“Why would you want to know a prostitute? And why did you lie to me?”
The tears were trapped under my eyelids. I took a deep breath, hoping to suck them back, but they kept coming until they started to flow.
“It wasn’t that I was lying to you, exactly. It’s the way it is. We don’t talk about her, so—”
“But you’re trying to get to know her, be with her?”
I took another deep breath. How could I explain this quickly? It took me years to understand what it was I wanted from Roxy, what it was I needed from her.
“She’s still my sister” was all I could think of saying.
He got up. “My mother was really hyper about it,” he said. “You know, with my father running for Congress and all. I told them I didn’t know any of this, but that only made matters worse. I can’t bring you to my house now.”
“Oh,” I said. It was more like a gasp.
“And for the time being, I promised I wouldn’t see you. They’re terrified that some reporter will find out I’m seeing a girl whose sister is a famous prostitute in New York. That’s how politics is now,” he added. He looked at my devastated face. “If you had only told me, I might have come up with something.”
“But she’s not part of our family anymore,” I protested.
He shrugged. “She’s your sister. She’ll always be part of your family,” he said. “That’s what blood means,” he added, and started away.
I watched him go. And then I called after him, even though I knew he was too far away to hear.
“You don’t know it, Evan, but you just answered your own question about why I wanted to see and talk to Roxy.
“That’s what blood means.”
9
Of course, it wasn’t hard to figure out where this all came from. When I entered the cafeteria, I saw Chastity immediately turn toward me. There was a look of great satisfaction on her face. She wasn’t smiling, exactly, but I could see the pleasure in her eyes. All of the girls at her table stopped talking to look my way. I heard their laughter spreading to nearby tables, rippling through the faces and over the lips of the girls in my class. More students stopped talking to look at me. I could feel the heat come into my face. In fact, the whole cafeteria seemed to go up twenty degrees.
I started toward the lunch line, then stopped and quickly walked out. The way my stomach was churning and churning, I couldn’t dare put any food in it. It would just come back up, and the thought of regurgitating in front of my classmates, especially the girls who were already enjoying a good laugh at my expense, was terrifying.
I went directly to the nurse’s office and told her I was feeling very nauseated. She had me lie down and took my temperature. I wasn’t running a fever, but it wasn’t difficult for her to see that I was in no condition to continue with my classes.
“I’ll let your mother know,” she said.
“I could just walk home, Mrs. Morris,” I said, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“There are insurance regulations,” she explained. “I can’t simply turn you out on the street.”
That expression made me wince. Wasn’t that what my father had done, turn Roxy out on the street? What were his insurance obligations? Mrs. Morris put a cool cloth on my forehead, and I closed my eyes to wait for Mama. Now I was really feeling terrible. She would surely come in a bit of a panic. I hoped she wouldn’t call Papa.
I nearly fell asleep, but when she came into the nurse’s office, my eyes popped open as I felt her hand on my forehead.
“I’ve taken her temperature. She has no fever. If it’s a virus, there might not be a fever,” Mrs. Morris told her. “How are you now, Emmie?”
“Better,” I said. “Just tired.”
“I have a taxi outside,” Mama said.
“I could walk home, Mama.”
“Get your things,” she said firmly. There would be no discussion about it.
“Don’t worry about your schoolwork. I’ll inform your teachers, Emmie,” Mrs. Morris told me.
I picked up my books and followed Mama out. She put her hand on my shoulder to stop me as soon as we were alone.
“What is it, Emmie?” she asked. “Why aren’t you feeling well?”
I shook my head, but my tears were determined to run freely down my cheeks. She moved me along faster. I didn’t look back when I heard the bell to change classes. Moments later, we were in the taxi and on our way home. I curled up against the rear door and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to talk.
Mama was too good at reading me, anyway. The moment we entered the house, she stopped and turned to me. “Something happened between you and Evan Styles? Is that it?”
I nodded. There was no point in trying to come up with a false reason.
“What?” she asked.
“He found out about Roxy,” I said, and hurried up to my bedroom. When I got there, I threw myself facedown on the bed. I heard her behind me.
“I don’t understand, Emmie. Why should that matter to him?”
I turned and looked at her. “I never told him about her.”
“Of course not. I understand.”
“My best friend apparently told the other girls, and one of the mothers called his mother to tell her. His father is running for Congress, remember? No scandals are permitted, and I’m a potential scandal. I have a sister who is a professional . . . escort.”
“Oh,” Mama said. She brought her right hand to her face.
The realization that her older daughter was a scandalous person didn’t come as any surprise, perhaps, but facing it did. It was the same as saying that the little girl she had conceived was not fit to walk the earth, but it was not only that. Maybe Roxy could contaminate the rest of us, especially me. Whatever faults Mama had found with herself or whatever reasons she had come to blame herself for Roxy’s behavior were now compounded by what was happening to me. That was her fault, too, if Roxy was.
“We can’t tell your father,” she said quickly. “I’m glad I didn’t call him when the school called me.”
I looked up quickly. “What will I tell him when he sees that Evan isn’t calling or coming over anymore?”
“I don’t know. We’ll think of something, but if he heard this, it would be like tearing off a scab, reopening a wound. Comprenez?”
“Oui, Mama.”
It wasn’t difficult to understand.
She walked off, mumbling to herself in French, but I didn’t cry. I was tired of crying. My sadness was flushed out by a rush of anger. I wanted to rage against Chastity, call her all sorts of names, ridicule her and insult her until she was drowning in remorse and regret. I thought about all sorts of ways to get revenge. I had once threatened to reveal some of her weird sexual activities and thoughts. It would be easy to turn the tables on her. Those girls who were accepting her now were only doing so because she had some juicy gossip that affected one of the most popular boys in the school. Once they had milked her of all the shocking information, they would turn their backs on her, and she would be even more alone than ever because she wouldn’t have me anymore, either.
I slept most of the remaining afternoon, and when I realized that Chastity would be home from school, I called her.
“Why did you do it?” I asked as soon as she said hello.
“Do what?”
“Don’t play games with me, Chastity. You told them about Roxy.”
“Oh, that. It just slipped out, and once it did, I didn’t know what to do,” she said, feigning innocence. “Why? Was it a problem? I heard you went home from school sick. What’s wrong?”
“You betrayed the wrong person,” I said, and hung up.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. Mama came to my room just before Papa was to arrive.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay, Mama. Don’t worry.”
“I don’t like telling lies or telling you to lie, but sometimes a little twist of the truth is a nice thing to do, not for yourself but f
or someone else.”
“What lie, Mama?”
“If your father asks about Evan, just tell him he was a little too interested in another girl. Maybe because his father’s running for Congress, he’s a bit stuck-up right now.”
I almost laughed. Mama creating some soap-opera material?
“Okay, Mama. Who knows? Maybe that is exactly what will be happening anyway.”
She smiled, gave me a hug and a kiss, and went down to work on dinner. I sat at my computer for a moment. The anger that had been simmering inside me twisted and turned, snaking its way deeper and deeper into my brain. The evil ideas that started to take shape were shocking to me. I never thought I would even consider doing such a thing to someone. But someone like Chastity, who let her jealousy and envy do harm to her closest friend, had to be punished. She had to be made to see that her actions had consequences.
I told myself that Chastity was like a little witch, a Wiccan, and they were always warned that if they did evil to someone, it would come back at them three times.
I turned on my computer. As soon as it was ready, I went into my e-mail. I had the e-mail addresses for most of the girls I spoke with in my class. Which one would be the best for this? I wondered, and then thought the perfect irony would be to choose Carol Lee. After all, it was her mother who had called Evan’s.
Hi, Carol Lee, I began. I have a stunning question for you, a little puzzle for you to solve. Which girl in our class puts lotion on a cucumber and experiments with herself sexually while looking at erotic pictures in her copy of the Kama Sutra? Hint. She likes to eat. There’s lots more hints, too. And lots more she does that would make your stomach turn inside out.
I hesitated, and then I clicked send.
Was it the Roxy in me that had me do it? It wasn’t hard to imagine her doing something like this and even more. Whatever, I felt a sense of satisfaction, left the computer on, and went down to help Mama with dinner.
Papa was excited when he came home. He felt as if he had inside information and had told his associates about Evan’s father running for Congress. Later in the day, they all heard the official announcement, and everyone wanted to know how he was in on it.
“I told them my daughter was seeing his son socially,” he declared with some pride.
We were all at the table. He smiled and then looked from Mama to me. I had my eyes down, and Mama’s face was always an open book.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing serious,” Mama began. “Emmie is a little annoyed with Evan at the moment.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“He’s full of himself,” I said.
“Just a young boy feeling his oats,” Mama muttered.
“Oats, huh? Flirting with other girls?”
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes it was better to let someone else fill in the blanks using his or her own imagination. That way, it seemed as if you didn’t lie so much.
“Well, you don’t worry about it,” Papa said, patting my hand. “If he doesn’t know how lucky he is to have your attention, then he’s not the young man I thought he was. Besides, you’re too young to be having love problems.”
I nodded. “Yes, Papa. You’re right,” I said. I gave him the best smile I could muster, and he quickly changed the subject.
As soon as Mama and I finished cleaning up, I went to my room and saw that Carol Lee had bitten on my e-mail. In big block letters, there was a response.
You’re kidding. Tell me more about it.
After having dinner, talking with Papa, and listening to him and Mama talk about some of their future plans for all of us, I had lost a good deal of my passion for revenge. Suddenly, it seemed juvenile and quite unimportant. I had started something, however, and I had to do something to end it, at least for now.
It’s too disgusting to write about, I told her, and shut off my computer.
Despite what had occurred between us at school, I still clung to the hope that Evan might call. By now, he probably had heard I had left sick, and I thought he would at least care about that and call to see how I was, but the phone never rang.
I tried to put on a pleasant face for Papa in the morning, even though this sense of dread washed over me almost the moment I awoke. School loomed before me like a place of gloom and doom. I was very nervous about how the other students would treat me. Would they all be laughing and hiding their gleeful smiles? Of course, I wondered if Evan would even look in my direction. I didn’t care about Chastity. Whatever would happen to her was well deserved.
I walked so slowly to school that I was almost late and had to rush from my locker to homeroom. As soon as I entered, I could see that my e-mail to Carol Lee had already taken effect. Chastity was sulking in her seat and avoided looking in my direction.
I took my seat. When the bell rang, Carol Lee and Cathy Starling were at my side almost before I could rise out of my seat.
“We want you to join us at lunch today,” Carol Lee said.
“We’ve got a lot to tell you,” Cathy added as an incentive. “Apparently, you’re not the only one she’s told these disgusting things.”
That surprised me. Was there someone else Chastity had been courting to be her best friend behind my back?
“And you have a lot more to tell us,” Carol Lee reminded me.
Their eyes twinkled with glee as they shot off ahead of me. I looked back and saw Chastity walking slowly with her head down.
Patty Marcus nudged me and nodded in Chastity’s direction. “They really gave her a hard time this morning. Did you hear?”
“No, I was almost late today. What did they do?”
“Someone put a bag of cucumbers in her locker with a disgusting note,” she said, laughing. “Everyone’s talking about it now.”
At one point during our morning classes, I thought Chastity was on the verge of apologizing to me. I imagined she’d heard the other girls talk about the confab that was going to take place in the cafeteria. I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to add anything to what I had already revealed. I knew I should have felt good about the result I had already gotten, but I didn’t. Who really wins when two friends damage each other? It all made me sick, and it was beside the point, anyway.
The point, which no one but me would understand, was that Roxy was still very much in my life, whether she wanted to be or not and whether I wanted her to be or not. And there wasn’t very much that either of us could do about it. How I would go about dealing with it was all that mattered now.
The first thing I did when I went to lunch was look to see where Evan was sitting. He was with some of the boys in his class, and they were sitting way off to the right. I stood for a moment to see if he would look my way. He did, but he turned right back to one of his friends as if he had never met me and had no idea who I was. Right now, it seemed our short romance had been nothing more than one of my fantasies.
What did all of those beautiful words he had said really mean? I was a discovery. Je t’aime. I love you. Was spending words like spending pennies? How much worse would I feel now if I had gone further with him in his room? How do you know when a relationship is solid and significant? How did Mama and Papa know? Was it something so special that only a very few ever have it? Was this something Roxy had realized? Did she decide to do what she was doing because she knew she would never have a relationship, never fall in love?
How could Evan tell me I was special, enjoy my company, be proud to be seen with me, and want us to be a couple one day and not even give me a second look the day after?
Maybe most important for me was the realization that I didn’t see this failure in him. I was naive. Why wasn’t there a class in school that would teach us how to recognize sincerity? Wouldn’t that be the most important class of all?
I decided not to sit with Carol Lee and the other girls. I sat at another table with girls in the ninth grade, who didn’t know much about me or what was happening. They were surprised. I just smiled and s
tarted eating. It took Carol Lee a few moments to realize it, but when she did, she came over quickly. I felt her standing there but kept eating.
“What are you doing? I told you to join our table,” she said.
I paused and looked past her at her table. The girls there suddenly resembled starving dogs, hungry for my pornographic gossip. I had no doubt that the pack would turn on any one of them if it meant they could enjoy some erotic pleasure. Chastity was just the flavor of the day. Gazing around a little more, I didn’t see her. Had she done what I had done and gone to the nurse’s office to get herself excused from the rest of the school day? Unlike her, I didn’t realize any new pleasure from the thought. I was actually beginning to feel sorry for her, despite what she had done. But I always had felt sorry for her.
“I really don’t want to hear any more about her,” I said.
“Well, what about what more you promised to tell us? You said it was too disgusting to write about. So?”
“I didn’t promise,” I said, and continued eating my sandwich.
“You know you’re really as sick as she is,” she said, her face reddening.
I imagined she had assured them that I had promised to give them some more shocking information. She was like their star reporter.
“I know why you wrote that e-mail,” she continued, still practically on top of me. “You wanted to get back at her. You used me. Well, I did it, so now you owe me. I want to hear all about your sister, too, and I mean right now.”
She stamped her foot like a little girl throwing a tantrum. The ninth-grade girls at the table all stopped eating. They were mesmerized by the scene being played out before them. Other students at other tables were starting to look in our direction. Suddenly, I saw Chastity way in the rear, sitting with two girls who were about as popular as the measles. She was looking my way, too, probably terrified of what else I was going to reveal.
“Well?”
I folded up the remainder of my sandwich, put it back on the tray, and picked up the tray.
“Good,” she said, and turned victoriously toward her table and her friends.
Forbidden Sister Page 11
