“I know.” She repeats it over and over again.
When I can stand, she helps me into the bathroom. I sit on the edge of our claw-foot tub and watch cold water gather around the rusty drain. When it’s full, she helps me out of my clothes and steadies me. Stepping into it is like easing into a cup of frozen yogurt: creamy, cold, comforting. It takes a while to adjust to the temperature, but it’s the only thing that helps. When I can stand it, I nestle down, deep as I can go.
“I miss the beach,” I say as I close my eyes for a moment, flying off to the shoreline, where she and I would sit for hours as the Atlantic’s roar scared off my pain. It eased the agony without fail, like nature’s morphine, but we’re not allowed to go to the beach anymore, not since they arrived.
“I miss it too.” Each word is interwoven with guilt. She blames herself for what has happened to our neighborhood—the fighting, the martial law, the hate.
“Where’s Dad?” I say, hoping he wasn’t one of the cops down in the street.
She dips a washcloth into the water, wrings it out, then lays it over my eyes. “At the precinct. Mike wants everyone to go over the plans for tomorrow one more time. There are a lot of moving parts with the FBI and all those soldiers. But they’ll be ready. Don’t be worried.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
“Things will get better. You’ll see.” Now she’s lying.
I sink down farther, completely submerging myself. It’s down here where I feel most safe, where the headaches retreat, where the roar of the water drowns out the thrum.
Chapter Two
I hear her tapping her foot, her impatient sighs, her orchestra of little noises demanding I start my day, but I refuse to open my eyes. I was up all night with a migraine, an anxious mother, and a father pacing back and forth until he wore a path in the carpet. If I open my eyes, I have to accept that it is Monday morning, the Monday morning all of Coney Island and I have been dreading for months.
“Lyric Walker, I know you’re awake. Get your butt out of that bed.”
“Go away.”
I slide farther under my sheet and curl in on myself all roly-poly-like, hoping she will see my resolve and go to school without me. If I can just get small enough, she will have to give up, right?
“We’ve got to get you ready,” she says as she rips off my cocoon. When I scramble for pillows, she snatches them away too. There’s nowhere to hide, and when she turns off my sound machine and pulls up my blackout blinds, I surrender. I’m going to school.
“I hate you, Bex Conrad,” I growl.
“Blame the Big Guy. He told me to wake you up,” she says as she turns her attention to my dresser drawers. She peers inside each one, digging for buried treasures she’s overlooked the hundred or so times she’s already gone through them. Bex covets my clothes—all of them—because, one, I have the best clothes, and two, her mom is a screwup who can’t hold a job and wouldn’t give two thoughts if Bex wore a paper sack to school. Today, however, she’s fierce, wearing a black miniskirt and a Hello Kitty T-shirt that’s easily two sizes too small for her. She’s got on the Mary Janes she swiped from under my bed last month that add a couple of inches to her already tall-ass frame. Her hair is clean and sleek, her makeup sick. Everything about her shouts, “Jealous, much?” Which means she is not here at this ungodly hour for my clothes.
“Tammy let him back in the house?”
She shrugs. Tammy is her mother in the loosest form of the word. “Him” is the devil incarnate—her stepfather, Russell.
“What does he have to do before she’s had enough?”
“I guess something worse than assault and battery,” she says flippantly.
I frown. Bex’s problems are hidden by walls made of jokes and smiles. Even after all this time, I am rarely allowed inside.
“Bex, I—”
She finds a black bangle I bought at a yard sale and slips it onto her wrist. Then she takes a peek in the mirror. “This is now mine.”
“Bex, seriously. Are you okay? Is he still drinking?”
“Where are all your sexy clothes? You have to look hot.”
“Bex, don’t change the subject.”
“We might be on TV.”
Bex continues rummaging through my things. She has said all she’s going to on the subject. She’ll share when she’s ready and not a moment sooner.
“Let’s skip school,” I say.
“They’re arresting everyone who tries.”
“My dad’s a cop.”
“You think the Big Guy won’t arrest you?” She laughs, then opens another drawer. “Where are the skirts, Lyric? Where are the tank tops? Are you Amish all of a sudden?”
“Who cares what we wear? No one is going to notice us. Not today.”