Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [13]
Mom doesn’t answer.
“Mom?” I say again, and Dad comes in from the living room, his mouth curved up in this weirdly familiar smile that, for some reason, sends a shiver racing through me, a flash bolt of panic-fear under my skin.
“I bet you have homework,” he says.
“Yeah,” I tell him, getting up and turning away so I can’t see his face and that smile. “I do.”
It’s silent, so silent, as I walk up to my room and shut the door, but as I creep out of it and back toward the stairs—I shut my door before I went through it because I knew what was coming—I hear my parents start to talk.
“I hate the idea of Tess going to a home,” Dad says. “She’s not—there’s still a chance. She could still wake up. And I don’t want her to think—”
“She knows you love her,” Mom says. “She knows you won’t give up on her. We all know that.”
“Katie—” Dad says, and Mom cuts him off, says, “Dave, I just—I’m not you, all right?”
Silence falls again, and then I hear Mom sigh, hear her cross the room.
“I wish—” she says, love and sadness in her voice, and Dad says, “Me too,” his voice smothered-sounding, like he’s speaking from somewhere far away, or holding something back.
Like he’s trying not to cry.
I creep down the stairs a little more, and when I crane my head toward the kitchen I see them holding each other, Dad resting his head against Mom’s, mouth pressed to her hair.
The smile he was wearing before is gone, wiped clean, and I realize where I’ve seen it before.
Tess. Her senior year, and especially before graduation, before she left for college, that was how Tess usually smiled. I just—I never realized it was strained. That it wasn’t real at all.
My skin prickles even though it isn’t cold, and I’m chilled to the bone.
I move silently back up the stairs, head into my room, and close the door behind me.
twelve
Until I was fifteen, I wanted to be Tess. I wanted her straight, shiny hair. I wanted her ability to always look perfect. I wanted her smile to be mine, I wanted people to see me and have their eyes light up.
I wanted all of those things, and never got any of them.
Tess was kind about it, though. It was her way. She would loan me her clothes, and not tell me to go away when I saw her with her friends. And when guys came to see her—and they always came to see her—she’d introduce me to them.
People in Ferrisville see Tess, even think “Tess,” and they think “perfect.” And she was perfect.
At least, she was in public.
At home though, sometimes, Tess would—well, she had a streak of darkness in her. Sounds normal actually, I think, but the thing is, she never showed it outside the house, never took it anywhere that people could see. Not ever.
It wasn’t anything big at first. She’d get upset over something and just retreat, fall silent and go into her room, act like she’d vanished even though she hadn’t. And then, if someone called or came by, she’d … I don’t even know how to explain it right. It’s like she’d smooth something over herself, push it away, maybe, and she’d be Tess again. The Tess everyone knew, the one who was always so happy, who always showed a smiling face to the world.
But that was for the world. For me … well, I remember this one time, when I was twelve and she was fifteen, I went into her room without knocking, hoping she’d let me sit with her and Claire, and she just stared at me like she’d never seen me before.
“Hey,” I said, and then she’d smiled, a too-bright and too-sharp curve of her mouth, like she’d forgotten how to smile and couldn’t even fake it, and got up, came over to me, and said, “Get out.”
She didn’t yell. She spoke in this weird, flat voice, almost like speaking hurt her, and when I said, “But—” and Claire said, “Tess, relax, okay?” Tess swung around and looked at Claire. Just looked at her, didn’t say a word, and Claire looked away from me, looked at the floor.
I took a step back,