Backlash

by Sarah Littman

  My sister looks kind of like the flowers wilting in the plastic pee bottle on the dresser — she’s seen better days. I wonder why no one has thrown those flowers out. Dropped petals litter the top of the dresser, and the water in the pee bottle is green.

  “The doctor tells us you can come home tomorrow,” Mom says.

  Wait, what? How come nobody told me that?

  This place is so awful that I feel like the world’s worst sister for even thinking this, but I’ve been kind of enjoying being the only child at home these last two weeks. No having to wait to use the computer or the bathroom. No Lara using up all the hot water before I get to take a shower. And best of all, even though my parents still talk about Lara constantly, they seem to notice me more.

  “I can’t wait to get out of this place,” Lara says with the most emotion I’ve seen her show since the night in the hospital. “It’s horrible. I hate it.”

  I am the worst sister ever.

  “But they’re helping you,” Mom says. “And that’s the most important thing.”

  Lara opens her mouth, but then shuts it like she’s thought better of what she was going to say. She looks down at her hands and starts picking at her cuticles instead.

  “You seem a lot better,” Mom says. “They tell us you’re making progress. Of course, you have to continue with intensive therapy when you come home.”

  How exactly does Lara seem better? I wonder. Okay, she’s not passed out in a bathroom, but she still seems pretty miserable to me.

  “Should I throw out these flowers?” I ask, walking over to the dresser, because the green water in the pee bottle is really starting to gross me out.

  “No!” Lara says with vehemence that startles me.

  “Fine! Jeez, chill, will you?” I say, backing away from the dead flowers that for some reason my crazy sister wants to keep.

  “Honey, I want you to have a look at these,” Dad says, taking some papers out of his pocket and moving to sit next to Lara on the bed.

  “Pete, are you sure this is a good idea?” Mom asks, her brow creased with worry.

  “It’s fine, Kathy,” Dad snaps.

  Lara flinches slightly at his tone, and she looks from one parent to the other, eyes wide.

  I don’t have a good feeling about this.

  My father is obsessed with vengeance and has little or no confidence in the competence of our local police force. Having watched a gazillion reruns of Law & Order, he considers himself just as qualified to run this investigation as they are, no matter how many times Mom tells him to back off and let them do their job. He’s been spending every night glued to his laptop, creating a spreadsheet of everyone who commented on Lara’s wall, which he’s cross-referenced with Christian’s friend list. Organizing and systemizing things are his specialty. I think it’s something to do with being an engineer. The problem is, he gets confused and frustrated when we don’t fit into the systems he creates.

  “I want you to look at this list,” he said. “I’ve made a list of the comments and who made them and if they were a friend of yours and that … person,” Dad says.

  “I don’t want to look at them,” Lara says. “I can’t.”

  “Pete —”

  “Lara, we need to find this jerk. He has to pay for what he did to you,” Dad says. “Just look at it.”

  “I can’t, Daddy,” Lara says, her voice starting to break.

  “Of course you can, honey. Just for a minute or two,” Dad urges her. He’s so focused on his spreadsheet and revenge that he’s completely oblivious to the signs that Lara’s losing it.

  “I can’t!” Lara screams. She takes the paper and rips it into shreds and starts crying hysterically.

  Dad stands there looking completely dumbfounded, the way someone who’s poked a stick in a nest can’t understand why he’s getting stung by a swarm of angry bees.

  “It’s okay, Lara, you don’t have to look,” Mom says, going to Lara and trying to put her arms around her, but Lara shakes off my mother’s embrace and seems to shrink into herself, curling up and burying her head in her arms, her shoulders heaving from the force of her sobs.

  “Lara? What’s happening?” A nurse stands in the doorway. She gestures for us to get out of the room. My parents don’t want to, but she doesn’t take no for an answer. She closes the door in Mom’s face as soon as we get out, and we can only hear the murmur of voices from behind the closed door.

  “Pete, I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Mom bites out from between clenched teeth. “Just because it’s your way of coping with what happened doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for Lara.”

  “Are you sure she’s ready to get out of the hospital?” Dad deflects.

  And they’re off. My parents are arguing about my sister again. I walk down the hall and thumb a text to Maddie and Cara.

  It’s official. My entire family has lost it.

  But I pause before hitting Send. And then, with a sigh, I backspace and erase it.

  It’s hard enough at school being the sister of “that girl who tried to kill herself.” Add to that being stuck backstage doing crew at play rehearsals while my friends are onstage together. Why add to my problems by being honest about how crazy things really are with my messed-up family?

  The nurse comes out of Lara’s room, and my parents stop arguing and pretend everything’s fine.

  “We need to talk,” the nurse says. “But first, I’m going to give Lara something to calm her down.”

  “Can we go in?” Mom asks.

  “She doesn’t want to see you right now,” the nurse says. “Only her sister. And we need to set up a family meeting for the two of you with Lara’s psychiatrist before she is released tomorrow. If her doctor still feels that’s appropriate.”

  Then she walks away to get Lara’s medication.

  Me? Why me?

  I can tell my parents are wondering the same thing as I open the door to Lara’s room and slip inside. She’s lying on the bed, curled up in the fetal position. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say or do, and I’m afraid to do anything that might set her off again. I sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Hey … are you okay?” I ask in a quiet, and what I hope is calming, voice.

  Duh. Stupid question. If she were okay, she wouldn’t be in this place.

  “Do you have your phone?”

  Her voice is muffled, because her face is still half buried in the pillow.

  “My phone? Yeah, why?”

  “I want to … They won’t let me use the computer in here and …” My sister sits up and faces me, reaching out and taking my hand. “I have to see if he wrote to me.”

  I’m about to say, “Seriously?” but I bite the word back.

  “Lara, I can’t let you use my phone. Mom and Dad would kill me.”

  I try to pull my hand out of her grasp, but she holds on.

  “Come on, Syd, please,” she begs. Her fingers are white-knuckled around my wrist, gripping so hard it hurts. “I need to know.”

  “Lara, no! I can’t do it. You shouldn’t be asking me to.”

  “Shouldn’t be asking you to do what?” It’s the nurse, carrying a tray with a small paper cup containing pills and a plastic cup filled with water. She looks at Lara sternly.

  My sister’s fingers become limp on my arm and fall off, and her eyes plead with me not to rat her out.

  I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing by covering for her, but I say, “Nothing,” and I get up to leave.

  As I walk out the door, I hear the nurse quizzing my sister — was she asking me to do something that was against the rules?

  “See you tomorrow, Lara,” I call out.

  As bad as I feel for my sister being stuck in this awful place, part of me hopes the nurse tells the doctor that she was trying to break the rules and that she has to stay in longer.

  I’m the worst sister in all eternity.

  Mom and I have to stop at the pharmacy on the way home from the hospital to pick
up prescriptions they’ve called in for Lara so we’ll have them when she’s released. We bump into Mrs. Helman, Spencer’s mom. She asks how Lara is doing.

  “Much better,” Mom tells her, beaming at Mrs. Helman with what I’ve started calling her Paranormal Smile. “She’s improving every day.”

  Considering we’ve just left Lara having to be given something “to calm her down” because she was crying her eyes out, I have to wonder if my mother is living in some kind of alternative reality.

  “I’m so happy to hear that,” Mrs. Helman says. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  And then Mom asks her if she’s planning to go to the city council election debate, and I have to walk away, because it’s just too weird to hear Mom talking about her opponent, school funding, and property taxes like nothing is wrong. Going on like life is normal when we’d just left Lara behind locked doors that they have to buzz you in and out of like a prison. Pretending that everyone at school, everyone on our street isn’t talking, isn’t wondering what’s so wrong with us that would make Lara do it.

  Dad went back to work after the hospital, and Mom and I have already eaten by the time he gets home, so he grabs a plate and comes to sit with me and watch TV. I’m watching a rerun of some old rom-com movie because I don’t want to think about anything other than laughing.

  “Can I switch to the news?” Dad asks.

  “Dad, I’m watching this!”

  “You’ve seen that movie at least five times already, Syd,” he says. “And it’s not exactly intellectually stimulating.”

  “I don’t want intellectually stimulating,” I say, throwing the remote control in his lap and getting up off the sofa. “I want something that’s going to take my mind off this crazy house and all the crazy people in it!”

  I stomp up to my room and hurl myself on the bed. I wish I were old enough to drive so I could get in the car and just go somewhere. Not that I have a destination in mind. Anywhere but here.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have that option. The closest thing I have is a book. I pull one of my favorites off the shelf and start reading it again, hoping that reading about other people’s problems will help me forget my own.

  My sister is home from the hospital by the time I get back from school the next day.

  “Shh!” Mom says when I let myself into the kitchen. “Lara’s resting. She tires very easily.”

  “Is she in the family room?” I ask. “Because I have homework to do and I need to use the computer.”

  “No, she’s in her room,” Mom says.

  “So … why do I have to shush, then? She’s upstairs. I’m downstairs. I can’t even talk in my own house?”

  We’re inside the house, so the Paranormal Smile is nowhere to be seen. Mom gives an exasperated sigh. “Sit down, Sydney. I need to explain a few rules going forward,” she says.

  This doesn’t sound good. I slide into a chair at the table and perch on the edge, waiting for the axe to fall. What are my parents going to take away from me this time because of Lara?

  “Your sister is still in a … fragile state,” Mom says. “We have to keep a close eye on her to make sure she doesn’t come to any harm.”

  “Wait, you mean she might try to kill herself again?”

  “There’s no immediate risk but —”

  “If they thought she might try to do it again, why’d they let her out of the freaking hospital?” I ask, my voice rising in anger at the doctors who made the decision.

  I don’t want to knock on my sister’s door or the bathroom door and get no answer and wonder if she’s okay or if she’s dead. I don’t want to feel that sick, gut-wrenching panic ever again.

  “Sydney, keep your voice down!” Mom hisses. “Lara’s sleeping.”

  “How am I supposed to sleep knowing my sister might try to kill herself in the next room at any random moment?”

  “Can you just listen to me before you start with the drama?” Mom says.

  Oh, I’m the one with the drama? Wow, Mom.

  “Lara will be seeing a therapist regularly, and I have to keep her under constant observation,” Mom continues. “That means she has to keep her bedroom door open and even the bathroom door has to be kept cracked open when she’s inside.”

  “What, even when she’s, you know, going?”

  “Yes, even then,” Mom says, her face grim.

  “That’s kind of creepy,” I say.

  “It’s a whole lot less creepy than finding her unconscious in the bathtub surrounded by pill bottles,” Mom says.

  I have to admit she has a point there.

  “Wait — those rules don’t apply to me, though, do they?”

  Mom looks confused.

  “No. Why would they apply to you?”

  “Because last time, when Lara was trying to lose weight, you made me stop eating cookies, too.”

  The look on Mom’s face would be comical if it wasn’t my life we were talking about. It was like this was some huge revelation to her, when she was the one who made the freaking policy.

  “I didn’t do that!” she protests.

  “What do you mean, you didn’t do that? Of course you did! You don’t buy cookies anymore. You don’t make any. This house has been a Cookie-Free Zone since Lara was in middle school.”

  “But … that was because I was trying to create a supportive environment for Lara to lose weight,” Mom protests. She looks down at her fingers and fidgets with her engagement ring. “I never intended it to feel like a punishment for you, sweetheart.”

  “Sure doesn’t feel that way.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She says it so softly I think I’ve misheard. I’ve never heard Mom say those words to me before. Apologies are a one-way street in our house, a street that goes in the parental direction. Until now.

  But when I look at Mom her eyes are glistening. There’s no Paranormal Smile. I think this is the real deal.

  “I’m doing the best I can, Syd. I try, but I don’t always get it right,” she says, an unfamiliar wobble in her voice.

  I’m not used to seeing her like this. Hearing her admit that she’s not right all the time, that she’s sorry, that she’s not the Paranormal Queen of Perfection, is what makes me get up and hug her, even though I’m still mad.

  “It’s okay, Mom. Nobody’s perfect.”

  She hugs me back, and I breathe in the scent of the perfume she always wears and the smell of her shampoo. So what if Lara is falling to pieces — Mom still puts on makeup and dresses like she’s on a photo shoot. Maybe that’s the glue she uses to hold herself together.

  Mom releases me and sighs heavily.

  “I don’t have to tell you how having to be here to watch Lara constantly is going to impact my campaign,” she says.

  And that’s when our little “moment” ends with a thud.

  “Maybe you can get Lara to apologize for the poor timing of her suicide attempt,” I say before taking my backpack and stomping upstairs, ignoring the stricken look on my mother’s face.

  “DID YOU hear? Sydney Kelley’s sister got let out of the hospital.”

  “You mean the girl who tried to kill herself?”

  “Yeah. My sister said some dude dumped her on Facebook and that’s what made her do it.”

  That’s the kind of buzz going around the cafeteria at lunch.

  I see Sydney walk in with her friend Cara. She stands in line to get her food. At first she’s chatting with Cara. But then I watch as her back tenses up and her hands clutch the tray tighter. As she starts hearing what people around her are saying. Then she says something to Cara and rushes out of the cafeteria, leaving her tray.

  “Yo, Liam — you zoning out or what?”

  Oliver waves his hand in front of my face to get my attention.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  “You asked me if I was zoning out.”

  He gives me an “Are you kidding me?” look.r />
  “Duh. Before that.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Are you going to debate club after school?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him, but my mind isn’t on debate. Or on the fantasy football league, which is what the other guys at the table are talking about. I’m wondering where Syd is and if she’s okay. I want to find her and ask, but I’m afraid she’ll think I’m weird if I do. So instead I pretend I just got a text, and under the pretext of replying, I send one to Sydney.

  Hey, saw you rush out of the caf. You okay?

  She doesn’t answer right away. I start to think she isn’t going to, so I force myself to join in the fantasy football league discussion and act like I care.

  And then my phone vibrates.

  Not really.

  Anything I can do?

  Tell everyone to shut up about Lara? Make the world go away?

  I wish I could do that. But I can just see me standing up in the middle of the cafeteria and shouting, “Could you all just shut up about Lara Kelley? And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming …” That would only make people talk about it more — and then they’d be talking about me, too, and how crazy I am.

  Wish there was something that I could ACTUALLY do, I text back, before saying, “Are you serious? I can’t believe you played the Bills running back over the Bears last week. You left twenty-five points on your bench.”

  As Roger Cohen launches into his reply, Syd texts back.

  There’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the worst part of it.

  My fingers tighten around my phone. I feel like throwing it at the wall. Someone should be able to do something. I want to do something. But I don’t know what to do or how to do it.

  So I just type, Hang in there, Syd, and go back to talking about fantasy football.

  THE ONLY time I’ve been out of the house since they released me from the hospital is to go to see Linda, my therapist, which I have to do every few days until she decides I’m sane enough to reenter society and, more importantly, go back to school. Part of me hopes that’s never. Every time my parents bring up the subject of if I want to go back to Lake Hills or transfer somewhere else it makes me want to take more pills. Like that’s even a possibility. Anything that might resemble a pill is under lock and key in our house. The next time I get my period, I’m going to have to ask Mom’s permission to even take Midol. She’s probably going to ration my use of tampons in case I try to make a noose out of the strings.