That wasn’t very nice. I didn’t know that the woman was stupid, only that she had poor taste in men.
But Willow and Everett? That could have been a good thing. “She’s actually really great,” I announced. “She had a million friends and people loved her.” For the rest of the long, snowy ride, I sang my sister’s praises. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out the way I wanted once we finally arrived at a dump of the bar in the middle of nowhere.
Willow ruined it—but that was what my mom always used to say, and I didn’t want to be like her. I didn’t need to respond like that. I was responsible for my own feelings, something that my former cooperating teacher, Sarah Pauker, often told her students. Maybe that kid made you mad, but you needed to deal with your emotions more constructively. You couldn’t throw his binder on the floor.
I couldn’t kill my sister, either. Even if I wanted to.
Chapter 4
“Boyd. Really. Boyd? Really? Boyd! Really!” I tried to control myself, since not only were Willow and I in a bar among strangers, but Everett was also standing just behind me. There actually weren’t very many strangers here, since this place seemed to be about as popular as Jannie’s. Its emptiness also could have been due to the terrible weather and road conditions—what we’d just faced getting here, in order to find out that my sister had been with Boyd.
Really?Boyd?
“Can you stop saying those two words?” she spat at me. She was trying to zip her coat, yanking hard enough that she was going to pull the plastic tab right off. “Really, I was out with Boyd, and really, it was great.” She gave up on the zipper and crossed her arms over her chest instead. “I’ve been waiting here forever. Let’s go!”
She went past me to head to the parking lot, but I checked with the bartender before I followed to make sure that she wasn’trunning out on a tab. Then I shook my head and looked despairingly at Everett, because I was pretty sure that my sister had just blown any chance she might have had with him. He wasn’t going to be interested in a woman whose affections were split between him and someone else, not since he was just coming out of the situation with his wife. Ex-wife, soon-to-be, or whatever.
“Where’s your car?” my sister asked when I joined her, but I grabbed her arm and wove it through mine before I walked her straight over to Everett’s truck. When she made a move to get into the front, I directed her straight into the back seat, too. I had to help a lot to get her up there, pretty much lifting her, and it reminded me of why I really, really should have been going to the gym at the college to work out. Maybe I could have met someone, too. But that, as well as the idea that I’d have extra time for exercise, seemed as likely as me flying home tonight. Home, as in the motel where we currently lived.
I turned to find Everett behind me. “Can I help you?” he asked. He must have noticed that, despite the temperature and the snow falling on our heads to cool us further, I was panting and flushed.
“She’s fine!” Willow yelled from inside the truck. She didn’t like that he’d just witnessed her struggle. “Can we go? Please?”
He and I silently returned to our seats in the front, and we started another long, slow ride. “Willow, what happened tonight?” I asked her. I looked in the back to meet her eyes, which she rolled.
“Boyd and I have been talking a little. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this. ‘Boyd? Really? Boyd! Really!’” she imitated me, lowering her voice and growling the words.
I ignored the fact that she thought I sounded like an angry gorilla. “What do you two have to talk about? Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”
“Not anymore,” she informed me. “They broke up. He broke up with her because…”
I glanced back again and saw that now, she was smiling. “Oh, geez. What? He realized that he was still in love with you?”
“Yes, actually! Why would that make you mad?”
She knew exactly why, and currently, I was too mad to answer her. The three of us rode in total silence besides the sound of the wipers whooshing away the heavy snow, and when I looked back for a third time, I saw that my sister was asleep. She hadn’t brought any of her mobility aids with her and I wondered how much she’d been walking today, and if Boyd would have helped her at all. Probably not, the idiot! Maybe his former girlfriend wasn’t, but he truly was.
“Idiot,” I muttered.
“Your sister?” Everett asked quietly.
“Willow is great,” I said automatically. “I’m sorry that she didn’t thank you for the ride, though. Or say hello.”
“So who’s the idiot?”
Me, probably. I was the one who had thought that he and my sister might get together, when she’d been in love with the otheridiot this whole time. “Boyd is,” I said, gorilla angry, but then I realized that I had to whisper if I wanted Willow to get some rest. “Her former boyfriend, Boyd. They broke up five years ago, and she’s still pining after him. As you just heard.”
“You were so happy that she went out tonight.”
“But not with him!” Too loud again. I checked on Willow, who seemed to be deeply asleep. It was very soothing in this car, with the total darkness outside, the smooth ride on the new tires, and the steady hum of the engine. I might have gone to sleep myself except that I was now so angry. “They were dating in high school, seriously dating. She was completely in love with him but he broke up with her and broke her heart. I’ll hate him forever.”
“I, too, was an asshole to girls in high school. Would you have hated me forever?”
It would have been hard to hate someone who drove me around like this, but if he had acted the same way that Boyd had with my sister? “Yes,” I said. “Yes, if you had treated her as badly as he did. You know she has trouble walking.” Now I looked at him, and I saw him nod. “She had an accident and he was awful. Terrible. He reacted like she had leprosy.”
“That disease where people had to live on islands?”
“Exactly, and that was so cruel. Did you know that they had to leave their families?”
