by Robin Benway
“No, I’m not … oh, shi—AAACHHOOO!”
I squealed in triumph, raising my arms over my head. “Victory is mine!” I cried, and some people turned around to stare. “Yes! Man the confetti cannons and cue the orchestra!”
Julian started to laugh, but he didn’t sound nearly as happy as I was. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t think a girl has ever actually celebrated not having a second date with me.”
Oops.
I dropped my arms back in my lap. I had forgotten we were actually competing about something, and I looked at Julian as he looked away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just hate to lose. I didn’t think—”
“It’s cool.” He swallowed the rest of his coffee. “Really, it’s—”
“Wait,” I said. “Just wait a minute.” I dropped my head in my hands, waiting for something, anything. But all I got was my vision of us, replaying again and again like a taunt, and when I looked back up at him, Julian was staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know how I feel,” I said slowly. “But I think that there’s something between us.” But was it a bad something? Why was he part of the vision with June and the red lights and my terrible sense of dread?
“There are a lot of somethings between a lot of people,” he told me.
“Believe me, I know. But you have to realize that I have a lot going on right now.”
Julian nodded seriously. “Okay.”
I took another deep breath. “And my sisters mean more to me than anything in the world.”
“That’s one of the things I like best about you.”
I paused, sort of taken aback by that. “Really?”
“Yeah. The other day, when you yelled at me to stay away from your sister? You looked like one of those bears that you see on the Discovery Channel.” He paused before adding, “It was kind of hot. Not gonna lie.”
“Well, yeah, okay, I was a little out of line with the yelling,” I said. “But if we can go slow, like super-super ‘oh look, I’m a turtle’ slow, then …”
“Then … ?”
“Then okay, we can hang out again. But no horror movies!” I added quickly.
Julian smiled so wide that even my heart could see it. “Cool,” he said. “My mom’s totally gonna let me keep my car.”
“Hey,” I said. “The date’s not over.” But then I blew my argument by yawning.
“Yeah, it is,” Julian said, and he stood up and put his hand out to me. “C’mon. Curfew is only two short hours away.”
“I live fifteen minutes from here.”
“There could be traffic.”
“There’s not,” I said automatically.
“And you know this because … ?”
“I just do.” I stuck my tongue out at him to lessen the truth of what I had said.
“Can I ask you something more difficult?”
“Okay.”
He held the door open for me when we went outside, and the autumn fog rolled in from the ocean and made me shiver. “How come I have to stay away from your sister, but not from you?” he asked me.
I froze. This was another moment I hadn’t seen coming. “Um …”
“Is this one of those strange things that you can’t explain?”
I could tell he was being sarcastic, but I still nodded and grabbed onto the opportunity. “Well,” I said, “the truth is, June’s actually a robot. I know,” I hurried on as he started laughing. “We don’t tell many people that because of all the prejudice surrounding robots in our society, but it’s true. And sometimes her microchip goes wonky, and she goes on a killing spree. It’s awkward, but now you know.”
Julian looked down at me, still laughing. “Remember how I said you were the second-craziest girl I know?”
“It’s hard to forget something like that.”
“Well, you’re slowly making your way up to first place.”
“Good,” I grinned. “I told you, I hate to lose.”
When he dropped me off back at home, he opened the car door for me and even walked me to the front door, hands shoved deep in his hoodie pockets. “So,” he said.
“So,” I echoed, looking towards my front door. “Thanks for everything. I had a really nice time.”
He would get home just fine and then he would check on his mom, who was asleep on the couch because she gave him the bedroom in their single bedroom apartment. He would eat some Golden Grahams and then put his dish in the sink and go to his room and close the door. He would smile to himself, and he would look so happy that it would make me wonder why I hadn’t kissed him tonight.
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “I even liked the movie.”
“You’re such a liar.”
He paused before saying, “Yeah, I am,” and we both laughed. “So maybe I can call you this weekend?”
He would call me tomorrow at one thirty-four p.m.
“Sure,” I said. “That’d be nice.”
“Cool, okay.” He smiled again and started to walk backwards down our driveway before he realized something. “Oh!” he said. “One thing!”
I already had my key in the lock, but I turned around. “Yeah?”
“My mom would kick my ass if I didn’t tell you this.”
I smiled. “Okay. What?”
“You looked very you tonight.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “Is that a compliment?”
“I just mean …” Julian scuffed his toe along the cement steps, and I could see the faintest hint of a blush creeping into his cheeks. “You looked really happy tonight. You’ve never acted like that before.
It just seems like you’re always on guard and tonight …” He looked up at me, and our eyes locked into another staring contest. “I just liked being with the real you.”
The words hit so hard that all I could do was keep staring at him, and before I could respond, he hurried off. I stood there until his car drove off, watching him leave. And when I got inside, the light over the stove was the only thing on in the kitchen, and all I could hear was my heart pounding in my chest.
I knew my mom was asleep upstairs, so I went to peek in her door. “Mom?” I whispered.
“Hmmmph?”
“Mom, I’m home.”
She rolled over and squinted. It was so dark that I could barely see her. “Have fun?” she mumbled.
My heart was still thudding. “Yeah,” I said. “It was cool.” But I couldn’t find the word to describe how it really felt. I don’t think that word has been invented yet.
“Good,” my mom yawned.
“Go back to sleep,” I told her, but she was already rolling back over. She was tired, I knew. And I also knew that our neighbor’s car backfiring would wake her up at five thirty in the morning, and she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. So I closed the door and went into my room.
Julian said he liked being with the real me.
And the world still turned.
I sat on my bed for a long time, trying to figure out where all the pieces would go, and it wasn’t until my cell phone rang that I moved, going to dig it out of my purse. I saw myself in the mirror as I did that, and I realized I had the dumbest, goofiest smile on my face. I wondered how long it had been there and how long it would stay, but it fell away when I saw the caller ID.
It was June.
“Hello?” I said, flipping the phone open. “Junie?”
“Hi,” she said, and her voice was icy.
“June, are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m at the party.” She was. I could hear the noise in the background, loud thumping music and people being obnoxious. May was probably miserable.
“Are you okay?” I asked June again, my giddiness getting wiped out by nerves all over again. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was still clipped and haughty, and I could feel her fury coming down the line.
“So what—?”
“I’m totally fine,” June interrupted. “It’s May
who’s wasted.”
I got to Mariah’s house in less than six minutes, speeding through a yellow light for the first time in my life. I had left a note for my mom under her bedroom door just in case she woke up. But she was snoring when I left, and I hadn’t seen her waking up until the backfiring car.
June had given me Mariah’s address and said, “Don’t miss the left-hand turn,” before hanging up on me, and I was getting the sick sense of dread in my stomach, the same one I got when my parents sat us down last summer, the same one I got when the earthquake hit and I shoved Julian out of the way without realizing what I was doing.
Things were going to change tonight. I didn’t have to see the future to know it was coming.
When I got to Mariah’s house, May was sitting on the curb, and June was standing behind her, arms crossed with a look of fury on her face that almost made me scared of her. Henry was sitting next to May, patting her shoulder awkwardly while she hung her head, hair falling towards the gutter. The front door to Mariah’s house was wide open, and I could see enough of the inside to know that it was trashed. There were already some empty beer bottles in the small patch of grass that led to the front door.
It wasn’t a good scene, let me just put it that way.
“What happened?” I said after parking and leaping out of the car. “Are you okay?”
June just laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “You were right about one thing. I didn’t get puked on tonight.”
Knock it off, I thought. We don’t want Henry to know—
“Oh, whatever,” June said out loud. “That wouldn’t even be the worst thing that happened tonight.”
I squatted down by May, who was holding a bottle of water. “Hi,” I said to Henry, ignoring June for the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“This is where he lives,” June interrupted Henry before he could even speak. “He’s Mariah’s brother. Another interesting piece of information. Can we go home, please?”
May groaned and held her head. “June, please, just shut up.”
“You wish.”
“Are you gonna puke again?” I asked May.
“There’s nothing left,” she muttered. She was still sort of slurring, but I could tell that she wasn’t as drunk as she probably had been earlier. I haven’t ever been drunk, and I’m not really a partier (news flash, I know). But I’ve seen enough movies and TV shows to know what it looks like. “Did you tell Mom?”
I shook my head. “No, she’s asleep.” I looked up at June. “What about you? Are you—?”
“Do not talk to me,” June snapped. “I called you for a ride and that’s it.”
Henry was still awkwardly patting May’s shoulder. “Do you want some more water?” he asked her.
“No, thanks,” she said, then groaned again and dropped her head into her hands. “Is someone dangling me upside down? It feels like I’m upside-down.”
“Wonderful news,” I muttered, while June rolled her eyes before glaring at me again.
“April, let’s go.”
I looked back up at June, prepared to snap back at her, but she cut me off. “No,” she said. “You do not get to say anything to me.”
Henry was looking among the three of us warily. “I think she’s okay, April,” he said to me. “She spent a lot of time puking.”
May moaned into her hands.
“Yeah, it was spectacular,” June said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Seriously, one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.” She paused before adding, “And what a delightful surprise to see my sister May here.”
May looked up, and for a split second, we shared a guilty glance. June knew what we had done. “Sorry,” May said to me.
“You better not be apologizing to April!” June snapped. “The only apologies that I want to hear better be—”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, cutting her off before she started blabbing in front of Henry and whoever was drunkenly stumbling down the front steps. “C’mon, let’s go home.”
June started to walk towards the car. “I hope she pukes all over the front seat,” she said as she stalked away.
Henry and I gingerly helped May stand up. “Oh, wow,” she said. “Wow.”
“Okay, she might still be a little drunk,” Henry whispered.
“Wooooow.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Okay. Thanks for taking care of her.”
“June did most of the work,” Henry admitted. “I just brought her outside.”
I looked back at my youngest sister, who was sitting in the backseat with her arms crossed, not looking at any of us. “Well, thanks anyway,” I said.
May looked up at him and yanked her arm away from his hand. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “You’re an asshole.”
Henry looked a bit surprised. But he let go of her, and May half-collapsed, half-slid into the front seat. “A total asshole,” she muttered.
“Oh, good,” June said from the backseat. “She’s an angry drunk.”
“That asshole is named after a king, did you know that?” May glanced up at me as I buckled the seatbelt around her. “Stupid kings.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered, then started to load her into the front seat. “You’re going to die of embarrassment tomorrow, I know that much.”
“Yep,” she agreed, then spent thirty seconds trying to move her dirty blond hair out of her face before giving up. “Take me home, I’m broken.”
I leaned in and said, “If you puke in my car, I will end you,” before slamming the door and going around to the driver’s seat.
We hadn’t made it a block down the street before June said, “What the hell, April?”
Her voice was flat and cold and would have been scary if she hadn’t been my baby sister. “Oh, what,” I shot back, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “What? Yeah, okay, so May followed you because I was worried.”
“Are you kidding me?” she screeched. “It was just last week that you were giving me the big ‘we have to be ethical and not lie’ speech! What happened to that? Now who’s the liar?”
“I thought something could happen to you!” I yelled back.
“You thought? Or you knew?”
“Guys, please shut up,” May said, rubbing her forehead and wincing.
“Deal with it,” June shot back. “This is your own fault. And I’m pissed at you, too!”
“I would have never guessed,” May mumbled.
“What happened?” I asked them, glaring at May as I spoke.
She shrugged and rested her head against the window. “It was just a couple of beers. And the clear stuff.”
“Vodka?” I said. “You’re wasted on vodka?”
“Please never say that word again.”
“Do you know how many bad stories involve vodka?” I screeched, which made her wince again.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” June said, shoving herself between the two front seats. “I’ll tell you how your brilliant plan worked out, April. May here decided to help herself to some ‘happy drinky drinks’—which I believe is what she called them while puking—”
“They were actually sad drinky drinks,” May interrupted.
“—and after a few hours of this, I go into the bathroom, and guess who I found on the floor?”
“Oh my God, May,” I muttered, shaking my head. That explained why I thought everything was fine. I couldn’t see her when she was invisible. The only flaw in my supposedly excellent plan.
“So you did ask her to follow me!” June was so angry, I could hear her voice shaking. “Do you even realize how much you both completely ruined this night for me? Mariah is probably never going to invite me to ditch with her again, and we were really starting to become friends. Real friends. Can you believe it? I guess probably not since neither of you seem to have any. And now I can see why. Because you’re total hypocrites.”
“June,” May started to say, holding her head in her hands, but June cut her off.
“D
on’t you dare,” she said, and I was almost a little scared of June’s voice. “I know, May. I know.”
May winced as she tried to turn around. “You know what?”
Oh no, I suddenly realized. Oh no.
“I know about you and the tequila! I know that you’re the reason we had to move because you went into your ‘poor me’ mode and got trashed! You were remembering it the whole time you were getting sick in Mariah’s bathroom. But what if Mom finds out about tonight, huh? Where are we gonna move next, May? What else are you two going to ruin for me?”
“June!” I cried. “We were just worried. We thought—”
“Fuck you.”
It was like she had slapped me, her words were so fast and strong. Even May looked up in surprise, first at me and then turning around to look at June.
That did it. Now I was pissed, too.
I jerked the car over by the side of the park that was near our house. It was completely empty, save for the fluorescent lights that lit the playground area, and I unbuckled my seatbelt and twisted around to face June. “You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing,” I said to her, my voice low and angry. “You have no idea.”
“I know better than anyone,” she shot back. “No one can lie to me. I just never thought my own sisters would. I know way more than either one of you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I sneered. “Like what? Please, enlighten me! What do you know that’s so great?”
June smiled smugly. “I know that Mom’s mom was a mindreader.”
May and I both stared at her.
“And she had two sisters, too,” June continued. “One of them became a hermit in Maine and the other one”—here she glared at me—“was really bossy all the time. Mom called her a ‘know-it-all.’”
“Mom told you this?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Did you … did you tell her? About us?”
“No, I’m not stupid. I just asked her about Grandma,” she said. “And she told me that Grandma always seemed to know what she was thinking. And if you think that’s a coincidence,” she said, interrupting my thoughts before they were fully formed, “you’re an idiot.”
May looked between us before saying, “But I don’t want to go to Maine.”
I was too surprised to respond. Could this really be true?