100 Days of Cake (22 page)

But as much as I want to hate Alex, V is the one I'm furious at. I'll admit that maybe,
maybe
I did a subpar job of conveying my feelings to Alex—like, I can't even really understand them myself—so I almost understand him.

But WTF, V? Even if she's got her Jaclyn's Attic friends and we don't watch sitcoms in bed with Mom anymore, she still had to know how important Alex is (was) to me. I talk about him constantly. Even Mom keeps asking when she's going to meet him. The last time I checked, V isn't deaf; she had to know. So why? Why
my Alex
? Veronica is the girl that everyone wants, the breathtaking breezy girl who could have anyone in the world. Why did she have to take the one guy who was important to me? Because I didn't lie to Mom about her being drunk? That's some pretty serious payback.

And then she lies to me about it. (Okay, a lie of omission, but still.) Instead of doing the mature thing and letting me know, she says nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nope, she sat
through family meals and car rides and shared mornings getting ready with me in the bathroom and kept mum. She let me go on and on about Alex and FishTopia without saying a single thing.

I squeeze the Admissions Ace! stress ball so tight that something pops, and sand spills out down my arm.

Seven episodes later the front door swings open and I hear V go into the kitchen. She comes into the living room with today's cake—something made in a Bundt pan—napkins, and a knife.

“Mom must be getting better; this one looks pretty good.” She puts it on the coffee table and glances at the TV. “
Golden Girls
. Cool.”

In my throat, that cold rage bubbles, and I'm on my feet snapping off the TV before she can even sit down. I start out of the room, but she blocks my path with this wide-legged stance, hands on her hips like Wonder Woman.

“Is there a reason you're not speaking to me, or is this just more of the big bad depression bullshit that we're all supposed to give you a pass on?”

Narrowing my eyes, I give her the most disgusted look I can muster.

“Really? You're not gonna say anything?” Her infamous ultra-hard eye roll. “No wonder you don't have a boyfriend.”

“Well, that's certainly not your problem, is it?” The level
of venom in my voice is impressive. “You've got plenty of boyfriends, don't you?”

“What are you even talking about?” V looks genuinely confused. “I'm dating one guy, not that you EVER bother to ask me about anything in my life.”

“I saw you at the movie theater with Alex on Friday night!”

A flicker of surprise dances across her face, like I've caught her and she feels bad, but then she just shrugs. “So what's the BFD? I'm allowed to hang out with people.”

“The BFD is . . .”

I want to scream that Alex is
my
friend, that kidding around with him at FishTopia is
our
thing. That I know I'm a moron and my reasons for not going out with him may not have made sense to her, but as my sister she should have at least tried to understand that. That's what sisters do. I used to know when she was upset about screwing up on a math test or not getting picked for a solo in modern dance class, and she should know things like that about me. At the very least she shouldn't have started seeing Alex behind my back. But it's all mixed up in my head. And I have this nagging realization that if I really wanted Alex to be happy with a pretty, great girl who could make him laugh, then shouldn't I be happy that he's with V?

“Alex is too old for you!” I finally manage, but it sounds really dumb even in my own head.

“Really, Molly? You dated T.J. when he was a senior and you were a sophomore—not that it matters.” V seems like the older sister, a million years older than me, certainly old enough to date a boy a few grades ahead of her.

“And we all know how well THAT worked out!” I say.

“Just admit it. You blew Alex off a million times, and now you only care because you THINK I'm dating him—”

“That's not true.”

“Then, what? You were just playing hard-to-get for two years? Word of advice, Mol, guys hate a cock tease—”

“Well, that must be why you're so well loooved. You only cock please, don't you . . . you . . . you selfish little slut.”

Okay, a low blow.

“I'm the selfish one?”

“
Selfish
” is what she's upset about?

“Are you even listening to yourself . . .” V's voice trails off into a squeak; her cheeks scrunch into her eyes and she gets all purple. She goes from seeming like the older sister to looking super-young, like when she was a little kid and used to follow me and Elle around. Sometimes she couldn't do some of the stuff we did—keep the Hula-Hoop spinning, balance on the handrail of Elle's deck—and she'd get so frustrated, just like she looks now. “Everyone in your entire freaking orbit has to tiptoe around you so you don't break. No one can talk about anything going on in their
lives—good or bad—because it might upset Molly. Mom's baking a fucking cake every day for Molly. But I'm the selfish one? Why don't you do us all a favor and just off yourself right now so we can get on with our lives!”

The phrase somehow echoes throughout our sunken model-home family room, reverberating from upgraded plush carpeting to the upgraded recessed lighting domes in the ceiling.

Yep, my own little sister advised me to kill myself.

V seems to realize the weight of that too, and something in her face changes.

“Molly, wait. I'm—”

No way am I going to stand here and listen to her apologize. Because no way am I going to forgive her. Not for any of it.

Swooping down, I grab the cake from the table and bolt past V up the stairs. She follows, calling my name, but I've always been faster than her, even if I haven't exercised since quitting the swim team. She's just making it to the landing by the time I slam and lock my bedroom door.

“Molly.” Out-of-breath V pounds on the door. “I didn't mean it.”

“Go away!”

“I'm not even da—”

Still shaking, I slide earbuds in and crank up the music on my phone, and V and all her apologies go away.

Playing the songs that Dr. B. told me about, I take a few deep breathes and try to calm down.

After the entire four minutes and three seconds of “Hunger Strike,” my bedroom door is still shifting slightly. V must be talking and knocking.

“Go away,” I say again, my words all weird in my head over the music.

In all the time I've been the big blue bummer, I've never once thought about killing myself. Not in any real way, at least. Sometimes, when I'm really low, I kind of wonder what it would be like to not be here anymore. To sort of melt into the bed and blend with the Egyptian cotton of the sheets. Or maybe to become a permanent member of the studio audience of an old sitcom—just watch and laugh and be amused by a life I'm not a part of, a life that is always neatly wrapped up in half-hour increments.

But I've never wanted to actively end things—never considered shoveling down a handful of the painkillers I have left from getting my wisdom teeth removed freshman year, or slicing a zigzag into my wrists in the bathtub. I know that Mom keeps a handgun locked in a metal box in her closet, but I've never thought about going to get it.

In junior high, there was a kid on the Maxwell swim team who did that. “Blew his brains out” was how we all described it, and some of the boys talked about all the blood and gray matter and what it must have looked like when
his dad found him. I think it was a way to deal with how freaked out we all were.

Does V really think I would do something like that? Does that worry her? I've never considered how much all this might have sucked for her, too.

It still doesn't give her the right to date
my Alex
or tell me to kill myself.

The cake is actually really good, by far Mom's best concoction. Not too sweet, with a pinch of salt, and the melon is almost refreshing.

An envelope from V's fancy stationary set pokes under the upgraded door, but I don't even bother picking it up.

Even after I'm disgustingly full, I finish off the cake, not leaving even the smallest piece for my sister.

A
s much as I've been dreading going back to the store and seeing Alex, I have to admit that FishTopia is looking awesome. He finished the cleaning and painting, and he swapped out the horrible fluorescent lighting with much softer bulbs.

Plus, he redid the labels on all of the fish tanks! Charlie never really had a system for that. Some tanks had half-peeled-off stickers from a million years ago—so you ended up with things like
antic Blue Ta
and
Candy C e Cor
, kind of like a fish
Wheel of Fortune
puzzle. Others had names written in black Sharpie (most of it smeared) on pieces of masking tape, and then there were the tanks of “mystery fish” that weren't labeled at all. We always had to invent prices on the rare occasions when anybody bought some of those. But now every tank has a typed label with the specimen's
name and price, plus basic information or some trivia—
The humpback grouper is an ambush predator feeding mostly on small fishes and crustaceans. Blackcap basslets are territorial and don't accept other members of the same species, so keep only one in a single aquarium.
It's really cool, like something that you might see at an honest-to-goodness aquarium. It must have taken Alex forever to do all of those. It's almost enough to make me forget that he's been stepping out with my sister behind my back.

I'm so enthralled with everything, I don't even notice when Alex and JoJo come up behind me until Alex nudges me with his shoulder and asks what I think.

“Wow, this is amazeballs!” I say, and really mean it.

“Thanks.” Alex smiles.

“Your boy has been a machine.” JoJo seems genuinely proud, even if she does think that we'll all make more money if this place goes diner. “He even conned me into helping.”

“Yeah, Jo knows a ton of random fish trivia.”

JoJo looks slightly embarrassed about something for the first time since I met her. “You know, all the
Jeopardy!
with that A-hat Alex Trebek.” Grabbing her purse, she announces she's “audi,” and leaves me and Alex alone.

“So, um,” he says. “V mentioned that you saw us at the movies the other night—”

Yeah, his FishTopia work is
almost
enough to make me forget about Friday, but almost isn't cutting it. Just hearing
him say “us” in the context of him and Veronica makes me want to throw up in my mouth.

“I so don't want to talk about this . . . ever.” I cut him off before he can say any more. I'm psyched that he's so committed to FishTopia, but that doesn't mean I'm cool with the rest of it. He's lucky I'm even talking to him. I still haven't opened V's note.

“I don't want you to think that we were talking about you behind your—” Alex tries to say something else, but I shake my head and reach for the remote to turn on
Golden Girls
.

“Can we just focus on the fund-raiser?”

“Mol, I know the whole thing is kind of weird—which I told V when she asked me—”

“I get it. You didn't do anything wrong. I still don't want to have a heart-to-heart about it.”

“If you'd just let me explain what actually happ—”

“Seriously, Alex, if you say one more word about it, I swear I'm going to hurl. Can we just get things ready for Friday?”

“Sure.” He definitely looks like he wants to say about ten thousand more words about it.

Most of the basic tank maintenance and stuff that we actually have to do each day is complete, but we still have to clean the roof deck and get it ready. Plus, we should probably clean the stairs in the back that lead up to the deck. I wouldn't be surprised if those haven't been touched since the place
was built in the seventies or whenever. Since one of us has to keep an eye on the store, we take turns, which is good because it means that Alex doesn't have an opportunity to say any of those ten thousand words to me.