Page 55 of Our Little Secret

“You’re not eighteen.”

“Who cares?”

“I do.”

“Oh right!” She narrowed her eyes as she forced down the top and struggled to close the zipper. “You care?” Leah made a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat.

Brooke reached out again and Leah spun quickly, slapping her hard across the face once more.

Brooke recoiled.

“Don’t touch me!” Leah warned. “You hear me? Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!”

Reacting, Brooke grabbed her once more. Hard. Her grip punishing.

Leah whirled around, and this time she spat. With vehemence. The spittle, warm and dripping, hit Brooke between her eyes and dripped down her nose as Leah jerked away again.

“You little—”

With that Leah was gone, the pink roller bag bouncing down the stairs before she marched into the kitchen, dragging the bag behind her, its wheels gliding noisily over the worn linoleum.

Hand pressed to her smarting cheek, Brooke was left standing in the middle of Leah’s room with its blush-colored walls and posters of teen heartthrobs, a white bunny and a tattered teddy bear on her messy bed. Hot tears of frustration rolled to her chin.

She wanted to kill her sister.

Angrily swiping her face with her sleeve, she caught up with Leah downstairs in the pantry, where she was emptying out the ancient Maxwell House Coffee tin that Nana used to stash cash for emergencies.

“Don’t!” Brooke commanded.

Leah ignored her. She stuffed a wad of bills into the pocket of her jacket and cast her sister another hateful glance before yanking on the roller bag’s handle and disappearing out the back door.

It was all Brooke could do not to fly after her. And she might have, if not for the twinge in her abdomen, the reminder that there was new life growing inside her.

Brooke stepped onto the porch, where flies were buzzing against the screens and a wasp was busily working on a nest in the corner of the roof. Leah was already crossing the cracked sidewalk leading to an alley and out the gate.

As if the world weren’t spinning off its axis, Nana’s shaggy black cat was sunning himself on the broken concrete near the old tetherball pole. No ball was attached to the rusting chain, which rattled a bit in a small puff of wind.

Brooke squinted and shaded her eyes, staring down the open alleyway, where trash cans and old bikes were scattered.

Leah had disappeared.

She won’t get far, she told herself.

But she’d been wrong. So wrong.

Leah had found a way to take a bus and hitchhike to Northern California. There she’d found solace with their grandmother’s sister, a cold woman who had never forgiven Brooke for her part in what Leah insisted to this day was the turning point in her life.

Brooke assumed some of the fault, but Leah’s problems were far more deep-rooted than the loss of a would-be boyfriend to her older sister. Far more.

At least, that’s what she’d told herself so she could sleep at night.

It hadn’t always worked.

So now Leah was back.

Taking up space in Brooke’s house.

Again.

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