Food, Cats, and Being Lazy

The next day, Vincent came over to my house. He spent some time talking to Paige in her bedroom before leaving. He didn’t say anything to me, but I could hear his voice from the other side of my bedroom wall. Then after I heard him shut my sister’s door and walk through the hall, something slid under my door. I could hear Vincent heading down the stairs and saying goodbye to my mom. There was a purple CD case on my bedroom floor.

It was just like the one that was left in the mailbox. Only this time, it said “To Pip” in the same stenciled writing. So there was no way I couldn’t know it was from him. I could hear the sound of his car starting up out front. I waited until he was gone before I stuck it into my computer. It was another set of five songs. I didn’t know them right off the bat, but they were nice. They weren’t sweet love songs or anything. Just the kind of songs that made me feel good about myself.

So the original CD must have come from Vincent too. I had no idea. I never would have guessed. I actually forgot about it entirely until he slid the second one under my door. So I went to grab the first one to reexamine the songs again. Then I realized there actually was an underlying theme. Vincent had always been trying to tell me that I was strong.

I still wanted to be mad at him, but it wasn’t easy. He was doing everything he promised to do. He took Paige to lunch every Saturday so they could talk about things. He came over to see her whenever she asked, and he took her to all her appointments. I was sure he’d do whatever she asked him to do. And according to Paige, he’d even gone with her to meet the same couple she wanted to give the baby to.

I guess I wanted to be mad at him because I just wanted him to like me. I was serious when I said I would have been surprised if he did. Guys like Vincent didn’t like girls like me. Especially if they could get girls like Paige. Girls who were beautiful and smart and all those other things. I was the opposite of that.

But it still hurt. He was still the first boy I’d ever kissed. I wanted him to like me. I wanted to like him back. I wasn’t sure if I actually did, though. I never thought about it before he kissed me, but I had dreams about him sometimes. And once or twice when I was half asleep, I liked the idea of them. But that was impossible now. Even if we did like each other, it would never happen. Because of Paige and the baby. Because I could never go for a guy Paige had already been with. Especially not if she had a baby with him.

I kept both of the CDs even though it kind of hurt my feelings to listen to them. Summer was destined to be boring. Reg and I didn’t really do anything but watch TV and occasionally have wrestling matches. My mom’s busiest candle-selling season was the summer, so she was always doing something. Phillip got into some cool fancy boy camp, and my dad was always working. So that left Paige and me. And if anything good came out of that summer, it’s that we got closer.

When school started again, I didn’t actually want to go back. I changed my mind about disliking summer now that Paige and I were hanging out more. We didn’t do a whole lot, but we always did stuff together. So I wasn’t looking forward to going back to having a sister who was too smart and pretty and cool to be seen with me.

She got a ride with us on our first day back. She was already showing, and my mom had to buy her maternity clothes instead of our usual back-to-school shopping trip. My dad said he wouldn’t pay for anything baby-related besides her health insurance. But my mom finally won him over because Paige didn’t have any pants that could button.

At lunch, when I wandered into the atrium to go hide in my stairwell, I was surprised when Paige caught up with me.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi?”

“Can I sit with you?”

“Sure. I usually just sit over here.” I hugged my lunch to myself. This baby was making Paige act like she was from the Twilight Zone. She was being so weird. I could forgive her for her summer behavior because no one was around to see us actually having fun together. But school was a different story.

I led her to my empty stairwell and sat down on the bottom step. She looked around like she’d never been there before and eventually sat down beside me.

“Where are all your friends?” she asked. We unpacked our lunches together. My mom actually let me make them the night before. So they weren’t soggy and gross.

“I don’t have any friends.” I was kind of irritated that she assumed I did.

“At all?” I shrugged.

“I used to sit here with this girl named Laura. But then she got a makeover and decided she was too cool to be seen with me. So now she won’t talk to me at all, and she even made Anton take her to Collin’s party instead of me. No, wait. She did talk to me once when she came in here looking for gossip. She got really offended when I told her I didn’t tell my family business to strangers.”

“I thought you were just being dramatic when you said you didn’t have any friends.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Why didn’t you ever come to sit with me?” I huffed and looked at her.

“Seriously? You pretended we weren’t related, and at home, you acted like I had some kind of nasty infection. You were worse than Laura.” She looked down at her lunch.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s what sisters do, I guess.”

“Well—Collin was asking about you.” I dropped my lunchbox.

“What?” She smiled and pulled out an apple slice.

“Yep. First period. He said ‘How’s Pip’ to be exact.”

“Shut the front door.” She laughed.

“I’m not joking.” I turned back to my lunch.

Beautiful. Sweet. Ridiculously attractive Collin. I almost forgot about him with everything that was happening. How could I forget Collin? Oh yeah, that’s right. I was mad at him for getting a girlfriend who wasn’t me. That was it. But oh my god, he asked about me? What was I going to do? What if he talked to me? What if he asked me to homecoming?

Okay, slow down. I was getting ahead of myself again. Boys like Collin didn’t go out with girls like me. So just shrugged.

“That’s cool,” I said. She was smiling deviously.

“He broke up with his girlfriend over the summer.” Oh, sweet baby Jesus.

“Good for them.” She kept smiling.