“Where have you been?” she asks, demanding more answers. She’s mortified, I can tell, and I feel slightly guilty as she glances over her shoulder to ensure no one is here, then grabs my elbow and pulls me into the living room. “I told you to be here tonight and you think you can just stroll in herenowacting the way you just did?” She closes her eyes in exasperation and massages her temples, like I’m a headache she’s trying to soothe away.
I’m still super aware that I’ve been drinking, so I take a couple steps back from her, increasing the distance between us. I don’t want to add any more fuel to the fire. “I’m not even late,” I mutter, because, technically, she told me to be here and I am.
“You’re two hours late!” she yells at me, her eyes flashing open again. She usually lets me off the hook a lot quicker than she is now, and I really wish she wouldn’t choose right now to argue with me.
I laugh again, but only to stop myself from losing it. “You really think I’m gonna come home to watch a damn barbecue?”
Mom exhales as her gaze softens. “What is your problem this time?”she asks, pacing back and forth in front of me as though she’s trying to figure out the underlying reason for my behavior tonight. Admittedly, I’m not usually as agitated as this. “Forget about the barbecue. You were acting like a little kid before you even got out of the car. What’s wrong?”
I’ve never been able to look Mom in the eye when I lie, so I clench my jaw and turn my face away from her, looking at the window. “Nothing.”
“It’s clearly not nothing,” she snaps back, and the softness to her expression is gone. I hate it when she gets like this. She gets mad at me a lot, but usually more in the frustrated, helpless sort of sense. This time, I really have pissed her off. “You just humiliated me again in front of half the neighborhood!”
“Whatever,” I say.
Mom goes silent for a second, and when I look back over at her, she’s shaking her head at the floor and murmuring, “I shouldn’t have let you leave. I should have just made you stay, but no, of course I didn’t, because there I was trying to cut you some slack, and you throw it back in my face as usual.”
“I would have left anyway,” I argue, because this is true. Even if I didn’t already have plans tonight, there’s no way I would have stuck around here, and Mom knows that. I don’t know why she even tries anymore. I wish she’d just give up on me. “What are you gonna do? Ground me again?” I take a challenging step toward her, failing to hold back my laughter again. I’ve been grounded for the past two years, I believe. It’s nothing but an empty threat that Mom never follows through with.
“You’re impossible.” She looks away then, staring straight past me and over my shoulder as her expression shifts. Her frustration with me seems to dissolve, and she furrows her eyebrows instead as she gently pushes past me and heads for the door.
I sigh and push my hand back through my hair, tilting my head back so that I can stare at the ceiling. If I have another argument tonight, I might just combust.
Mom says something and I quickly spin around to find her lingering just outside the door, only it’s not me she’s focused on. I don’t know who she’s talking to, so I move across the living room and peer around the door.
There’s a girl awkwardly spread across the stairs, eyes wide with alarm as though she’s absolutely terrified. I don’t know who the hell she is, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen her around before. I’m sure I haven’t. I narrow my eyes at her, studying her more intensely. She doesn’t look that much younger than me, so I seriously can’t figure out why I’ve never seen her around school before, and given the fact she’s a brunette, I’m sure I would recognize her. Her anxious gaze doesn’t leave mine, which makes me begin to wonder why she’s so nervous in the first place, but I don’t wonder for long because I become distracted by how plump her lips are as she presses them together and swallows. This girl definitely isn’t from here. I know for sure that I would recognize her if she was. How couldn’t I?
The muscle in my jaw tightens when I realize what I’m thinking. Tiffani would kill me if she heard my thoughts right now.
“Who the hell is this chick?” I finally demand, tearing my eyes away and looking expectantly at Mom instead.
She takes a minute to think about her answer, and even she seems a little nervous too. “Tyler,” she says quietly as she places her hand on my arm, “this is Eden. Dave’s daughter.”
At first, I don’t quite process her words. “Dave’s kid?”
The girl straightens up, standing up, and she opens those plump, wet lips of hers and says nothing but, “Hi.”
My eyes are drawn back to hers at the sound of her voice. It’s low and husky, even a little raspy, and it is so different and so new to me that I freeze on the spot, paralyzed by a single syllable. Even on her feet, she’s still several inches shorter than me, so I stare down at her, trying to make sense of the information that’s pushing down on me. This girl… This brunette girl with the full lips and the husky voice…is my stepsister?
No. Fucking. Way.
When Mom said Dave’s kid was going to be living with us over the summer, I didn’t even pay that much attention, and now I’m really wishing that I had. I didn’t realize she’d be around my age. How old is she anyway? I want to ask, but I can’t even part my lips, let alone form words. I feel like someone has knocked the air out of me. I swallow hard and look at Mom again. “Dave’s kid?” I repeat, but it’s almost a whisper. I’m in complete and utter disbelief.
Mom sighs. “Yes, Tyler,” she says, almost like she’s exasperated. “I already told you she was coming. Don’t act stupid.”
Although I’m looking primarily at Mom, I’m also looking at the girl as surreptitiously as I possibly can out of the corner of my eye, because I seriously can’t look away. The makeup around her eyes is smudged a little. “Which room?”
Mom’s expression flashes with confusion. “What?”
My throat is starting to feel dry. “Which room is she staying in?” I urge.
And then Mom says it, the answer I was dreading: “The one next to yours.”
I groan, finally becoming unrooted from the spot. We have two spare guest rooms upstairs, and of course Mom has to give her the room next door to mine. I don’t want to be anywhere near this girl, not becauseI have a girlfriend, but because this girl is my stepsister. God. I never thought I’d ever have to stay away from a girl because ofthatreason.
My anger is surfacing again, and I don’t even realize I’ve been glaring at her until I feel the strain in my forehead from narrowing my eyes for too long. I couldn’t stick around at Tiffani’s place, but now I can’t stick around here either. Everything that has happened in the past hour is seriously starting to get to me.
Nudging my way past Mom, I storm upstairs, and I have no choice but to brush past this girl who is going to be in my way for the entire summer. I knock against her shoulder, and I can’t bring myself to apologize, because all I can think about is getting the hell away from her. I march into my room, slamming the door behind me and pacing around in a circle for a good minute or so until I collect my thoughts. They’re all over the place, and I have to play some music as loud as I can through my speakers in order to distract myself. Once my breathing has calmed, I pause and glance around. Mom has made my bed and picked up my clothes from the floor again. They’re folded and left in a neat pile on top of my dresser. I should put them away, but I’ve discovered that if I leave them there long enough, then Mom’ll give in and put them away herself. I’ve also discovered that the only reason Mom doesn’t mind tidying up my room every morning is because she likes to raid the place in search of anything she doesn’t approve of.
