Then we have to make the most of it.
The same thing he said to me.
I run as fast as I can back to the cottage. When I get there, Emily is in the kitchen making dinner. She turns, sees me when I come in. My hand is on my stomach. She asks what’s wrong, and I tell her I have a stomachache, that I think I might be sick.
“Maybe you’re just hungry,” she suggests, as if it could be that easy, as if heartbreak could be likened to hunger and cured with food.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think I can eat.”
“Well, you have to eat something.”
“I can’t,” I say again. “I’ll puke if I do.”
She watches me for a long time. Then she says, “Okay,” letting me off the hook because of the look on my face and because she thinks I might actually be sick. I fight tears, desperate to get out onto the porch, to be alone before I start to cry.
Outside, everyone eats but me. I hear them through the screens of the porch, where I lie in bed with my back to them,listening to them laugh and to their conversations. The adults are drinking. Everything gets funnier the more they have to drink, though every now and then their voices go quiet, whisper-like, and I wonder what they’re talking about and if they’re talking about me.
And then I hear my name and I know. They are talking about me.
“What was wrong with Reese? Why didn’t she eat with us?”
“She said her stomach hurt,” Emily says.
“That’s too bad. She seemed fine when we were playing baseball,” Aunt Courtney says.
“I don’t know aboutfine. She was pretty moody.”
Nolan scoffs. “What else is new? She’s always moody.”
My throat tightens.
Aunt Courtney says, “I didn’t mean that. I just meant that I didn’t hear her say anything about her stomach bothering her during the game.” She pauses, says then, “Can you imagine how hard it is to be a teenager these days, with social media and all that? It’s not like when we were kids. We had it easy in comparison.”
“Do you think she’s on drugs?” Uncle Elliott asks from out of nowhere, and I know that’s what he wants them to think. That I’m on drugs. “I just mean the moodiness. I’m not saying she is, but it’s a sign. Being sullen, depressed, hostile, withdrawn.”
People are quiet, imagining me as all these things, deciding in their minds that Uncle Elliott is right, that I probably am on drugs.
Emily asks, “Like what? Like weed? Where would she even get that?”
Nolan’s voice is loud, patronizing. “Anywhere, Emily. Don’t be so naive. Half her school probably smokes weed.”
“Shhh,” Aunt Courtney says. “You don’t want her to knowwe’re talking about her.” She asks then, “Have you checked on her since we’ve been home? Have you made sure she’s okay?”
“No,” Emily says. She goes quiet and I think that’s all, justno. But then she says, “Maybe I will. Maybe I will go see how she is,” and for a minute, I flash back to when I was young, when Emily would come into my room at night and lie down beside me when I had a bad dream or didn’t feel well or couldn’t sleep. She would burrow beside me under the covers, nuzzle in close and run her fingers up and down my back until I fell asleep.
But then Mae came and everything changed. Because Mae almost died. Because, when she was born, there was a lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain due to something with her umbilical cord, because the cord came out before Mae did. Her skin was blue when she was born and her breathing was weak, which I only knew because I stood there that night, hidden behind an open door, when Nolan came home from the hospital, telling my grandparents about the color of her skin and how they weren’t sure she was going to survive the night. The doctors had all sorts of scary prognoses should she actually survive, like cerebral palsy, epilepsy, more. She stayed in the NICU for weeks, on a breathing machine. Emily stayed too (feeling guilty somehow, as if it was all her fault) and when they came home, Mae almost never left Emily’s arms. Something had changed. I was seven at the time, and though I knew Emily still loved me, I could tell she loved Mae more.
“I’ll be right back,” Emily says now, and I imagine her setting down her drink, pushing her chair back, standing up, and I decide that when she gets here, I’ll tell her everything. About Daniel. About what happened. About how much my heart hurts.
But then, before she can leave to come to me, Uncle Elliott’s voice cuts in, and he says, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Emily asks, “You don’t think I should?”
“Well,” he says, “I’m just thinking she’s probably asleep, right? If she was telling the truth and really doesn’t feel well. You should let her sleep.”
My anger grows. Uncle Elliott is only saying it to protect himself, to keep Emily from me so that I can’t say anything to her about him.
“No,” she says, “I guess you’re right. I don’t want to wake her. She should sleep if she’s sick.”
