Chapter nineteen

My half sisters were sitting on my couch, laughing.

“You look like an old lady, ” I heard one of them say, but my mind was unable to make sense out of what exactly I was seeing.

They had Marin’s purse. It was open on Lexi’s lap, the contents bared to the world. Marin’s things. My things.

“What…? ” I started, but then I noticed that both of them were chewing gum, the foils wadded up and tossed onto the couch, and they both had pink, lipstick-smeared mouths. Lexi was clutching Mom’s lipstick in her hand, rolled all the way to the top, the pretty slanted point ruined. Across the front of the purse they had written “COW” in Mom’s lipstick.

“You got some seriously messed-up taste in lipstick, Granny, ” Lexi said, but she looked nervous as she said it, as if she knew they had crossed the line this time.

I reached out and snatched the lipstick out of her hand. “That was my mother’s, ” I said, feeling a rage swelling so big inside me, I wasn’t sure how to contain it. I’d unclenched my teeth, and everything I’d been feeling in that car ride home—hell, everything I’d been feeling since the tornado—strained to get out of me. I felt bare and taut, an exposed nerve, a caged animal, a spring.

I’d lost everything at this point. I had nothing left but my memories—the ones that came from me, the ones I could trust—and they were trying to steal those, too. They couldn’t. I wouldn’t let them. If I let go of my memories, I might never recognize me again.

“Well, your mom has gross taste, then, ” Meg said.

I reached down and picked up the purse, grabbed the foils they’d discarded on the couch, dropped everything inside, then hurriedly zipped the purse shut and hugged it to my shoulder, the lipstick they’d drawn on the outside smearing up against my skin.

“Hey, ” Meg said, standing up, her nose a couple inches away from my chin. Lexi followed half a beat later but took a small step to the side, hanging back a little. Meg grabbed for the purse, but I clamped my elbow down on it. “Nobody said you could have that back.”

“It’s not yours to take, ” I said.

“Anything in my house is mine to take, ” she said. “And if I want to take your ugly-ass lipstick and your little gum stash, I will. And that goes for anything else you might have, Jersey Cow. Because you don’t get to say what goes on in this house. You don’t belong here and everyone knows it.”

“Meg, ” Lexi said. I glanced over. Lexi was looking worriedly between her sister and me. “Come on, let’s go to Jeff’s party now.”

“What? ” Meg said defensively. “It’s the truth. The only reason she’s here is nobody wants her.”

She had turned toward her sister, but my eyes were firmly planted on Meg. On her delicate little ear with the earrings snaking up the side. On her sharp, freckled cheekbone. On the corner of her hateful little mouth, where lipstick collected in a pink pool.

My mother’s face swam before my eyes, coming out of the bedroom, the pink lipstick making her skin look creamy and smooth. Marin’s voice echoed in my ears: It’s for special. I like it sharp.

And now the tip was blunt and ragged, ugly. It had been stretched across the lips of two horrid girls who had only worn it to be cruel, had been dragged across the face of Marin’s purse, no longer special, no longer new. That lipstick had probably been Marin’s most prized possession, and these two bitches had no right.

Before I knew what was happening, my hand reached out and grabbed Meg’s face, slapping up against her mouth as I dug my fingers in and clawed, trying to wipe the lipstick from her lips. She didn’t deserve it; she wasn’t special enough. These were my memories. Mine. And I would die before I would let anyone take them from me.

Meg gave a surprised little yelp, stumbling backward. Her heels caught the edge of the couch and she sprawled back onto the floor, her head knocking against the boards loudly. I followed her down, clawing and scratching at her face, mashing her lips against her teeth with my palms, dragging my hands across her mouth over and over again.

I was so intent on getting my sister’s lipstick back, I was only vaguely aware of the racket we were making. I was grunting, crying, repeating that she didn’t deserve to use my sister’s lipstick, that she wasn’t special enough, to give it back. Meg was screaming as much as she could through my fingers, her eyes wide and frightened, her hands flailing at my hair, my face, my chest. And in the background, I heard Lexi’s voice as she cried for help.

There was blood. I could see there was blood. Meg’s pink mouth had been replaced by a much larger red one. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything anymore. What did it matter? What did anything matter now? I was alone. I had no home, no family, nowhere that I belonged. In that moment, I finally and truly understood what it meant to have nothing to lose.

I kept after her until I was yanked to my feet roughly by two hands under my armpits. As soon as I was pulled off her, Meg curled up on one side, her arms flung over her mouth, her cries more like muffled shrieks.

I turned wildly, half ready to fight whoever had pulled me from her, but was surprised to see that it was Grandfather Harold. His fingers dug into my shoulders, his face a deep, wrinkled scowl. Lexi gaped at me over his shoulder, trembling, tears running down her cheeks.

“Let me go! ” I shrieked, twisting violently out of his grasp.

“What the hell is going on? ” Grandmother Billie said, bursting through the screen door, her nightgown swishing and swinging above her hairy ankles. She looked from Meg to Lexi to my grandfather to me, her head whipping around almost comically.

“She attacked Meg, ” Lexi said. “She scratched her up bad.”

I turned my hands over and gazed at the blood on my fingers. I was still out of breath, so angry I could hear my pulse in my ears, but in a way what had just happened seemed impossible, like it had happened to someone else. Had my hands not been all bloody, I might even have tried to deny it.

Grandmother Billie hurried over to Meg and knelt next to her, trying to pry her arms away from her mouth so she could see the damage.

“They…” I said, then paused. How could I continue? They stole my sister’s lipstick. They stole my memories.

Grandfather Harold took a heavy step toward me. “These girls ain’t never been in a lick of trouble until you got here. Now I understand why Ronnie wanted to be rid of you.”

“I’ve never been in trouble, either! ” I cried out. “You don’t have any idea what I’m like.”

“I shouldn’t have agreed to this, family or not, ” Grandmother Billie said.

By this time, Terry had joined the crowd, staring out through the screen door, Jimmy perched on one hip, rubbing his eyes. She pushed Jimmy’s head against her shoulder with one palm and shushed him but didn’t say anything.

I gazed at her, feeling ashamed.

Grandfather Harold motioned to Lexi. “Help your grandmother clean up your sister. We’ll deal with you tomorrow, ” he said to me. “I s’pose we should call Tonette and get her home.”

They all shuffled back into the house, Meg’s cries turning to wet snuffles, Lexi glaring at me over her shoulder through slitted eyes. Aunt Terry watched me for a second longer; then I heard the sound of the screen door lock clicking into place.

At first I stayed rooted to my spot near the couch, the covered barbecue grill behind me, a stack of broken plastic lawn chairs close by. I blinked in the darkness, wondering how I had gotten here. How I’d gone from reading in a cozy armchair in a real bookstore to scrabbling open the skin of my half sister’s mouth in the space of half an hour. Or how I’d gone from cooking dinner for my family to sleeping alone on a porch in little more than a month. It all seemed so surreal. My life no longer felt like mine.

We’ll deal with you tomorrow, Grandfather Harold had said, and though I didn’t know exactly what he’d meant by that, I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Worse, he’d planned to call Tonette, interrupt her night of barhopping to let her know that I’d beat up her precious little girl. I would be in huge trouble, because as angry as my grandparents had been, it wouldn’t be anything compared to how angry Clay and Tonette would be when they found out.

“Well, I’m not going to give you the chance, ” I said aloud. I needed to get out of this place where truth and lies swirled and bled together and stole all that I had left of me. I dropped to my knees and felt around until my hands landed on my backpack, which had been stuffed far behind the sofa, probably when Lexi and Meg were looking for something to steal. I pulled it out. It had been unzipped, but it didn’t look like anything was gone. I quickly grabbed the blanket that lay folded up at the end of the couch, stuffed it inside, zipped it, and pounded through the screen door into the night.

I wasn’t sure where to go. I hadn’t wandered around enough to have more than a vague idea of what was beyond the cookie-cutter houses and the strip malls. I could see pastures behind the house, and a thicket of trees on one side. I could maybe find an old barn to sleep in, or a clearing under a tree. But what if a storm came? I hated that I now got panicky over something so silly, but I couldn’t help it. Every day that the tornado sank deeper into my soul, I became more and more afraid of it.

In the end I decided to go with what was familiar, and headed into town.