Page 57 of Electricity

I met Lacey at her car that afternoon and showed her Mason’s text. “That’s on the other side of town. What time do you want me to get you?”

I exhaled in relief—not at just at getting ride, but knowing I wouldn’t be alone. “Is ten-fifteen long enough?” I had to make sure Allie would really be sleeping.

“The way I drive? Oh yeah.”

Lacey dropped me off and I noticed the Buick had moved fractionally from where it’d been parked when I left this morning. My mom had been up and out at some point in time—probably to get more beer or smokes. Hopefully she’d gone right back to bed.

I unlocked the front door and tossed Lacey’s bag to where my backpack usually lived—I didn’t think my mother would notice the difference—and found my mother sitting on the couch, flipping idly through a People magazine.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, as innocuously as possible.

“Guess who I ran into at the gas station?” she asked, without looking up.

I bit the inside of my lip, trying to judge her current mood. Our dad? Our dad’s new wife? An old boss? A new bartender? “Who?”

“Guess.”

“Jenn…i…fer?” Dad’s new wife seemed the safest bet.

“Her?” My mom blew air through her lips, making a braying sound. “Why would you guess her? No. Sasha Lewis.”

Liam’s mom. I could feel the color drain from my face as all my blood, bones, and internal organs fell to my feet.

“So, do you have anything about this past weekend you’d like to tell me?” She flipped another page, and a reality TV star with fake boobs, fake teeth, and a fake life smiled out.

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be, Jessica.” She closed the magazine and looked up at me. “I told her how excited I was that you and Liam were dating. She looked at me like I was an idiot—and then I mentioned prom. Do you know what she did then?”

I shook my head.

“She laughed.”

“Oh, Mom?—”

“How could you lie to me like that, Jessica? To my face? And after I helped you with your dress and everything? Do I deserve that?” Now that she was looking at me, I could see that she’d been crying.

“Mom,” I sank down on the carpet. “I’m so sorry.”

“How can I ever believe anything you tell me again?”

“You can mom. You can. I’m a good kid, really.”

“I want to believe that, but how can I?” She was holding back tears. “Why, Jessica? Why would you lie to me?”

I crawled closer to her, placatingly. I hated sad-mom so much worse than angry-mom. Angry-mom you could just get angry back at, sad-mom made you wish that you had died. “I was afraid you wouldn’t let me go otherwise.”

“Who’d you wind up going with?”

“The boy who picked me up.”

“So he lied to me too?”

“Because I told him to. It was all me.”

There were still tears swimming in her eyes at my betrayal. “Why? You’ve got two more years to go, Jessica. Why this year? What was so important?” Unsaid: That it was more important than being truthful with me?

My heart crumbled. “I just—I just—” I said, unable to honestly explain. “I had to be there. I didn’t want to miss anything.” It was just as true as it sounded bad.

She bent over and started sobbing.

“Oh, Momma,” I said, trying to get under her to see her face, putting my head down on her knee. “I’m so sorry, Momma—I didn’t mean to—I just—I’m so so sorry.”

“I just don’t know what to do with you sometimes, sweetheart,” she said, her voice cracking.

That she still somehow loved me, kept making it worse.

“You’re so smart. I know that. And then you go and do something so dumb.

” She gathered herself for a moment, then started brushing the hair back from my face with her hand, and I could smell the nicotine on her fingers. “That boy—are you still seeing him?”

“No. He just wanted to have a prom date was all. We’re just friends. Like I’m just friends with Liam, too.”

“I suppose that’s for the best,” she said in a far-away voice, wavering with her disappointment in me.

I grabbed hold of her knees in an awkward hug, clinging.

Everything’d been so hard since the night of that party.

I’d been freaking hit by lightning two weeks ago!

And ever since then I’d had to lie and spin—I’d killed a dog and kissed Darius—and seen all those pictures—and then this weekend’s worth of whore-slut-texts and getting hit in the halls, and what’d happened to my poor old backpack—the amount of shit I’d had to put up with, literally—I knew Lacey had it harder, but that didn’t stop me from hurting too.

I finally let it all go, sobbing helplessly into my mother’s lap.

“Oh, baby. I know. I remember.” She pet my hair back as I blubbered on her knees until I reached the end of it. “It’s so hard your age. All the hormones and everything seems like it’s so important—but the truth is, it’s not, baby, it just seems that way.”

And that was where she was wrong. It was important. It had to be or all of this was for nothing. I lifted my head up and wiped my eyes. “I know,” I said agreeing, well aware I was lying to my mother all over again. I sniffled, half-real, and half-for-dramatic effect. “Momma, what now?”

She contemplated me and I could see myself so clearly in her face.

“Well, now I know two things. That Sasha Lewis is a bitch, and that Liam made the biggest mistake of his life, not asking you to prom. And also that you’re now grounded forever.

” She pointed at the fridge. “Go get me another beer, and then get to your room and do homework or something, okay?”

I nodded, hang-dog, and went to retrieve another can.

When Allie came home she knew something was up, from the way the residual tension in the living room mixed with the ambient tears.

She veered from needing too much attention, proof that life was going on and that things would be okay, to needing too little, as if understanding that bouncing on the fragile truce my mother and I now shared might break it.

I hid in my room for most of the evening, minus Allie’s interruptions and when she brought me a PB&J, until I heard a knock at 6:30.

“I’m going now,” my mother said, as she came inside. “I told Allie to keep an eye on you.”

“Awesome.” That’d mean being subjected to an evening of my sister’s demands.

“I expect you to come out here and hang out with her—I don’t want her burning the place down, unsupervised.”

“I will, I will,” I promised, standing up.

My mom was gone by the time I reached the living room. I did my best to hang with Allie and trying to hide the fact that I was thinking about my phone. After fifteen-minutes of enforced sister-bonding, I went to the bathroom to clean my latest texts out.

Ten minutes later, after doing a sweep of everything worth seeing on ZB—which took a lot longer, manually—I pocketed my phone and opened the door, almost stumbling over Allie.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Mom told me to watch you.”

“Oh God?—”

“Mom also said I could have soda and ice cream,” she said, with an entirely straight face. If Mom thought she had problems now, with me?—

“I’ll let you pick the channel tonight. But that’s it.”

“Fine,” Allie said emphatically, then went back to the TV.

I watched the minutes tick by the old-fashioned way, on the microwave. I didn’t want Allie telling mom that all I did all night was look at my phone, in case it’d remind her to go and take it away.

That didn’t stop me from thinking about it endlessly, though.

What was gonna happen tonight? I’d tell Mason I had proof he’d cheated—he’d trade me the photos—and then Lacey and I would go straight to the police.

Danny would get carted out of Redson High in handcuffs by noon tomorrow, if he bothered to show up—I could see it all now, ending just like one of those true-crime shows my mother was so fond of.

Everyone would play their part and do their job, and backstage we’d be all high-fives and smiles.

A rainbow would burst out overhead. Kittens would spontaneously erupt from the earth in purring mounds.

A unicorn would run by in the distance, pause, look at us majestically, and then gallop off, leaving a trail of undeniable happiness in its wake.

Or—

Or.

The microwave ticked over to nine-twenty-four.

“Okay! Bedtime!” I announced, trying to hide the quaver in my voice.

Allie twisted back to look at me, half her face in TV light, the other half in shadow. “One more show! Please? Please please please?”

One more’d push it to ten, and then what if she couldn’t go to sleep? But if I tucked her in too early, she’d wind herself up playing games with the stuffies on her bed. “Aren’t you tired at all?”

“Nope!”

Dammit to hell. “One more. But that’s it Allie, it’s a school night.”

“Fine,” she said, greatly put upon, and turned back to the TV.

She snuggled up against me, probably still a little traumatized from earlier today, and I managed to find a position with my arm slung out on the back of the couch where I could still casually scan everything happening on my phone.

The show she picked had a laughtrack in the background and was easy to ignore until the end when I realized at long last my sister was asleep—against me.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

If I woke her now, would she just go back to sleep?

I only gave that even odds. She was too big to carry to her room, I’d have to make her stand and shuffle her back.

But if I were willing to leave her on the couch, maybe, just maybe—I pseudopoded away from her, one fractional inch at a time, replacing myself with couch pillows so that she was leaning against an equivalent amount of bulk.

She brought one hand up to scratch her nose and then settled back.

It’d taken ten too-long minutes, but I was free.

I left the TV on and the lights dimmed and ran back to my bedroom.