“Can you please just fill out that form for school? The lunch form thing?”
She rolled her eyes, massaged the back of her neck with one hand, and scooped up her purse with the other. “Gem. I am so tired. Just fill it out and I’ll sign it.” With Dixie gone and no one to perform for, she’d stopped pretending to care about my day or my grades or the fact that I’d hardly eaten.
“I did. But they need copies of your paychecks, or the Basic Food statements.” I’d told her all this before.
Mom walked toward the kitchenette; I followed. She tossed her purse onto the small table we rarely ate at. “I don’t like them having all that information about me. Anyway, isn’t school food disgusting and fattening and everything? I’ll get you food at the store.”
“When?”
She turned around slowly. Under the kitchen light I could see her eyes were bloodshot; mascara had flaked and settled into her tiny wrinkles. Her tank top hung off one shoulder, showing a purple bra strap. Her power had dimmed. “When I get some sleep, Gem. When I get a shower and a cup of coffee. That’s when. It’s two in the morning. God.”
I clenched my teeth. My choice was to push harder and piss her off, or back down and wind up with nothing. I had to eat. “Can I have some money?” I asked. “Like . . . three of those dollar bills?”
“What dollar bills would those be?”
“I saw them in your purse.”
“Oh, you mean my dollar bills? The ones I earned at my job?”
Her job. Bartending twenty hours a week. Catching other shifts here and there.
She reached for her purse. “When are you getting a job again, one might ask.”
“I’m trying.” I’d filled out applications everywhere within a walk or a reasonable bus ride. I had no references, though, not after getting fired from the souvenir shop for always being late, which was usually the bus’s fault.
“‘Do. Or do not. There is no try.’” Yoda voice. “Okay, look, I’m going to loan you these dollar bills.” She pressed a wad of money into my hand. “And I want them back in this exact condition. I will check every wrinkle.”
I looked at the money.
“Gem, I’m kidding,” she said, jostling my arm. “You’re so serious. It’s excruciating.” With a glance toward the hall, she whispered, “Don’t you wonder what’s in that letter? I mean, don’t you just wonder what flavor, what exact flavor, of bullshit he’s selling now? I haven’t heard from him in . . . Well, thank god. Not as if I want to.” She fixed her eyes on me. I closed my hand around the money and lowered my arm. “What about you? Have you heard from him?”
I shook my head.
“No,” she said, reaching to brush my hair out of my eyes. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
3.
DIXIE SLEPT through our alarms. Only the top of her head showed from under the blankets. She always slept like that. For years it was my job to get her up, get her dressed, make sure she ate breakfast, get her to school. When she was little little, she didn’t complain, but as she got into second, third, fourth grade, we started to argue about it. She would want to wear her favorite outfit five days a week and I’d tell her she couldn’t, because people would notice and tease her. She’d want candy for breakfast, she’d want to play instead of finishing schoolwork, she’d want to run ahead of me and cross the street without waiting for a green light. Around sixth grade, she decided she could do everything herself.
“You’re not my mom,” she’d tell me.
I had a picture in my drawer, me pushing a stroller around some city street when Dixie was a toddler and I was in maybe kindergarten, maybe first grade. Dixie’s sitting there, chubby legs and curly hair. And me, pushing the stroller and wearing a grown-up’s purse over my shoulder.
One morning last year I told her she had on too much makeup for junior high and she said it again—“You’re not my mom”—and I took the picture out of my drawer and said, “Who’s this, then? Who’s pushing you around in a stroller?”
She laughed. “Someone took that picture, Gem. Probably Mom was right there, or her friend what’s-her-name, Roxanne. They probably stuck a purse on you and told you to push me around because they thought it was cute.”
She was probably right, but truthfully I’d never thought about who took the picture. It just existed, and me and Dix were the only ones in it. It was the image of the two of us that stuck in my head as the reality; I’d never wondered who was outside the frame.
Now, I put both hands on the lump of her and rocked it until she thrashed her arms and legs at me.
“You’re going to miss the bus,” I said.
“I’m not taking the bus.” Her voice was muffled.
“What does Dad’s letter say?”
“Nothing.”
I poked her shoulder.
She threw the covers off. “Get out of my face!”
“Just tell me what it says.”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, and pulled the covers back up. “Leave me alone.”
Mom had given me seven dollars. I doubted she’d realized she’d shoved that much at me. I also had that spare quarter from yesterday, plus the four quarters Luca had given me, which I guess technically belonged to Denny, but all together it was the most money I’d had at once since running out of what I’d saved.
I left the apartment without checking on Mom to make sure she was okay from whatever she was on last night. Don’t look and you won’t see, I reminded myself. And if I didn’t see, then I didn’t know, and then I wouldn’t have to worry.
On the way to school I stopped by the doughnut shop that I smelled every day, and I got in line. “Apple crumb, and a glazed old-fashioned. And a milk,” I said. “And a chocolate coconut,” I added before the cashier rang me up.
I sat at the counter facing the street and ate all three, taking my time about it, pretending I was the kind of person who always had unlimited doughnut money and did this every day.
All morning, I looked for Dixie between classes in all the places she might be. Before third period I saw her best friend, Lia, head bent over her phone, standing outside their bio class in the black knit hat and green cowboy boots she always wore.
“Lia!”
My voice came out louder than I’d meant it to. More than one person turned to see what I was yelling about. Lia looked up, but her expression didn’t change and I figured she must not recognize me. “It’s Gem. Dixie’s sister?”
Lia laughed. “Yeah,” she said, “I know.”
Then why didn’t you say hi, you little snot? “Have you seen her?”
Lia’s answer was to hold up her phone and show me a text she’d just gotten from Dixie.
tell mr w i’ll be there in 5 mins ish
I’d be late for my next class two floors up if I waited around. “Tell her to look for me at lunch.”