Page 83 of Fade into You

“You’ve been hurting yourself for a while now, Kayla, and I’m worried. I’m really worried.”

She shakes her head like she’s coming out of a dream and says, “Dade can never find out, Bird.” She takes both of my hands now and holds them so tightly. “I’d die if he found out. I’d die,” she repeats.

“I’d never say anything.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

We don’t talk about my worry and we don’t talk about Jessa. Because Kayla has barely finished crying before Dade shows up unannounced with a movie he rented at Blockbuster that we’re supposed to simply drop everything to watch. He doesn’t even notice that she’s obviously been crying. The second the tape goes in, they act like I’m not even there.

So I go up to Kayla’s room, bringing the cordless phone with me. I call Charlie. The hallway phone at his dorm just rings and rings. I hang up and call back, and this time it only rings twice before someone answers. The guy tells me to hang on, and I hear him set the receiver down and yell Charlie’s name in the distance. It’s 6:23 by Kayla’s alarm clock. I wait until 6:32 before someone hangs up without even checking to see if anyone was waiting.

I go to Kayla’s computer and sign on with my AOL account. The yellow figure, the dialing, waiting, the connecting; it’s all much faster at her house.

Nothing new from Charlie. I’ve been trying to pin him down about a visit, but as usual, we keep missing each other.

Charlie,

I tried to call you again tonight. Just letting you know that you kinda have to say yes about me coming there because I already told Mom and Daniel you said it was okay. :-P

Guess that’s all for now. I miss you. See you soonish. Talk to you sooner (I hope).

Love, Bird

P.S. Any news on the father front?

I find the last email from Silas. I never did send him the poem like I said I would. So I pull out my notebook—our picture still there in the front cover, along with the photocopy about the restaurant—and I find the poem from the open mic night. I prop the notebook up against the monitor and transcribe my handwriting into a new email. No message. Just the poem. In the subject line, I type:Thank you for last summer.

Then I pull up Kat’s email address. Except in her subject line I type:I’m sorry for last summer.I almost hit send, but stop. In the message, before the poem, I give her the words I couldn’t until now.

You were right, Kat. I did have feelings for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be honest with you—or myself. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you can forgive me one day.

—Bird

I send them both, and look at our picture once more. This time I stick it in the back of my notebook. I need to keep it—for now, anyway—but I don’t need to look at it every day anymore. Because I don’t need to wonder if they were as close to love as I could get. Now I know for sure, they weren’t.

When I go back downstairs, Kayla and Dade don’t even notice me leaving.

JESSA

It’s Thursday afternoon, the firstweek of November, when I see the real Mack, the old Mack, for the first time in a long time. Sure, the Mack presence has been here, but not the sister I remember.

There’s nothing special about the day. Bird is babysitting and Liv is at the house, so as much as I wanna go over, the part of me that cares about my mental well-being is not going to be around that evil bitch—who I still cannot believe is in any way related to Bird. Dade still isn’t talking with me, so I’m sitting down at the kitchen counter finishing some math homework that I could probably do in my sleep when Mack comes out of her room and doesn’t smell like week-old garbage. She comes into the kitchen, pulls out a Tab, cracks it, and sits across from me.

“Precalc, ugh. I hated Mr. Kaplan, such shit.”

“He doesn’t bug me much.”

“He touches all the girls’ shoulders. Tried to give me a back rub, creep.”

“Is that lavender?” Her hair is wet, her makeup done. She looks good.

“Herbal Essences, think it’s Mom’s, ughhh ughhh ughhhh!” She does a horrifically accurate imitation of my mom’s sex noises, much more horrifying than the orgasmic sounds in the shampoo commercials. We have grossly thin walls.

“Ew, Mack, that’s nasty!” I laugh, and she joins in.

“Fuck precalc, Jessa, let’s do something.”