Page 25 of Fade into You
“Well, maybe they weren’t so completely wrong.”
She stares at me, her eyes hard, like she’s deciding between cutting me down completely and telling me she’s sorry, telling me I’m right.
“Okay, fine,” she finally says. “I know we haven’t gotten a lot of time together since you’ve been home. What about Friday?Spend the night. Bring your stuff to school and just come home with me, all right? We’ll catch up. I promise.”
I wait to see if there’s more, some undercut or passive-aggressive comment.
“Please?” she says, smiling now. Pushing herself to her knees, she drops the half sandwich to the ground and clasps her hands together and makes a big show of begging me. “Pretty please? Please!” she shouts. “Please, oh Birdie, my queen, do me the honor of a sleepover this Friday.” Then she’s throwing her arms around me, pretending to wail and sob into my shoulder.
“Okay, okay. People are staring, you weirdo.”
She lets go of me and sits back on her heels and then gives one last sniffle, reaching for a strand of my hair to wipe her non-tears.
I wait on my front steps for her to pick me up Friday morning. I have my overnight bag with me. I stand there way too long, waiting like an idiot. I miss the bus. Daniel has to drive me—late, of course—because Liv refused to let me ride with her and her mouth-breather boyfriend, Garrett. God forbid anyone at school sees us together.
At lunch, when I go find Jessa, Dade is already there with her. Alone. No Kayla.
“She’s sick,” he tells me, thinking somehow I knew already.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, adding, “She just said she didn’t feel good and was staying home today.”
“You didn’t ask what was wrong?”
“She said she’d be fine for homecoming tomorrow.” He shrugs again like it’s nothing and mumbles, “Can’t be too bad.”
I use the pay phone outside the gym to call her. It rings and rings, until the answering machine picks up. Her dad’s voice tells me to leave a message.
“Kayla, are you there? It’s Bird. I was just calling to check on you. I heard you’re home sick…. You there?” I pause. “Maybe you’re sleeping.” Pause again. “Well, feel better. I’ll talk to you later.”
I can barely pay attention the rest of the school day, because I can’t help feeling like either she’s sick, like really sick because of the food stuff, or else she’s gone to a whole lot of trouble to make sure we don’t have our sleepover.
I call her three more times after I get home. I even check my email to see if maybe there’s something there. There isn’t. But there is a message from Charlie. He must’ve been in a rush to class because it’s all in the subject line, nothing in the body:I have an update. Call you tonight after 9.
I try Kayla again, and this time her mom answers. She tells me Kayla’s been in bed all day. Stomach flu. I don’t buy it. I mean, I can believe she’s sick, but I don’t believe it’s the stomach flu. She’s doing something to herself, something worse than eating a bunch of Olean Doritos.
It’s 8:58 according to my clock radio. The phone echoes through the house, from the landline in the kitchen to the cordless muffled under the covers of Olivia’s bed, where she’s brushing her hair andhas her face caked in an expensive skin treatment I have a feeling she shoplifted from the mall.
“Hello?” Olivia answers, then coos, that saccharine whispery fake voice she loves to use. “Hey, babe.” Her smile cracks the clay mask, forming a pair of parentheses enclosing her mouth, making her look like her mom.
I hear Daniel’s voice downstairs answer, “Rubens residence.” He always answers the phone like that, and every time I’m left wondering if he knows what he’s saying or not. This was something that drove Charlie crazy when he still lived here. Because me and Charliearen’tRubens. He always thought Daniel did it on purpose. But I don’t think so. He’s not like that. I don’t think he has a malicious cell in his body—all his recessive meanness genes were passed on to Olivia. He’s just oblivious.
“I got it,” she yells, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. Then into the receiver: “Dad, I got it, god. It’s for me, hang up.”
His bumbling, “Oh, okay. Sorry, honey. Jeez,” echoes in stereo through the phone and up the stairs.
“Ugh, sorry, babe. Yeah. No. Nothing really, just thinking aboutyou.”
“Liv?” I whisper. “If Charlie calls, I need to talk to him.”
She darts her eyes at me, widening then narrowing them.
“Okay?” I say, louder. “Liv, okay?”
“That’s just Birdie,” Liv says, pulling the phone away from her face to add, “Seriously. Can you, like, leave?”
“This is my room too, Liv.”
