“Are you kidding me? I can’t take her—she’s . . .” Sarah stopped herself just in time. She’s what? I wanted to ask. Fat. Not cool. A sixth grader. A loser. An embarrassment. There were so many words she could use to fill the blank.
“Nico’s only eleven, and I’m just not comfortable with her being here alone all day,” Mom chimed in. “Part of our agreement was that you would look out for her this summer.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say I would have to let her ruin my entire life! I’ve taken her everywhere with me. I’m done.”
“Hyperbole,” Dad intoned, reaching for the bread.
I knew what they were doing, and Sarah did too. We weren’t stupid. If I went with Sarah, there wouldn’t be anything “inappropriate” going on between Sarah and her eighteen-year-old boyfriend. I was a de facto chaperone, at age eleven.
Sarah stood suddenly, even though we weren’t allowed to leave the table without permission. “Fine, then I won’t go. If I have to take Nico, forget it.”
Mom and Dad finished their dinner in silence. I hated the scratching sounds of the forks and knives on the plates, with no words spoken. We could hear Sarah’s door slam upstairs, then her moving around in her room. Finally, Mom said, “You know she’s not mad at you, right? She’s mad at us.”
Mom and Dad exchanged another look, and I knew they would continue talking about this later—how to handle Sarah. How to keep her calm. It was all they ever talked about. Sarah.
“I’m okay to be here by myself,” I said, even though I really wasn’t. After an hour or two in the house alone, I usually got spooked by something: the mailman ringing the doorbell, a weird hang-up phone call. One time, Mom had left the dryer in the basement on wrinkle guard, which meant it went on by itself every fifteen minutes. Sarah was home with me then, and I went to her, not daring to enter her room but standing in the doorway to tell her that I’d heard something downstairs. She grabbed one of her cheer batons from the closet before heading into the basement to see what was going on. I cowered at the top of the stairs, waiting for her to come back up.
“Sarah? What is it?” I called down timidly. Of course she pretended not to hear me for the longest time. When she finally came back up, she put her finger to her lips, telling me to stay quiet. “What? What is it?” I asked anxiously, terrified that there was someone—or something—waiting for us in the dark corners. She came up the stairs quietly, then slammed the basement door behind her and locked it, looking over at me with big eyes.
“Nico . . .” she said, her voice shaking.
“What?” I could feel a cold wave wash over me. I was ready to run. We were about to be murdered, like on reality news shows.
“It’s . . . it’s the . . . dryer!” She burst out laughing. “Oh man, Nico, you should see your stupid face right now! I need my phone, I’ve got to get a picture of this—did you just pee your pants?”
When Mom came home I told her what had happened, how scared I had been, but she brushed it off. Just Sarah being silly, a joke. But—not so funny—Mom remembered it, and ever since then she brought it up as a sign that I wasn’t old enough to be left home by myself. Like now. “Nico, remember what happened when the dryer was on wrinkle guard,” she said, standing and clearing Sarah’s plate with her own.
“That was, like, last year,” I pointed out.
Mom acted as if she didn’t hear me. “If Sarah really wants to meet Max, she’ll take you along. And I think she wants to see him. She’ll calm down.”
But the next morning, she hadn’t calmed down. She didn’t speak to me for hours after Mom and Dad left for work. Then she came in with the sweater, the one I had worn and stretched. She stormed out, slamming my door behind her, more chips of paint cracking from the doorframe. I still didn’t know if I was going with her or not. About an hour before she was supposed to meet Max, she was still home primping, leaning in to the bathroom mirror with a mascara wand. I heard her cell phone ring, then tense words. I thought at first it was Mom checking in, but then I heard Sarah call the person a “fucking bitch,” and I knew that even Sarah wouldn’t say that to our parents. When they checked her phone records later, at that exact time Paula had called. Her best friend. Her former best friend.