Page 23 of The Last to Let Go
“Did you study?” I asked her, trying so hard to ignore what was happening on the other side of our bedroom door. I walked over to our laptop to turn the volume up on the music. Underneath the arguing and the music and Callie’s humming, and me pretending like nothing was happening, I could hear the steady rhythm through the wall our room shared with Aaron’s. It was the bump-bump-bumping of Aaron lying on his bed tossing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it, over and over again.
“Sorta,” she finally answered.
“Sorta... is not good enough,” I scolded, as I thought was my duty. “Nebraska?” I asked her, even though I was almost unable to hear myself think through all the layers of noise reverberating through the house.
Callie rolled her eyes and fell over sideways onto the bed.
Here we go.
“I don’t wanna do this,” she moaned again, opening her hands dramatically to let the Barbies fall lifeless to the floor with a dull clatter.
“Nebraska,” I demanded.
“Omaha,” she growled into her pillow.
“Wrong. Lincoln.” I lay down on my bed, across from hers, on my stomach, getting fully into quizzing mode. “Rhode Island?” I asked, some part of me taking pleasure in the structure of it all—the rightness of having clear, definitive answers. I could feel myself kicking my feet, swinging them up and down, alternating, left-right, left-right, left-right.
“No, Brooke.Pleee-ease.”
I threw my ancient Care Bear at her head. “Come on!”
“Ow,” she whined. “Providence, jerk!” She threw it back at me, but I blocked, and it ricocheted off my arm into the wall, then fell softly onto my bed, before tumbling soundlessly onto the floor with Callie’s Barbies. She stuck her tongue out.
“Vermont?”
She shrugged—she could never remember Vermont, for some reason.
“Montpelier. You can remember because the end of ‘Vermont’ is the beginning of ‘Montpelier.’ Got it?” She continued to stare at me, expressionless. “Okay, Kansas?”
“Toe-picker!” she shouted—she really did enjoy annoying me.
“It’s Toe-peek-a. Topeka, okay? Be serious, Callie. New York—youbetterknow this one.”
I watched this little smirk twisting up the corner of her mouth, a dimple indenting her cheek, and I could read it on her face—she was probably daring herself to say “New York City,” like the last time, but decided against it. She took a cue from me and sighed through the word “Albany,” managing to stretch it out over one long syllable.
“Yes. Tennessee?”
“Nasssshhhh-ville” she said, sitting upright again, suddenly alert, bouncing up and down, having found a way to amuse herself.
“Right. North Dakota?”
“Bisquick!” she shouted, totally losing it, dissolving into that stupid full-body laugh of hers that was nearly impossible to withstand without joining in. I bit down on the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling.
“Fine. Enough, okay? Are you done?” I waited until she stopped. “All right, Arizona?”
She gazed up at the ceiling thoughtfully, trying to come up with something clever. But then the door slammed, giving the whole apartment one last rumbling aftershock. I could hear his footsteps on the stairs. And Mom gasping through her sobs in the living room.
My eyes closed. There was a tiny ice pick somewhere deep in my brain, jabbing away at my frontal lobe. I buried my face in my folded arms. My legs went limp as they flopped down against the bed. It was over. It hadn’t been that bad. It wasn’t always super awful; sometimes it was just loud more than anything. But no matter how bad or not bad, it always affected me the same, stirring up all kinds of chaos inside of me, the way a storm churns up all the mud and scum at the bottom of the river.
“Phoenix,” Callie answered.
On the other side of the wall the bouncing of the ball had ceased, and I could hear Aaron wrestling his window open—a clang followed by a screech, always. Then his careful footsteps pinged the metal stairs of the fire escape. He was on his way up to the roof to smoke.
I lay there, trying to still the rolling waves of anarchy surging through my body.
“Phoenix,” she repeated, louder. “Brooke, Phoenix!”
Something took hold of me then, as it sometimes did. I lifted my head to look at her, and when I opened my mouth, it was someone else’s voice. “Shut up, Callie—justshut up!” The words raked through my throat like fingernails on a chalkboard, sending chills up and down my spine. “Shut! Up!” I screamed into my pillow, the words strangling me.
