Chapter 3 #2
Grandma Vera walked into the dining room, opened the bottom-left drawer herself, and pulled out a pain patch.
Then held it out for Emily to take. “I’m always getting these dang drawers mixed up, une gaffe.
Mes excuses.” The French rolled so easily off her tongue, as if she had been rehearsing this line, along with all her others.
Had she?
There were so many things Emily should’ve asked Grandma Vera right then. She should’ve flung back open the wrong drawer, demanded an explanation.
But instead, she took the pain patch, and all she heard herself saying, the word itself sounding like it was coming from underwater, was “Thanks.”
Grandma Vera was wrong.
Emily was not a good egg.
After a hot bath, and the pain patches, she crawled into her bed.
Whatever she had seen, whatever she had thought she’d seen, she decided she would never, ever allow herself to think about it again.
And for sure, she could never tell her sisters.
She would bury it so far underneath her hard exterior shell that no piece of her heart would ever be able to access it.
“Em.” Nora wandered into her room later that afternoon. “Will you help me? Nate told Julia he just wants to be friends, and she is pretending to be okay. But she is so not okay. She’s scrubbing down the lounge chairs in the backyard with Lysol because she told Gram the dirt hurt her eyes.”
“Too bad. She should’ve gone surfing with him,” Emily retorted, which was an entirely obnoxious thing to say, and she regretted it as soon as it came out of her mouth, but still, she didn’t take it back.
Nora huffed loudly. “You’re such a bitch sometimes.”
Sometimes? Pretty much all the time. Grandma Vera was wrong about her being even remotely good.
Nora turned to stomp out. “Nora,” Emily called after her, and Nora stopped for a moment. “Julia just needs to give him some space. He’s going through a lot.”
Nora put her hands on her hips and frowned. “Right. You should get out of bed and tell her that. She’s a mess. And she listens to you more than she listens to me.”
“I’m too sore,” Emily said, which was by this point in the afternoon mostly a lie.
The truth was, Emily was afraid that if she got out of bed and huddled up with her sisters, she might tell them what she saw.
And she could never tell them. Nora was beautiful and so talented.
Julia was brilliant and probably on the path to becoming a Supreme Court justice one day.
And Emily was just… Emily. She was already dark and cynical and expected life to always let her down.
If any one of the three of them had to be tortured, ruined, it might as well be Emily.
Later that night, after everyone was asleep, Emily was restless.
Her mind was going in circles, and she couldn’t just lie here any longer.
She hobbled out of bed and quietly went down the steps, out the front door, trying not to wake anyone.
Once she was outside on Ocean Boulevard, walking, her muscles loosened up, and she took deep breaths, wishing for the sea air to soothe her.
But the night was silent, still, and her mind wouldn’t stop.
She headed toward Clayton’s, the twenty-four-hour diner on Orange Avenue.
She wasn’t hungry, but she’d been here late at night with her sisters in years past, and she knew it was always crowded, filled with strangers.
Emily suddenly craved the presence of anonymous people.
A sea of humans who knew nothing about her.
She walked in through the large glass front door and was comforted by the clang of the brass bell, by the fact she’d been right, the place was, indeed, packed. She hobbled past the crowded red booths and took the last seat at the old-fashioned diner counter, before ordering a root beer float.
“You look like you had a rough day.” A blonde-haired woman in a Cal sweatshirt sat next to her, picking at a piece of cherry pie with a fork.
I learned my entire life is a lie, she thought. “I learned to surf,” she said.
“That’s some bullshit. Surfing.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Emily said.
“I’m Monica, by the way,” she said.
“Emily,” Emily said.
“That’s a pretty name, Emily.” Emily shook her head. She had always thought her name to be weirdly average. Or maybe that was just her middle-sister syndrome. “And it sounds to me like you need something stronger than root beer right now,” Monica added.
Emily laughed. Did Monica actually think she was old enough to drink? Taken out of context of her high school, her sisters, her family unit, sitting here at the Clayton’s counter, just a girl with a pretty name, did Emily look more twenty-one than seventeen?
“For real,” Monica was saying now. “I have some beer back at my hotel room, if you want to join me when we’re finished here? It might be fun.”
Emily looked at her for a moment. Monica had a pretty heart-shaped face, big blue eyes.
She looked both innocent and kind. But Nora had gotten obsessed with a new TV show this year, Dateline, and Emily had caught enough episodes with her to know that this was definitely one of the ways you could be murdered.
Still, Monica didn’t seem like a murderer.
She seemed like a college student, in Coronado on vacation.
And Emily was only one year away from being a college student herself.
This really wasn’t all that weird. She’d probably drink at college, and what was the big deal if she tried it now?
It felt like a better option than going back to Grandma Vera’s and being alone with her thoughts.
“Sure,” Emily finally said, attempting to sound nonchalant, like she drank beer all the time. “That sounds great.”