CHAPTER 2
Sam
I jump at the noise coming from underneath my back and immediately groan at the reaction. I’m twenty-five and already feel twice my age because…because…
Kassie.
I sit up, and the magazine lying across my chest tumbles to the floor. A strand of hair is stuck to my dried lip gloss. I hook a finger around the curl and pull it free, then rub my eyes and look up. What is that sound? Why won’t it stop? Why are my eyelids stuck together?
The noise ceases at the same time more confusing questions flood my mind. What time is it? Is Kassie home? Why didn’t she wake me? Why am I on the sofa when I should be in bed? Where is my phone? I pat the cushions around me and that’s when it hits me: my cell phone. It was ringing.
I locate it behind my back and check the screen. Three missed calls from my sister. She isn’t home, and it’s already curfew. Feeling a rush of panic, I quickly call her back. She answers on the third ring. I listen to her talk, but I don’t like what she has to say.
“You’re doing what?” I lean forward and press the phone to my ear, unable to hear over the ear-splitting wails coming from the other end of the line. I’m barely awake and she sounds like she’s speaking into a vacuum.
“We’re going…watch…and greet…bus….”
“Kassie, I can’t hear you! Go somewhere quieter!” She’s at a concert, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear the noise. Especially when I’m still asleep.
Rubbing one eye, I listen to the sounds of my sister bumping her way through strangers, an occasional excuse me and one watch it, buddy spoken into my ear. Then Kassie cusses loudly, and it hits me right in the offensive spot.
“Kassie, don’t say things like that.” I know I sound like her mother, but she’s only seventeen and you really should be eighteen before you say bad words. Plus I just woke up and my brain isn’t making sense. Besides, in theory I am her mother. And father. Who needs husbands and babies and white picket fences when you have a teenage sister to raise? As of this time last year, that’s exactly what I’m doing. A full-on mother at twenty-five, thrust back into the world of hormones and temper tantrums just as I was coming out of that stage myself. Babies and travel and a man to share life with can wait. An easy thing to say when your actual parents abdicate the job and leave you with no other choice.
Not that they could help it.
Not that I would change anything. Kassie is my life. Without her, I wouldn’t have anything.
“Well, some jerk elbowed me in the ribs,” she huffs over the static-y line. “Okay, I’m away from everyone. That wasn’t very easy, you know.” She sighs. “Anyway, I said we’re going to stay here for a while and try to get Cory’s autograph. There’s a whole crowd of people waiting for the meet-and-greet.”
“I thought the meet-and-greet was before the concert?”
“Something happened and they changed it to after. He’s supposed to be here soon.”
Something crawls up my spine. A warning. Fear. A weird sense of déjà vu? My mother’s image flashes, but I brush it away. A concert has nothing to do with that. “I don’t want you driving home that late, Kassie.”
“I won’t!” The high-pitched protest wraps around my eardrum. I jerk the phone away and cringe. Add whining to her list of traits. “It’s only ten o’clock. Please let us stay,” she continues, her voice back to a normal volume. “I promise we’ll leave in like, an hour. Two, tops.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come on, Sam—hey, careful where you’re stepping!—it’s only ten thirty and Megan is here with me. It’s not like we’re going to get murdered in the middle of a crowd.”
Every ounce of me wants to say no. I know I should. I feel it like a scream clawing its way up a throat, begging to be released. I swallow it down when she keeps talking.
“Please? Please, Sam. Please, please? I promise I’ll help you clean the house tomorrow. I’ll empty the dishwasher and take out the trash—”
“You don’t even know where the dumpster is.”
“You can show me. I mean it.”
I massage my forehead. It aches from knowing I’m going to relent. She’s right. It’s still early on a Friday night and the latest she would get home is one o’clock. Every teenager in America stays out that late. Besides, I bought the tickets to the meet-and-greet myself. It isn’t like I can take the opportunity away from her now.
“No more than two hours. I mean it, Kassie.”
“Thanks, Sam” Kassie squeals. “I promise we’ll hurry.”
“Midnight. One at the latest. Okay?”
“Got it!”
And with that, the line goes dead.
I toss my phone on the sofa and rest my head in my hands. Worry and awful memories fill my mind. When did I get so responsible? When did I become so old? After a few more internal questions, I force myself to relax. I’m afraid, but I don’t need to be. I’ve lost almost everything, but that isn’t Kassie’s fault. Besides, the meet-and-greet, the long line of people waiting to shake Cory Minor’s hand, the t-shirt she’ll no doubt want him to sign. Of all the decisions I’ve made in my life, the decision to buy Kassie those tickets for her high school graduation last week might be the best one ever.
Nothing good happens after midnight.
The long-ago words of my father come unbidden, and I stand and begin to pace. I used to hate those words, always uttered when I wanted a later curfew—an extra hour at a dance, a few more minutes to spend making out with my boyfriend, another chance to cruise the downtown square with my friends. He always said no; I hated his stupid rules.
I wonder if he might have been right all along.
It takes effort to resist the urge to call Kassie back and demand she return home now, but I will not be irrational. I will not be afraid. I reach for a magazine lying on the floor and return it to the table beside the sofa, then roam the apartment looking for things to do.
I can’t get my mind off my sister.
For the first time since I moved in, I resent this apartment for being so annoyingly clean.