Christine Deriso - Then I Met My Sister

“I’ll miss it, too,” he says. “But I’ve already reserved this picnic bench for senior year. And we can hang out this summer, right?”

I fake-pout. “Mom’s sentenced me to hard labor, remember?”

Gibs’ eyes narrow.

“My aunt’s flower shop,” I remind him.

“Oh, right. How often do you work?”

I shrug. “I don’t go back until Saturday. But after school is out, Aunt Nic will probably start giving me weekday hours. I’m sure we’ll have time to hang out, though. Just you, me, and my raging allergies.”

Leah Rollins and Kendall Popwell walk past the gym in shorts and cheerleading T-shirts, offering fluttery waves as they approach Gibs and me. Both girls’ hair is flat-ironed into sleek, smooth submission—Leah’s brown, Kendall’s bottle-blond. Kendall is prettier but Leah is skinnier, and thinness trumps all in their circles. Besides, Leah’s always the center of the universe, so Kendall just sort of orbits around her. I cringe, recalling my stint as Orbiter-in-Chief.

Gibs waves back gamely.

“How’d you do on the Chaucer test?” Leah asks him.

“Okay, I think,” Gibs says.

Kendall snorts. “‘Okay’ probably means an A plus in Gibs’ world,” she says.

He’s brushing off the compliment, explaining that Chaucer was really tough for him (yeah, right), but I’m not paying attention. A slow boil is simmering in my chest. I hate to sound petty, but it really chaps my ass that Leah and Kendall are reading Chaucer with Gibs in honors classes while the headiest reading they do in their spare time is Cosmo. I know, I know … I have no one to blame but myself for not being in those classes (I really could crack a textbook now and then, other than during finals). But honors courses should require thinking an original thought once or twice in your life, shouldn’t they?

“Summer?” Leah says, and I realize she’s repeating herself.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “What?”

“I asked what you’re studying.” She’s inching closer, to peer at the history book I’m holding.

“History,” I say.

“Yeah, but which one?”

Snothead. She loves rubbing my C-list academic standing in my face.

“Ms. Pilcher’s class, right?” Kendall volunteers helpfully, making it clear that yes, that’s the class one tier up from remedial.

“Right,” I say evenly.

“Isn’t Brice Casdorph in that class?” Kendall asks.

Touché. He’s the one who was just arrested for vandalism.

“Mmmmmm,” I reply.

“So your final is today?” Leah asks.

“Mmmmm.”

“Well … good luck with that.”

I manage a fake smile as they walk away. “Bitches,” I murmur under my breath.

“What?” Gibs asks earnestly. “What did they say?”

I roll my eyes. “You don’t get girl vibes at all, do you?”

He studies my face for a few seconds, then pulls a knee against his chest. “So,” he says, changing the subject, “what’s the latest with Shannon?”

Aaaahhh, Shannon. I’m tempted to tell him that I’ve been too busy with finals to think much about her, but the truth is, I’m nothing short of obsessed. Did you kill yourself, Shannon? Please tell me you didn’t kill yourself. I can’t quite bear that thought. And what other secrets might you harbor? Anything that might, oh, I don’t know, totally screw with my mind?

Every morning on the way to school, I drive past the tree she hit—three blocks up the street from our house, a few yards past the stop sign after the right turn, past three ranch-style houses and around a little curve, right before a park just half a mile from the high school …

I’ve always known which tree it is (Mom and Grandma still place flowers there), but I never thought much about it until I started reading Shannon’s journal. Now, that stupid giant oak tree practically taunts me, casting its gnarled branches like an arthritic Satan, looming over me like a gray, wizened wraith. It creeps me out to see kids playing near it on the swings and merry-go-round.

Thank God school will be over in a couple days and I won’t have to drive past the tree again until senior year starts. But I can’t avoid Shannon’s journal. I haven’t read any more of it since the night I opened it; finals actually feel like something of a godsend for once, an excuse to stay busy. But I can already feel her words luring me back, like the branches of that tree.

“Have you read any more of the journal?” Gibs asks.

“No,” I say. “And maybe I won’t.”

He considers my words, then nods sharply.

But he knows. I can see in his eyes that he knows.

I’m not fooling anybody.

You’d figure I’d have big plans tonight, since I’ve just finished my last day of school. But you’d figure wrong. Gibs is at a Habitat for Humanity meeting (should I admit how much I miss him?) and I have to work at Aunt Nic’s shop tomorrow, so I am actually calling it a night at the embarrassingly respectable hour of ten p.m. But not before I take a deep breath and reach for the journal I’ve tucked under my mattress. “Hi, Shannon,” I say sleepily, then turn to her next entry. Saturday, June 5, 1993 I sneaked out last night to see Chris. I’ve perfected my system: Dad checks the locks at ten o’clock every night, then goes to bed. Mom stays up to watch another hour of TV, then starts the dishwasher and calls it a night. The dishwasher is pretty quiet for the first ten minutes or so, when it’s filling up with water. But then, the water starts churning and the motor sounds like bullfrogs on speed. That’s when I make my move, slipping downstairs and out the sliding glass doors. From that point, I walk across the deck and tiptoe down the stairs into the back yard, Then all I have to do is duck when I pass Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom window, unlatch the gate, run down the side of the yard, and walk a block down the street, where Chris is waiting at the stop sign to pick me up. Dad has caught me a couple of times sneaking back in, but he just shakes his head. Who is Dad to lecture me about sneaking around? Chris and I are tossing around the M word. Crazy, I know. I didn’t even have my first date until eleven months ago! While all my friends were flirting and pairing up from, like, seventh grade on, I was starting petitions to improve crosswalk signage. So who knew I’d fall so hard and so fast for my first real boyfriend? He wants to go into his dad’s welding business as soon as we graduate, so if I stay in town for college, we can get M’d right away. (I can’t even bring myself to write down the word!) Chris says the M word stands for ‘maybe later,’ the stinker. But he’s just kidding. Did I mention that Chris is the greatest guy in the free world? God, I love him so much. In other news, Mom has blackmailed me into seeing a shrink. She said she’ll take my car away if I don’t. My first appointment is Monday. I think I’ll mess with his mind by telling him I talk to trees and can make things spontaneously combust. No need to get into the messy truth that Mom is a control freak who thinks she can live my life. She’ll love the whole M plan. Maybe Chris and I will even live in a trailer. We’ll have barbecues on Saturday nights and serve squirrel. She can wear her pearls. I wonder if she bribed the shrink to install a computer chip in my head so she can program my life.

I shake my head slowly as I prop myself up on my elbow. Marriage? At seventeen? To a loser she had to sneak out of the house to see? No wonder Mom hired a shrink.

I know Mom’s a control freak, Shannon, I think. Nobody can relate to that better than I can. But, God, you’re an idiot. No offense. And while I’ve got your attention … would it kill you to spell out exactly what’s up with Dad?