ed to build up expectations for me and for herself.
“We’ve never been alone with boys, Kaylee. There are no jealous friends to interfere and no chaperones with their disapproving eyes. It’s like maturing overnight!”
I couldn’t really blame her for being more excited than any other girl our age might be. Mother had hovered over us for so long and so firmly, ready to pounce if either of us violated one of the strict rules she had imposed not only on our behavior but also on our very thoughts.
Nevertheless, it was difficult for me to get enthusiastic about a party, even a small, private one, because I was so down about what was happening between our parents. Haylee kept at me about my lack of excitement. After school on Thursday, she finally came into my room, her eyes full of that blazing anger I had long ago nicknamed Haylee’s Comet.
I was lying there thinking and wondering how bad Daddy really felt about it all. He had yet to ask to see us to discuss it and defend himself, and he couldn’t telephone one of us without telephoning the other. Mother’s point about us not noticing much difference in our lives wasn’t so far-fetched. Daddy had been diminishing his involvement with us for some time, but more so lately. It really bothered me that the reason might be that he’d adopted a new family and, like our grandmother Clara Beth, he now cared more about his new family than he did about us. At least, that was what Mother had told us about her relationship with her mother. Now the same thing was coming true for us and our father.
“What?” I asked when Haylee continued to stand there glaring at me.
“There’s no problem telling the difference between us these days, Kaylee. Your face is so long that your chin slides along the hallway floor when you go from class to class like a zombie. You’re taking all the fun out of this. Jimmy is worried you’ll be a downer and ruin our night.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for him,” I said, with exaggerated sympathy. “Maybe you should just go by yourself.”
She dropped her hands to her hips and once again looked as if she might start pounding her thigh the way Mother did when she was in a rage.
“You know Mother won’t let me go if you’re not going. Besides, you should be sorrier for yourself. And you should be more grateful. You finally have a real date, thanks to me. Everyone was wondering why you and Matt weren’t seeing each other outside of school. All I hear all the time is ‘your sister is so shy, so socially backward.’?”
I sat up, my eyes probably as steely as hers now. “Socially backward! And what do you tell them, Haylee Blossom Fitzgerald?” I knew I sounded just like Mother, who often used our full names whenever she was upset with us.
The fury and the look of superiority in Haylee’s face dissipated like smoke. “I defend you, of course.”
“How?”
“I tell them you’re just . . . just being careful. Don’t you go telling Mother something different, Kaylee.”
I shrugged and lay back. “Why should I? You were right. I was being careful, just like you are,” I said. “You’re just better at hiding it than I am.”
She studied me to see if I was being serious. I didn’t smile, but I enjoyed how confused and insecure I was making her. Did I really envy her? She wanted that to be true so much that she was eager to accept it. If Sarah Morgan could hear this conversation, she’d be laughing, I thought.
“Whatever. We’re going to have a good time tomorrow night, Kaylee,” she said, as if she had to convince herself as much as me.
“I hope so.”
“You don’t need to hope so. We will! Don’t dare back out of this at the last moment because you’re sad or something. That would make Mother mad, too.”
“Make Mother mad? Why?”
“She’d think you’ve taken Daddy’s side or something. You’ll make it seem like it’s all her fault, and she won’t like that, not one bit.”
That was a clever way to twist things around, I thought. Perhaps I was underestimating my sister.
“Is that why you act like you don’t care what’s happening, Haylee? You don’t want Mother to think you like Daddy enough for it to matter?”
“I don’t want to talk about sad things,” she said. “You heard what Mother said about that. ‘Dwelling on sadness is like watering poison ivy.’?” She turned to leave and then paused. “It’s that Sarah Morgan.”
“What is?”
“Causing you to be the way you are. She’s such a loser. She wants you to be one, too. Losers need company,” she added, pleased with herself, and left.
I hated to give her credit for a sharp insight, but she wasn’t all wrong about Sarah. It was easy to see how upset she was by my spending more time with Matt than with her lately. If the three of us were together, he practically ignored her, and that made it more difficult to keep her in our conversations. She was always asking me if Matt had asked me out or if I was going to meet him somewhere and wouldn’t see her on a weekend. When I told her about our Friday night date, she just nodded and said, “Have a good time,” but not like someone who was happy for me. She seemed more like someone who felt sorry for herself.
I did try to hide this from Haylee. I knew she would pounce on it the way she had in the beginning and cry to Mother that Sarah was more of a burden than a friend for us. On more than one occasion, she had made a point of telling me that Sarah would never get invited to parties we were invited to. She’d always be on the outside looking in.
“You’re wasting your time being friends with her and forcing me to pretend I am, too,” she insisted incessantly. Before I could respond with criticism of her friends, she would quickly add, “But I won’t say anything about it to Mother. You’ll get tired of Sarah on your own. If you’re smart enough, that is.”
On Friday after school, Haylee got up the nerve to ask Mother if it would be all right for us to dress differently for the party. “It’s just a party like others we’ve gone to, Mother, but we’re older now. We’ll each wear something you bought us and approve of,” she said.