‘Long day?’ I ask.
‘Yes, always,’ she says, rolling her neck to one side and then the other, setting off a series of pops. ‘But I survived.’
Grandma joins us, pausing to turn on the television set before she settles into her corner armchair.
‘I’ve Got a Secret is on soon,’ she says. Grandma loves her television programs.
‘All right,’ my mother agrees, tipping her head back and closing her eyes.
I sigh and draw my knees up to my chin. All of a sudden, my brain flashes on something strange – me, fifteen years into the future and still in this house, my mother in my grandmother’s place and me in my mother’s, me calling out for the leftovers to be saved for later. Something about the image makes me shudder, and then I feel guilty.
‘Cheryl wrote Evelyn a letter,’ my grandmother announces, her eyes trained on the end of the episode of To Tell the Truth. ‘It arrived today.’
I roll my eyes and hope neither one of them sees, or I’ll get scolded for being fresh. But now my mother’s going to want to know what Cheryl wrote. Sure enough, Mama immediately opens up her pale blue eyes – naturally, I inherited my boring brown ones from my good-for-nothing father – and peers at me, curious.
‘Is she all right?’ Mama asks, her voice eager for news.
‘She met a neighbor,’ I say. ‘A girl around her age named Mary? She seemed happy about that.’ Remembering Cheryl’s demand that I keep her letter private, I don’t mention Cheryl’s obvious loneliness or Mary’s baby or the unsettling unknown of Vietnam. My mother takes a deep breath and draws a thumbnail up to her mouth, then quickly drops it back to her lap. Grandma is always after her not to chew her nails. ‘I’m glad to hear it. It’s so good she ended up with Dennis.’ She pauses. ‘I know it’s expensive, but maybe we can call her on Sunday night, just to hear her voice for a few minutes,’ my mother says. The last time my mother and Cheryl spoke on the phone, Mom teared up a bit after she’d hung up, even though she said they were tears of joy from knowing that Cheryl was settled and safe somewhere. That’s what she said, anyway, but I couldn’t help but sense that Mama might feel a lot better about the situation if she could see Cheryl with her own eyes and hug her with her own two arms and know for sure that her oldest was all right.
‘It would be nice to hear her voice,’ I say, letting the truth about Cheryl tickle the tip of my tongue. What if I told Mama right now how worried Cheryl’s letter made me? What if I spoke up about how scared I was that Cheryl’s life is the only future Mama sees for me?
But I just keep my mouth closed tight. Something about doing that feels easier, even if it’s not exactly easy.
Suddenly my mother sits up, remembering something.
‘Evelyn, did you know about this?’ she asks, reaching for her copy of the Chronicle. ‘This murder that happened at Winkler’s on Saturday? Weren’t you there that night?’ She unfolds the paper, revealing a headline over a picture of Preston Fowler. My stomach lurches at the sight of him and his rich-boy smirk, and a bitter taste of bile tickles the back of my throat. I look away, down at the nubby green couch, squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.
‘Evelyn, are you all right?’ my mother asks, and I feel her hand on my shoulder.
My eyes flutter open, and I focus them on the television set, the headlines of the newspaper blurring the edges of my vision. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘And yeah, I heard about that, but I’d left Winkler’s before the fuzz … I mean, before the police showed up.’
I sense my mother nodding, and then she folds up the paper and tosses it back onto the coffee table. ‘That’s good,’ she says, ‘although I don’t like the idea of you just hanging out at Winkler’s with those friends of yours, frankly. I wonder if you were even really watching the picture.’
I nod, my heart racing, my eyes unable to block the image of Preston Fowler from my mind. Anxiety grips me, makes me want to move. I feel the urge to run right out of the house and into the black night, outpacing the memory of that boy’s face until it can’t catch up with me ever again.
‘I need to finish some homework,’ I manage at last, unfolding myself from the couch and heading toward my bedroom. Both Mama and Grandma eye me curiously. Homework hasn’t been a priority for me in ages.
‘Well, good,’ my mother answers uncertainly as I head off down the hallway, squeezing my hands into fists until I feel my fingernails slicing into my palms. My tongue feels thick in my mouth.
Moments later I’m inside my bedroom, and I quietly shut the door behind me. I switch off the light and bury my face in my hands, trying to disappear somehow into the inky darkness.
Breathe, Evie. Breathe. You’re all right. He didn’t get you. That monster didn’t get you. You’re here now, in your bedroom. You’re safe.
And I imagine Cheryl and her once constant presence in this space that we shared for so long. And I think about Sunny and Connie and Juanita and their flashing eyes and bold hearts and loud laughs, and Diane with her guts and her bravery that night outside the bathroom. Hell, I even picture Miss Odeen, my English teacher, who always seems so confident and sure of herself. And I wish that any one of them could be with me now, right now in this bedroom of mine where I feel so trapped and alone. So ashamed and sick. I imagine they would tuck an arm around the small of my back, lean close, and whisper into my ear, ‘Evie, it’s all right. You’re all right. Listen, Evie, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
And in my imagination, I believe them.
Miss Odeen slips my paper about Fannie Lou Hamer into my hands as I walk out of English class the next day, and I peer down to spy a Lovely thoughts! I agree! written in perfect red script at the top.
‘Nice job, Evie,’ she says, smiling, her honey-blond hair perfectly set, her pink lipstick neat and crisply lined. ‘It’s so good to see you making an effort. I hope you keep it up!’
‘Thanks, Miss Odeen.’ I nod, my cheeks warming. The way some teachers would say that stuff about my effort might make me feel sort of lousy, like it’s a rare thing for me to try in school. I mean, I guess it sort of is. But the way Miss Odeen notices my work, it almost makes me want to try more for her.
‘She’s really lovely, isn’t she?’ Diane asks as we filter into the crowded hallway, our shoulders practically bumping up against one another’s. I catch a whiff of her Evening in Paris perfume and wonder how much it costs.
‘Yeah, she’s my nicest teacher, and she’s new, so she doesn’t hate us yet,’ I say.
Diane nods. ‘My fifth-period algebra teacher, Mr Morris, seems to hate us, but I hate him, too.’
‘Oh, he’s the absolute worst,’ I say, grimacing. ‘He picks on Juanita all the time for the dumbest things. She can’t stand him, and I don’t blame her. He’s just horrible.’
‘He’s mean to all the Mexican kids in class,’ Diane says. ‘He accused Julia Delgado of cheating just because she got the highest score on the last test.’
I frown, disgusted. That sort of thing isn’t even the worst sort of stuff Juanita has to endure at Eastside. An impulse grips me and refuses to let go. It comes on all of a sudden – the same urge to run that I felt last night when that monster’s smirk invaded my mind.