“I thought you were going to kick everyone out!” I say to Roger.
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“Obviously!” I snap. I push past him and storm downstairs. I stride into the living room, and there is pee on the wall, and Chuck is zipping up his frickin’ pants.
“Sorry, man,” he slurs. “Where’s the john?”
His friends think this is the best show in town. Derek is doubled over with hilarity.
“Get out of my house,” I say. My voice is shrill.
Drunk Chuck comes over to me and slings his arm around me. “Aw, baby, don’t be like that.”
I shove him off. “The party is over. Everybody leave.”
Nobody leaves.
“Now!” I bark. “Get. Out. Now!” They stare at me like I’m a talking puppy, a curiosity, and I throw back my head, close my eyes, and SCREAM.
I hear commotion. I hear some guy say, “Dude, bitch needs her meds.”
“Give her some Midol, man,” another guy says. “She is majorly on the rag.”
“You heard her,” Roger says in his deep voice. Usually it’s a gentle deep voice. Now it’s an intimidating deep voice. “Out.”
When I open my eyes, Roger is shoving Chuck toward the front door. I watch mutely as he herds Derek and the junior guys out. Then the brandy girls, one of whom keeps trying to persuade Roger that she can’t leave because she lost her earring and it’s her favorite.
“Bye,” Roger says. “Vaarwel. Don’t come back.”
“Where’s Peyton?” I ask him. “Where’s Vonzelle?”
“Someone puked in the kitchen. Vonzelle’s cleaning it up.”
I absorb this, and I wish I could feel grateful. Instead, I say, “What about Peyton? Where’s Peyton—and for that matter, where’s Cole?”
Roger looks at me the way he always does when I mention Cole. Like I’m letting him down.
“No,” I say, my hands curling into fists. “You can’t make me feel like I’m the jerk here.”
He walks over to me, closer and closer until he’s right there. He looks directly into my eyes. “Carly . . .”
My heart is all of a sudden pounding.
“Do you remember when you said sixties music was an acquired taste?”
“No.” Maybe.
“Well, maybe I’m an acquired taste, too.”
I swallow. I kind of can’t believe he’s saying this.
“I don’t play the guitar,” he goes on. “I don’t have soulful eyes, and I’m not good at cool remarks.”
My palms are sweating, and he does have soulful eyes. Soulful brown eyes that are making my body respond in an extremely unexpected manner. “Roger . . .”
“When you figure it out, I’m here,” he says. “I will always be here.”
His words strip me bare, and what’s underneath scares the heck out of me. Roger must see a bit of this, because his expression changes. It goes from solemn to surprised, from surprised to hopeful—and his hope is so raw I can’t take it.
“If Peyton’s with Cole, I’m going to kill her,” I say. “She knows how much I like Cole. She knows he’s mine.”
It’s like I’ve punched him. I have to leave, I have to stop seeing his wounded eyes, so I turn on my heel and jog upstairs. I look in my room—no Peyton. I go to Anna’s room. The door is closed, and my breath grows shallow. I twist the knob and burst in, and Cole is in bed with Peyton, only it isn’t Peyton—it’s Anna. Anna is with Cole. Anna is with Cole, and Cole is on top of her. His lips are on hers and his hand is under her shirt, except it’s not her shirt. It’s my shirt. His hand is under my shirt, which is on my sister.
Cole startles at the sound that comes out of me. Anna looks up, blinks, and gives a confused, swollen-lipped smile.
“Hi, Carly,” she says. She giggles.
“Get out of my house,” I tell Cole.
“Carly, babe, relax.”
“Get out of my house and out of my life,” I say furiously.
He slides off Anna and off her bed. He looks at me, not her, and rakes his hand through his hair. “There’s no reason to tell Trista, you know.”
I don’t reply.
“Carly?” Anna says.
I start to cry, and I don’t want anyone to see, so I go into the hall. My sobs rip through me. I can taste the salt of my snot.
“Carly, what’s wrong?” Vonzelle calls. She’s at the bottom of the stairs. She starts up at a jog, but I can’t handle human contact right now. I retreat to my room, close the door, and go to be with my ducks, who love me. Who don’t betray me. Who would never kiss the asshole boy I thought I liked.
In my bathroom, I drop to my knees. “Hey, guys,” I say through my tears. “Humans suck—did you know that? Take it from me, be glad you’re ducks.”
In the tub, Dandelion looks at me. Beans cocks his head and quacks.
“Yeah,” I say. I scoot on my knees toward the bucket, where Voodoo Baby’s been living the good life. “You hear that, Voodoo Baby? Be glad you’re a duck, even if you have to eat bugs.”
Voodoo Baby doesn’t respond, because Voodoo Baby is floating sideways on the surface of the water. Oh my God. Nausea churns my stomach, because ducks don’t float sideways on the surface of the water. Ducks don’t slosh when someone grabs the bucket and shakes it.
Dimly, I register the sound of my bedroom door being opened.
“Carly?” Vonzelle says.
I nudge Voodoo Baby’s tiny body. Her body moves, but not in the right way. It moves in the wrongest way possible, and my eyes fill so that I can hardly see. I have a hard time breathing, too.
Vonzelle’s feet appear beside me. “Carly, what happened?”
Then Anna’s feet join the party. Hers are bare. Bare, naked feet with ugly pink polish.
“I killed Voodoo Baby,” I tell them, lifting my head. Tears streak down my face, but my voice is distant and weird. I focus on Anna, who’s swaying. “No, I take that back. You killed Voodoo Baby.”
She starts crying.
“Oh, and I hate you,” I add. “I really, really do.”
“Don’t say that,” she says, drunk and beautiful and sobbing. “You can’t hate me. You’re my sister.”
There are things called tears running down my face, but they’re something apart from me. I gaze at her dispassionately, and it scares her. I’m neither glad nor un-glad. I’m nothing.
“Carly?” she whispers.
“I used to be your sister,” I say slowly. “But see, here’s something interesting. Can I tell you something interesting?”
“Carly,” Vonzelle says, meaning stop it and don’t and this isn’t you.
Anna’s a gasping mess. She really is such a mess, and when she reaches to touch me, I shake her off.
“I no longer want the job,” I say.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
BYE-BYE BIRDIE
I wrap Voodoo Baby’s weightless body in a washcloth. I walk past Vonzelle and Anna, angling my body so that I don’t touch either of them. There is to be no touching. I can hear Vonzelle’s words, Anna’s hysterics—how sloppy she is, how embarrassingly out of control—but all of that is outside of me. I’m outside of me, too.
I go downstairs, down the hall, through the entryway. Out the door. Cold air tries to chill me, but fails, because I’m already cold to the core. As I walk, one phrase loops continuously in my brain: Anna sucks, Anna sucks, Anna sucks.
By the time I reach the Duck Pond, I’ve begun—ironically—to thaw. My body’s still cold, but my heart can’t help but pump, and the blood inside me is warm. Deadness, it seems, can’t last in a still-alive body. That sucks, too.
Other thoughts filter in, such as the realization that actually, Cole sucks. Not instead of Anna, because Anna also sucks. But Cole has a girlfriend, or had a girlfriend, and he cheated on her. And not with me.
Clearly, I am as sucky as they come.
I bury Voodoo Baby on the shore of the pond. The other ducks are sleeping, but they’ll
wake up. Voodoo Baby won’t. I imagine her paddling about in the bucket. Paddling and happy, and then not so happy. Wanting to paddle harder, but unable to. Wanting out, but unable to get out. No duckling-size lifesaver tossed her way.
A fresh wave of crying racks my body.
“I’m sorry, Voodoo Baby,” I say. The sobs ripping out of me are grotesque, and I’m as ugly as Anna, I’m sure of it.
No, uglier.
At some point, the sobs change to gulps, the gulps change to hitchy, sniffly inhales. I’m all cried out. I sit there for a while, and then I rise from the shore, say good-bye to Voodoo Baby, and start for home. To my surprise, I want to be home. It’s late, and it’s dark, and I’ve come back to myself enough to know that I’m an idiot to be wandering the streets alone, because there are so many bad people in the world, even in wealthy Atlanta neighborhoods. There’s so much badness, period.
As I approach my house, I see that there are no longer cars lining the street. Pete’s Volvo is gone. The yellow Karmann Ghia is gone. The only car left is Roger’s mom’s station wagon.
Roger. My stomach plummets.
I enter the house through the front door, and Vonzelle almost immediately appears.
“Carly,” she says. “Thank God.” She hugs me full on.
I hug her back, close enough that our boobs squish together.
“Vonzelle . . .”
She twists her head over her shoulder. “She’s here! She’s safe!”
I glance toward the kitchen.
“Roger?” I say. My voice trembles, and Vonzelle’s eyebrows go up.
I hear the back door open and shut.
Did he leave?
“Where were you?” Vonzelle demands, pulling my attention to her. “You scared the crap out of us.”
“To bury Voodoo Baby,” I say. “I left her alone in the water.”
(I am paddling. Then paddle harder!)
My eyes burn, but I’m all dried up of tears. “I left her too long.”
Vonzelle doesn’t judge. She just looks sad.
I take a shuddery breath. I look around and say, “You cleaned up.”
“Me and Roger,” she says. She pauses. “He scrubbed Chuck’s pee off the wall.”
“Are you serious?”
“You don’t think I was going to do it, do you?”
Outside, I hear Roger’s station wagon start up. He scrubbed Chuck’s pee off the wall for me, and now he’s leaving. Why?
Because he’s now disillusioned with me the way I’m disillusioned with Cole?
Vonzelle’s cell phone rings. She fishes it out of her pocket. “Hey, Roger,” she says. My pulse picks up. I also feel ill.
“Yeah,” she says. “Okay, sure.” She listens. “No problem. Bye.”
She hangs up.
“What did he say?”
“He’s glad you’re okay.”
“Did he . . . ask to talk to me?” I know the answer already. I just have to ask.
Vonzelle shakes her head. My lungs do something wrong and painful.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she says softly. “It’s been a long night.”
As I follow her to my room, I know there’s something else I need to ask. I don’t want to, but I make myself.
“So, um, where’s Anna? Is she . . . okay?”
“She went to bed,” Vonzelle says. Her eyes slide toward me. “She was kind of a wreck. She couldn’t stop crying, and she wanted to go after you. But I didn’t let her.”
“Why not?” I say, thinking, Anna could have stood a dose of anxious neighborhood wandering. It could have done her some good.
“She was drunk, Carly.”
Oh, I think. Yeah.
Vonzelle touches my arm. She lets her fingers linger, and then drops her hand.
CHAPTER FIFTY
DUCK , DUCK , GOOSE
I let Vonzelle have my bed. I sleep in the big claw-footed bathtub with Beans and Dandelion. At first they don’t know what to make of this, but eventually Beans gets up the nerve to investigate. He waddles up to me, cocking his head. I hold still. He pit-pats from one webbed foot to another. If he tries to nip me, I’ll let him.
Instead, he settles himself in the crook of my arm. Soon, Dandelion crowds in, too.
I’m sorry about your sister, I say in my mind. Do they know? Do they miss her?
They’re just ducks.
My throat hurts.
Beans tucks his beak under his wing. Dandelion does the same thing. They breathe in sync, and it seems miraculous, their fragile chests rising and falling in harmony. I’m pretty sure they’re asleep, and within seconds, I am, too.
In the morning, I feed Beans and Dandelion and give them water. Vonzelle’s in my bed, not yet awake, and her mouth hangs open like a little kid’s. I go into the hall, where I stand for several moments outside Anna’s door. I think about how strange emotions are, because they’re real, and they can be crazy-strong, but there’s an ebb and flow to them that doesn’t have a lot to do with personal choice. At least, that’s how it works for me.
My fury at Anna, which last night crashed down and did its worst, has now retreated. I still ache inside, which proves the bad stuff happened. And I’m sure my anger will come again. But right now I’m barefoot on the damp stretch of sand left in its wake.
My love for Anna is stronger than my hate.
My love for Cole is gone, because if a guy turns out to be a jerk and not the person you thought he was, then you never were in love with him anyway. Not the real him.
I knock on Anna’s door. She doesn’t answer, so I twist the knob and go in. I’m hit with the memory of Anna and Cole glancing up at me in surprise, and God, it hurts.
“Anna?” I say, peering into the murky early-morning light.
She’s not in her bed. I flip on the lights to make certain, but no, she’s not there. Huh.
I go back into the hall. The door to my parents’ master suite is closed, but I’m sure Anna’s not in there with Tracy. Maybe she’s downstairs? Maybe she crashed on a sofa, or maybe she’s awake and having a Pop-Tart.
I go downstairs and peek into the living room. No Anna. Also, no pee stains. I still can’t believe Chuck peed on the wall.
I go down the hall and look in the TV room, where Derek had his way with the flat screen. Two sofas, five throw pillows, one chrome-and-glass coffee table. No Anna.
I cut through the dining room, where the crystals of the Waterford chandelier cast flecks of light onto the wall. I enter the kitchen and say, “Anna?”
She’s not there.
My skin starts to tingle. I head back through the lower level of the house, taking a closer look in all the rooms I’ve already searched. I don’t find her this time, either. I spot Vonzelle at the top of the staircase and say, “Where’s Anna?”
“She’s not in her room?”
“She’s not in her room or down here.”
“Is it possible she’s with Tracy?” Vonzelle asks dubiously.
I doubt it, but there’s nothing to do but check. I take the stairs two at a time, and Vonzelle and I have to bam on the door to Mom and Dad’s suite for a full five minutes before Tracy unlocks the dead bolt. She squints at us. She smells like sour wine coolers.
“What?” she says.
“Is Anna with you?” I demand.
“Is Anna with me?” she repeats, not seeming to understand the question. I interpret her confusion to mean, Why would she be? Either that, or Who’s Anna again?
I push past her and check the bathroom, the bedroom, even Mom and Dad’s huge walk-in closet.
“She’s not here,” Vonzelle says.
“Then where is she?” I cry. I dash back down the upstairs hallway. I lean over the railing and call, “Anna! An-na!”
“Why is she yelling?” I hear Tracy complain. “Crap, my head hurts.”
“We can’t find Anna,” Vonzelle tells her.
“Huh? Why not?”
As Vonzelle explains, I check Anna’s room again, as well as her
bathroom. I check my room again, and my bathroom. She’s not there. She’s not anywhere. I even check the horrid, nasty basement that no one ever goes into because it’s so mildewy and gross.
No Anna.
I hurry up the basement stairs and burst into the kitchen, where Vonzelle and Tracy stand by the island. Tracy’s face is pale, like she’s finally absorbed the fact that losing your employers’ kid is not a good thing.
“Did you find her?” she asks.
I shake my head. “She’s gone.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE
Tracy hyperventilates, blabbering about how Mom and Dad will be here in an hour.
I hyperventilate, too. I replay my last words to Anna, when I told her I no longer wanted to be her sister. Who says something like that? Who is that heartless?
“She must have gone out,” I say.
“Where?” Tracy says.
“And why hasn’t she come back?” Vonzelle adds.
“I don’t know—because she was drunk?” I say. “Maybe she passed out or something.”
“She better not have,” Tracy says. “If you’re going to pass out, you got to do it somewhere safe, where no one can get at you.”
Oh God, I think.
“And if you’re hired to look after someone’s kids, you should look after their frickin’ kids,” Vonzelle snaps. “Not get wasted on wine coolers in their parents’ bedroom.”
This shuts Tracy up. She turns a little green.
“I’m going to go look for her,” I say.
“I’ll come with you,” Vonzelle says.
“No.” I shove my feet into my black sneakers. “Somebody should be here if she comes back.”
“I’m not ‘somebody’?” Tracy says. “I’m nobody?”
I cross through the dining room and yank open the front door, Vonzelle and Tracy following on my heels.
“Should I call the police?” Tracy calls after me.
The police. Crap. Please don’t let us need the police.
I stride down the driveway. Each second ticking by is one more second without my sister.bruised and bloodied joggers
drugged-out burglars with guns
a world without my sister
“Anna!” I call. The morning light is gray; no one is out except me. “Anna!”