She pointed at him. “You! Don’t talk to me.”
“What did I do?”
“You got Thomas the bike!”
Ethan opened the front door.
“We’ve got to go,” he said.
Rain nodded and started to walk out. Then she turned back. She met my eyes, and I was thrown by it. What I saw there. It was a little bit of concern and a little bit of anger. But beyond that, there was something else. Something that looked like how Danny looked. Like she didn’t know me at all. And maybe she never was going to want to.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she said.
And with that, she was gone.
16
When I woke up in the morning, it took a minute to figure out where I was. I sighed loudly, thinking of Amber, feeling a crick in my neck from sleeping on Rain’s couch. The terrible last few days came screeching back. And I vowed that this was the only night I’d wake up in last night’s clothes, sleeping in my sister’s house.
“Gena isn’t coming,” she said.
Sammy. The sound of her voice surprised me. I looked down to find her sitting on the floor by the head of the sofa. She was fully dressed, in jeans a button-down shirt, reading a book, patiently waiting for me to wake up.
I rubbed my eyes, confused and still exhausted. “You sure?”
She held up her wrist, where she wore a little watch with SAMMY on the band in glitter. “It’s eight A.M. and she isn’t here.”
“Doesn’t mean she won’t be.”
“Actually, statistically, ninety percent of the time someone shows up within a half an hour of a scheduled obligation, or they don’t show up at all. Her half hour was up over an hour ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“Thomas told me.”
“How does he know that?”
She shrugged. “You’re going to have to ask him.”
I tried to will myself the rest of the way awake—to figure out what I was going to do with Sammy now.
“So I guess we should call your mother.”
She shook her head. “My mother called a little while ago and told me that Thomas had a boo-boo and you were going to watch me until Gena arrived. So I told her she already did.”
“You lied to her?”
She shrugged. “She’ll just worry, and there’s no sense in her worrying.”
I tilted my head, took her in. “How old are you?”
“Six.” She paused. “How old are you?”
“Older than that.”
She looked down at her book. “Obviously. Way older.”
Rain and I hadn’t discussed what I should tell her about who I was—or who I was to her. Gena was supposed to be on duty.