Chase: Come by. I guarantee I’ll be the opposite of pissed.
Me: Who was it that bailed? Not your cousin?
Chase: No, Brandon’s here. He’s who I called in to replace the no-show. Can you come? I’ll ply you with free smoothies and you can tell me about your games.
Me: I’m pretty beat. It’s taking all my energy to move my thumbs right now.
Chase: My loss.
Me: Mine too.
Chase: Should I let you go?
Me: Not unless you have to.
Chase: Never.
On Sunday it went back to being hard. We went to church as a family, sat in our normal pew as a family and drove home afterward as a family, but we didn’t do anything else that day as a family. We didn’t talk much at all. Everyone was nursing hurt or angry emotions. We normally cooked lunch together on Sundays, but that day we just didn’t.
Instead Selena and I disappeared into my bedroom. She job-hunted online while I lay on my bed, tossing a softball toward the ceiling over and over again, hoping Chase would text and trying not to think about Mom taking care of her sick father while Dad was here with another woman.
“Anything promising?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. My dishwashing skills are highly in demand.”
“No openings for spoiled princesses with no work history?”
“You want to apply too?”
Neither of us had ever worked. Between school and sports, we didn’t have the time. I kind of liked the idea of getting a job, though, especially now that I was trying to avoid being home with my parents as much as possible. I’d suggested Mostly Bread, but either Nick was doing such a good job that they didn’t need anyone else, or they’d only ever had the one opening.
An hour later, Selena had a list of places she planned to apply to. She read them off to me and we narrowed the list further.
“I think I’ll put in for Lava Java, Name Brand Exchange, AJ’s Grocery and Jungle Juice.”
The softball I was throwing hit me smack in the face. “What—which Jungle Juice?”
She continued typing. “Whichever one will have me. I can put in for all the ones in the area and then see who responds.”
I was overwhelmingly glad she was looking at her laptop and not at me. If I looked half as paranoid as I felt with my eyes bugging out, I would never have gotten away with the lie I told.
“Why would you want to work there? Have you ever been?”
“It’s a smoothie place. I like smoothies.”
“Do you also like screaming monkey calls every time the front door opens?”
She swiveled in the chair to face me. “Do they really do that?”
“Yep. My friend Ariel works at one. She says most people quit within a month and the management structure is horrible. People flake on shifts all the time,” I said, using Chase’s story from the night before to lend my semi-lie the ring of truth I needed to really sell it. “Whoever is there ends up doing the work of, like, three people without extra pay. She’s planning on quitting herself.”
Selena wrinkled her nose. “I guess that’s a no to Jungle Juice.” She turned back to her laptop, and I breathed for the first time in a full minute.
What would I have done? There weren’t that many Jungle Juice locations in Arizona. Chase knew I had a sister named Selena, and we looked enough alike that people often mistook us for twins. On top of that, Iknewthat Selena would recognize something in Brandon if she saw him. She might not put together that he was our brother, but she’d know something connected them. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say or even really if I was going to say anything at all. Right now she and Mom were happy; they didn’t know that Brandon existed. And maybe Dad didn’t either.
I went back to throwing my softball until my equilibrium returned, but once I started thinking about Brandon, I couldn’t stop. And thinking about my brother while our dad was downstairs was unbearable.
I eventually escaped to Jessalyn’s. We still needed to talk, and not just the few sentences we’d been exchanging during games or practices since the fallout with Nick. We weren’t exactly fighting, but we weren’t not fighting either. I was mad at her and she was mad at me, but I’d also screwed up and couldn’t claim I was the only injured party. I think she felt the same way.
