“I can’t,” I said. “I have too much to do.”
“You’re missing a great time,” she sang. “If you change your mind, let me know as soon as the bell rings, and I’ll send Grover back home without you.”
I couldn’t deny that I wanted to go, but I was too frightened this time. I deliberately took longer to leave my last class. Even so, Kiera loitered near the doorway.
“Change your mind?” she asked.
“No, I can’t, but thanks,” I said.
“Too bad,” she said. “Tomorrow I have to go to therapy.”
“I know. I’ll see you at home.”
“Home? Right,” she said, and left me quickly. I saw her meeting the others in the parking lot. Ricky looked my way, shrugged, and then followed everyone else.
Did he really like me much? I wondered. I was fourteen, a girl who had never had a boyfriend or even a boy just interested in her, and a senior at my new school was looking at me romantically after spending only two days with me and his friends. He was one of the best-looking boys at the school, too. I hated seeming so young and innocent. I tried to talk and act more like Kiera when I was with her and her friends, but running home that afternoon probably made me look like a child again. Tomorrow they would have no interest in me, I thought, and my classmates would not be so friendly, either.
I sank back into a deep funk and remained there all the way back to the March mansion. When I entered the house, I headed for the stairway, waiting to get into my homework so I could have time to practice the clarinet. I paused when I heard some loud voices and realized that it was Mr. and Mrs. March. When I heard my name mentioned, I turned toward the living room and listened.
“You’re not making any sense, Jordan,” Mr. March said. “You said you brought this girl here to save her from the streets and the orphanages or whatever. You wanted her to have a family, right?”
“Yes, but …”
“So why wouldn’t having Kiera as an older sister make her more part of our family? And look what good this can do for Kiera. It’s her way of achieving repentance, feeling remorse. Her therapy is going well, and now you want to stop her from being too close or influential with Sasha? It makes no sense to me. If you’re that worried about Kiera being a bad influence, then maybe it would be better if we found another home for Sasha,” he said.
Mrs. March was quiet. I held my breath. “It would be terrible to send her away now,” she finally said.
“Well, then?”
“Okay, Donald, I’ll try to keep an eye on both of them for now.”
“If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s more tension in this house,” he said.
They were both so quiet that I thought they’d be coming out and see that I was eavesdropping, so I turned away quickly and headed for the stairway. Once in my suite, I sat and pondered what I had heard. What was Mrs. March agreeing to let me do? I was as conflicted as she was at the moment.
On one hand, I wanted to be with Kiera and her friends, go out, go to their parties, go on their trips, everything, but on the other hand, I wanted to do well in school, too. Kiera and her friends didn’t seem all that interested in school or concerned about their grades.
It would be like walking on a balance beam, I thought. Could I do it, do both?
If I fell this time, the fall might be too long and deep for me to make any sort of recovery, and then where would I be?
Probably following Mama’s ghost on some backstreet and wondering how I had become so trapped in my recurring nightmare.
24
Rules
Mr. March was at dinner that night. This time, Kiera made sure she was there, as well. She didn’t come to my room when she returned from the mall. I thought she was still upset about my deciding not to go with her and the others after school, but when she came down to dinner moments after I had arrived and taken my seat at the table, she smiled at me and apologized for not coming to my suite to fetch me.
“I wanted to be sure you got some of that homework done,” she said. Then she looked at her father and added, “They give students in the ninth grade more work than they give us seniors. I remember.” She turned to her mother. “You remember, Mother. I was complaining about it when I was in ninth grade, and they told you it was the transition grade from junior high to high school.”
Mrs. March nodded but said nothing. Her eyes betrayed her deep suspicion of Kiera’s sudden sweet talk. No one said anything while Mrs. Duval and Rosie began serving.
Then Mr. March clasped his hands and began what was obviously his and Mrs. March’s compromise. “I’m pleased to see you including Sasha in some of your activities with your friends, Kiera, but you have to remember that for now, along with being younger than you, Sasha is a different sort of responsibility for us. We are acting as her foster parents, and therefore it doesn’t begin and end with us.
“Naturally,” he continued, looking at me, “we don’t want her to feel strange or different. We want her to feel she’s part of our family. However, we have to supervise her activities more closely. We need to maintain more control, follow more rules. So, before you decide to go anywhere with her, you must get either your mother’s or my permission. We want her curfew maintained. For now, we don’t think it’s appropriate for her to be out later than eleven.”
“Even on weekends?” Kiera cried.