the little sister,” he says. It’s more of a sneer than anything else.
“That would be me.” I watch as he brings the cigarette to his lips. “Can I bum one?”
The request must catch him off guard, because for a few seconds he just blinks at me in surprise, but then he digs into his back pocket and shakes a cigarette out of the pack. He slides it into his mouth and lights it before extending it toward me. When I walk over and take it from him by the tip, I hold it between my index finger and middle finger, like a normal person, while the boy pinches his between his index finger and thumb, the way you would hold a joint. Not that I’ve ever smoked a joint, but I’ve seen enough people do it to know how it’s done.
When I first draw the smoke into my lungs, I cough hard as the boy watches me struggle to breathe. I look away, embarrassed, and inhale on the cigarette a few more times until it goes down smoother.
We smoke in silence, the only sound the scraping of his thumb across the edge of the lighter, flicking the flame on and off, on and off. The boy stares at me, and I stare at his shoes. He has on beat-up Chucks. Who wears sneakers to a wake? There’s writing on them, too, across the white toes, but I can’t read it upside down. He also happens to be standing on what had at one point in time been my mother’s garden. She used to plant daisies every spring, but I can’t remember the last time she’s done that. It’s been years, probably. His shoes only crush overgrown weeds that have sprouted up from the ground.
I meet his eyes again. He still stares; it’s a little unnerving. His gaze is like a vacuum. Intense.
“Do you cut your own hair?” I ask.
He tilts his head to the side. “Talk about your non sequitur.”
“Because it looks like you do,” I continue. He looks at me for a long time, and when I realize he isn’t going to say anything, I take another pull off the cigarette and say, “It looks ridiculous, by the way.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’m doing out here?” He sounds a little confused, and a lot annoyed.
I blow out smoke, watching it float away, and shrug. “Not really.”
The boy’s stare has turned unquestionably into a glare. I’m a little surprised, and weirdly … relieved, or something. It’s better than the pity I’ve seen on people’s faces all day. I don’t know what to do with pity. Pissed off, I can handle. At the same time, I don’t want to be around anyone right now. At all.
I should be inside, comforting my mother. The last time I saw her, she was sitting on the couch, halfway through what had to have been her fourth glass of wine in the past hour. If I was a good daughter, I’d be at her side. But I’m not used to being the good one. That was always June’s role. Mine is to be the disappointment, the one who doesn’t try hard enough and gets in too much trouble and could be something if I only applied myself.
Now I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
I toe into the garden a little, drop the cigarette butt and scrape dirt over to cover the hole. At this point I have two options: face the throng of people inside, or stay out here. It’s like a no-win coin toss. Option number one won’t be pretty, but I might as well get it over with, since I don’t really want to stand outside being glared at for no reason by some stranger, either. Even if he does share his cigarettes.
“Well, it’s been fun,” I say drlly. “We should do this again sometime. Really.”
I teeter across the uneven yard in my stupid shoes, aware that one misstep will send me sprawling. I’ve got one foot on the porch stairs when he calls out, “Hey,” in a sharp voice.
I turn. The boy steps away from the white siding, out of the garden. He pauses, his mouth open like he’s going to say something more, but then he closes it again like he’s changed his mind and flicks the last inch of his cigarette onto the grass.
“You tore your … leg … thing,” he says.
I bend my leg up to examine it—sure enough, there’s a tear in the tights, running from my ankle to my shin. When I glance back up at him, he’s disappearing around the corner. What the hell? Does he think that makes him, like, an impressive badass or something, having the last word and mysterious exit? Because it doesn’t. It just makes him kind of a jackass.
The back door opens—it’s Laney.
“Harper?” she says, looking confused. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, even though really, nothing could be further from the truth. I smooth my dress down and carefully make my way up the porch steps. “Thanks for rescuing me earlier. I needed that. I was getting a little—” I stop because I don’t really know what word I’m searching for.
Laney shrugs like it was nothing. “Don’t mention it.” She holds something out to me—a covered dish. Of course. Her face is apologetic. “It’s quiche, courtesy of my dear mother.”
Back in the kitchen, I try to rearrange the refrigerator shelves to make space, but despite my valiant efforts, the quiche won’t fit. Eventually I give up and leave it out on the counter. The whole time Laney watches me cautiously, like she’s afraid at any moment I’ll collapse on the kitchen floor in tears. Everyone has been looking at me that way all day. Maybe because I didn’t cry during the memorial service, even when my mother stood at the podium sobbing and sobbing until my aunt Helen gently led her away.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. June was my sister. I should be a mess right now. Inconsolable. Not walking around, dry-eyed, completely hollow.
“I saw your dad out there,” Laney says. “He looks—”
“Uncomfortable?” I supply.
She makes a strangled sound, something close to a laugh. “I see he left the Tart at home. Thank God for that, right?”
The Tart is Laney’s nickname for my father’s girlfriend. Her actual name is Melinda; she’s ten years younger than he is and waitresses for a catering company. That’s how she met my father—the previous April, she’d worked the big party his accounting firm threw every year to celebrate the end of tax season. The party was held on a riverboat, and during her breaks, they stood out on the deck, talking and joking about the salmon filet. Or so the story goes.
Dad maintains to this day nothing happened between them until after the separation. I have my doubts.
The truth is, I don’t actually hold any personal grudge against Melinda. She’s nice enough, even if her button nose seems too small for her face and she has these moist eyes that make it look like she could cry at any moment, and she wears pastels and high heels all of the time, even when she’s doing some mundane chore like cleaning dishes or folding laundry. And sure, she can’t hold a decent conversation to save her life, but it’s not like I blame her for my family being so screwed up. She just happened to be a catalyst, speeding up the inevitable implosion.
“You look really tired,” Laney says. “I mean, no offense.” She winces. “I’m sorry. That was so the wrong thing to say.”
She says it like there’s a right thing to say. There really, really isn’t.
“I’m just ready to be … done.” I rub at my eyes. “I’m sick of talking.”
“Well, then don’t! Talk anymore, I mean,” she says. “You shouldn’t if you don’t want to. Here, come on. Let’s go upstairs and blow off the circus.”
It’s easy to get from the kitchen to the bottom of the staircase with Laney acting as my buffer, diverting the attention of those who approach with skilled ease and whisking me to the haven of the second floor in a matter of seconds. In the upstairs hallway, there are two framed photos on the wall: the first is of June, her senior portrait, and the second is my school picture from earlier this year. Some people say June and I look alike, but I don’t see much resemblance. We both have the same brown hair, but hers is