After ten minutes helping the customer, it's only the two of us again. She's picking at her fingernails and it's then I realize that even though girls are different from each other, they're the same too. It's totally something Mel would have done—trying to look distracted, as if the last conversation we had isn't still stuck in her head.
"You started that English assignment?" Awesome job, Shaw. Leave it to me to bring up one of the things I want to talk about the least. I really, really don't want to write an in depth paper on the meaning of a stupid Shakespeare play, or sonnet and how it relates to something in my own life. I have so much trouble understanding my own life that I'm not sure I can compare something I don't get to it.
"Of course," she says. "Almost finished. Didn't I ever tell you I'm a genius?"
"Huh?"
"Okay, maybe not really, but yep, I'm a geek. I've never gotten anything below an A in my life and don't plan to start now."
I stare at her.
"Shocked?"
I don't know why I am. It's not as if she struck me as someone who's stupid, but I can't really match up a braniac with the girl who dyes her hair orange or dances on tables or who plays basketball in someone else's shoes. Nothing about her fits into any mold I've ever seen.
"Whatever." I'm aware that I'm pouting, but not sure why. "I probably won't do it. It's stupid anyway." The words always take me more time to understand, but when I feel like this? Like I'm drowning in my own life? Those are the times I just want to walk away from it.
"Yes, you will. If not for anything else, but for basketball."
"Whatever," I mumble again before I start packing up one of the shelves of knickknacks. Mom always keeps a "to do" list at the store and she wants these replaced with something else.
Kira sighs and then I hear her get off the table and walk over to me. "Coach...you need some help? I'm here. If need me for anything."
She's so not talking about work, but I'm going to pretend I don't know that. I'm good at pretending. "Sure. There's a box in the back labeled Forest Friends." Which is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but that's beside the point. "Want to grab it for me?"
She smirks, obviously not believing me, but she replies with, "Sure."
I get everything packed up and she's still not back. Figuring she couldn't find it, I head to the stock room to check on her. Kira fumbles when she hears me, whipping around and shoving something behind her back, but it's too late. God, it's too late in more than one way, but for now I can only focus on the fact that I saw it. That I know what she has in her hands. Which she somehow knows I won't want to see.
It's like voices start battling inside my head. Mine making excuses, Mom's making promises, Bill's making threats. They're all fighting, yelling to top each other so much that I feel like my head could explode. Then Sara's voice creeps through. Her cries when she has nightmares. Her laughs when she plays games with Mom.
I want to cry. I actually want to fucking cry. My hands itch to play ball. My feet itch to run. My head itches to block out the voices and to disappear inside itself.
I can’t believe it. Or I don’t want to. There has to be another excuse for a half empty bottle of liquor to be in my mom's stock room. At her work. Her store. Oh, God, how can she be drinking at work?
No matter how much I search for an excuse for the bottle to be there, there's none, but the truth.
"It's mine," I blurt out. "I forgot it was there. I hid it when my mom came in."
Kira's hand drops to the side so she's holding it next to her. I fight the urge not to rip it out of her hand, break it and smash it over and over, like that will somehow change things. When she drinks Vodka, I used to dump out half the bottles and add water, hoping it would lessen the affect. Nothing ever worked. She always had more. Breaking this one won't do a damn thing either.
"It's yours?" She eyes me, not flinching the way I want to.
"It's mine." I hear her chanting Liar liar pants on fire in my head.
She opens her mouth like she's going to say something, then closes it again. Shaking her head, she walks up to me, shoving the bottle into my chest so I'm forced to grab onto it.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Coach." Without another word, she walks out.
Chapter Eleven
It's crazy how easy it is to avoid someone you live with. I guess it helps when they're probably avoiding you, too. She knows that I know. Not about the bottle at work, but from our phone call. About the way she spent her day. I'm pretty sure she knows something about Grandpa, too. She had to have seen the missed calls, which means she would have called them back. They would have told her I went down there.
But still, nothing. No knock on my bedroom door. No promises that it won't happen again or vows that I don't have to work in the store. No Chinese food for dinner. It all makes me even angrier. Maybe it's cruel of me to want her to feel bad for what she's done and to try to make it up to me. I deserve at least that, right? Is a little remorse too much to ask?
I can't stop seeing that stupid bottle. In my head, I'm repeating the words about it being mine over and over again, when, really, I want everyone to know it's hers and that she's letting it take her over in a way she never did before. I want everyone to know I'm trapped in the middle, the worm in the bottom of a Tequila bottle, wrong on all sides of me. I just want to do the right thing, but it's always out of reach.
Without my usual bowl of cereal, I wait for her in the morning. It was a last minute decision. The coward inside me wanted to pretend it didn't happen, but then I saw one of Sara's stupid Barney dolls and remembered I'm her brother and it's my job to look out for her.
Man up, I keep telling myself, and now it's time to do it.
"Oh. Carter, you startled me," she says as she walks into the kitchen. I don't reply. She starts making her coffee and I just stand there, arms crossed, picturing the bottle and her voice and how she looked laying in her bed.
I want to grab her and shake her and tell her I'm tired of it. That I don't want to do it anymore, but I can't.
Holding her cup, she leans against the counter and stares at me. She knows I'm upset and I almost revel in it. Mom bites her lip. Takes a drink. Shifts the way she leans from one side to another before she finally talks. "About yesterday...I just want you to know I had a bad day. I'm sorry,. I won't—"
"Do what you want, but not when Sara is here." A bad day? A bad fucking day? How many bad days have I had lately? No, how many has she given me and I still deal with it. I don't turn to a bottle. I can't listen to it. Can't hear any promises because even though I know better than to believe them, I want them to be true. "Sara comes home today. She doesn't deserve it."
Mom nods. Water pools in her eyes and her hand starts to shake. Before she can make me feel guilty, I walk away. As soon as I open the front door, Sara bursts in.
"Carter! Carter!" But she doesn't take the time to stop to talk to me. She's too busy. Too much to do, so she keep running down the hall and to the kitchen.
With the door closed behind me, I cut off Bill before he can start. I know what's coming next anyway, considering it's been a few weeks since the last time he shoved me further in the middle of Mom's drama. "Everything's fine. There's nothing to worry about. I'd never let anything happen to Sara."