by Jenn Bishop
When all the pizza was gone, Haley and I cleared the table while Mom and Dad went into the living room to play cards.
“You want to watch a movie tonight?” Haley asked.
“Sure,” I said, dumping some bits of crust into the trash can. “Which one?”
“I don’t care. You can pick.”
“Really?” Haley never let me pick the movie unless Mom and Dad made her.
“Yeah,” she said. She had been washing the silverware, but she stopped for a moment to look out the window. “Unless…”
“What?”
“Never mind. Mom probably wouldn’t let us.” She went back to washing the dishes.
“Come on. You know I hate when you start saying something and then don’t tell me what you were going to say.”
“Fine. But I know they’ll veto it,” she said. “Going for a swim. At night.”
“That’s the best idea ever, Hales!”
I ran into the living room. “Mom, Dad—can me and Haley go swimming?”
“Right now?” Dad asked.
Mom looked up from her laptop. She wasn’t supposed to bring it on vacation. “It’s pitch-black out there.”
Dad peered out the window overlooking the lake. “Laurie, it’s a full moon.”
“Oh,” Mom said. I’m sure she was trying to think of some other reason why we shouldn’t do it. Sharks?
“It’s their vacation, too,” Dad continued. Then he turned to me and said, “I’m fine with it if your mother agrees.”
I put on my most-responsible-person-ever face. Then I wiped the pizza sauce off the side of my mouth. “Please, Mom.”
She sighed. “Fine. However, if you come out covered in leeches…” But she was smiling as she said it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I ran upstairs to change into my bathing suit. I peeked in Haley’s room. Her phone was right where I’d left it. I thought about grabbing it and checking to see if Zack had written anything back, but then I heard Haley coming up the stairs.
Please don’t check.
Haley met me in the hallway in her bikini.
We grabbed towels from Mom and Dad’s room and went downstairs. I shivered when we stepped out the back door. The stones marking the path down to the dock were cool under my feet. “Have you ever gone skinny-dipping before?” I asked Haley.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “Have I?”
I didn’t ask again; I knew she meant yes.
When we came out from under the trees and walked onto the dock, the whole lake was lit by the moon. The sky was filled with thousands and thousands of stars, and the water was calm and quiet. There were no motorboats or people on Jet Skis or even a kayak. It was just me and Haley, sitting on the edge of the dock, dipping our toes in the water.
“You really should paint your toenails,” she said, lightly splashing her feet in the water.
I shook my head. “No way.”
“I could paint them for you tomorrow.”
Even though there were lots of things Haley and I did together, she had never offered to do that. Toenail painting was a Haley and Mom thing. Dad and I were officially not invited.
“Okay. But if I don’t like it, I can take it off, right?”
“You’ll probably like it,” she said. “I’m pretty talented.”
We got real quiet then, and I thought about the phone upstairs. Was there a way to delete a text message? Were there take-backs? What if I called Zack and said it was a mistake and I was sorry and please, please, please don’t tell my sister?
Haley shivered. “It’s now or never,” she said, standing up. She looked up at the moon, put her hands together, and dove into the water. One of those clean dives with no splashes. She popped her head up a few yards away from the dock. “It’s amazing, Quinnen. Come on—jump!”
I looked up at a star and wished. Wished for that message to disappear from Haley’s phone and for everything to stay just like it was right now.
And then I grabbed my nose and jumped.
—
I’m not sure Haley and I would have ever left the water if Mom hadn’t come out and stood on the dock, bribing us with hot chocolate.
We sat in the plastic chairs on the patio behind the house, all four of us sipping our drinks and watching for shooting stars. It was Dad’s idea. He had an eye for them. That or he was a really good liar. He would always jump up and point, saying he had seen one. But then none of us could ever say that we saw it, too.
“Oh, wow!” Haley shouted. “I saw one!”
Dad squinted up at the sky. “Really?”
“It was incredible.”
I stared up at the sky. There was too much of it. How was I ever going to be looking at the right spot at the right time to see one?
“I’ll be back in a sec,” Haley said, and she went inside.
Mom and Dad and I continued to stare up at the sky, hoping we could be as lucky as Haley.
“Mom!” Haley yelled from inside the house. It was different from any yell I’d heard from her before, and I’d heard a lot of them.
Mom stood up to go inside, but before she got to the house, Haley was slamming open the sliding glass door. Her cell phone was in her hand, and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.
Haley stared right into my eyes. “I hate you.”
“Haley,” Mom said. “What’s wrong?”
“You couldn’t let me have this one good thing, could you? You had to go and take it away.”
One good thing? Did my sister really think Zack was the “one good thing” in her life?
“Just the other week, you didn’t even know if he liked you back, and now all of a sudden you decide you love him?”
Haley glared at me. The whites of her eyes stood out in the dark, reminding me of the dog we had found hurt on the side of the road last fall. Wet and whimpering and scared all at once.
“Quinnen?” Mom said. “What’s going on? Will someone say something?”
“It was a mistake.” I couldn’t look at Mom, and I really couldn’t look at Haley. All I could do was stare down at my lap.
“She texted Zack,” Haley said. “She texted him and told him I wanted to break up with him.”
“Quinnen!” Mom said sharply. But I still didn’t look up.
“I’m sorry,” I said. But I wasn’t sorry. Not completely. My voice started to waver. “What if I tell him it was me?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Haley said. “It’s too late. He never really loved me. He wrote back ‘Okay.’ ” She could barely get out the last word before she started crying these big gulpy sobs.
Okay.
Okay, like he was agreeing. He was okay with breaking up with my sister. Haley and Zack were over.
It had worked.
Mom wrapped Haley in her arms and the two of them walked out to the dock, leaving me and Dad alone on the patio. Dad shifted in his seat a little, like he was trying to find the words he was supposed to say to me, the words I didn’t need to hear because I knew what he was going to say already. That I was the bad sister. That I shouldn’t have done it.
“Your sister’s very upset,” Dad finally said.
I couldn’t look at him, so I stared at the moon instead. “I know.” I wrapped my towel around tighter, but I couldn’t stop shivering.
“You really texted him?”
I nodded silently.
“What did you write?”
“ ‘I think we should break up.’ ”
Dad sighed. Mom and Haley were sitting on the edge of the dock. Mom was rubbing Haley’s back, so I knew she was still crying. “Who breaks up by text message?”
“I guess everyone,” I said.
He shook his head.
“One time, Casey’s brother had his friend do it for him.”
“That’s pretty bad,” Dad said with a little laugh. “Quinnen, you know this isn’t funny, right?”
I nodded.
“Even if you really don’t like Zack, it’s not okay for you to make decisions for your sister. I know it’s hard to understand—and it’s hard for your mom and me, too. Haley’s a teenager. There are always going to be boys. Your sister—she’s social. She’s going to be out there making new friends and meeting people. That’s who she is. And it’s changing every minute.”
He cleared his throat. “There are lots of times when Mom and I think it would be so much easier if we could make decisions for you and Haley. But it doesn’t work like that.”
“Really?”
“Your mom and I would love to protect you and Haley from everything, honey. But it’s impossible. You wouldn’t want to be the one kid in your school in padding and a helmet, right?”
“Definitely not.”
“Well, that means your mom and I are taking a gamble. Every day, we let you and Haley out into the world. It means mistakes happen. We all make mistakes. Lord knows I’ve made plenty.”
Me too, I thought.
I’d wanted Haley and Zack to break up, but I didn’t think it would look like this. Feel like this. The way Haley looked at me—my own sister staring right back at me with so much hate in her eyes.
I looked up at the sky, hoping for a shooting star. I needed one. Just one.
“Do you think Haley will ever forgive me?”
Dad didn’t answer right away. Mom and Haley were walking back from the dock. Haley was still sniffling, but at least she had stopped sobbing.
“I think your sister’s hurting right now, and she has every right to. But it won’t last forever.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“I know, Quinnbear. But there’s someone else who needs to hear that more than me right now.”
I stared at all those little gritty bits of chocolate at the bottom of my mug while Mom and Haley walked past us and into the house.
As Dad and I sat out back, watching the stars and getting colder by the minute, I saw a shooting star. A real one. I wished for a time machine, for a do-over. And then I closed my eyes real hard and counted to ten.
But when I opened them, nothing had changed. It was still just me and Dad and my mistake.
—
Eventually Mom came out onto the porch and told me I was going to catch a cold from sitting out there in my wet bathing suit. I didn’t tell her I deserved one. I think she knew.
When I went inside, Haley was lying on the couch with a cup of tea and a box of tissues and watching When Harry Met Sally.
“Haley?”
I said it loud enough for her to hear, I was sure of it, but she didn’t even turn her head. It was like I didn’t exist.
Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Not now, Quinnen.”
I went upstairs and took a bath. When I came out, Mom was reading a book in the leather chair in my room. “We need to talk about this,” she said, closing her book.
I sat down on the bottom bunk, twisting strands of wet hair between my fingers. “Okay.”
“I’m so disappointed in you, Quinnen.”
I nodded.
“You know better than to do something like this.”
I nodded again.
“Did you read your sister’s other messages with Zack?” She looked me right in the eye when she asked the question.
Looking right back at her, I told her, “No.” But my lip quivered and my stupid cow eyes gave it away, like they always do.
“Oh, Quinnen.”
I couldn’t look at her. All I could do was picture the phone on Haley’s bureau and that mean message she wrote about me to Zack. The one I was never supposed to see.
That feeling I had, that feeling that told me, Do it now, Quinnen, do it now, where did it go? It had worked. My plan had really worked. My sister and Zack had broken up. I had her back.
But I didn’t.
Because now everything else was broken, too.
“What your sister and Zack wrote to each other was private,” Mom said. “You didn’t have any right to go in there and read that.”
“I know, Mom,” I said. “I messed up.”
“Yes, you did.” She was quiet for a moment. I wondered if she and Dad had talked over my punishment while I was taking a bath. The tournament. My eyes filled with tears.
“Not you, too,” she said. “Stop that, Quinnen.”
I wiped at my eyes. “Are you and Dad…Are you…Do I still get to play in the tournament?”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I’m not going to punish your team. As far as we’re concerned, you’re going. You didn’t break our trust today. You broke your sister’s.”
I nodded.
“You’re too young to understand what it’s like to have your heart broken. It’s a terrible feeling. I don’t know what came over you to do that to your sister.”
I looked down at my lap. Mom was right. And now there was no way I could undo what I had done.
“Your father and I will discuss a punishment for you when we get home. It doesn’t make sense to further spoil our family vacation.” Mom sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Quinnen. You’re so impulsive. Sometimes, I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.”
She walked out of the room, leaving me all alone. I climbed into the top bunk to lie down.
It was so quiet without Haley.
Was that how it had been for her, back before I was born?
It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea of a time when I didn’t exist. The thought made me shiver. But for the first six years of Haley’s life, I wasn’t around. There was no Quinnen. It was Mom and Dad and Haley. Just three. And then—bam—I was born, and suddenly it was four. Haley had to deal with me. Whether she wanted to or not. Maybe it was not.
Haley had never said she hated me before. She’d gotten mad at me plenty of times, so many that I had lost track. But she had never said that word. Hate. Did she ever wish things could go back to the way they’d been before me, when it was just three?
I could hear Dad laughing downstairs. He made fun of that movie every time Mom and Haley watched it. I bet it was him and Mom and Haley on the couch. Just three again.
I closed my eyes, rubbed the sheet in between my fingers, and tried to fall asleep.
I look back at Mom and Dad sitting in the stands, but they have no idea that Cheese Pizza is Zack. Banjo is lining up the pizzas in the foul territory over by third base. I’m standing to the side of home plate with Charlie, the old man, and Amanda, the teenager, waiting for Pizza Knockout instructions.
Banjo’s voice is broadcast over the sound system. “The way the game works,” he says as he heads toward us, “is each player gets paired with a pizza. Players, your goal is to knock out your pizza with…wait for it…” He looks out at the crowd, expecting them to shout out guesses. Meanwhile, the batboy and batgirl come running toward us with buckets.
“Water balloons!” Banjo yells.
The crowd cheers as the buckets are placed at our feet. We each get one bucket full of water balloons. There must be at least twenty of them in there. Red, blue, green, and yellow.
“Whoever is the first to hit their pizza ten times will win free tickets for the rest of the season and a free post-game pizza today at Pizza Palace. How about that?”
The crowd cheers again. Charlie starts reaching down for a water balloon, but Banjo cuts him off. “Not just yet, my friend. You haven’t chosen your pizza partners! What’ll it be, Charlie?” Banjo holds out the mic for Charlie to answer into it.
“My favorite’s always been pepperoni,” Charlie says.
“So pepperoni it is!” Banjo directs Charlie so he’s lined up with the pepperoni pizza.
Banjo walks over to Amanda next. “Whatcha hankering for today, Amanda?”
Not cheese. Not cheese.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Amanda says. “So I’ll go with cheese.”
“Man, my pizza craving is through the roof right now.” Banjo walks over to me. “Well, sweeti
e, looks like you don’t get much of a choice now, do you?”
“I’ll take sausage,” I say. But I keep looking at the cheese pizza.
“Okay, folks. We’re ready to roll! On the count of three, our first-ever game of Pizza Knockout will begin!”
Banjo doesn’t say that the pizzas are going to dance. He doesn’t say that they’re going to play the stupid “Hokey Pokey” song during Pizza Knockout. But they are. The pizzas are dancing. And they’re probably happy that the day they have to wear pizza costumes is that one cool day you have all summer, where it’s cloudy and it looks like it’s going to rain, only it hasn’t yet. And I know that underneath that costume, Zack is smiling. I can see it in the way his feet step from side to side, in the way his huge pizza body dips and twists.
Zack is happy and smiling and dancing, but my sister will never dance or smile again.
I lower my hand so it’s just an inch away from touching the water balloon at the top.
“One.”
Maybe this is what I’ve really been practicing for with Hector.
“Two.”
I know I should throw at my assigned pizza.
“Three.”
I grab a red water balloon, keep my eye on Zack, and throw. The balloon gets him right where his stomach should be. Nice shot, Quinnen. I grab a yellow balloon and watch as it explodes right by his heart.
“Hey, that’s my pizza!” Amanda says. But she hasn’t hit him even once.
“Oops.”
I grab three more water balloons and throw them at him. Bam. Bam. Bam. I can’t stop. He’s getting soaked, but he hasn’t fallen over. Not yet.
I haven’t won. Not yet.
“She’s going rogue,” Banjo says into the microphone with an uneasy chuckle. Putting the mic aside, he says to me, “You’re supposed to be aiming for the sausage pizza.”
“I guess my aim’s not that good,” I say.
The sausage pizza starts scooting over toward Zack, as if that will make me start hitting him, like I’m supposed to.
Pizzas are stupid.
I grab three more water balloons and chuck them even harder, this time right at Zack’s head. They explode over his stupid sheer pizza eyes. I can’t see Zack’s real eyes, but I can feel him looking right at me, and I think he knows.
He knows that he ruined my last summer with my sister and he can never, never, never fix it.