The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(76)

Rain fell hard that day, and the neighborhood was not the greatest. The house was a tall Victorian with a big porch that hadn’t been painted in a long time. My dad peered at it. “This is where they sent her?” He swore under his breath.

“I guess. This is the address, right?”

“Yes.” He smoothed his beard between his fingers. “Do you want me to go in with you?”

A part of me was really afraid of going up those steps, into that world, but I shook my head. “No.”

“I’ll come back in . . . what? An hour? An hour and a half?”

“Hour and a half. I haven’t seen her in months.”

“Take your time. I’ll be right out here.”

I dashed to the porch and up the steps, feeling like a girl in a gothic story. The screen door was extra wide and the door behind was open. I knocked, and a girl who looked younger than me appeared. She was enormously pregnant, her belly like a ball stuck on her body. “Yeah?”

“I’m here to visit Suze Ogden?”

“She know you’re coming?”

“Yes.”

She pushed the door open and I slid inside, dashing water off my hair. “She’s in room seven. Two flights up on the right.”

“Thanks.”

The air smelled of cooking, and I could hear girls talking somewhere as I climbed. The first set of stairs was generous, but the second was narrower. Servant stairs, I thought, something I picked up from a book somewhere. The tight hallway I found confirmed that. The door of room seven was plain white. I took a breath, steeling myself, and knocked.

The door was yanked open—angrily, I thought—and a girl stood there. It took me a full breath to realize it was Suze. Her yards of hair had been shaved off, and only a soft blonde fuzz covered her scalp. She wore a smocked shirt that belled out over her pregnant belly, so shockingly weird that I didn’t know what to look at first—head or tummy. She didn’t help, just stared at me with the tiniest quiver of her lower lip. Her eyes burned like eerie marbles in her face, bright bright blue. I felt embarrassed for her. And sad. And awkward. And hurt. She’d excluded me from everything. She had sex and never told me! How could we really be friends?

I didn’t know what to do or say or where to look. A roar filled my ears and I glanced over her shoulder to a window, where a thin curtain lifted in the breeze. “You’re going to freeze to death,” I said.

“Nah, I’m always hot.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”

I slid by her, turning sideways to slither by like a snake. The room was furnished with a single bed against the wall, a metal chest of drawers, and a desk with a gooseneck lamp. Over the surface were pencils and paper, drawings I couldn’t make out. “You’re drawing a lot.”

“Your grandma sent me some art supplies.”

“That’s nice.” I was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for some signal, some indication of what I should do. Like how did you act when somebody had been through something so big? My hands felt awkward beside my body so I tucked them in the back pockets of my jeans.

She ran a hand over her head, a soft blonde cap coming back, and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I look so weird,” she said. “He shaved my head to punish me.”

“You don’t,” I said, and did what felt like the only thing I could do—I hugged her. Her belly bumped into me hard, but I pushed my butt backward to make room and held her shoulders tight.

She sobbed silently, tears wetting my neck. “I hate him so much,” she said. “Hate him.”

“I know,” I said, understanding that she meant her father. “I know. I brought you some books.” I gave her the bag of paperbacks I’d collected. I had remembered that she’d wanted to read The Drifters because Joel liked it, so I got that one, and some other things I thought she would like.

She looked in the bag, and pulled out The Drifters. Tears filled her eyes and she dropped it back in the bag. “Thanks. I don’t really have much to do.”

“We should have my dad take us to Powell’s.”

“Hello?” she said, gesturing. “Jail.”

I ducked my head. “Sorry.”

We sat on the bed. An awkward silence rose, and I didn’t know where to look. Her eyes burned like spotlights from her face. Her skin was broken out. “I wish I could see the church burned down.”

“I should have taken a picture.” I rubbed my hands on my thighs. “How are things here?”

She gave a short, awful laugh. “Terrible. Every girl here is somebody who is thrown away.”

“No! You’re not thrown away. It’s only for a little while and you’ll be out.”

“I’m not going back to my dad’s house,” she said fiercely. “I’ll never live with him again. Ever.”

“Amma said he moved to some town in Texas.” I touched her hand, but I privately thought there was no way around her dad taking ownership of her again. He’d put her in here, and he would come back and get her.

“Have you heard anything from Joel?” I asked. I thought of the letter tucked away in my drawer.

She stared at me hard. “Back to crushing on Joel?”

“No!” I sucked in a breath. “Also, that was really mean.”