My sister stares at me.
I spin her laptop toward me, open it and start typing. “There’s one a couple hours away and I need you to come with me.” I turn the screen back to her so she can see the site detailing all the rides and guaranteed fun for the whole family. I make sure the largest image clearly shows the Salt & Pepper Shaker ride that she used to love even though the sight of it makes me queasy. She glances at it then at me.
“Just go with Maggie.”
I shake my head. “Her mom is making them repaint all the bedrooms in their house together. I want to go with you, and...I might lose my nerve if I wait too long.”
The apathetic mask my sister always wears slips. “Nerve for what? Why do you need to go to this carnival?”
I take a deep breath. “Because it’s the closest Ferris wheel I could find and I’m tired of being afraid of heights.”
The mask stays down. “You’re serious?”
She can see that I am.
“Why now?”
The fact that my sister is actually engaging with me is the deciding factor in telling her the truth—or at least most of it.
“Don’t say anything to Mom, but the audition deadline forStories on Iceis coming up next month. Maggie has been bugging me about it, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least film something. Anton already agreed to partner with me, but I’m having a hard time even being that little bit off the ground.”
I tense as the oddest expression overtakes Laura’s face. I’d almost swear it’s relief, but that doesn’t make any sense, and anyway it’s gone too quickly for me to decide.
“You haven’t mentioned it in so long,” she says. “I thought you weren’t going to try anymore.”
“I’m not,” I say, wondering that she’s not more panicked the way Mom had been. I have to tread carefully here. If I bring up Jason directly, I’ll lose her like I did last time, and yet I can’t leave him out entirely either. “I don’t know that I want to leave everyone here, at least not right now.”
Laura turns to look at Ducky in his cage. “I think you should.”
I’m sure I don’t hear her right. “Audition?”
She nods. “I know they’ll pick you. You should do it.”
I reach to brush her knee with two fingers so that she’ll look at me. “They tour year-round,” I say softly. “I’d be gone more than I’d be home.”
She pulls her knee away from my outstretched hand so that I can’t touch her even that tiny bit. “I know.”
Slowly, I straighten. I want it not to sting, but the fact that she cares so little about seeing me regularly feels like a slap. “It would just be you, Mom and Dad for the next few years until you left for college. You’d be fine with that?”
She shrugs, and even that small gesture is half-hearted.
I know I wanted Mom to be sad that I was giving up on auditioning. I didn’t want Laura to be sad exactly, but I wanted to see something that showed she’d miss me, not more of her indifference. That hurts worse than anything.
Laura clicks something on her computer and closes out the carnival page. “You don’t need a Ferris wheel. Just go stand on the porch railing.”
I slam her laptop shut. “Why don’t you care? About anything! I could stand on anything or I could wait for Maggie. Instead I found a stupid carnival with one of those stupid Salt & Pepper Shaker rides that you love in a stupid town far enough away that no one will recognize us. I wanted to do somethingwith you, spend timewith you, face this thing that genuinely frightens mewith you.” I suck in a deep breath, waiting for her response, for her to say or do anything, but she doesn’t. And it breaks my heart. “I’m trying so hard and you act like just being in the same room with me bothers you. What did I do, huh?” I stab my fingers against my chest. “What didIdo?”
“Nothing!” she screams and I flinch back. “You did nothing! I told you something was wrong when he came home from college, but you didn’t listen. We should have talked to him—we shouldn’t have let him go out that night. I could have gone after him...” The heat in her voice vanishes as quickly as it ignites, and for a second I think she’s going to cry, but she just presses her lips together until the rest of her face smooths and her shoulders lower back down.
She may have wrestled her control back but I haven’t. My breath hitches as I stare at her. “You’re saying—you think it’smyfault? That I—we could have stopped him?” My eyes blur when she refuses to look at me. “Laur—you can’t believe that anyone could have known what was going to happen. Jason didn’t even know.”
Her gaze snaps to mine, hard and glaring for one heart-stopping instant. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” She draws her laptop back and opens it, her finger gliding over the track pad like the last few minutes never happened.
I’m near tears and she looks like she could fall asleep.
“Laura,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Please come with me. We can talk and figure some of this out. I didn’t know you felt this way, but I need to.”
Without looking up she says, “You can go. I don’t feel like going to a carnival.”
