“Oh, Sunny,” my mom says, and sighs. “I hope you’re wrong. I have faith in your Auntie Mina, that she’s strong enough to tell us if and when she needs us. In the meantime, let’s keep an extra close eye on her, okay? All of us.”
I can’t help wondering if that’s true—or if she’ll just suffer in silence. Like Shiri, who didn’t even feel like she could talk to me, who took it all out on herself.
And then I wonder: What if I’d been able to listen in on Auntie Mina’s house somehow? What if I’d been able to stop Uncle Randall before he hurt her?
My mouth goes dry. If Shiri had been able to underhear, if she’d known her dad was like that … why didn’t she make it stop? Then I realize: in her own awful way, she did.
fifteen
I pull the blankets up to my chin; then I break into a sweat, my skin crawling with heat, and kick the covers off again. Five minutes later, I’m cold. A lone annoying bird wakes up early and starts squawking in the tree outside.
It’s four a.m.
I haven’t been able to sleep, despite tea, despite Pixie snoozing at my feet, despite soothing music and candles and exhaustion. My thoughts keep bubbling up, making me toss and turn. When I do start to fall asleep, I doze fitfully, dreaming about being smothered in voluminous Wiccan robes, half-waking when I think I hear Shiri or Auntie Mina calling out for me, waking fully just long enough to realize it’s only a dream.
At breakfast, I force down half a bowl of granola cereal. The rest of it turns to soggy mush as I sit there trying to avoid my parents’ eyes. In our silence, we all know what isn’t being said. On top of that, there’s everything else that happened to me last night, before I got home. After Mom’s one outburst about me not calling when I left the solstice party, she didn’t ask about it again. And I can’t help feeling sorry for myself, not that I want to talk about it.
It’s like Shiri’s absence tore a hole in our family; but that hole, instead of gradually going away, is like a black hole, expanding to take up more and more space.
I can’t bear to sit here anymore, watching my mother sigh over her coffee while my dad stubbornly reads the same page of Backstage magazine over and over, so I dump the rest of my cereal in the garbage disposal.
“I’m going to make a phone call,” I mumble, heading for the stairs.
Closing the door of my room, I pick up my phone from where it’s lying on my desk. If I don’t talk to someone about something … I feel a throbbing start in my temples, and I dial a number I haven’t dialed in a long time.
It rings three times, then he answers.
Singing.
“Here comes the SUN, do-do-do-do, here comes the SUN, and I say, ooh yeah, it’s all right, ner ner ner ner ner nerrr—”
“STOP. Now.” I interrupt Spike’s painful ruination of the Beatles song he always used to tease me with, only to hear his mom’s faint Georgia twang in the background.
“Spencer, is that Miss Sunny you’re torturing with your yowling? Sweet girl. Say hello to her for me. It’s been ages.” Hearing her voice makes me a little sad.
“So, the elusive Little Miss Sunshine herself,” Spike says, sounding muffled like he’s chewing on something. “My mom says hi. As you probably heard.”
“Yeah,” I say, cautiously. “Look, do you have a few minutes? Are you eating or something?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “I mean, sure, I have a few minutes. I just grabbed an extra piece of bacon. I’m done eating.”
“You’re never done eating,” I scoff, before I can stop myself.
But Spike laughs, and I hope that means things are still okay between us, more or less. “Like you’d know,” he says. “You’ve missed at least three barbecues. For all you know, my eating habits have undergone a complete transformation.”
I grimace. “Sorry. I should have called sooner.” I look out the window at the leaves fluttering against the grayish-blue sky.
“Yeah. Well, I could have called, too. You know I don’t call people, though.” His tone is light, but sort of brittle. “Plus I figured you were busy with your new friends,” he adds pointedly.
“Oh, God, Spike, I—” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat. “Listen, everything is crazy right now. I don’t know what to do. I had a huge fight with Mikaela after this party, and then I found out that Cody—she and Cody—I don’t know. Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
He’s silent for a minute and I squeeze my eyes shut, wondering if anything I just said made sense.
“I thought things would be simpler if I just started fresh,” I add. “But they’re not.”
“Sunny … you know I’m not good with this kind of thing.” Spike’s voice sounds pained. “I mean, why are you telling me all this?”
Almost in a whisper, I say, “Because maybe you were right. About them.”
Silence.
“And I’m … sorry I was such a bitch about it. That wasn’t fair.” Saying those words feels like I’m forcing out broken glass, but I can’t help thinking about what Spike said, that he didn’t trust Cody or his friends. I feel my chest constricting, like I’m about to cry.
“Oh,” he says. “Well, yeah, I heard some rumor about Cody getting arrested last year. But I don’t even know if it’s true. And I don’t really know the rest of those people. I recognize one or two, I guess.” He pauses. “You seem pretty buddy-buddy with that one girl, the short one with the braids. Is that who you’re talking about?”
“Yeah. She told Cody something that should have been a secret. She shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m so stupid.”
“So what’s this big secret?”
It sounds ridiculous, trying to tell him what happened without telling him about underhearing. It makes the whole thing seem insignificant. But I’m not ready to tell him everything yet, so I decide to lie.
Not a huge lie. Just a little one. A rearrangement of the truth.
“It’s just … there’s been a lot going on in my family since Shiri died. Her mom—my Auntie Mina—has been having some marital problems. Her husband is kind of … ” I swallow, and then I say the word I’ve been avoiding. “Abusive.”
“Uh huh,” Spike says, sounding uncomfortable.
I cross my fingers. “Anyway, I was telling Mikaela about some private stuff, and she told Cody, and … I found out last night at a party that she told him. Then we had a big argument about it and I’m pretty sure she never wants to talk to me again.”
“Sunny.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to have to be honest here.”
“Okay.” I sit forward, hunched, hugging my knees.
“Listen, and think about it. How many times did Cassie blab something you or Elisa or I told her to the rest of the group without even blinking?”
“Uh … ” I don’t want to think about Cassie. Is he trying to upset me?
“Remember the time she told everybody in our bio class about that pool party at James’s house, when Mike sneaked in on Elisa in the bathroom while she was changing into her bathing suit and ran off with her bikini top? And then Cassie couldn’t stop laughing about it?”
“Yeah,” I say, sullenly.
“Do you really think Elisa wanted her to talk about that? And the time Cassie told Jenny Alvarez that my voice didn’t finish changing until the end of freshman year?” Spike continues. “I was in love with Jenny Alvarez. That was a completely cold thing to do. But that’s just Cassie. You can’t tell her anything. She has boundary issues.”