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“There,” I said. “It’s gone. You can sleep now.” I returned the pillow under her head and she smiled. “Close your eyes and try to sleep,” I said.

Del and I sat in the room with his brother and sister and whispered to each other. Outside the door, we could hear his mother and her girlfriend LaShay continue to laugh and smoke.

“Maybe your idea about running off isn’t so stupid after all,” he said.

“It isn’t. By doing what you’ve been doing, all you are accomplishing is keeping them in a bad situation, Del. I know you don’t want to see them separated and sent off to foster homes.”

He nodded.

“You’re pretty good with her,” he said, looking at Patty Girl, who was now asleep.

“I guess I just think about what I wish it had been like for me when I was her age,” I said. “Maybe if I had a big sister like me…”

My voice and my wish drifted off like smoke.

He looked at his watch.

“You had better get home, Teal. It’s getting late, and you could get into bigger trouble.”

As quietly as we could, we slipped out of the bedroom. We paused in the hallway. His mother and LaShay had gone into her bedroom and were now talking very low.

“She’s going to get her into something very bad,” he predicted. “It’s just a matter of time anyway.”

“We can do something about this, Del. You’ll see,” I said.

He nodded and smiled hopefully. He looks desperate enough to believe in the tooth fairy tonight, I thought.

“It’s not a fantasy,” I assured him.

He walked me to where I could get a taxi home, and then we kissed good night.

“Thanks for helping with them,” he said.

I felt so sorry for him, so sad when he closed the taxi door and we started away.

He stood there watching me drive off in the taxi and then put his hands in his pockets, lowered his head, and returned to a hell far worse than my own.

7

In a Reckless Mood

I was able to get back into my house and up into my room without being discovered. It reinforced my feeling that I could do anything I wanted if I was just careful and clever enough. I was so excited about the possibilities that loomed ahead for Del and me that it took me quite a while to fall asleep. I imagined us all heading west in my mother’s SUV, looking forward like explorers out to discover new worlds, every experience fresh and promising. To live without rules and restrictions, curfews and punishments was truly to be free.

As usual on a weekend, I slept late into the morning. For a while when I was younger, my father tried to get me to rise earlier and take care of my personal chores, like make my bed and clean up my room, but Mommy never liked how I did it and was always afraid someone would look in and see.

“She’s deliberately messy, Amanda, because she knows you’ll have the maids do everything if she is,” Daddy told her, but it was less stressful for her to have the maids take care of my things than oversee the way I did it They just had to wait for me to rise and go down to breakfast, and that was that.

Actually, what woke me this particular morning was the sound of Mommy crying. I could hear her sobbing below in the sitting room because the window was open and the window in my room was open. At first I thought it was a baby bird that might have fallen out of its nest.

Seeing and hearing my mother cry was not very unusual. She could shed tears over the smallest, silliest things, such as getting a luncheon invitation days after a friend had gotten hers, or having her name left out of an article on the society pages. What, I wondered, would she ever do if she had even a tenth of the problems Del had? So I didn’t rush down to see what was wrong. I showered, dressed, and by the time I got downstairs, she was sitting quietly in the living room and just staring out the window, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and jerking her shoulders up like someone with the hiccups.

“What is it now, Mother?” I asked from the doorway, my voice heavy with disgust.

She turned slowly. Then she sighed deeply, so deeply someone might think her heart had cracked in two.

“I confronted your brother this morning,” she said, holding her hand to the base of her throat. “He has indeed gone ahead and proposed to Ellery, but what is worse is, everything has already been decided: where the wedding will be held, colors of the gowns, favors, even the menu!”

“Well, that should make you happy, Mother. Why are you crying? You don’t have much to worry about now.”