After a few silent seconds, Dad’s footsteps pounded the floor and a door slammed shut. My breath caught in my throat. Maybe Tiffany and I had our differences, but oh my God, I didn’t want her to be homeless. I had no idea where she’d even go. Tiffany and I had grown up in this house, a bathroom apart. I stood there so long, listening to the silence, not breathing, I started to see stars.
I let myself into her room. “Tiff?”
She was still sitting where she was when I’d left, staring at her door. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
She blinked a few times and turned to me. “Are you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
My hands shook. Tiffany tried so hard to be tough, but I knew she wasn’t. Maybe I was the only one who knew that besides my mom. I couldn’t imagine how it’d feel to be on the receiving end of those things Dad had said to her. I crossed the room and she opened her arms right as I launched myself into them. I was the one who started to cry.
“Stop,” Tiffany said. She laid us back on the bed, petting my hair. “They’re not worth crying over.”
“Who?”
“Men.”
“Even dad?”
“Especially dad.”
I drew my eyebrows together. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. I’d heard her crying enough times after their fights. “Are you leaving?” I asked. “I don’t want you to go. Please, just go apologize to him.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“But you said . . .”
“I’ve said it before. I wasn’t serious, and he knows that. He’s not going to kick me out.”
I couldn’t remember any of their arguments ending that way. It was as if Tiffany wanted to see how far she could push him. I looked up at her. “Why didn’t you just tell him you’d stop seeing Manning?”
“Because that’s exactly what he wants. He’s trying to control me and you and Mom.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “He just wants what’s best for all of us.”
“For you and Mom, maybe. Me? He just wants to pretend I never happened. His life would be easier if I weren’t around.”
She said the words so simply, someone else might’ve thought they didn’t affect her. That she didn’t care. I knew she did, though. How could she not? He was her dad. Even after all the fights I’d witnessed, I couldn’t believe she truly thought that. “He loves you,” I said. “Things are just weird right now. When you find a job, he’ll ease up.”
“You don’t know anything, Lake. You’re too young to understand. I’ll never get the kind of job he wants me to. You will. I’m not going to be a doctor or a lawyer or any of those boring things. He can’t stand that he’s worked as hard as he has to give us opportunities just to have me waste mine.”
Tiffany didn’t even try. She’d barely studied, and she’d skipped a lot of classes, especially her senior year. I didn’t know if I was smarter than my sister, but I definitely tried harder. “You could do whatever you want, Tiffany. If you apply yourself—”
“Shut up,” she said without inflection. “You sound like dad. He says that all the time.”
“But that fight could’ve been avoided,” I pointed out. “You said you don’t even like Manning.”
Tiffany blinked up at the ceiling, tilting her head. Her hair tickled my neck, but I just watched her. Her eyes roamed until she finally said, “I thought I didn’t . . . but maybe I do.”
My heart dropped. She couldn’t just change her mind back and forth like that. “Why?” I asked. “Just because it makes Dad mad?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It just made me rethink the whole thing, like maybe I didn’t give Manning a real chance.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, using Manning to get back at Dad.”
Tiffany tore her eyes from the ceiling to look at me. She pushed me off and we both sat up. I thought she’d kick me out, but instead she looked right at me. “I guarantee Manning has done worse than that to a girl. Men don’t care about women. They use them. The sooner you understand that, the better.”
My stomach churned. Not Manning. He wasn’t that way. When I looked at him, spoke to him, we connected. He’d given me Birdy when I was sad. He’d returned my bracelet. He’d eat anything I made. In my gut, I knew—he was a good person. “I think it’s the other way around,” I said gently. “I’ve seen guys go crazy for you, and you just ignore them.”
Tiffany smiled a little. “That’s how you play the game. The truth is, men think they have power, but they don’t. We do. Like tonight, with Manning. When he wouldn’t do what I wanted, I told him not to call me again and walked away. And you know what he did?”