Chapter fourteen

I heard a door slam inside the house, followed by muffled shouting—sounded like those two boys and my aunt Terry again—and hurriedly zipped Marin’s purse shut. I wedged it between the back of the couch and the wall and then did the same with my backpack. I guessed that meant I was settled in.

I made my way to the kitchen sink and began washing the dishes, jumping each time someone made a sharp noise behind me—which happened every few minutes. I could hear the family convene in the living room. The volume on the television ratcheted up, my grandmother and Aunt Terry talking, occasionally barking a laugh or groaning or making loud “ooooh” sounds. These were the sounds of a home, but they weren’t the sounds of my home. Nobody was asking how my day went, whether or not I had homework to do, how the spring musical was coming along, or whether I was ready for finals. There was no humming, no chirping cartoon voices in the background, no hiss of Ronnie popping open a beer. The sounds in this house didn’t belong to me—they belonged to another family, one I wasn’t a part of. In some ways it seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d last heard the sounds of my home. It seemed like I’d belonged to another family in a different life, a dream life, one that wasn’t even real.

Nathan and Kyle ran in and out of the kitchen randomly with what seemed like endless energy.

“You’ve got pimples, ” one of them—I wasn’t sure which was which—said to me, and they both burst into giggles. I ignored them, tried to feel sorry for them, which didn’t work. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.

By the time I was finished drying the dishes and opening and closing cabinets until I figured out where they all were supposed to go, I was exhausted. Instead of following the voices into the living room, I went back to my porch, looking forward to being alone and going to sleep.

So much of my life was about being alone now.

I pushed through the screen door, only to find the two girls, Lexi and Meg, sitting on the couch. I froze.

“You got any money? ” the older one, the one Grandmother Billie had called Lexi, asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t have anything at all, ” I said.

The other one, Meg, squinted her eyes at me. “You came in here with a purse and a backpack. We saw.” She unwound her legs from the couch and stood up.

She was about nose-height to me, and skinny as a rail. She looked like she was maybe fourteen or so, a couple years younger than me.

“There isn’t any money in those, ” I said, forcing my voice to come out steady, strong.

“We know you were a little rich girl, ” Lexi said, standing next to her sister. “Our dad told us about your mom’s job and all.”

I laughed. “My mom had a job, but we were far from rich. She didn’t get any child sup…” I trailed off, tucking my lips in against each other. My life without Clay wasn’t any of their business.

I studied their faces, looking for a resemblance. We shared blood, so in theory we should have looked alike in some way. My mom had always said I got my dad’s facial structure, which was why I didn’t look anything like Marin. Marin’s features were a perfect combination of Mom and Ronnie. I always felt like when it came to me, they should be singing that old Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others.”

But I couldn’t see myself in these girls, either. Their jaws were sharp where mine was soft. Their eyes were wide and blue, as opposed to my brown, narrow ones. They were skinny enough to squeeze through prison bars, where I was round and curvy. They each had a smattering of freckles across their upturned noses, which somehow made them cuter than they already were, where my face was lined around the edges with what my mom called sweat pimples. Don’t worry about them, sweetie, she’d say whenever I’d get frustrated and call myself ugly. Everybody gets sweat pimples. They’ll go away.

Meg tilted her head to the side. “Just so you know, we don’t want you here, ” she said.

“And our mom and dad don’t want you here, either, ” Lexi added. “You’re only here because Granny says you’ve got to help family, even if they’ve never acted like family before. But we don’t really think it’s fair to have to be all sisterly just because that’s what Granny believes.”

I ground my teeth, concentrating on trying to look steely. “Well, I don’t exactly want to be here, either, ” I said. “But I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”

“Granny says you’re a sad case because you’re an orphan, ” Meg added, the last word sucker-punching me.

I’m not an orphan, genius, I wanted to say. You’re only an orphan if both of your parents are dead, and my dad is still alive. But I wasn’t so sure if that was true. Could someone be an emotional orphan? If so, I was an orphan all the way.

“Our dad told us about your crazy mom, ” Lexi said, but Meg bumped her ribs.

“We’re not supposed to talk about her mom, ” she hissed.

My breathing went steady and deep, my fists clenching at my sides. I had my moments of being mad at Mom, sure, but something about hearing these two talk about her enraged me. You don’t know my mom, I wanted to say. You never will know my mom. She had more class than all of you combined. “Well, my mom’s gone now, ” I said. “She has nothing to do with anything anymore.” Inwardly, I cursed at how shaky my voice sounded. There were so many other things I wanted to say at that moment. I wanted to remind them that Clay was still my father, as much as I didn’t want him to be, and that made them my family, whether they liked it or not. Whether any of us liked it or not.

We stared each other down for what felt like forever. Inside the house, the TV blared, the children ran and cussed and knocked into things. Inside the house, the dishes were done. Inside the house, nobody cared how Lexi and Meg welcomed me.

Finally, Lexi said, “Come on, Meggie. We’ll get money out of her later.”

The two of them burst through the porch door and into the backyard, all the while stage-whispering names over their shoulders—a weak attempt to keep me from hearing them. Whale. Moron. Orphan.

I sagged onto the couch, my hands shaking so hard I had to sit on my fingers to calm them.

Not that I’d been expecting to be best friends with my half sisters, but there was no way I could live with them. If I called Ronnie and told him they’d called Mom names and said horrible things about her, he would care, right? I mean, he might not have cared about me anymore, but he loved my mom. Surely he would take me back to defend Mom.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I had another text from Dani. Still no news. Also still no Jane. Worried! I typed a message back: I hope she’s ok. Call me as soon as you hear from her! I sent the message, then typed a second one: This place is awful. Half sisters from hell. Save me! I hit Send again, then scoped out an outlet where I could charge my phone later. It was my only lifeline home. I didn’t want to think of how abandoned and cut off I would feel if it died.

Quickly, I dialed Ronnie’s number, rehearsing in my head what I would say to him. I know you think you can’t care for me right now, Ronnie, but I can help care for you. I can help you keep Marin and Mom alive in memory. I can cook and clean for you. I won’t even complain if you want to remarry.

But he never picked up his phone, and instead I left him a voice mail. “Hi, Ronnie. I just wanted to let you know that I made it down here.” I paused. “I want to come home, though. Please let me come back up. We can get through this together. Please? Call me? ” I hung up, then dialed Kolby’s number.

“Hey, ” he said, his voice sympathetic and soft, causing homesickness to rip through me. It felt like I had left years ago, not a few hours ago. It seemed impossible that it had only been a week since Kolby and I had walked home from the bus stop together. I’d borrowed his skateboard and pushed myself lazily along as we talked about how glad we were that school was almost over and the stuff we each planned to do over summer break. Neither of us would have ever dreamed we’d be doing this. “Everything okay? You still at the motel? ”

“No, ” I said. “Ronnie sent me to Caster City.”

“What the heck is in Caster City? ” he asked. I could hear the clicking of computer keys in the background, and I could imagine him sitting back in that aloof way of his, a laptop in his lap, Googling Caster City.

I took a miserable, deep breath and let it out. “My biological father.”

There was a pause. Even the keyboard clicking stopped. “I didn’t know you had a biological father, ” he said.

“Me either. Well, I knew I had one, but I was a baby when he left.”

“What’s he like? ”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him yet. But if his daughters are any hint, he’s not so whippy.”

“Whoa, wait, you have sisters? ”

“Half sisters, yeah. Meg and Lexi, the personality twins, ” I mumbled.

“So I take it you don’t like them.”

“I don’t like any of this, ” I said, feeling my voice rise, feeling my chest tighten. Why didn’t Ronnie answer my call? Didn’t he understand what he was doing to my life, what this stupid tornado had done to my life?

“How is Milton? ” I asked, switching topics before I burst.

“Fine. Dull. But, hey, at least it’s a house, right? ”

I closed my eyes and nodded. He had no idea.

“My mom is happy to be with her sisters, and Tracy is happy because we’ve got, like, a billion girl cousins. But I’m kinda sitting around with nothing to do but play games online. And my arm hurts like hell.”

“Why? ”

“Remember? I cut it on some glass? Back, you know, the day after.”

“Still? It’s not healed yet? ”

“No, it’s gross, you should see it.”

“No, thanks, ” I said, but on the inside I was thinking I would totally want to see it if only it meant I could see him, if only it meant that I could see somebody familiar and friendly. If only I could see something I recognized, something that reminded me I had a place to belong. My chest squeezed again and I feared this time I wouldn’t be able to stave off the tears. “Listen, I gotta go, ” I said. “But call me later, okay? ”

“No problem, ” he said. “And, Jersey? ”

“Yeah? ”

“Hopefully they’ll come around, ” he said. “Your half sisters, I mean. This could be good, right? Sisters? ”

I doubt it, I thought. “Yeah, definitely, ” I mumbled, then hung up, turned the phone off, and stuffed it back into my pocket. I pulled the blanket over my head and bawled into the dirty couch, the sobs reaching so far down into me, they came out dry.

I lay there crying until the sun set and the sky darkened and the noises coming from inside the house slowly dimmed, dimmed, dimmed until they were shut off. Soon all I could hear was the chirping of crickets and the buzzy noise of frogs out in the distance and the occasional shuffle of what I imagined to be wild animals. I wanted to get up and lock the screen door, sure I was going to be murdered on my couch by some madman or a coyote or both, but there was no lock on that door. I might as well have been sleeping right out in the backyard.

But soon I began to tune out the noises and cuddle up in my blankets so much that I felt somewhat cocooned by them. Eventually, exhaustion took over and I started to drift off.

Before I could get into a deep sleep, though, I was awakened by the crunching of gravel under car tires. I didn’t even fully realize that was what I was hearing until the slams of two car doors split the air.

I sat up on the couch, hearing footsteps coming around the house, hushed voices floating over the sudden silence.

The screen door slammed open, knocking my heart practically out of my chest, and then there was a scent of alcohol, and a booming voice. “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch, ” it said.

I blinked and peered through the darkness, into narrow, brown eyes that matched mine.

Standing in the doorway, swaying crookedly, balanced on a pair of beat-up cowboy boots, was my father, Clay Cameron.