Kip talked more about deciding to cut her hair, change her name, change her clothes, but I got fixed on what she’d said about Dixie being mad at herself for not being like me. Could that be true even a little bit? I couldn’t imagine how. Dixie had friends, Dixie was cute, Dixie got along better with Mom and Dad. What was there about me to like? To want?
We were at the motel. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Kip asked. “Do you want me to go in with you and see if she’s there? If you want me to get Ryan’s number—”
“No. I’m fine.” I pushed the car door open, caught up in my own thoughts, but before I could get out, Kip grabbed my arm. I looked back at her.
“Um, good-bye?” she said. “I mean, you’re not just going to get out of the car and slam it in my face after I drove you all around today and everything.”
“Oh.” I reached into my jacket pocket. “I could give you some gas money. . . .”
Kip laughed, then just sat there with her face turned to me. I couldn’t see her eyes too well in the car but she didn’t seem mad. “We’re friends, Gem. Don’t worry about it. But don’t jump out of my car without saying good-bye.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Call me if you need help. Call me if you don’t. Text me or whatever. Stay in touch. Let me know what happens.”
“Yeah. I will. Bye.”
She leaned over and hugged me. I got out and watched her drive off. I waved.
When I went up to the room, Dixie wasn’t there but her stuff was. Not that her stuff was anything she would need to come back for. She was wearing her new clothes, her boots.
I turned off the light and lay on the bed.
I could hear the TV in the room on the other side of the wall. And sometimes passing headlights would beam moving light onto the ceiling. The heater fan rumbled on and shuddered off at random intervals; it made my muscles tense up every time.
But I was all alone.
This is what it’s like without Dixie, I told myself.
I’d slept alone before. There were all those times she’d spent the night somewhere else. And then there were all the ways she made me invisible to her at school, and all the ways she ignored me at home. There were the times she yelled at me to leave her alone, or gave me the silent treatment. But there’s a way a person is there even when they aren’t and even when they don’t want to be. A way a sister is there.
That night, though, I knew she could be gone. Really gone. Because she’d told me from the beginning she wouldn’t go back without the money, and then I gave it to her. Most of it, anyway. I might as well have said Go home.
I let that idea, of her going back and me going forward, sink way down into my heart and pump through me with my blood. The way Kip wasn’t part of Julia and Jessa anymore—what if I wasn’t part of Gem and Dixie? Would I still be me? Kip talked about wanting to be herself, but I couldn’t think who I was without Dixie to take care of, or Dixie to avoid, or Dixie to be mad at. Dixie to feel hurt by, Dixie to feel jealous of.
I made an image of myself in my mind. Walking on a road, in the clothes Dixie had chosen for me. Me, putting one boot in front of the other, moving forward, forward, with my back to whoever could see me, whoever was watching.
And I realized it was Dixie. Dixie was the one watching, the one whose eyes I saw myself through as I walked away.
25.
I FELL asleep for a couple of hours and woke up with a stiff neck and a growling stomach. My arm throbbed. I wished I’d thought to get a few more pills from Kip, also that I’d eaten more at the party or at least stuffed some cheese cubes into my pockets.
Dixie hadn’t come back.
Yet, I thought, almost as a reflex. Still, I had to start figuring out what I would do after I checked out of the motel at noon—eleven hours away. Where could I go next? I had less than two hundred dollars left of what we’d doled out to ourselves in the dressing room. This wasn’t a game. Either I had to go home, or this was my life now.
And I wasn’t going home.
I moved in the dark to the little desk with the phone and clicked on the light, sat in the wheeled chair. The phone had buttons for the front desk and for emergencies. The instruction card next to it detailed the prices for personal calls and how they’d be add