The girl with an apparent obsession with pink was back at Emily's locker, trying to attach a glitter-framed mirror to the inside of the door. Her hair was pulled into another braid and she wore a bright pink cardigan, neon pink socks, and a black corduroy skirt.
I watched her as I filled my water bottle at the fountain. She slowly retracted her fingers from the mirror, a hesitant expression on her face. When it stuck, she grinned triumphantly, like she'd accomplished something more than just adhering a decorative mirror to a locker. She was brushing the glitter off her hands when I heard my name being called from behind me.
"Clara!"
Water spilled over my fingertips as I jumped. Mrs. Foley, smiling through turquoise lips, was waving her hand in the air as she approached me, wearing an olive-green vest over an orange T-shirt. She wore khakis at school, but whenever I saw her in the grocery store or something, she had on drawstring pants messily hacked off into shorts.
Mrs. Foley was someone who simultaneously did and did not seem like a music teacher. She wore weird lipstick shades and wooden clogs that clacked against the floors when she walked. Not only did she direct the school musicals but she organized fundraisers almost monthly to keep the school glee club open. Her insistence that I audition for the musical was how I'd first got to know Mrs. Foley. She'd noticed I didn't have enough change at a vending machine and given me a dollar, saying the only way she wanted me to pay her back was by trying out for the school's spring production, Mamma Mia.
She'd said I could just be in the background if I wanted and stay out of everyone's way, including the audience's. Then when I auditioned, she gave me the role of Sophie Sheridan, the main role of the musical. I almost backed out when I found out, but Mrs. Foley convinced me not to, telling me to trust her on this one.
"Hey, Clara," she greeted me. "How are you? We miss you in practices."
"Hey, Mrs. Foley."
She watched me for a moment as I twisted the lid onto my tumbler, slowly so I could focus on something other than her standing there expectantly. "Bex misses you too. She says that you haven't talked in a few months." Ten to be exact, I wanted to say, but I didn't. Instead I hoped that she'd just leave on her own so I wouldn't have to respond.
Mrs. Foley sighed. I looked up for long enough to see the defeated look in her eyes that drowned out the sparkle I normally saw in them. "Listen, honey-pie, I know things suck for you right now. But we're here for you! Even if you don't want to be involved in the spring musical—which would break my heart because we're doing Shrek and I think you'd be a perfect Fiona—we're still your friends." She smiled but when I looked away, she shrugged. "But it's all up to you, honey-pie."
I nodded, mumbling, "I really have to get to class."
The sky was bright blue that afternoon as I headed through the school doors. I was on the second to last step when my fingers brushed against something as I went to move my hair from my face—something soft, warm, and polyester. I turned to see Kolby Rutledge staring at me, going the opposite way up the stairs, as my hand touched his vest.
"Hey," I said dumbly, quickly retracting my hand and shoving it into my pocket. Somehow it still felt like I was touching his vest, the sleekness against my fingers. "Sorry. I wasn't looking."
He nodded as if he already knew this, and maybe he did.
"It's okay," he told me. Kolby had always had a deep voice. Not weird deep or James Earl Jones deep, but just deep, and I remembered how much Mrs. Foley loved it. She was always pestering him about auditioning for a musical, but he turned her down each time. He was quiet, and used the least amount of words possible in each sentence. I wondered if that was because he didn't like talking or if he just didn't like talking to me.
"Sorry . . . again," I said after a moment, sighing the last word as I went around him on the steps.
"Clara?" He shifted his weight as if he were uncomfortable. "When I asked you if you knew why she did it, were you lying?"
My muscles tensed at this, but I tried not to let it show in my face. "Why would I lie about that?"
"I don't know." He exhaled. "You're not answering my question, though."
He looked at me for a few seconds in a way that made me want to cringe and turn away, like he was searching for an answer I wasn't about to give but he seemed to know was there anyway. Then he nodded, like I'd confirmed something he expected. It wasn't until he started to walk down the steps that I realized that look, that nod, irritated me.
"I wasn't lying," I told him. "I don't know why she would . . ." I was beginning to get frustrated as I struggled to say something that made sense. Frustrated that I was always being asked this question and always lying in response. "Just because I'm her sister doesn't mean I know why. You knew Griffin, so wouldn't you know if he did anything to make her want to kill him?"
He inhaled deeply, glancing away from me for a moment. When he looked back, I couldn't tell if he was hurt or if he pitied me, or maybe both. So when he started to say, "Clara," I just nodded and walked away.
I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard someone calling my name again. A girl this time.
"Clare?" I stopped mid-stride, my blood turning to ice in my veins, as I heard the voice of the only person in the world who called me Clare.
Bex.
My best friend.
"Hey . . . Clare." She smiled hesitantly at me. "Hey, wow. I haven't seen you in, like, forever." She laughed awkwardly. I knew what she was doing. She was trying to pretend that the past ten months had never happened and that we hadn't spent them apart.
That we were still best friends.
But the thing was?
We really weren't, not anymore.
"Yeah," I mumbled. Her hair was dyed a bright shade of blond, but before—when we were really still friends—it had been darker, and longer. Now her hair was shoulder length, bouncing with beachy curls. My hair was longer then too, but I'd cut it a few months ago, up to my own shoulders. It reminded me of the first thing Bex ever said to me, when I'd walked up to her at the counter, an application tentatively curled in my hand.
Hey, your eyes are green, just like mine.
I got the job, working with Bex at the ice cream parlor, Scoops!, the summer before the school's production of Into the Woods. In between dunking the ice cream scoopers in cups of water and informing customers that we did not serve frozen yogurt, we became friends. We would sneak handfuls of sprinkles when the place was dead and swap magazines back and forth. We blasted music from her phone until one day she got so sick of her songs that she stole my phone and plugged it in while I was in the bathroom. I was washing my hands when I heard the unmistakable sound of a song from Wicked.
"What is this?" she asked when I came back out, staring at my phone in her dock. "Is this . . . Broadway?"
At first she thought it was pretty weird; the songs were either too long or too short, and too many of the notes were belted dramatically. But one day, as she was serving a chocolate twist, I heard her humming a song from Rent, and the next thing I knew, she was cast as the Baker's Wife in Into the Woods, trying to steal my gold slippers and kissing my husband. We cracked jokes about trading shoes and spouses.
Hey, your hair is short, just like mine, I could've said to her now.
"I've got to get home," I said instead, when I could tell she was bringing herself to say something, maybe ask why I'd ignored her calls or why I always kept my eyes forward whenever I passed her in the hallway. But like she always did, when I started to walk away from her, she just gave up and gave me the one thing I wanted now—to be left alone.
When I pulled into our driveway, something was sticking to the pane of one of the windows on the second floor of our house. I stepped out of the car, swinging my backpack over my shoulder before walking onto the snow-covered lawn.
I stood on the tips of my toes, pushing my glasses farther up my nose, and my heart dropped. I turned to look around the neighborhood, in case I saw someone lurking behind a telephone pole, watching as I realized someone had egged my window. Well, actually, Emily's window.
I heard a rumble on the pavement behind me and turned to see Brandon Tomlin pulling a garbage can up his driveway, staring back at me. His hair was tousled, again, and his patchy beard was thickening on his face. He wasn't wearing a jacket or coat, just a T-shirt and some sweatpants. He looked at me, lazily and resentfully at the same time, before he disappeared into the garage.
I blinked, my fingers cold and numb, as my mother's car pulled into the driveway behind me. I watched through the windshield as she gasped, staring up at the dripping egg yolk and shattered eggshell on Emily's window.
"Go inside, Clara," she told me, getting out of her car and glancing around her, but Brandon Tomlin—or anyone else who might have wanted to egg Emily's window—was out of sight. When she saw I was still standing there, she shot me a look. "Now."
When my father came home from work and saw the crusted egg yolk on the window, the few pieces of shell that had fallen on the driveway, he wanted to call the police. He was angry. He was cursing under his breath as he got a dishcloth and the ladder from the garage, and climbed up to clean up the mess.
He had shrugged off his jacket, and even though his breath was coming out in frosty puffs, he didn't seem to realize he might've been cold up there. "Did your mother call the police yet?" he said down to me, his voice snapping like a ruler against knuckles. It seemed pointless to me now, since he had already scrubbed off most of the egg.
"Calling the police isn't going to do anything, Eric." My mother stood on the front porch, wrapping her cardigan more tightly around herself, her eyes red, her cheeks flushed. We'd caught her in one of those rare moments where she had nothing to prove, nothing to ignore, and nothing to pretend. "It's not like they can fingerprint the eggshells or anything."
"At least we'd be doing something!" my dad retorted, his voice dripping with annoyance like the egg yolk dripping from the window pane.
My mother nodded bitterly as she moved to step inside, muttering, "Like bothering the police."
My father hesitated, his hand clutching the dishcloth, and his grip tightened around the side of the ladder. He peered over his shoulder, calling out, "Samantha!" But she closed the front door before he could say anything else.