June 14, 2007 (7 Years Ago)

The muted sound of music and laughter bled through the bedroom walls, and I scowled at nothing in particular.

It was getting late, the party winding down, storm clouds building on the horizon over the seaboard and farther toward the south. Lying in bed, I could see the sky through the open curtains and had been watching it grow as bleak and thunderous as my mood.

Turning my eyes to the ceiling, I studied the small imperfections in the paint, the discolored splotch where I once had a poster taped in place, torn down almost two years ago now. A piece of tape still clung in place, discolored by sunlight and dust—an ugly splotch on an otherwise plain and pristinely kept stretch of space.

I hope it stains and Eleanor throws a fit.

The front door opened and closed. I heard someone's voice out in the yard speaking too loud and too cheerfully.

Teeth grit, I grabbed the first book off the nightstand my hand landed on, intent on reading to distract myself—and I let out a sharp, irritated breath when I read the title of one of Tara's college textbooks. I didn't know how that ended up in my room, and I didn't care, opting to drop the book on the floor, shoving the other texts off the nightstand as well. The heavy thumps of them landing vibrated through the floor.

Again, the front door opened, voices mixing in the yard, and I heard car engines turning over out at the curb as the music died downstairs and the hour grew later still. It didn't take long before footsteps came up from below, and I rolled to my side before the bedroom door opened.

She stood at the threshold for half a second, then sighed. "Well, I hope you're proud of yourself."

I scowled at the wall.

My mother and I didn't share many, if any, similarities. She looked nothing like me or my sister; where we were willowy and stark, pale and dark-haired and blue-eyed like our dad, Eleanor Gaspard was curvaceous and coiffed, light brown hair cut short and kept tidy, her eyebrows sharper than kitchen knives above keen dark eyes. The astringent smell of hand sanitizer followed her and defined my childhood, reminding me of hospital waiting rooms and Eleanor's office, the subconscious snap of her hands coming together whenever she sterilized them.

I despised that sound, and I despised the smell.

"Your guests are gone now, if you're ready to stop having a tantrum and come downstairs."

"Not my guests," I muttered.

"Don't mumble, Sara."

"I said they're not my guests!" I retorted as I rolled to my back, knocking a pillow to the floor. "They're your guests, or Tara's. You wouldn't let me invite any of my friends."

Eleanor scoffed as she entered the room, taking in the mess I'd made, the books splayed on the rug, blankets askew, a sweatshirt thrown over the desk chair by my backpack. A muscle in her jaw twitched. "Those people are hardly your friends—and I've told you half a dozen times you are not to socialize with that—boy. He's at least five years older than you! I'm not about to allow them into the house." She started to pick up the textbooks.

I sucked air through my teeth, watching her from the corner of my eye. She grew more irritated by the minute, and my own mood fed off of her anger, twisting in my middle until it weighed on my stomach like molten lead. True, I didn't much like my own friends either, but that didn't give Eleanor the right to judge them unworthy of my presence. It was my life, not hers.

"You'd have actual friends if you socialized." She picked up my calculus primer. "Instead you hole up here and leave your sister by herself!"

"Yeah, it's all my fault," I sniped. "Everything's always my fault. 'Stupid Sara, having one of her moods.' Sorry I fucked up Tara's birthday."

Red bloomed in Eleanor's sculpted cheeks. "Watch your mouth," she ordered. "You're eighteen now. This behavior is entirely too juvenile—what is this?"

The dangerous shift in her tone dragged my gaze from the ceiling to her face—then to the crumpled paper held in her hand, irritation for my own idiocy overcoming my frustration when I realized what it was. Damn.

"Nothing," I lied.

Eleanor turned the page over. "This is the order form for your cap and gown." She dropped the calculus text on the nightstand, and I sat up as she stepped nearer. Her voice went quiet as she sputtered in furious disbelief. "Why do you have this? Didn't you turn it in?"

I shrugged, not quite meeting her searching gaze.

"You told me you turned this in! Dammit, Sara, you lied to me! It's past the acceptance date now! Where are we going to get your cap and gown now?"

"I didn't want to walk anyway."

"I told you not to mumble!"

Standing, I uncrossed my arms and shouted, "I don't want to walk!" loud enough for anyone downstairs to hear. "I'm not going to the stupid ceremony!"

"Don't be ridiculous."

We stood too close to one another, the stark, revolting smell of the hospital filling my nose, and I fought the urge to shove Eleanor back. She hadn't even gone to work today, but the scent lingered. My anger thickened, and hers did the same, escalating, the stupid form crumpling in her fist.

I loved Tara more than anything—certainly more than Eleanor, more than Dad, and more than myself—but, God, was it hard to be her sister sometimes. It was hard being considered the stupid twin, the underachiever, the one still in high school while the other went on ahead, excelling in all she did. I didn't want to attend the graduation ceremony. I didn't want to cross that stage, hearing my name alone, knowing I was second best.

"It's just high school graduation. Who cares?"

"I care!" Eleanor yelled. "Your father cares!"

"Like hell."

"You're going!"

"No!" We'd had this argument before. We'd had it the first time she slipped the form into my hands, and I'd relived every scathing word when I stared at the page and shoved it out of sight inside the cover of my calculus text. We'd danced this dance before—and yet it rankled all the more for her callousness, her disregard for my wishes as opposed to her own.

'Don't be ridiculous' had become a rote reply for most people in my life of late, and I was tired of having her tell me the same thing over and over again.

I made to rush by her, and Eleanor grabbed my arm, stopping me, fingers digging in.

"Everything isn't always about you, Sara!"

Turning, I snarled, "Well, it fucking isn't about you either, Eleanor!"

The crack of her hand slapping my face rang loud—louder than the argument, louder than Eleanor's gasp and my sudden, harsh exhale.

I didn't look at her. That amorphous, curling anger leached into a rapidly cooling pit in my chest, and I didn't say a single word to my mother; instead, I yanked my arm from her slack fingers, spun on my heels, and grabbed my backpack from the desk chair.

I was already down the stairs and out the front door before I heard her calling my name.

The rain came down heavy and unremitting, splattering on the windows of the southbound train, and I sighed as I stared at streaks rippling across the glass.

Verweald rose around the tracks, swelling like an incoming tide, dark, graffiti-strewn walls giving way to gleaming industrial buildings. The seats around me remained empty of passengers, aside from a few scattered at the far end of the car, a man entrenched in his magazine and a woman on her cell phone. My backpack teetered on my knees, and I clutched it to my chest, fingers curling into the straps.

The taste of copper burned in my mouth.

The city curled close in the valley's basin, a colorless creature of black, glistening scales, its skyline like the ridge of a spiny tail left supine on a bed of sage and rolling hills. I'd been to Verweald once before and I'd seen pictures of it plenty of times, and I always thought it a surreal place. Cities like New York were known for being restless, for never sleeping, but Verweald wasn't like that. Watching it in the rain, and it reminded me of an indolent lizard crawled into its den, glowing eyes shuttered, waiting until it was time to wake again.

The train reached the station and I disembarked, ignoring the cold lash of water as I threw my backpack onto my shoulder and strode across the platform. It took ten minutes of shivering, dismissing missed calls, and swearing at my phone for me to find a local cab agency, and another ten minutes to wait for the car to arrive. The driver glanced over the seat, then shrugged; I figured he'd had stranger passengers than a half-drowned teenager with a busted lip.

He drove off, the meter ticking, and by the time we reached my destination, I had to count out every damp single I had, and the man gave me an exasperated look as I tipped a handful of loose change into his palm. I returned to the rain, pushing wet hair out of my eyes, and the cab pulled away, leaving me to stare at the small, cozy home on Sycamore Street with the light dimly burning in the window.

Morose, I walked up the path to the door and knocked.

A moment passed, thunder tolling far in the distance toward the coast, rippling over the seaboard until it dissipated in the hills. The light—from a fire, given the quality and the steady ebb of smoke from the chimney—wavered as someone rose inside the house and crossed the front window, coming to the door. After another pause, the lock turned and it opened.

The woman on the other side of the threshold looked deceptively young, like a person in her sixties as opposed to her nineties, the black of her hair left undiminished by either dye or genetics and her bright gray eyes sharp and attentive. She wore a comfortable dress with a knit sweater wrapped around her to ward off the unseasonable chill of the rain.

Blanche Gaspard blinked, her lips parting. "Sara?"

"Hi," I replied, suddenly at a loss for words after two hours sitting furious and wretched on a train. So I simply said, "Hi, mamé."

The repetition stirred Blanche into action, and out of her mouth came a confused jumble of French and English as she hurried me across the threshold and out of the elements. I savored the warmth, shivering in my wet clothes.

"Rene!" Blanche yelled down the hall. "Rene, come out here!"

A door opened, new light spilling over the floor, and a man came into view after walking the corridor.

Like Blanche, Rene Gaspard hardly looked his age. Both were French ex-pats who'd escaped the Loire Valley when Germany invaded, and Rene liked to say the scar on his brow came from head-butting a Nazi—though the story could change when my papé got deep in his cups. The same pin-straight black hair inherited by his son and granddaughters fell past Rene's shoulders, his brows liberally streaked with silver, his blue eyes peculiar in their unwavering intensity. He wore a comfortable gray sweater dappled with rain, as if he'd been outside only minutes ago.

"What is it, what is wrong?" he asked as he looked between Blanche and myself, attention dipping to my cut lip. "Oh, Sara...."

"I'm fine," I said, swallowing, eyes burning. "I, um—. I had an argument. With Mom."

My grandparents said nothing. They froze in unison, and shared the kind of unique, instantaneous communication possible with older married couples, in which disapproval fluttered like the turning of pages in their eyes—and then disappeared, as if the book had snapped shut.

Neither asked what had happened, not yet. Mamé clutched my hands in her own. "That woman," she growled, pulling me to the armchair by the fire, disregarding the puddles I left in my wake. "Camont Luc paeliut oloh-lospaesol?"

Tired from the trip and the confrontation with Eleanor, I didn't understand what she said.

"I think," Rene replied in English. "You should call our son, Blanche, and find out what happened, yes?"

Mamé grumbled something uncomplimentary as she straightened and stomped her way to the back bedroom where the landline resided. Rene disappeared as well, then returned from the restroom with a towel. I took it, and he eased my backpack from its slouched position on my shoulder, depositing it on the floor by my foot.

"Thanks, papé."

He smiled, showing the barest hint of teeth as he took the towel and started drying my hair. "Ah, ma fée, what are we to do with you? You know you should not squabble with Eleanor."

I stared at my knees, concentrating on them instead of the smarting sensation in my lip or the damp fabric coming down from my head to wipe water and dried tears from my face. I knew. I always knew. "I'm sorry. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go."

Rene's thumb brushed the swollen cut as he tipped my chin up, looking into my eyes. I could hear Blanche, voice muffled by the shut door, arguing in fluid, furious French, and the sound highlighted the serious nature of my grandfather's usually jovial attitude. The ruby ring on his finger glinted in the firelight. "No apologies. You are fine, Sara. You will stay here."

He bent at the waist to kiss my brow, muttering foreign words against my skin, and tears again threatened when his warmth retreated. This was why I came here without a thought; I sank into the soft, genial affection of my grandparents' support and the sting of Eleanor's hand faded farther from my mind. I knew she hadn't meant it. I knew—but I wouldn't consider it now. Maybe never.

Something of Rene's normal, affable mood reappeared when he grinned, one brow raised as he dropped the towel over my head. "Come on, then. Let us find you something to eat. I'm sure it was a long trip."