Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [23]
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay, I’ll try it,” I say, and hand her another toy. “I should go home.”
“Do you ever wonder what she’d think?” Claire says. “About you and me being friends, I mean?”
“Sometimes,” I say, and wave as I get back on my bike.
But I don’t. Tess would be furious, and when Claire waves back, I see she knows that too. I wonder if either of us will ever be able to do anything without Tess’s shadow looming over us.
That’s a question I can’t answer.
It’s a question I’m afraid to.
sixteen
At home, I race through my homework while I watch television in the living room, finishing it as Mom and Dad get in. Dad heads straight upstairs, pausing only to kiss the top of my head and murmur that he loves me.
“What’s wrong with Dad?”
“He’s tired,” Mom says, and gestures at my books. “How’s the homework going?”
I shrug.
“Just like your father,” she says. “He barely had to do anything and he made As. Tess was so much more like me, always having to study, always worrying about her grades …” She trails off, glancing over her shoulder at Tess’s chair at the kitchen table.
“Tess got great grades, Mom.”
“Oh, I know,” she says, turning back to me. “She just … it’s so easy for you.”
“That’s because every decent teacher fled town when the state decided Ferrisville High wasn’t meeting even minimum academic standards.”
“And not because you’re smart?” I make a face at her and she touches my hair. “Your father can’t take compliments either.”
To be honest, I think I’m about as much like Dad as the moon is like straw, no matter what Mom says. I guess she must see that, though, because she says, “You really are a lot like him, Abby. How smart you are, how determined you are to—” She clears her throat. “You even get upset like he does.”
“Dad doesn’t get upset.” He does, but in a general swearing-at-the-lawn-mower-when-it-won’t-start sort of way. There’s no way he could ever be like me. He looks like Tess, tall and blond, so how could he? I know things were hard for him, with his brother dying when he was young, but still.
I know Dad doesn’t walk around wanting to be seen and then hating himself for it. I know Dad never did anything as dumb as try to get someone who’d never really want him to love him.
“Your father used to be—he was very unhappy after John died. And I know you’re angry about Tess now, but—”
Thankfully, the phone rings then, and when she answers it I go upstairs. Angry about Tess?
I wish.
The thing is, I am sort of angry at Tess. I mean, why won’t she wake up? What is she waiting for? What does she want? I pass Mom and Dad’s room and try to be quiet because the door is closed, like Dad has gone to bed, and then walk by Tess’s.
I look inside and see all the things she’s left on her desk and dresser and floor, things she thought she would be packing up. She hadn’t intended to come home to stay. She hadn’t intended any of this.
But she hasn’t come back either.
“You should wake up,” I whisper. “Mom just told me I’m like Dad. I’m not like him. I—” I take a deep breath. “I’m giving you what you want, Tess. I found you a guy, and he’s—you should see him. You have to see him. Just open your eyes, and then you can have him.”
No reply.
I walk to her desk.
“Have you ever loved anyone?” I ask the pictures on it. Her laptop is there too, plugged in and ready to go.
I look at it and tell myself I’ll get Eli to talk tomorrow. I can ask questions. Anyone can do that.
seventeen
Anyone, apparently, except me.
Things start off okay. I get to the hospital and find Eli sitting in the main waiting room, hunched over a notebook, and seeing him I’m struck all over again by … well, by him.
He looks up then, of course, and I will myself to not look away, to not act like I care that he’s caught me staring at him.
He gets up, slipping his notebook into his bag, and comes over to me. “Hey. How are you?”
“Okay,” I mumble. “Ready to see who you’ve been waiting for?”
He starts to