Backlash (23 page)

My stomach clenches. Is it Grandpa, who has angina, or Nana, whose cancer has been in remission?
Please don’t let Nana’s cancer have come back. There’s enough bad stuff going on right now. Pleasepleasepleaseplease!

Dad’s angry shout of “WHAT?” so loud that I hear Syd stir in her sleep next door tells me the call isn’t about death or illness. It’s something else. For once I’m glad about my “open door” restriction, because I can hear what’s going on.

Finally!

3. Open Door Policy helps me eavesdrop better.

“WHERE DID YOU HEAR THIS?” Dad yells.

I hear Mom telling him to stop shouting, because he’ll “wake the girls.”

Um … a little late for that, Mom
.

Syd stands in my doorway, bleary-eyed and bed-headed.

“What’s Dad shouting about?”

“Haven’t a clue,” I tell her.

She comes in and collapses in a huddle on the end of my bed, her head resting on my stuffed Hedwig.

“What kind of sick —”

“What is it, Pete?” Mom interrupts him. “Who’s on the phone?”

“A reporter from the
Lake Hills Independent
,” Dad tells her, then recommences his rant.

“PETE! Tell them no comment and hang up, now!” Mom hisses at Dad.

“No comment! Good-bye.”

Syd and I look at each other as we hear the phone slam back in the cradle.

“I’m going over there right now and I’m going to rip them to pieces with my bare hands!”

I’ve heard my father angry before, but I’ve never, ever heard him like this.

“Who’s he going to rip to pieces?” Syd asks. “What’s he so mad about?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But he’s really starting to freak me out.”

“Me too,” Syd says, cuddling Hedwig.

I slide my toes under her for warmth, and she doesn’t protest. She encircles my ankle with the hand that’s not holding my stuffed owl.

Mom is telling Dad to calm down, that he can’t take things into his own hands.

Dad comes stomping down the hallway, with Mom on his heels.

“Pete, you have to let the police deal with this,” she pleads. “It won’t do anyone any good if you go vigilante.”

That’s when I know that this is about me.

Pulling my feet from under Syd, I jump up from the bed, and run out into the hall.

“What happened? What was that phone call about?”

Mom’s hand flies to her mouth. She looks paralyzed with fear.

Dad turns to me. He’s in his tartan pj bottoms and a faded Chicago Bulls T-shirt and slippers. Is he planning on going out of the house to exact retribution on someone like that?
Tell me you’re not planning on leaving the house like that, please, Dad?

“You want to know what that phone call was about? It was a reporter from the
Independent
. She wanted to know my reaction to the news that it was our neighbors and former friends who’d set up that fake account.”

Neighbors and former friends?

No … It can’t be. He can’t mean … No way. Bree would never do that to me. Not Bree. Never.
Christian
couldn’t be
Bree
… He
flirted
with me.

I feel sick.

“
Wait
… you mean …”

It’s too hard to process, much less
say
the words I’m thinking.

“Yes,” Dad snaps. “I mean the Connorses. Your best friend, Bree, and her mother, Mary Jo.
That’s
who you’ve been talking to all this time.”

Christian … who used the
L
word …

Then told me the world would be a better place without me in it … was really …
Bree
.

My best friend, Bree.

My
former
best friend, Bree.

And her
MOM
.

Did they sit there laughing at me while they did it? Was messing with my head all some big joke to them?

I almost
killed myself
because of Bree and Mary Jo Connors.

How … can … this … be … real?

The dizziness comes over me so suddenly I have to put my hand on the wall to stay upright.

“I’m going over there right now,” Dad says.

“You can’t, Pete. It’s eleven-thirty at night,” Mom tells him, gripping his arm. “You’ll wake up the entire neighborhood.”

“You think I care?” Dad shouts, pulling his arm free of her grasp. “What kind of neighborhood is this when you can’t even trust the people you thought were friends? Huh, Kathy? Answer that for me.”

He turns on his heel and stomps down the stairs. A few seconds later we hear the front door slam so hard, the framed school pictures of Syd and me lining the wall of the stairway rattle against the wall.

Mom heads toward her bedroom. “I better go out there before he gets himself arrested,” she says in a voice clipped with anger.

Why does it seem like she’s angrier with Dad than with the Connorses?

She comes out, tying the knot on her bathrobe, her bare feet stuck hastily into a pair of pink running shoes.

“I’ll be back,” she says, her face grim, as she marches down the steps to save Dad from himself.

“Are you okay?”

Syd puts her hand on my shoulder, tentatively, like she’s afraid I’m going to shake it off. But I don’t. I’m grateful for it.

I shake my head no, not trusting myself to speak.

“I bet …” Syd puts her arms around me cautiously, like I’m an unexploded hand grenade that could go off any minute, and gives me a gentle but awkward hug.

Syd’s afraid I’m going to lose it again
.

“I’m doing better than Dad,” I say, patting her back.

“No kidding,” Syd says, pulling away from me. “He’s scary.”

And that’s when we hear the commotion in the street. Shouts and screaming.

Syd and I look at each other and run down the stairs, through the door, and out into the street, neither of us caring that we’re in our pj’s and barefoot. The grass is cold and damp beneath my feet, and it sends a chill up my body, but not nearly as much as the scene in front of the Connors house. Dad is trying to get to Mrs. Connors like he wants to strangle her, and Mom and Mr. Nunn from next door are holding him back. Mr. Connors is standing between Dad and his wife, his fists clenched, ready to deck Dad if he gets any closer. Liam stands behind his mother, watching wide-eyed.

Mom is screaming at Dad to calm down and go home. Mr. Connors is telling him he’s crazy. Mrs. Connors shouts that she’s calling the police. Syd clutches my arm, and I hug her back for comfort and warmth.

And then I see Bree, watching the scene from their living room window. She has her cell phone in her hand, and she’s probably recording this whole thing to put on Facebook. Putting my family’s worst moments on Facebook seems to give her pleasure for some screwed-up reason. Why else would she have posted that picture of me on the stretcher?

Up and down the street, people are turning on their outside lights and coming out to check out the source of the noise, to see what the heck is going on.

More shouting.

“Hey, do you mind putting a sock in it? You just woke up my kids!” That’s Mr. Campbell from three doors down.

Mom grabs Dad’s collar so she can pull his head toward her. “Pete, you’re making a scene. We have to leave.
NOW.
”

People are holding up cell phones. This whole surreal scene is being captured for posterity or YouTube, whichever comes first.

And as none of us Kelleys are ever allowed to forget, Mom is running for reelection.

Syd starts crying. “Dad, come inside,” she wails.

I’m hugging her, not sure if I’m giving or seeking comfort. Despite all the tears I’ve shed since the night I took those pills, tonight my eyes are dry. Other than the cold grass under my bare feet and the wind that occasionally blows my hair across my face, I hardly even feel. Because this … this
scene
I’m a part of now … it’s not real. It can’t be. It’s too
surreal
. It’s a movie that I’m watching, that’s about my life, with familiar characters acting in unfamiliar ways.

And then we hear the sirens approaching. That’s when Mom loses it, too.

“Pete, get in the house,” she screams. “You’re making things worse.”

“Listen to Kathy, Pete,” Mr. Connors snarls. “Get off my property. Go home and leave my wife alone!”

When the police car pulls to a stop in front of the Connors house, the red and blue lights create a strobe effect, flashing off the houses, the gawking and videoing neighbors, my parents and Mr. and Mrs. Connors.

A police officer gets out and walks over to where my parents and the Connorses are standing. Mrs. Connors is still holding the cordless phone she used to call 911, brandishing it like a weapon in my father’s direction.

Dad, who has been like an attacking Rottweiler held back by Mom and Mr. Nunn, droops visibly when he sees the blue uniform. Mom and Mr. Nunn drop their hold on him, and he glances over at Mom, who doesn’t meet his gaze. She is marble — cold, hard, impassive, but I know underneath she is calculating the damage to our family image and her campaign and figuring out how to repair them both.

Can something like this even be repaired?

Mom catches sight of Syd and me shivering together on our front lawn and gestures for us to go inside. Syd wipes her tears away with the sleeve of her pajama top.

It’s like being at a sleepover when everyone else wants to watch a horror movie. I’ve seen enough that I don’t really want to watch any more, but I still want to know how it ends. But Mom gestures again, this time mouthing, “Go inside
now
,” and knowing the kind of mood she’s going to be in after this, it’s better to just go with it.

“Come on, Syd. We have to go in.”

“But what about Dad?”

“Mom says.”

We head back to the house. My sister casts a look back at my parents, and when I look back, too, I notice that Liam’s gaze is focused on us, not at what is going on with our parents and the police.

“My feet are freezing,” Syd complains when we get inside.

“Do you want me to make you some hot chocolate?”

She gives me a strange look. Under the kitchen lights, I can see the dried tear tracks that stain her cheeks, still tinged pink from the chill outside.

“What?” I ask.

Syd opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but closes it and looks down at her bare feet, which have bits of grass still stuck to them. “Nothing,” she mumbles. “Hot chocolate would be nice.”

I know she was going to say something else, but I don’t have the energy for twenty questions. Whatever’s on her mind, Syd’s gonna have to just spit it out.

I’ve just finished pouring the boiling water into the mugs when the front door opens and slams shut.

“How
could
you, Pete?” Mom shouts. “Do you realize you’ve probably single-handedly sunk my reelection campaign?”

“I’m sorry …”

“A citation for disorderly conduct? What kind of example —”

“Seriously, Kathy? That …
woman
almost killed our daughter and you’re worried about the election and setting examples?”

My former best friend and her mother punked me and I tried to kill myself over a guy who didn’t even exist, my dad’s been cited for disorderly conduct by the police — I’m sure the video of him losing it on our neighbor’s lawn in his pajamas is all over YouTube as we speak — and my mother’s reelection campaign is probably over as of tonight.

Everything is a complete disaster, and it’s all because of me.

Syd grabs my wrist as soon as I put down her mug of hot chocolate.

“Don’t.”

The fierce urgency in her voice shocks me. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t do that thing you do. Don’t go all zombie on me right now.”

Her eyes burn into me, trying to force me out of the numbness I’m trying so desperately to retreat into.

“You always do that. You always disappear when things get hard,” she says. “I’m sick of it. It’s not fair.”

I think,
I’m not disappearing. I’m trying to save myself.

I say, “I’m right here, Syd.”

Syd rolls her eyes and blows a raspberry of disgust through her lips. “Sure, Lara. Okay, Lara. Whatever you say.”

She slides out of her chair, taking the mug of hot chocolate with her, and storms out of the kitchen, while I listen to our parents fighting and try my best to slip back into the comforting void, alone.

I
THOUGHT
when Mr. Kelley went crazy on our lawn in his pajamas and got cited by the police for disorderly conduct, it would take some of the heat off Mom and me.

Well, that’s just another example of how stupid I am.

What actually happened was that it brought
more
attention to us. There’s a huge front-page spread in the
Lake Hills Independent
under the headline “Mother-Daughter Bullying Team.”

Mom and me a team? That’s got to be the biggest joke ever. The truth is, she’s the crazy coach and I’m the player who always gets yelled at for no reason.

There were reports on the local news stations with the same “Bullying Team” tagline. Not that the Kelleys got off easy, either, which didn’t make me feel any better. There was video footage of Mr. Kelley ranting on our front lawn in his pj’s. When Mom watched the news yesterday morning during breakfast, she laughed at that.