Christine Deriso - Then I Met My Sister

“Right. Then you told Shannon that Jamie was pregnant.” I’m trying so hard to sound casual, you’d think we were discussing the weather.

Chris’ eyes flicker at me. “Jamie told her,” he mutters, the indignation still fresh in his voice. “Shannon would never speak to me again.”

I swallow hard. “So then, Jamie had the baby and …”

A vein in his neck throbs. “She told you she had my kid?”

“Um …”

Chris eyes me suspiciously. “What did Jamie tell you?”

I feel my face flush. “Nothing … nothing. I haven’t talked to her yet. We’re meeting later today, remember?”

He shakes a finger at me. “Well, don’t believe anything she says. That psycho is a liar.”

I glance at him anxiously. “So she didn’t have the baby.”

He eyes me suspiciously. “Are you playing some kind of game with me?”

Damn. I fold my elbows across my chest, shift my weight, and stare at my sneakers. “No, I just …”

“Look. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know, or why the hell you’re showing up on my doorstep, but I’ve said all I’m going to say.” He turns to open the front door.

“Wait …” My eyes fill with tears. “Did you love her?” I ask, and he stops in his tracks.

“Did I love Jamie?”

My jaw drops again. “No. Shannon. Did you love Shannon?”

My sister, you moron.

He shrugs. “Shannon? Yeah.”

Oh God. He might as well be commenting on his favorite football team.

I clamp my teeth together. “Because she loved you, you know.”

His eyes fall.

“ She loved you ,” I repeat, my voice trembling.

He scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah.” He looks puzzled. “We were kids, you know?”

This imbecile. This stupid clod that Shannon wanted to marry, to spend the rest of her life with, was screwing her best friend behind her back and dismissing Shannon as casually as if she’d been a girl behind a counter serving him ice cream.

“Did you even go to her funeral?” I suck in my bottom lip to steady it.

Anger flashes across his face, but then his expression softens. “It tore me up when she died,” he mutters. “Especially since I never got a chance to explain …” He sighs. “I guess there was nothing to explain. I was a jerk. But I was sorry. I wish she’d let me tell her I was sorry.”

A tear rolls down my cheek and I take a deep breath. “Do you think she hit that tree on purpose?”

His shoulders stiffen. “On purpose? You mean, because of … ?”

He can’t even comprehend it—being heartbroken enough, betrayed enough, to want to die.

“No,” he says emphatically, but it’s obvious he was considering the possibility for the first time. Bastard. Did he even lose a single night’s sleep over Shannon’s death?

I hug my arms tighter across my chest, shivering in the humid ninety-degree heat. What do I want from him? A lifetime of teeth-gnashing?

I don’t know. But I can’t bear him reducing Shannon to a fling, an afterthought.

“I wish I’d been here to protect my sister from guys like you.”

Chris plants a hand on his hip and wags his finger at me again. “Like I said, I don’t know why you showed up on my doorstep, but the past is the past. That’s it.”

He turns around, flings his front door open with a flourish, and slams it shut behind him.

That’s it.

The rubber soles of my sneakers pad down the concrete apartment steps. Thud, thud, thud. I reach the landing and run toward Gibs’ car in the parking lot.

He gets out of the driver’s seat as I approach him. I fall into his arms, crying.

“Bastard. Bastard ,” I mutter.

“What did he say?” Gibs asks, pulling my shoulders back so he can study my face.

I shake my head, squeezing tears out of my eyes. “She was nothing to him. A fling! It never even crossed his mind that she might have wrecked her car on purpose.”

“He said that?”

I nod. “Among other things. Remember Jamie, the ‘best friend’?”

Gibs’ eyes prod me on.

“He got her pregnant. Chris got her pregnant! That’s what Shannon was so upset about.”

Gibs exhales slowly.

“It was just another summer vacation to him,” I say bitterly. “Shannon was nothing but some cute girl to hook up with. As long as he got what he wanted from her, he was happy enough. Then, when he got bored … on to the next girl.”

Gibs interlaces his fingers with mine. “I think that’s all that most guys are capable of at this age.”

I shake my head. “Why couldn’t she have met someone like you?”

His dark blue eyes look so kind. Usually he looks down when I compliment him, but this time, his eyes stay locked with mine. “Thank you,” he says softly.

A breeze ripples through my hair. “She wanted to marry him,” I say, rolling my eyes at the stupidity of it all. “Shannon was so smart, but she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this stupid, shallow guy. If only she’d listened to Mom.”

Gibs studies me closely, then the slightest of smiles creeps across his lips.

I drop my head and laugh. I’m as stunned as he is at what I’ve just said.

Thirty-Seven

“Excuse me …”

I hadn’t planned on stopping by Mr. Kibbits’ classroom. It’s registration day at school and I’ve come to the cafeteria to pick up my schedule. It was while I was standing in the N-Z line, smiling nonchalantly at familiar faces as they milled around the room, that I decided to pop my head into his room. I’m glad I haven’t thought it through. I have no idea what I’m going to say to him. I’m not even sure he’s here.

But he is.

“Summer!” he says brightly, looking up from his desk as he sees me hovering in the doorway. His gray hair looks freshly trimmed, framing his boyish face. His tie is loosened.

“Come in, come in!” he adds, glancing at the piece of paper I’m holding. “A problem with your schedule?”

I shake my head.

He smiles. “I didn’t think so. Come sit down.”

He nods toward a chair by his desk, then stands up and waves me toward it.

I sit down as he gathers the papers on his desk into a stack and moves them aside. He crosses his arms, leans back casually, and looks me in the eye.

“So. How are you doing?”

I tug a lock of hair. “Okay. I just wanted to say hi.”

He pauses, studying my face. “Have you finished Shannon’s journal?”

My eyes fall, and I stare at my fingers. “ She didn’t finish it,” I say softly. “Life just … left her hanging, you know?”

He pauses, then nods. “I guess that’s what ultimately happens to everybody. We’re here one day, gone the next.” He clears his throat. “I didn’t mean to sound insensitive,” he qualifies.

“It’s okay,” I insist. “I know it’s a bummer she died so young, but I’m kinda getting that. We’re here one day, we’re gone the next, and life goes on.”

I steal a glance at him. “Did you know her boyfriend got her best friend pregnant?”

Mr. Kibbits blushes and looks at his lap. “There were rumors.”

“Did Jamie have the baby?”

He tugs at the knot in his tie. “No. She was in school that fall.”

“An abortion?”

He blushes again. “I don’t know, Summer. Maybe a miscarriage. I never knew Jamie very well, and I think she dropped out before she graduated. But she was in school most of the year, and she obviously wasn’t pregnant. For whatever reason, her pregnancy didn’t last long.”

“And Chris?” I persist. “Did she and Chris stay together?”

He shakes his head vigorously. “I don’t think they were ever together.”