Tell Me a Secret (13 page)

“
What
,” my mom hissed, “is going on here?” She looked over her shoulder—always looking to see who might be watching the family sins. I slammed my sketchbook shut.

We both started to answer her simultaneously. Guilty, though I couldn’t even pinpoint what we were guilty of.

Talking. Connecting. Speaking the dreaded name of our family’s worst blasphemy. Xanda or Lexi: it didn’t matter which.

“Hill—,” began my dad.

“Don’t ‘Hill’ me. You know exactly what this is about,
Chuck
.”

She only called him Chuck when she was really ticked, to remind him of the vast chasm between them. Chuck was a
trailer-park name, she joked when she was in a better mood. She definitely wasn’t joking now.

“I saw those…those
workers
driving out of here,” she said, as if she couldn’t even find a name for the scum of the earth Dad employed. “That
girl
. Did you have them working here, at the church? Around our daughter?”

My dad listened in silence. A stone wall, expressionless.

“And
you
,” my mom said, turning to me, “how long have you been here? I thought you were working. Don’t tell me you’re skipping work now, too.”

“I—”

Her face had tightened. Eyes narrowed. Teeth clenched. The same expression I remembered from the night Xanda died. “Chuck, did you have those guys around her? Is that what’s been going on behind my back? Have you been letting her hang around with those
men
?”

“Mom,” I started, “I was not hanging around—”

“You stay out of it.” She looked down at my belly, which suddenly felt naked and stretched beyond capacity. “This has nothing to do with you.”

It had everything to do with me and the vortex Xanda had left behind.

Lexi lurched, enough to make me stagger and reach for the back of a pew. Dad winced. I remembered the sound of Lexi’s heart beating on the Doppler, my own beat thundering in the background with a heavy thud. Now my blood was racing around her at what must be a frightening pace.

“It has everything to do with her!” my dad suddenly roared. It stopped my mom in her tracks, loud enough to echo in the sanctuary like a lion let loose from a cage.

“Don’t raise your voice in this building,” said my mother with a look of disgust, as if his words were not even worth a response.

It must have been the aftereffects of hanging out with his construction buddies, cutting loose with whatever came into his head. Or maybe it was seeing Lexi’s picture, knowing of her shape and her name, seeing Xanda’s sweater on me, and being in a sacred place that gave Dad some mystical sense of strength. Otherwise, I couldn’t explain why, after all of these years of shouldering the blame for Xanda’s death, he would transform from a distant figure to a wall of defiance in one singular moment. Whatever it was, it froze all of us in place, as if God had come down from the heavens and smacked us upside the head.

“I said,
leave her alone
.” In one powerful movement, he filled the space between Mom and me, making both of us step back from the field of energy suddenly, terrifyingly surrounding him.

My mom opened her mouth, but nothing came out. We all stood there suspended, waiting for him to say more, or for something else to snap. For a window to crack open, or maybe for the gates of hell to swing wide.

When nothing came, Mom laughed nervously, pushing past him as she swept toward the stage. “People will be
showing up soon, Charles. You’d better get the rest of these tools cleaned up.”

I was still petrified, standing behind my dad as his shape transformed from the enormous wall of power back to the crumbling wall of shame. All that was left of his rebellion were two clenched fists.

But I was in shock. In shock that my dad—my own, invisible dad—had stood up for me, however briefly. I was floating up, up, up, past the glass and into the dark sky, like the white bird in my drawing. The part of me still in the church could hear Dad snatching his tools and disappearing out the back door while Mom looked over her script for the one thousandth time.

“Mandy!” My mom snapped. “Are you listening to me?”

“What?” I whispered, returning to my body with a shiver.

“Collate these new pages for me while I get things ready onstage.” When I hesitated, she barked, “Get moving! People are going to be here any minute and it would be nice to have some help here.”

That’s right. I had to bring myself down to earth before the saints came marching in. We were all saints or sinners in my mother’s mind. I’d swapped titles in one swift meeting of sperm and egg.

But what about my mom?
They’ve been lying to you all along,
Dylan had said.

If pregnant girls were sinners, what were liars called?

Montage opening night was sure to be a packed house for Essence Hannah, breakout actress. Mom couldn’t stop telling everyone about her
Guys and Dolls
part or the Cornish application, or how they would be blown away by her performance. I would be backstage looking out over the crowd, trying for one more year not to think about the night Xanda died.

While everyone else headed to the Winter Ball, I waited on the couch in the First Washington lobby for my mother to pick me up. She would be rehearsing lines in her head for last-minute changes. I was rehearsing lines as well—the conversation I’d had earlier with Kamran replayed in my mind over and over.

I was late to English class that morning with stomach
cramps. Just before I reached the door, Kamran came out with a pass. We nearly crashed into each other.

“Miranda,” he said, “it’s you.” Like we hadn’t crossed paths nearly every day since last summer. Like he hadn’t been avoiding me all along.

“We should talk,” I said. “Before…well, before…” I touched my belly. Even at almost twenty-six weeks, it looked ready to burst. I couldn’t imagine what I would look like at forty.

The key paddle dangled in his hand, jingling. His hair was longer than last summer, grown out over the collar of his jacket. “I’m not sure what there is to talk about.”

Our English teacher’s voice droned faintly through the door. I just stood there with his eyes drilling into me. “Well, even if you don’t care about me, I thought you would be a little more interested in the baby.”

He laughed, the same sound I had heard a thousand times, only never this harsh.

“I don’t know what’s funny about that,” I said.

The laugh ended abruptly. “It’s funny because I’m not so sure that it’s mine.”

What?

“I’m not so sure I’m the only possible candidate here. Because I’ve been finding out there’s a lot more to last year than I thought. Delaney—”

“Delaney?” I cried out, then lowered my voice. “What has Delaney been telling you?”

Kamran ran his hands through his hair, a gesture I remembered like it was my own. “I always knew there were things you wouldn’t tell me, but I was trying to give you space—I thought it was about your sister. But all the time I was studying and working, you were going out—parties, camping trips…always keeping things from me. What else am I supposed to think?”

“If you would just give me a chance…”
I would tell you there has never been anyone but you.

“I did give you a chance. I thought you were different, Miranda. I’ve gotta go.”

I came to work with my mind reeling. I could talk to Nik. Could I talk to Shelley? For a week now, I’d been baiting her with things like, “I saw
Femme Nikita
last night. Awesome movie.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

Or, “Hey, Shelley…what do you think of the name Nicole? Nik, for short?” She only frowned. I didn’t dare mention reading baby websites or ask if she’d had more than one miscarriage. If I was wrong, I would only be reminding her yet again.

Finally, she asked, “Is there something you want to talk to me about, Rand?”

After that, I stuck to filing and shredding and generally trying to stay out of her way.

Looking at the clock a million times didn’t make my mom appear any quicker, so I headed to the break room for hot
water and lemon. My belly didn’t make it easy to push out of the soft cushions and into an upright position without flashing the lobby. As I turned to reach down for my sketchbook and satchel, I heard a voice behind me. Or rather, more like a low whistle of appreciation.

For me?

“Nice legs,” said the voice: male, sultry, with a hint of an accent. Familiar, in a distant kind of way. I wasn’t agile enough anymore to flee, but then I wasn’t sure I wanted to. In any case, I couldn’t stand there showing my backside forever. Who knew what hottie or creep could be standing there.

I did turn. More like arched, curiosity getting the better of me.

I knew him.

Andre.

In the split second we locked eyes, I saw how his face was older, more worn, but still the same boy Dad brought into our house so long ago. Almost six years, and I remembered every detail.

He squinted. “Don’t I know you?”

“Excuse me,” I pled, but he caught my arm. The smell of him floated past me, the same smell I remembered. Musky and sour and spicy, the smell that permeated Xanda’s hair and now almost brought me to tears.

Before Dylan’s Halloween party, the last time I saw Andre was my twelfth Christmas Eve. I fell asleep the night before to the
merry tones of Xanda and Mom screaming about abandoning the family for “that boy.” It was exciting—Xanda defying our parents to be with him. Mom made her promise to come home for Christmas Eve dinner, and we would all go to the closing night of the montage together.

That was the year Xanda refused to act in the play, when Mom cast me in my first and last lead role.

Xanda showed up for Christmas Eve dinner with Andre in tow, looking too cool to be uncomfortable. She wore a skirt so short I saw her panties when she spun to throw her arms around him.

It wasn’t long before the shouting started. “Take that skirt off this instant and go put on something decent,” ordered my mother. I couldn’t wait to wear something so indecent myself. While my dad rolled his eyes at Andre, I was busy memorizing every detail of Xanda’s revolt.

“This instant?” she countered.

“This instant,” echoed Dad.

“Fine.” And with one dramatic rip, the skirt was in Xanda’s hand. The panties underneath exposed her two round cheeks. Andre smirked—I had the feeling he had seen this display before.

And that was when everything shattered. First, the skirt went into the fire and hissed with melting finality. Next, Mom grabbed the afghan off the couch and lunged for Xanda, who dodged and hid behind Andre. “Get out of my way,” growled Mom. But Andre wouldn’t budge. Xanda grinned from behind him. So Mom did something that shocked everyone—quick
as lightning, she clutched Xanda by the hair and dragged her, whimpering, toward the door. Dad opened it on cue, and Mom pitched Xanda into the icy, holy night.

Then she turned to Andre. “Get
out
.” He didn’t argue, but as he left, he muttered something about my mother burning in eternal agony.

Once it was all over, Mom hugged me, crying, kissing my hair. “Never do that, Mandy,” she whispered. “Never.”

When I went up to my room to change clothes, I heard Xanda climb through the bathroom window and rifle through her things, the bars on her own window a mere inconvenience. A few minutes later, everything was silent.

But I saw them, below on the street. Andre looked up. Even from that distance, his eyes pierced me. I knew I might never see them again as I listened to the roar of his Impala fade into the valley.

In the end, my body didn’t give me away. It was my eyes. He met my gaze, and he knew.

“I do know you. You’re Xanda’s little sister.” He appraised my bump. “Well, you used to be little, anyway.”

My arms instinctively wrapped around my belly. I could barely breathe under his scrutiny.

“Mandy! Mandy, that’s right. Like Xanda but with Mmmm.”

“Rand. I go by Rand now.” For so long I had dreamed of this moment—flirting with the boy who loved my sister, who would have run away with her if not for her death. But never
in my dreams did it go like this, under the fluorescent lights of the bank lobby, where my mom could storm in any second.

“Rand. Well, someone was randy with you, huh?”

“It’s my—” My what? My ex-boyfriend’s, the guy who was supposed to be like
him
except things didn’t quite go as planned? “Never mind,” I finished lamely.

“Didn’t work out?”

“No. It didn’t work out.” It was the first time I admitted it out loud.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card.
Andre Velasquez, Odd Jobs
. Under his name, a P.O. box and a cell number. I cradled it in my hand when an all-too-familiar version of my name sliced our conversation in half.

“Mandy?”

Mother. Here. To pick me up. And I could tell by the look on her face that she recognized him, too.

I stuffed the card in my pocket, the adrenaline I needed to escape Andre’s orbit suddenly appearing in embarrassing abundance. I threw my coat around my shoulders and scurried toward my mom, who stood in the open doorway.

Shelley’s eyes followed me.
One more reason for her to think I’m a train wreck.

My mom said nothing, only aimed and fired a laser beam to unlock the car. I ducked in like she’d just read me my rights.

The car doors shut with a suffocating
thunk
.

Mom drove with her eyes straight ahead, boring into the road. But I knew better.

It was dark already, almost the darkest night of the year. Our windshield wipers squeaked every half second, whipping back and forth as we drove to the church.

She said nothing. I tried to imagine what was going on in her head after what she’d seen. Me, talking to the boy who killed my sister.

Maybe I was wrong—maybe she hadn’t recognized him. And if she had, maybe I could convince her
I
hadn’t. Five years ago, I was just a kid. Twelve years old.

I guarded his card in my pocket like a precious pass to the future. A wild image flashed through my mind of driving
to L.A.—a boy, a girl, and a green Impala. If he couldn’t go there with her, maybe he would go with me. And when we got there, maybe he would tell me what really happened to my sister.

Meanwhile, next to me, the mountain of my mother simmered. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but the next onslaught filled my throat like sand.

“Have you been seeing him?”

A strange fluttering was happening in my lower back, tightening, as if by her voice, my mom was pulling on the connecting wires of my body.

“Because if you are, that’s sick. He is sick. He’s a grown man, and you are a little girl. Is that what you’ve been doing behind our backs?”

No, no I wasn’t. I didn’t.

“Are you even working at that bank?” My mom’s voice had begun to rise. “What were you doing, talking to him? First you get pregnant, then you’re sneaking out, then you’re hanging out with your dad’s crew, now you’re seeing—were you planning to run away?”

“No—”

“Then what were you planning?” The shriek had reached metal-melting properties, the strings around me tightening, tightening.

“I wasn’t planning anything.”

“What was he doing there? Don’t you remember wh
at he

How you

Why were you

Why he

He

You…you…you…you…

Xanda…you…Xanda…you…”

The shriek wrapped around me in a high, desperate hum, settling into my body as a ball of blinding
pain, pain, pain,
purple and swirling hotly in my pelvis like mercury in my veins, creeping toward my heart, threatening to stop if she didn’t stop screaming at me or if this pain didn’t stop, screaming voice and screaming pain shouting
stop stop stop stop
.

“Stop.” My voice slid underneath the din like blood seeping under a door. A fire engine screamed past with sirens blaring, but I could barely make it out from under the shrieking curtain of pain. My vision tunneled into blackness with Xanda’s image at the other side, reaching out for my hands as I drifted, heavy with my small burden, reaching out to let Xanda take it off of my hands, silently offering me a way out. Or was she offering something else?

“…and if you think I’m going to let you make the same mistakes, then…”

“STOP!”

The car and her screaming whirled to a stop, and I could dimly make out a red light at the top of my field of vision. The rain came down in dark, drizzling sheets.

“What, Rand?” And more silence, as loud as her shrieking had been.

You’re killing her.
I didn’t realize I had whispered it until my mother responded with, “Killing who?” But I was already out in the street, painted by raindrops, water streaming down my hair and face as I slipped between the cars, across the road between a strip of businesses where she wouldn’t be able to follow me in her luxurious, lumbering boat of a car.

I slipped in and out of darkness and water and pain, until the strings she had been tightening with her voice let loose and my body returned to normal, and by that time I was past the park and a secondhand record store and a café and a few brick apartment buildings, and the rain soaked my coat and the outside of my satchel. I didn’t stop until I reached a covered corner near the bus stop, crowded with workers and students going home for the night and a homeless guy muttering and extending an empty hand.

My sketchbook and cell phone were still dry inside the satchel. My top five numbers were Home, Kamran, Delaney, Chloe, and Essence. I couldn’t call any of those.

I had Nik’s number stored from the BabyCenter days, though I’d never called her and couldn’t imagine doing it now. What would I say? “Uh, hello, Nik, who might really be Shelley—this is XandasAngel, who is really Rand, who is really a pregnant teen and not a married art student. I just had a fight with my mom because of that guy you saw me with in the bank. Do you think you could come pick me up?”

That would go over like a miscarriage.

My belly lurched again, driving its tendrils of pain up and around the muscles holding Lexi, squeezing us both into a hard knot. Wrapping my arms around myself, I felt the paper in my pocket crinkle. Andre’s card.
Andre Velasquez, Odd Jobs
. I wondered if picking up his stranded ex-girlfriend’s sister from a street corner fell into that category.

He picked up on the first ring. “’Ello?”

I almost hung up.

“Who’s this?” I could barely hear him past the rain and the homeless guy’s shouting.

“It’s me, Rand. Miranda. Xanda’s little sister. Um, we were just at the bank, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Twelve-year-old me quivered, like the safety pins of Xanda’s dress.

“I was wondering…do you think maybe you could pick me up?”

I couldn’t figure out whether the silence on the other end was stunned or satisfied until a low hum swelled into a long
mm-hmmm
. “Yeah. Be right there.” No questions asked. It might have been thrilling under other circumstances.

“Are you at home?”

“No. Actually, I’m at…” Where was I? The neon sign above my head blinked. “Cassandra’s Salon Supply.” I gave him the cross streets.

I didn’t really know this neighborhood, which boded well for eluding my mom. We were definitely in the wrong part
of town for her comfort level, but exactly in the right part of town for Andre’s. By the time he drove up to the curb in his green Impala, the pain had subsided enough for me to waddle out there, forlorn and pathetic. I slid in, at once knocked out by the strong odor of cigarettes, grease, and beer. Morning sickness had been gone for months, but the scent of a forgotten hamburger in the backseat and a full ashtray were enough to push me to the edge.

Rain continued to come down, dampening whatever holiday spirit lit up this part of town—
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
blinked alternately with the time, 6:47
P.M.
—and the temperature—46ºF—on the light board across the street.

Opening night was in a little over an hour. I had that much time to get Andre to take me to the church and to play my part—the part of
that
kind of girl.

“You wanna go somewhere?” Andre looked at me expectantly, a crooked smile on his face.

“Yeah, I wanna go somewhere. Take me to where Xanda died.” The smile dissolved into shock.

He stepped on the gas.