I leaned back against his leg, and his hand began to rub my shoulder, the one farthest from Amy. His touch was harsh against the muscle, but the pressure felt so good. I was immediately relaxed. I reached up and pulled my hair down to help hide the affection from my sister.
“Yes.” Laurie laughed. “Some.”
Amy took a bite of her crumbly snack, and Beth stood over me. Her eyes were on Laurie’s hand on my shoulder, rubbing the strain away. I wasn’t embarrassed, which was kind of weird because I was around Amy. Not with Beth, though.
“I’m going to take Mom to the PX,” she told us.
“I’m coming!” Amy announced, spitting little flakes of crackers on her white shirt.
Beth shook her head. “You should stay with Jo and Laurie. We are just grabbing a couple things and picking up Aunt Hannah’s birthday cake.”
“I don’t want to stay with Jo and Laurie,” Amy protested.
Since she had started curling her hair and wearing little diamonds in her earlobes, she looked older than Beth. It was strange. I swore that since she’d started her period, she aged two years. She seemed too immature for her body, with a thin black choker around her neck, and her jeans squeezing her little blossoming hips. She was going to have Meredith and Meg’s type of body. I knew it. She already had bigger boobs than me and she was twelve. I wondered how she would handle it and if she would need me to remind her that she held the power of her body and to never let another person use it as a weapon against her.
“Look,” Beth started whispering. “You can’t get anything at the store, okay?”
“Okay. Fine?”
“I’m serious, Amy. You can’t wait till we get there and beg for stuff because Mom and Dad have a lot of bills and that fund-raiser is coming up.”
I knew Amy always pulled that. She once had a midlevel meltdown in the middle of the PX over some body spray she wanted. My parents didn’t spank us often, but that day, Meredith swatted her four or five times on the way to the car.
“Fine. Oh my God.” Amy rolled her eyes.
Laurie squeezed my shoulder a little tighter and I turned around to Amy.
“Amy, chill,” I told her.
“Mind your business, Jo,” she sassed. She was giving me such a grown-up look that it was slightly terrifying, but mostly pissed me off. I hated when girls showed off in front of boys, and that was exactly what Amy was doing.
“Amy,” I warned her again.
Laurie slowly moved his hand away from me.
“I’ll just go ask Mom.” Amy jerked her body off the couch so fast that the laptop fell on the ground. I freaked.
“Be careful!” I yelled, reaching for the laptop.
Laurie moved his legs out of the way.
“Guys,” Beth cooed, trying to break the tension.
“Amy, seriously! Go, go to the kitchen or something. Get out of here,” I seethed. The screen was frozen when I tried to log on to the home screen. “It’s frozen! It’s broken now because you—”
“Girls!” Meredith came into the room. “Cut it out.”
“She broke the laptop!” I yelled. I didn’t look at Laurie.
“Josephine! Stop it. Now!” Meredith was awash with anger. It was the most emotion I had seen on my mom’s face in a while. It looked good on her.
Amy told my mom that she wanted to go to the PX, and when Meredith told her she couldn’t, she grabbed the computer from my hands.
My sister was glaring at me, standing like a little lioness, with her lip curled up like she was ready to pounce, claws out.
“Drop it! Give it to me!” I screamed.
She lifted the laptop higher.
“Amy!” I yelled, trying to process what she was doing. Would she really trash our only computer knowing that if our parents couldn’t afford to get her a glittery skirt or new pair of sandals, they sure as heck couldn’t afford a new laptop?
I was full of rage and all I could think about was shoving her onto the floor, climbing on top of her, and shaking some sense into her. I could barely see straight when I started yelling back at her. Meredith moved toward her, but wasn’t fast enough.
Amy started yelling, too, saying that I was a liar and she hated me. What did I lie about? Who knew? I didn’t, but I told her I hated her, too. When Beth moved toward Amy, I pushed at her shoulders and she slammed the laptop to the floor. She screamed and dug her sharp little nails into my skin. Laurie reached down and grabbed the computer, carrying it away from further harm.
“Stop it!” Beth yelled, yanking Amy right off me.
Meredith wasn’t even close to happy with us.
My dad sped into the room. “What the hell is going on?” his voice boomed.
Laurie looked away, just a little terrified of my dad’s Army voice.
“The girls are fighting,” Meredith explained.
“About what now?
“I want to go to the PX,” Amy said at the same time that I said, “She broke the laptop!”
“You broke the laptop? You’re not going to the PX. Get to your room.” My dad pointed his finger toward the hallway.
Amy sulked, glaring at everyone, Laurie included, and stomped back to her room.
“Let’s go, Beth.” Meredith sounded so exhausted. “They close early on Sundays.”
Laurie waited for my dad to leave the room before he sat back down on the couch.
“Tell me the worst,” I said when I sat down next to him.
The laptop was open on his lap, but I couldn’t see the screen. He licked his lips and played around with the keyboard and the mouse some. “Okay, so it’s unfrozen. I think it has some damage, though, and is loading slow. But . . .” He stopped and looked past me to the hallway.
The house was quiet except for the news on the TV and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Amy and my dad hadn’t come out of her room yet, and I knew she was probably crying tears of guilt during the lecture Dad was surely giving her.
“But what?” I asked Laurie, moving closer.
He hesitated. “I don’t know . . . I think I found something kind of . . . weird.” He turned the screen toward me.
“Show me.” I leaned in.
On the screen was an email inbox with Meg’s name on it. Laurie clicked on the outbox, and I stared blankly at the screen while my brain processed what I was seeing. Only a few emails were in the sent box, and they were all to one person. Meg Spring.
“Open it,” I told Laurie.
I read the email as soon as it covered the screen.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
41
beth
&nbs
p; The PX tended not to be too crowded on Sunday evenings. The rest of the weekend was the worst time to go because all the soldiers were off work, but Sundays were sort of a family day around military bases. Mom and I came to the PX to get batteries and a few pair of jeans for my dad right after Amy broke the laptop in front of everyone, including Laurie.
Meredith was quiet most of the drive, and driving much slower than usual. I figured maybe she was tired. We all had so much going on, I didn’t blame her. It used to take me over an hour to fall asleep every night. Not anymore; I fall asleep ten minutes after my head hits the pillow.
“Do they have thirty-six, thirty-six of the dark ones?” my mom asked me.
We were searching through stacks of folded jeans for my dad’s size. She had just told me the latest drama. Denise Hunchberg was being accused of taking some of the money from the fund-raiser. No one seemed to have proof, but Mateo Hender’s mom claimed she did and posted on the FRG Facebook page that she was going to expose her. Since the women’s children were dating, that would surely cause drama at Jo’s school.
“Got them.” I grabbed a pair of dark wash jeans and dropped them into the cart.
We were almost done with our small list, and I was getting so hungry. I had a Language Arts assignment that I had to finish by the time I went to bed, and I was pretty sure nobody else was doing anything about dinner. I would need to make something, and quick. It wasn’t going to be hard, just time-consuming, and I had been hoping I could get some quiet time when I got home before Amy came into the room for bed.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked.
My mom picked up a dark gray shirt and held it up in the air. A Nike check was on the little pocket. “They want forty dollars for this?” She gawked at the price tag in her hand and slid the hanger back onto the metal rack and grabbed a similar T-shirt from another rack. “I thought we could get Little Caesars when we stop by Kmart. I’m going to get the batteries there. I have a coupon.” She pushed the cart toward the checkout line.