CHAPTER 19
Every day leading up to Wednesday, I’d been planning. Preparing. Practicing.
And, fine, a little Googling: How to confess to your best friend that you have feelings for them.
Sunday had been a day dedicated to researching Google, Reddit, and YouTube, searching for answers to the slightly embarrassing question. I’d erased my search history after that, horrified at the idea of Theo seeing it when he took my phone to play his game.
And Monday had been a day dedicated to avoiding the twins like the plague, because with all the confession-coded info stuffed into my brain, there was no way I could even text them without being super awkward.
So I’d texted them both an excuse I thought was semi-believable.
theo’s been under the weather these past few days. Some kind of summer flu. I’ll text you when he’s better to keep from spreading germs.
Nellie
Poor thing!! Sending hugs. Let me know if you need anything!
Jamie
I can come and keep you company.
I’d wanted to kick my feet over the text, to send back yes, please, but I kept myself in check.
projectile vomit, Jamie. You don’t want it. But I’ll check in when he feels better.
I really needed one more day to perfect my drawing.
So it all came down to today—Wednesday. When Mom came home from work in thirty minutes, I’d head out and show up at Alderton-Du Ponte to wait for Jamie to finish book club.
I’d ask if we could talk. Maybe we could go for a walk through the rosebushes.
I’d hold his hand, and without anyone around, I’d hand him the piece of paper he’d given me, only this time, there’d be a drawing on it.
I want this to be real, I’d tell him, with my heart in my throat and smaller hearts in my eyes. I want us to be real.
And then I’d kiss him.
Probably. If my tiptoes could bring me tall enough.
But just the thought—sitting at the kitchen table—had me blushing like a maniac.
“Are you okay?”
I jerked my head up to find Junie standing at the edge of the table, hands clutching the spindles of one of the chairs. “Yeah. Why?”
“You look like you’re choking.”
I pressed the backs of my fingers to my cheeks, swallowing hard. “Just… warm.”
Penn and Ivy were playing an adventure game on the TV, and Penn spent most of the time explaining the rules to Ivy. Theo was beside Penn on the couch, wiggling his fingers just out of view, watching.
“Whatcha drawing?” Junie asked, angling her head to see the paper clearer. “Is that… Jamie?”
I traced my fingertip across the sheet of paper. It was separate from my notebook, but I was so accustomed to sketching on the thick paper that I used it as a base. My heart did a little flip that Junie could so easily recognize him, even when I wasn’t quite finished with the shading.
Even though he’d asked for gore, I hadn’t been able to get the image of Jamie in the Alderton-Du Ponte library out of my head.
The way the sunlight had threaded in, through his hair, and the angle of his neck as he peered at his book.
The way his glasses slipped down his nose, just as they always did before I pushed them back up.
I’m drawing Jamie. Willingly. Enthusiastically. I wanted to see if it was different from drawing Kit, and it totally was. It felt more… intimate. Dragging the tip of my pencil along his lips had my stomach flipping. “Yeah.”
Junie rested her chin on the back of the dining room chair, blinking dreamily at my sketchbook. “Is he coming over today? You should invite him. He should’ve come over with Nellie last week.”
The big sister in me wanted to poke fun at her for her little crush, but I held back. “I’m going to see him at Alderton-Du Ponte.”
“Can I come?”
“Sorry.” I turned back to my paper. “No kids allowed.”
Junie made a soft humph noise, coming around the kitchen chair, gripping it and sinking into it. “I’ve been thinking,” Junie began, immediately rocking the chair back on two legs, holding the table for support. “And I think it’s a pretty good idea.”
“Feet on the ground, Juniper.”
The front chair legs slammed to the floor, and it rattled the glass of water I had in front of me. “Do you want to know what I was thinking?”
Knowing Junie, it was probably some sort of attempt to let her stay up later. Or to watch a horror movie. Or to play her shooting game. I could see through her, and the way she lilted her little voice. I started to draw the outline of Jamie’s face. “Tell me.”
“I think Mom should quit her job to stay home with us every day, and you work instead.”
My pencil stopped on the point of Jamie’s nose. I lifted my eyes, finding Junie rocking back on her chair legs again, watching me with a cheerful smile. The kind of smile only kids could get away with after saying something that’d rip your heart out. “What?”
“You could work instead, and Mom could be home to watch us every day.” Junie rocked back further. “Summer would be so much more fun!”
I stared at my little sister, the buzzing from the house melting in my ears.
“Junie,” Penn snapped. She’d paused her game, glaring from the couch. “Why would you say that?”
“What?” Junie’s voice pitched up. “It would be more fun. We do the same thing every day with Daisy. We just sit around at home, and it’s boring. Ivy, wouldn’t you have more fun if Mom was around more?”
Ivy perked up. “Yeah!”
Junie’s words weren’t painful in the sense that it hurt that she wanted Mom more than me. Of course she did. She was ten. She idolized Mom in the same way she idolized Jamie. But her words were still heavy in the way a weighted blanket might be, forcing me down to a nap I didn’t want to take.
“You’re such a selfish brat,” Penn told Junie, raising her voice. “Would you say that to Dad if he were still here?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Penelope.”
The chair legs slammed against the ground again as Junie sat up. “Daisy isn’t Dad! Dad was fun!”
And Daisy is not, I finished in my head, another blow straight to the chest. I lowered my pencil, hand shaking.
“You’re such a bad sister,” Penn threw at Junie, turning back to the TV. “All of you say things to Daisy that are so mean.”
“As if you’re any better!” Ivy shouted, her words slurring a little through the gaps of her missing teeth. “You’re mean to Daisy all the time.”
“I am not!”
Junie threw back, “You are too! All the dirty looks you give her—”
“At least I don’t give her black eyes!”
“Well, maybe if she were gone—”
“Oh no,” Theo mumbled, as if afraid to draw attention to himself. “My slime. It’s… stuck.”
We all fell quiet. Theo hadn’t just been idly twirling his fingers—he’d been playing with a glob of orange slime. He tried to scrape up the goo that he’d melded with the fabric material of the cushion he sat on. His little eyebrows were pulled together, lips pursed in concentration.
I looked down at the sketch in front of me, at Jamie’s downturned head. Not Kit in the slightest, but I had the strongest urge to slash through the drawing like a knife, taking the scene that’d been filling my head and exchanging it for the darkness that seemed to live there.
Daisy isn’t Dad. Dad was fun.
Wordlessly, I stood from the table and walked into the living room to where Theo sat. “How many times have you been told not to play with slime on the couch?” I asked him quietly as I crouched down.
Theo ducked his chin. “More than once.”
“More than once.” There were spots and marks all over the couch, though, from pop spills and food stains, and Theo’s slime could’ve blended right in.
The couch was lived-in, worn-down, and no one probably would’ve noticed a new mark on it.
I stared at the stain, the weight on my chest pressing down harder. Quieter, I echoed, “More than once.”
I don’t want to do this. The words felt so loud in my mind. I don’t want to do this anymore.
Junie thought summer was so boring already, and we were only a week in. Junie would’ve rather had Mom home than me. It shouldn’t have cut so deep, but I’d been trying so hard. To get them to listen, to make them have fun, to keep my head above water.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
There was a sharp gasp. Junie had been rocking back in the kitchen chair again, but this time, she’d leaned too far. The table slid out of her grip, and her feet knocked against the underside of it as she fell.
Junie and the chair crashed against the ground at the same time the bang from the table tipped my glass of water over, spilling onto my sketchbook.
And onto the drawing of Jamie.
I shrieked, pushing off the couch and bolting back to the table.
I snatched the cup up, but the damage was done.
Water pooled onto the drawing I had on top, quickly seeping through to the sketchbook underneath.
I snatched it up, and water streamed off the pages, dripping onto the floor.
“Junie!” My voice cracked. “I told you!”
Junie looked up at me wide-eyed for one singular second—before she started to wail, her face blooming red as she remained on the ground.
The paper I’d been sketching Jamie on feathered between my fingers, his downturned head turning into a streaked mess.
In my sketchbook, the graphite from my pencil bled onto the other pages, smudging and smearing, and all my sketches became muddled plots of gray.
The pressure in my chest squeezed and squeezed—
Until I exploded. “Why can’t you just—listen?” I demanded, fist tightening around the sodden pieces of paper. “Why can’t any of you listen? At all, ever? Why does it have to be so hard?”
Ivy shrunk her shoulders to her ears. “I didn’t—”
“Theo, you knew about the slime. Why would you play with it on the couch if you knew you shouldn’t? Juniper, I just told you about the chair!”
Junie’s wail sharpened, high and piercing. Theo started crying, too. Ivy was saying something—apologizing maybe—but the words tangled with the noise and the drip, drip, drip of water hitting the floor.
I threw my sketchbook back into the puddle on the table. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I said, the forbidden words finally ripping their way out. My anger flared hotter, burning me alive. “None of you ever listen to me. You’re disrespectful, and spoiled, and I don’t want to do this—”
“Daisy?”
Mom stood in the open doorway, keys jingling in her hand, eyes wide. Junie and Theo’s crying paused, showing just how exaggerated it was to begin with.
“I could hear you from the driveway.” Mom glanced around the room. “What on earth is going on?”
Ivy ran over to Mom, tucking herself behind her as if afraid. “Junie fell over, and Daisy was mad about her sketchbook.”
And almost like the mention of her name triggered it, Junie started to cry again, louder than before.
Mom dropped her purse on the ground, hurrying over to where Junie still lay on the ground.
“Your sketchbook?” Mom demanded. “That’s what you checked first?
” She shot me an exasperated look as she crouched down beside Junie.
Junie fell into Mom’s arms, wailing harder.
You’d think she had blood all down the back of her head for as loudly as she cried, but her blonde hair was only mussed.
My sketchbook, Mom had scoffed. As if it weren’t filled with all the little moments of happiness and despair, and as if it weren’t the thing that’d brought me back from the brink several times. Ruined, but unimportant.
“She didn’t even hit her head,” Penn said from the couch. She had no scowl on her face, but her eyes were very wide. “I could see from here. It just scared her.”
Mom still frowned. “It’s still nothing to yell about, Daisy.”
I stood there, watching Mom smooth her hand down Junie’s back, listening to the water continue dripping off the table. “Nothing to yell about,” I echoed, gaping at her. “A sketchbook I pour my heart into is ruined, and it’s nothing to yell about.”
“It was an accident—”
“How would you know?” I demanded breathlessly, the words clawing and cracking their way out of my throat. “You only just came through the door, and it only took one look at everything to decide I’m the bad guy.”
“When you’re yelling, and your sister is crying, then yes, Daisy, you’re the bad guy.” Mom set Junie aside from her to stand. “You’re the adult here, and—”
“I’m not the adult!” My throat tightened, finally speaking the other words that were never, ever supposed to be said aloud.
“I’m not the adult, or the parent, or the mom.
I’m the sister. I’m a kid, too, and you don’t know how much they don’t listen, and you don’t know how overwhelmed I am, and I don’t want to do it anymore. ”
The sound of my voice fractured through the house, the walls seeming to shudder with the weight of the sound.
My chest rose and fell hard, the dread threatening to swallow me whole as I stood there, swaying with the ferocity of my anger.
This time, though, I had no sketchbook to distract myself with.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
And then the guilt hit. Sinking. Swamping.
Suffocating. Looking at Junie’s quivering shoulders, with Theo’s cries still echoing in my ears, I could barely breathe around it.
I couldn’t turn away from Mom, even as my eyes began to burn and the expression on her face began to twist. I could remember the keening sound of Mom’s cries through her bedroom door, could practically hear it echo in my ears now.
I don’t want to do this anymore, she’d cried that day.
Not without you. I can’t handle it without you.
And I’d just said the same thing in front of everyone.
Mom hadn’t been the one to ask for my help—I’d stepped up, stepped in, and here I was, throwing it back in her face. Heat crawled up my neck. I wished, suddenly and violently, that I could take every word back, that I could erase the last five minutes entirely.
But I couldn’t. Mom’s face had gone stricken in a way that made something deep inside me twist painfully. Junie’s sniffling still filled the kitchen, Theo’s soft cries bleeding in from the other room, and every awful sound seemed tied to me somehow.
I pressed my lips together hard against the burn in my throat and turned away from the table. No one called after me as I hurried out of the kitchen, avoiding Penn’s eyes entirely and pretending not to notice Ivy shrinking back to make room for me to pass.
I just kept failing at every possible turn.