came to pain, whether physical or emotional. She had very few moods: she was either happy and cheerful and energetic, or angry in an ultraliberated hardline feminist righteous kind of way, or even-keeled and focused, or a hypersexualized take-what-I-want party animal sort of way. Sad, scared, worried, nervous, frustrated…none of these applied to Alexandra Goode.

  So, this call from her, sobbing and outright scared and borderline nervous breakdown? This was apocalyptic and very worrying.

  And she refused to tell me a single thing over the phone.

  Not one single detail.

  A dozen scenarios ran through my head—most of them centered around the possibility of her being pregnant. I couldn’t think of anything else that would cause this kind of panic in her. She was…adventurous, sexually, to say the least. Just don’t use the “shame” word around her though, or she’ll verbally flay the skin off your bones. She could make grown men cry with just a few words.

  Mere mortals should stay away.

  So, the point here was that she did what she wanted and god help anyone who even thought of judging her.

  Mom and I both have always worried that despite how careful she was about birth control and contraception she would eventually turn up pregnant. So that’s where my mind was focused as I drove.

  But I didn’t want to assume—I couldn’t afford to. If I were to show up at Sarah Lawrence with a brain full of assumptions Lexie just might, in her current state, disown me.

  Or worse, unload both barrels into me, and I was dealing with my own crisis of identity and future, and I just didn’t think I could handle a Lexie Goode tongue-lashing.

  So I did my best to just focus on staying awake and getting to Sarah Lawrence in one piece with an open mind.

  I finally arrived and navigated my way through the picturesque East Coast campus. As I got closer to where I vaguely remembered her dorm building being, I turned down the radio so I could see better. Ha ha.

  I recognized her building—I have a pretty excellent visual memory, and this looked familiar. I’d only been here for a few minutes, once before, when she first transferred here from U-Conn.

  I parked, consulted my message thread with Lex for the building and room details and verified I was in the right place. I grabbed the coffees I’d purchased at my last pit stop, and headed inside. At her door, I knocked, three times, firmly.

  A long pause.

  A raspy voice. “Who is it.” This, despite the peephole in the door.

  “Lex, it’s me.” I peered at the peephole. “Charlie? Your big sister? The one who just made a three-hour drive in record time, with stops for coffee and pee breaks.”

  The only response was the sound of a lock clicking and the handle twisting, and the door opening a crack. A single mocha-brown eye peered at me.

  I snorted. “What is this, Lex? You’re acting so weird. Like, did you borrow money from the Mafia or something?”

  “Shut up,” she snarled. But she opened the door and allowed me inside.

  I stepped in and she slammed the door shut, locked it, and her eyes went immediately to the coffee in my hand.

  “Please Jesus tell me one of those is for me?” she whimpered.

  I handed over her coffee, and frowned at her. “You look like shit.”

  She really did. Her hair was a mess, tangled and snarled, obviously unwashed. She sometimes styled it messy, but this was just…a mess. She was wearing what had to be a triple-XL U-Conn sweatshirt that even Dad would have swum in at his heaviest.

  Sorry, Dad. RIP. But you were not in great shape, there, at the end.

  Probably she wasn’t wearing a damn thing under that sweatshirt, either. She had the sleeves rolled a half-dozen times, and they still hung past her fingertips, and the bottom came to her knees, the neck hanging off her shoulders. If she’d been clean, it would have been a cutely endearing look. In her current disheveled and smelly state, calling it hobo-chic would be generous.

  “My life is over,” she muttered. “Personal hygiene can go fuck itself.”

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere with you until you shower.”

  She gave me the finger. Two of them. “Food.”

  “I have donuts in the car. But you don’t get them until you stop smelling like a herd of goats took a poop on you.”

  She growled. Actually growled. “You’re supposed to be supporting me in my time of need.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t support you if I can’t stomach being within ten feet of you.” I wrinkled my nose. “Seriously. How long have you been holed up in here?”

  “I lost track after the first week. My roommate has started sliding Lean Cuisines to me through the door. She’s currently hiding out with her boyfriend off-campus because I’m, like, not safe to be around, according to her.”

  I shuddered. “Alexandra. Lean Cuisines? Really?”

  She shrugged. “And whole pizzas.”

  I sighed. “Is that why your chin acne has its own area code?”

  She blinked at me. “Wow, okay, Charlie. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  I saw, then, that she was blinking back tears, and I leaned into her. “Sorry. But it’s hard for me to help or support you when I have no idea what’s
going on. And when I can’t breathe through my nose while hugging you. I love you, girl. I woke up at three thirty in the morning, listened to you cry on the phone, and then drove three hours to get here. So I’m here. I’m supporting you. But for the love of god, please, take a damn shower.”

  She pulled the crewneck of the sweatshirt away from herself, stuck her nose into the opening, and sniffed. And promptly yanked her head away, gagging. “Okay, yeah. Yep. You’re right.”

  “You lost track after the first week?” I said, as she headed for the bathroom. “For real, how long has this—whatever it is—been going on?”

  Ignoring me, she peeled off the sweatshirt and tossed it aside, rummaging in her dresser—and yeah, she was naked under it. Good thing none of us girls are squeamish about being nude around each other.

  She’d obviously fallen victim to the freshman fifteen and never lost it, and maybe a little extra over the years since her freshman year. This I decided to keep to myself, though. She wore it well, at least, most of the extra weight being in her butt and thighs, which worked for her. Weight went to my butt and thighs, too, but I was already genetically predisposed to being curvy, so that extra looked like a LOT extra on me, whereas on Lexie the same amount of extra weight just looked like she had a bangin’ booty. On me, I just looked like I couldn’t muster the gumption to run off the junk in my trunk.

  Not fair.

  Sigh.

  I was being judgmental, and I told myself to stop.

  I turned my attention to the dorm room. One bed was neatly made, with a few floating shelves on the walls decorated with pictures of her roommate with various family members, a few Beanie Babies, dancing and volleyball trophies. The half of the room around this bed was spotlessly neat. The half around Lexie’s bed?

  It looked like a bomb had gone off.

  I saw the evidence of her recent dietary malfeasance piled everywhere—pizza boxes and Lean Cuisine trays stacked one atop the other in a toppling tower. Soda bottles in the twenty-ounce and two-liter variety. More than one empty wine bottle—contraband on campus, I was sure. Empty boxes of Cheez-Its.

  Ugh. Lex. Baby. You need help.

  Lexie emerged from her rampage through dresser drawers and bins under her bed, a stack of clothing in hand, which she tossed on her bed. Wrapping a towel around herself and grabbing a toiletry kit, she scowled at me.

  “Donuts,” she snapped. “Need donuts.”

  “What you need is intermittent fasting and some salad,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What?” She peered at me through narrowed eyelids. “I missed that, Char. What’d you say?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Go shower. I’ll get the donuts. But we’re leaving, yes? Shower, dress, and pack.”

  She shrugged. “Moira said she’d pack for me and ship it all to me in Alaska. I’m not coming back here. Ever.”

  I frowned. “You’ve been talking about going from U-Conn to Sarah Lawrence since you were in eighth grade.”

  “Yeah, well…sometimes dreams die,” she said, and left.

  I cleared a space on her bed and sat down, pulling my phone from my back pocket. As I did so, it began to vibrate: Mom, it said, accompanied with a thumbnail photo of Mom.

  “Crap,” I muttered. Warily, I answered. “Hello?”

  “Charlie,” Mom said, breezy, happy. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

  I sighed, not knowing how to start. “I…um.”

  “Oh shoot,” she murmured. “What now?”

  “Have you talked to Lexie?”

  A pause. “Lexie? What’s wrong with Lexie?”

  “Um. I don’t actually know. And I don’t want to say too much, you know how she is.”

  “There’s a crisis, though?”

  “Yeah. I’m with her in New York right now, actually. She called me, hysterical, at three thirty this morning. But I have no clue what’s going on—I mean that, I really don’t know, so don’t try wheedling it out of me. I just got here.”

  “So what’s the plan, then?”

  I sighed again. “I’m going to take her on a road trip. We’ll eventually end up in Alaska, I’m guessing. Somehow, at some point. Hopefully along the way I’ll be able to help her figure out whatever her issue is.” I bit at a fingernail. “And my own, I guess.”

  “So you’re not calling Poppy?”

  My youngest sister, Poppy—Mom had been after me for months to get together with Poppy, since we were both going through crises of life and work and men, but I didn’t get along with Poppy very well under the best of circumstances, and these were far from that, so I’d been avoiding doing so.

  I growled. “Mom, god. I’m dealing with my own life crisis. Now I’m here with Lex, and she was crying, Mom. Begged me to come get her.”

  “Lexie was…crying?”

  “Worse than Poppy cried when she burned herself on the bonfire that one summer.”

  “No,” Mom breathed, in utter disbelief. “You’re serious?”

  “I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You don’t joke about anything,” she teased.

  “Oh shut up, Mother. I do too. Just not about Lexie crying.”

  “She’s pregnant, I bet.”

  “Mom!”

  There was a silence, and I could all but see her rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Okay, okay. I won’t push. Just…” She seemed to be trying to figure out what to say.

  “Mom, we’ll figure it out. I’ll call you when I can, okay? But don’t hold your breath.”

  “If you need me, I’ll be there.”

  “I know.” I could hear Lexie’s voice in the hallway. “I better go. If Lexie hears me talking to you, she’ll go apeshit.”

  “Yeah, she’s weird about people talking about her.”

  “She’s weird about everything,” I said. “Also, I did talk to Poppy. She’s not leaving Columbia yet. She’s not ready to quit, mainly because she doesn’t know what she does want so she’s not quitting until she’s figured out a plan.”

  “Well, that’s logical enough.”

  “Well, on the surface of it, yes. But really, she’s just scared of what she actually does want, which is to be a full-time professional artist.”

  “I know that, and you know that, but she has to decide that for herself.”

  I sighed. “Yes, Mother. Which is why I’m not road tripping with her, but with Lexie. Because Lexie needs me right now, not Poppy.”

  “Don’t act like you’re not relieved though. Poppy drives you crazy.”

  The doorknob turned. “Gotta-go-bye,” I muttered, ended the call, and slid the phone back into my back pocket moments before Lexie walked in.

  She rolled her eyes at me. “How’s Mom doing?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about her.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, she wanted to talk about me.”

  I nodded. “Well, yeah. And I told her what I know…which is nothing.”

  She shut the door, locked it, and dropped her towel on the floor. “Which is why I haven’t told you anything yet—I knew she’d call, and I knew you’d tell her. And I’m not ready to talk to Mom about this yet. I’m not sure I’m even ready to talk to you about it, even though you’re here because I begged you to come.”

  “Why don’t you want Mom to know?” I asked. “And why call me, not her?”

  “Because Mom would lecture me, and I can’t handle a lecture.” She glared at me as she started dressing. “And if you lecture me, I’ll never talk to you again.”

  “I already promised I wouldn’t judge you, hon, and I won’t. I won’t lecture. I really am here to help, okay?”

  The mask she was maintaining cracked, just a little. Turning away from me, she stuffed her legs into a pair of baggy, blousy, breezy linen pants—something Aladdin would wear, it looked like to me—white, low-waisted, and tight at the ankles. She wore a thin maroon shirt with it, which left her midriff bare from below her navel to just und
er her breasts.

  No underwear, no bra.

  She did put on socks, and then knee-high tan leather boots. She faced a small mirror she had hung on her wall next to her dresser, put some product on her palm, and styled her hair into an artfully messy look, longer black strands draping across her forehead and into her eyes, other strands brushed back, some to the side.

  I frowned at her. “You’re annoying, you know that?”

  She blinked at me, baffled. “What? Why?”

  I gestured at her. “You can go from looking like a dirty hobo to…that, in fifteen minutes. Also, no bra, no panties? With white pants?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t give a shit. It’s comfortable. I bend over, or the sun shines on me just right, sure, someone may get a little glimpse at the goods. I bend the wrong way and you may see some of my titties. So what? I genuinely just don’t care. Someone wants to shame me for it, let them. I’ll rip ‘em a new asshole and go about my day happy as a fuckin’ clam. Don’t get at me about what I wear or don’t wear.” A glance at me. “Why is it annoying?”

  “Because you actually pull it off.”

  She snickered. “You couldn’t go without your plain white brassiere and granny panties for five fucking minutes, could you?”

  I glared at her. “My bra is not white, and I am not wearing granny panties. And what’s wrong with them, anyway? Sometimes they’re just practical.” I flicked my fingers at her chest. “Besides, you’re gonna end up with saggy boobs when you’re older.”

  “So? They sag, they sag. Not my problem.”

  I frowned. “How do you figure? They’re your boobs, Lex.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t care what they look like, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks about what I look like, either. Some guy looks at me in fifty years and is like, ew, yuck, her titties hang down to her kneecaps, I’m gonna be like, motherfucker, if you don’t like ‘em then don’t look at ‘em.”