Allyson In Between ✔︎

Chapter Twenty-Four

And I wish I didn't know it now, because it only makes me want him more.

"Have you heard from him since..." Lindsay clamps down on the rest of the question. Her lips press together; her arms cross over her stomach.

I shake my head, putting the stool back on the box. Because all of a sudden, I can't bear the sight of it. If I let myself think about Noah, I'll start obsessing about what I did or didn't do with Drew—and I'll never get through all the "sorting out" Dad promised me.

I go back in my room, to the closest alcove window. The garage door must be open now, because there's yellow light spilling onto the driveway. Dad is leaning against his truck, nodding and nodding while Mom paces, her hands in constant motion: grasping at her hair, reaching for the sky, then dropping dramatically to her sides. I hope she's being a little more reasonable than she was this morning.

Was it really only this morning that I overheard her yelling at Dad on the phone?

Lindsay rests a hand on my shoulder as she leans in to see what's got me so fixated. "We should probably get our story straight," she says.

"There is no story, Linds. I already told Dad the truth."

My sister sighs as she slumps over to my bed and collapses onto her back—on top of an old sheet that's splattered with every paint color that can be found on the walls in this house. "What happened after you and Mom left the hospital?" I ask. "Did you talk at all, or did you just come up here and paint?"

"We started talking in the car on the way home."

She hugs her knees against her chest and sighs again, louder and longer.

"Lindsay, talk to me. Did you tell Mom how much it was bothering you to keep that secret from me?"

"She already knew. She figured it out the day you moved home. When Noah called your phone and I overreacted, she realized the secret was bothering me more than I'd let on. She tried to talk to me about it the next day, and the day after that, but I kept putting her off."

"Why?"

"Because I was pissed off!" Lindsay drops both legs to the carpet with an angry thud. "I told Mom about the phone call because I was freaking out," she says, sitting up. "We were in the car, driving home from Faircrest after I'd showed you the IM app. I made this huge confession that I'd been wanting to make for months and months—and Mom acted like it was nothing. She just thanked me calmly for the information and said we should keep it from you until you had more time to adjust."

"She put me first," I say. "She thought she was protecting the child who needed it most."

"Yep. That's exactly what she told me an hour ago—while she was rolling paint on the walls like a mad woman."

"Did she apologize?" I ask.

"Yeah." 

There are tears on Lindsay's cheeks. She doesn't try to stop them or wipe them away like she usually does. She lets them drip onto her paint-splattered T-shirt, and I get the feeling Mom's apology wasn't good enough. 

"I had her convinced I got caught trying to steal weed out of Drew's car," Lindsay says. "And that you and Samantha were there to rescue me. You should've let me take the blame. I deserve it after what I did to you and Noah."

"What about the things I did to you?" I ask. "It seems to me like you had a good reason to want me to suffer."

Lindsay shakes her head. "The whole thing started with a stupid impulse. You were in the shower and your phone was ringing. I regretted it the second I picked it up and said hello, because I was so sure Noah would recognize my voice and tell you. But he didn't. He asked—thinking I was you—if I wanted to meet him at the mall for a movie when he got back into town. I blurted out something about meeting someone else and hung up. But I promise you it wasn't premeditated."