The Snowball Effect Page 2

  I’d lived in three different houses and three different apartment buildings, and as I drove around Corben, I inadvertently went back to those familiar places. First the apartment where I’d lived briefly with my parents when they were still in love (or at least still together). Then to the house we lived in with Grandma Elaine. The apartment building I lived in with Mom (and, at various times, a Daddy Whoever). The other apartment building we lived in. The house we rented before we moved into the house that we bought.

  I made sure that my drive didn’t take me anywhere near the house I currently lived in, the house where my mother had just offed herself, the house where police officers might still be hanging around.

  The Corben Courier did a big story once about how seventy-five percent of Baltimore County’s registered sex offenders lived in Corben, like that was shocking news. Where else did they think they would live? Did they think an ex-con pedophile was going to get a high-paying job and afford a half-million-dollar house in the ritzy part of the county? Of course not. He would get a job at a gas station working for minimum wage, and he’d rent a cheap-ass apartment in Corben.

  After Mom starting making more money, transformed from Old Mopey Mom into New Peppy Mom, we did have a choice, but she wanted to be near the people who supported her. For the last few years, Mom had worked as a life coach. She taught workshops out of our house, and she wanted to be near the women in her groups. I knew the women would have followed her anywhere, though.

  I drove past the big shopping center on Corben Avenue, close to the beltway, where Riley worked in the auto repair shop. I drove past the mall and then turned into Kara’s neighborhood.

  When Kara opened the door to let me in, her face was almost as red as her hair. I felt guilty that she’d been crying, even though it wasn’t my fault that my mom decided to hang herself. Kara had been my best friend since middle school, so she’d known my mom for a while. She was closer to her parents than anyone I’d ever known. After Mabel called, she probably started thinking about what she’d do if she lost both her parents and her grandmother all in the same year.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said to Kara. I could feel my cell phone vibrating inside my pocket. I checked the caller ID. Riley.

  She nodded real quick like she didn’t want to talk about it either. She rubbed my arm as I walked inside. I let Riley go to voice mail.

  “Hi, Lainey!” Kara’s mom said in a fake-happy voice. It rubbed me the wrong way, but I knew that she didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know how I wanted her to act.

  I sat on the couch between Kara and her mom, leaning up against the quilt that Kara’s grandmother had made. We didn’t say much. We watched TV until her dad got home from work. Then we sat in the kitchen while her dad made chicken parmesan for dinner. I pushed my mom—my entire family—out of my mind and listened to Kara’s dad talk about his day.

  “So this woman comes in, asking about some rugs that she ordered. The girl at the counter tells her we have no record of it. She gets pissed—pardon my French, Lainey—and she wants to talk to a manager. So I come out and look it up, and I can’t find any record of it either. That really sets her off. She tells me I’m incompetent. Tells me she’s never shopping here again. On and on and on. Finally, I tell her we’ll go in the back and look for them. I can still hear her screaming and hollering as I’m walking into the back room. Of course the rugs aren’t back there, and when I come back out, the woman’s gone.”

  Kara’s dad stopped and opened a can of green beans. He took his time emptying them into a pot. He never told a whole story straight through. He always stopped and waited for one of them to ask how it ended.

  “Then what happened?” Kara’s mom asked.

  He tossed the empty can into the trash and smiled at us. “About five minutes later, she calls. She asks if I’m the manager she was just talking to and I say yes. So she tells me that she actually ordered the rugs at Masterson’s down the road. But she wasn’t calling to apologize for screaming at us.” He shook his head. “No, of course not. She tells me that she actually ordered the rugs at a different store, and then says to me, ‘I can’t believe you all didn’t know that!’”

  “Like you could possibly know that!” Kara exclaimed. She and her mother laughed.

  “Exactly!” her dad said. “Exactly!”

  I couldn’t make myself laugh, but I forced a smile.

  After a while, dinner was ready and we all sat down and held hands and Kara’s dad said grace. If someone took a picture of that moment, we could have passed for a family, sitting around the table in the happy orange and yellow kitchen. Kara’s dad had dark hair and brown eyes like me, and except for the flaming red hair, Kara looked just like her mom. She could be the sweet but slightly rebellious younger daughter. I could be the lovably sarcastic older daughter. It certainly made for a nicer family portrait than the picture Mabel had taken of my real family on the day of Collin’s graduation. Maybe I’d just stay here with Kara forever. Or at least until she moved out.

  “…and God bless Lainey and her family. Please hold them near to you and help them through this troubling time. Amen.”

  Kara’s dad squeezed my hand and gave me half a grin. “We love you, kiddo,” he said. And that was that. That was the closest anyone came to mentioning my dead mother.

  After dinner Kara went to her room to take a nap before work. I sat on the couch with her parents and we watched the news. I hated the news. It was just a daily count of murders and scandals and four-alarm fires. But once I’d sat on the couch between Kara’s parents, I couldn’t find any way to extricate myself, so I tried to think about other things. My mind wandered to Riley. But then I remembered that I hadn’t called him. I still didn’t really feel like talking to him. Or anyone else.

  “I’m going to do the dishes,” I announced during the first commercial break.

  “Oh no, sweetie,” Kara’s mom said. “I’ll take care of that later.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” I said. “To thank you for dinner.”

  “You don’t have to thank us,” Kara’s dad said.

  I motioned toward the TV. “I just can’t…it depresses me. Everyone…dying.”

  Kara’s mom frowned and looked at her husband. That, right there, was the Poor Lainey face. They both looked so sad for me. Like their hearts were just breaking in half for Poor Lainey Pike.

  “Please don’t feel sorry for me,” I mumbled. “I just want to do the dishes. I like to wash dishes. Ask—” I trailed off. I’d almost said, “Ask my mom.” When I was aggravated or annoyed, I went straight to the kitchen sink, because for some reason, washing the dishes relaxed me.

  Kara’s parents were still staring up at me. “Ask Kara,” I said, although that didn’t make sense, because Kara didn’t know I loved to wash dishes.

  I went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. A few minutes later, Kara’s dad came into the kitchen and grabbed a towel. “I’ll dry,” he said. He picked up a plate out of the rack.

  “I really do like washing dishes,” I said after a minute.

  He nodded. “I’ve always been fond of mowing the lawn when I need some time to think about things.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t really want to think about things.”

  He nodded again. “Understandable.”

  As much as I didn’t want to think about anything, I couldn’t shut my brain off. I thought about Riley again, just to have something occupying my mind. I wondered what I’d do if Riley died. Would I feel like I’d never be able to love anyone again? Would I feel like he’d been my last chance to be happy? How long would it take before I felt normal again, like I could live without him?

  No, I told myself. Stop. You’re not going to pretend it makes sense. You’re not going to make excuses for her.

  And then I guess I started crying. Kara’s dad dried a few more plates before he noticed. Then he muttered, “Oh, kiddo. Hold on.” He dropped the towel on the counter and then disappeared into
the living room. I stared down at the soapy water in the sink. I closed my eyes and remembered the way Kara’s parents had looked at me. I remembered the same look on the faces of Mabel and her pastor. Poor Lainey.

  Kara’s mom walked into the kitchen. “Honey,” she said. She touched my shoulder. I let go of the dishrag and she pulled me into a hug. We stood there together in front of the kitchen sink, and I cried into Kara’s mom’s shoulder. My hands were soapy, and I knew I’d gotten the back of her shirt wet, but she didn’t say anything. She just held me.

  When it started to feel awkward, I pulled away and asked if I could take a shower. She went into Kara’s room and found me some clothes to change into—a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that I knew were going to be too tight, but I took them and thanked her.

  I checked my cell phone on my way to the bathroom. I had nine missed calls—a combination of Riley, Mabel, my dad, and a Florida number that I first thought was Grandma Elaine and then realized had to be my aunt Liz. I listened to the messages, and they were all generic “I’m worried, please call,” messages. I’d call Mabel and Riley back later. Maybe even Aunt Liz. But not Dad. No friggin’ way.

  I couldn’t believe he thought he could step in and play hero now. Every time I’d ever needed him when I was a kid, he’d let me down. Every time I’d asked for something, he couldn’t give it to me.

  Honestly, I’d never gotten over our visit to Chuck E. Cheese’s when I was seven. I hardly knew my father then, because his visits were as sporadic as the child support checks. But even though I barely knew him, I asked him if I could move in with him.

  “Honey, you know you have to live with your mommy,” he said.

  “I don’t want to!” I started crying. “I don’t want to live with Mommy and Daddy Steve anymore. I want to live with you.”

  “Does she make you call him that?” Dad asked.

  I nodded. She always made me call all her boyfriends Daddy whoever.

  “Don’t call him that anymore. From now on, call him Asshole.”

  I cried harder and shook my head. “That’s a bad word.”

  “I’m your father, okay?” He pointed his thumb at his chest. “This is the only Daddy you’re ever going to have.”

  “Then please let me live with you. Or take me to Grandma Elaine’s house in Florida. Please, please, please?”

  Surrounded by pizza and games and a ball pit—a little kid’s paradise—and I was miserable. You’d think that would have told Dad something about my home life.

  “Baby, it’s not up to me,” he said. “Come on, finish your pizza.”

  So, no, I wasn’t going to call him back. I wasn’t going to ask for his help. I didn’t need him anymore. Didn’t want him. And hopefully no one would force me to live with him. I’d be an official adult in less than a month anyway.

  When I stepped into the shower, I waited for the tears to come back, but they didn’t. Alone, without people staring and feeling sorry for me, I felt fine. I dried my hair and then went back to the living room. Kara’s parents had gone to bed. Kara came out of her room wearing her work apron. “Go to work with me?” she asked. I nodded.

  Kara worked at the diner right off the interstate, not in Corben but in Baltimore City, with the super-big parking lot where truckers could park their tractor-trailers. No one we knew really hung out at the diner until after Kara started working there.

  Kara’d gotten some scholarships, but she still needed money for college and she actually made decent tips working at the diner. Unlike most of our graduating class, Kara would be at a real college in the fall—UMBC, on the other side of the beltway. She wanted to be a nurse.

  When Christine had found that out, she’d rolled her eyes and said, “You could take nursing classes at CCC,” which is Corben Community College, where about half of us were headed. After Christine’s boyfriend, Wallace, decided to go there, Christine started talking about CCC like it was Harvard or Yale, even though anyone could get in; you just had to decide you wanted to go, and then you went. Christine wasn’t going to college at all. All she wanted to be was a homemaker, and you didn’t need even an AA degree for that.

  I’d be at CCC in the fall. Riley, too. He’d taken a year off after high school so we could start together. I would major in business and he would get certified in auto repair, and then we were going to open our own repair shop. I’d be the receptionist and run the business side of it, and Riley would fix the cars.

  I sat in one of Kara’s booths and ordered an omelet and sausages. She found an old Sunday paper in the back and brought it out for me to read so I wouldn’t look pathetic sitting all alone. She kept my coffee cup filled. When she wasn’t busy, she came and sat down with me and told me stories about dumb customers she’d had. Some of the stories I’d heard before, but I let her tell them again. I knew she was just trying to get me to laugh.

  When she got off, we went back to her house and her mom was up already for work. She stood in the kitchen in her robe and started the coffeepot.

  “Mabel talked to your boss,” Kara’s mom said to me. “She told him you’d be out for at least a week, but if you want to take more time, just let us know.”

  I nodded.

  Kara’s mom kissed me on the forehead. “Sleep tight, girls.”

  Kara and I slept awkwardly together in her twin bed. I woke up about a million times. I finally got out of bed in the early afternoon, just in time for Heartstrings. I went out to the living room and turned the television on.

  I must have woken Kara up, because she came out a few minutes later. “Are you kidding me?” she asked as she sat next to me on the couch. “We haven’t watched this in forever.”

  On soap operas, everything is so drawn out and overstated that even if you haven’t watched in a long time, it isn’t hard to figure out who’s had an affair or who’s gotten killed or come back to life. The only thing that threw me was Lainey St. James’s baby, who’d been born the summer I was eleven. They’d rapidly aged her. She was a grown woman now—engaged, even.

  It boggled my mind to look at that beautiful girl and remember the day she was born. I knew it wasn’t real, that twenty years hadn’t actually passed, that it certainly wasn’t the same baby actress I remembered. But still, I felt old. I felt ancient.

  After Heartstrings we spent the afternoon watching movies. I kept my phone turned off. I hadn’t felt like calling anyone back yet. I went to work with Kara again that night. When I woke up the next afternoon, I saw that Kara’s mom had washed my clothes and left donuts for us.

  “I guess I should probably talk to Riley,” I said to Kara as I dunked a chocolate donut in my milk. I didn’t feel too guilty about it, though. Mabel would have told him I was at Kara’s, so he could have found me if he’d really wanted to.

  I knew he had to be devastated about my mom. He’d try to get me to talk about my feelings, and he’d make it into such a big deal. But I wanted to ignore it for as long as possible. Denial was my favorite stage of grief, by far. I didn’t mind being numb. When you go to the dentist, who wants to feel all of that scraping and drilling? If you don’t take the novocaine, you’re crazy. There’s nothing wrong with being numb.

  Riley would understand why I’d been ignoring him. He knew me. I wasn’t some fake perfect girlfriend, and he loved me anyway. Even when I let his calls go straight to voice mail.

  Kara raised her eyebrows and took another donut. “You haven’t talked to him? He’s probably worried.”

  I glared at her.

  “Just saying.”

  After we ate, I changed back into my own clothes and left Kara’s house. I didn’t drive straight to Riley’s. I got on the beltway and drove around for a while. I drove past the spot where Carl crashed his bike. I’d done it before and it didn’t really bother me. Mom, though, never went back on the beltway after Carl’s accident.

  I practiced how I’d apologize to Riley for ignoring him.

  I’m sorry I’ve been distant. Or, you know, completely absen
t.

  I just wanted to be alone. Sort through my thoughts.

  I know I should have wanted to be with you.

  Hey, my mom is dead. I don’t have anything to apologize for.

  Ugh, yes I do.

  I was selfish. I am sorry.

  Finally I pulled up in front of Riley’s house. I didn’t even have to knock. He saw me coming up the sidewalk, and he opened the door and stood back and let me in. Like he’d been waiting for me. Maybe he had. Maybe Kara had called him, or he’d called Kara.

  “Anybody home?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  Riley’s family was always busy, and they were hardly ever home. His mom owned a craft store and spent all her time there. That’s what got Riley motivated to open his own business. His dad was a car salesman. His brother spent all his time with his girlfriend or playing soccer.

  He took my hand and led me upstairs to his room and then shut the door and gave me the longest hug of my life. He probably thought I would start bawling, because that’s what he remembered me doing after Grandma Elaine died. And like I’d done when Mom said we couldn’t afford to fly to Orlando for the funeral. She never went back to work after Carl’s accident, but I knew she was lying about not having the money.

  Riley had really wanted to take me to the funeral. He had money saved up because we’d been planning on getting an apartment together after I graduated. But Riley’s mom didn’t want him to miss work, and I didn’t want to go by myself. I told him we should just keep the money for the apartment. I knew Grandma Elaine would have wanted us to get out on our own as soon as possible. So in the end I didn’t get to go, but he’d tried.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered in my ear.

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s watch TV.”

  He let go of me and pulled his sheets back so I could climb into bed. I snuggled up under the blue plaid comforter that I’d helped him pick out a few years earlier.