“No.”
“Then why are you crying?”
She shuts her eyes, squeezing them so tight it makes her entire face pucker. “I’ve never slept away from home.”
Oh.I chew on my bottom lip, trying to think of something to say that will reassure her. “I cried on my first sleepover, too.”I didn’t.“I was staying over at my best friend Rae’s house.”True.I was eight and incredibly excited. “I cried so much that her mother let us have ice cream in the middle of the night.”True and not true—we’d snuck down to the kitchen to eat it once her parents were asleep. It was probably nine o’clock but felt like midnight. “Want some ice cream?”
Nev’s eyes widen, as though I suggested we go run a mile in our underwear while singing the national anthem at the top of our lungs. “Your mom won’t be mad?”
“If she hears us, she’ll probably join us.”
Nev gets out of bed, and we pad through the dark house toward the kitchen. Even though I’m not particularly hungry, I eat rocky road straight from the tub. You don’t have to be hungry to eat ice cream.
Nev is quiet for a while, and then she says, “I wish Ten wasn’t going away to boarding school.”
I pour us two glasses of milk.
“He’s leaving because this state reminds him of Mom, but she never visits us, so I don’t get why he needs to go.”
I peer at her over the rim of my glass.
“You know who our mom is, right?” Nev asks.
“Yeah.”
“He really hates her.”
“And you?” I ask carefully.
“I try to hate her.”
I frown.
“But I can’t. You can’t hate someone you don’t know.”
Exactly!
“Don’t tell Ten or my dad,” she says.
I feign zipping up my lips. “I’ll keep it between us. Promise.”
After our high-calorie feast, we head back upstairs. I’m about to go into my bedroom when Nev tenses up. She looks positively frightened to be going back into her room alone.
“Want to sleep in my room?” I ask her. “I promise I don’t snore.”
She nods, then all but runs into my bedroom as though worried I might rescind the invitation.
After we get into bed, and I turn off the light, she says, “Ten snores, but I don’t mind.”
I smile.
I think she’s fallen asleep, because her breathing has slowed, but then she adds, “He always lets me sleep with him.”
“He sounds like a good brother.”
Again, it gets very quiet.
“I don’t want him to leave, Angie.”
