Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [79]
It was ugly and appalling. It was pathetic.
Why hadn’t I seen that before?
“Well, your plan backfired, didn’t it?” I slid all the way out and slammed the door. Then I screwed up my face and, through the open window, shouted words I thought would feel good—but in reality, they felt like knife pangs, not in her chest, but mine.
“Because you’re nothing but a goddamn selfish liar, Mandarin. And now I won’t go anywhere with you!”
Mandarin stared blankly back.
I didn’t shower, or wash my face, or even wipe the mud from my calves. I peed with the light off so I wouldn’t have to look in the mirror. I stuffed my dirty dress into the trash. Then I crawled into bed without pulling down the covers, curling up with my knees against my chest. I squinched my eyes shut.
But I couldn’t sleep.
I rolled out of bed, knelt beside my shoe box of rocks, and pried the lid open. I unfolded the paper bundle and dumped Mandarin’s arrowhead into my hand. Or rather, Mandarin’s mother’s arrowhead, regifted to me.
I went to my window. For a moment, I stood there, recalling the time I’d climbed out and let go, weeks earlier, millions and millions of years before.
And then, although I knew it was melodramatic, I hurled the arrowhead outside. I hadn’t aimed for the baby pool, but it fell right in, scarcely making a splash in the circle of murky water.
When I woke the next morning, I felt like I’d been stomped on by a giant cement jackalope. I had to unglue my mud-caked legs from the top of my comforter. The back of my head ached and my elbows stung—probably from when Tyler had knocked me down. My brains seemed to overflow in my skull.
The worst pain, however, was the one in my chest. It throbbed with my heartbeat, blurred my eyes. It made me want to roll over and sleep forever.
But my headache drove me from bed at last. I pulled on my longest sweatpants and padded downstairs.
“Momma, do we have any aspirin?” I called blearily.
“I just want an explanation.”
My stomach sank, which made me feel even more nauseous. “What do you mean?” I asked as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, where I discovered that Momma wasn’t speaking to me at all—her words were directed at my sister.
Taffeta sat on the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, her head bowed. She scowled so ferociously she looked like a little old woman. Ghosts of the past night’s makeup still haunted her face, faint lipstick staining her mouth as if she’d been slurping a red Popsicle.
We probably look like sisters, I realized, remembering the mascara smudges circling my own eyes. But I didn’t want to think about it. Thinking hurt.
“Aspirin?” I asked again, turning to Momma.
She wore her baggy blue muumuu and had her fists on her hips, so the satin ballooned in an hourglass shape around her. Her face was makeup free, and she’d pulled back her hair in a sloppy ponytail. Her eyes were narrowed. The vein in her forehead throbbed.
Momma was at the end of her rope.
“Taffeta, how could you? After all the time and money we put into your pageants—how? After everything I’ve done for you?”
“Tylenol would be fine,” I said. “Or Excedrin.”
“The pantry,” Momma replied without looking my way.
Ducking to remain out of striking distance, I found a bottle of aspirin on the top shelf of the pantry. I tipped too many tablets into my palm. When I tried to cram them back into the bottle, several spilled through my fingers and pinged on the floor.
“All I want is an explanation.” Momma turned to me. “You won’t believe what she did!”
I was suddenly positively, absolutely certain Taffeta had sung a dirty song, just like I’d suggested during Candy Land. “What happened?”
“She didn’t sing! She got up there, and just … didn’t sing.”
I glanced at Taffeta. Her chin was wrinkled like a dried-up fruit. Tears leaked from her immense brown eyes. So