But I couldn’t fool Alec. “Of someone.”
“What?”
“A memory of someone,” he clarified. “Someone important to you.”
Seriously, how did he see through me so easily? We hardly knew each other. And yet I found myself opening my mouth to explain. “My sister, Rose.”
“The other girl in the picture?”
At first his question confused me, but then I remembered yesterday and how he’d asked about my family. “Yes,” I said with a nod. “She was obsessed with origami. She’d fold whatever she could get her hands on—napkins, wrappers, receipts—into something beautiful. My favorites were the paper hearts. One year for my birthday she folded… Oh, I don’t know, must’ve been more than a hundred of them, and she hung them from our bedroom ceiling. Her wrist was so sore she had to wear a brace for a week.”
I couldn’t tell Alec the rest of the story, how after Rose left, I would stare up at those damn paper hearts for hours, praying for my sister to come home. And when she didn’t, I’d torn them all down. I’d wanted to throw them out, to burn them even, but a small part of me stillhoped. So I’d boxed them up and banished them to the back of my closet.
Every now and then, I’d discover a heart covered in dust behindmy desk or trapped in the crevice between my headboard and the wall. Finding one was like getting a paper cut, a split second of sharp pain that faded to a dull throb. But seeing one of Rose’s paper hearts here? Now? It was a blade in my gut.
“Was?” Alec asked.
I shook my head to clear away the pain and memories. “Sorry?”
“You used the past tense, and yesterday you said it was only you and your mom. Is your sister…” He hesitated, as if he didn’t like where he was taking the sentence. “Did she go to live with your dad?”
His question startled me. I turned to the Electric Waffle’s big front window as I thought about my answer. The rain had stopped, but judging from the clouds, it was only taking a momentary break.
“No,” I said eventually. But the truth was, I couldn’t actually answer Alec, because I had no idea where Rose was. For all I knew, maybe shewaswith our dad. It was highly unlikely, considering how angry she was when he left, but there was always a chance. “Actually,” I corrected myself. “I’m not sure.”
A beat of silence passed. “You…you don’t know where your sister is?”
“She ran away four years ago.”
I felt the need to provide more of an explanation, but that was the only information I had. And that lack of understanding always ate at me. I’d spent countless hours wondering what made Rose leave so suddenly and without explanation. The only reason that came to mind was a fight she and Mom had had the week before her birthday. It stuck with me because the two of them came home togetherat two o’clock in the morning, and I’d thought it was strange that Mom was out so late. As soon as they stepped in the door, the screaming started and I’d promptly put on my headphones. Now, thinking back on that night, I wish I’d listened, even if it was only for a minute. Maybe then I’d know why Rose had left.
“So…what happened?” he asked.
My mouth twisted. “We haven’t heard from her since.” There would be no mistaking the pain in my voice, not with Alec’s keen observation skills. I could feel white-hot anger building inside me. “I don’t remember much about my dad, but my sister did. From the little my mom has told me, I think the two of them were a lot alike, both headstrong and wild. Mom always said they had more wanderlust flowing in their veins than blood. Rose tried to pretend that him leaving didn’t crush her, but months after he moved out, I’d still hear her crying herself to sleep. One night, it was particularly bad, so I crawled into bed with her and asked why our dad would want to hurt us so much.”
I paused, reliving the memory: Big Blue clutched against my chest, Rose laughing softly and wiping her eyes, her arms pulling me close so I wouldn’t fall off the narrow single mattress. I took a deep breath and released it, letting the air hiss past my lips. “Instead of giving me an answer, shepromisedshe’d never do the same thing to me, but…”
“She did,” he finished.
“Yes. I want to hate her for it, but I can’t.”
Alec looked at me for a long moment, as if considering everything I’d told him. Then he said, “I don’t blame you.”
Whatever reply I’d been expecting, that wasn’t it. After all, I’d just admitted to feeling darkly about my sister. “You don’t?”
“My sister, Vanessa, and I are super close, so I can imagine how hard it must be for you to be apart from Rose,” he explained. “And sometimes the people who mean the most to us, like our family, do things that make it difficult to love them, but we do anyway because that’s what love is.”
From what he’d said about his father, I had a hunch he was speaking on a personal level. “Is that how you feel about your dad?”
He shifted in the booth before nodding. “Let’s just say the relationship I have with him is…complicated.”
“But you still love him.”
“He’s done some pretty shitty things, but yeah. I do.”
I wasn’t purposely digging for information on his private life, but hearing that Alec didn’t have the easiest relationship with his dad helped soothe some of my own self-loathing about what had happened with Rose.
“Speaking of my father…” Alec tugged on the collar of his shirt. “Every year he has this barbecue for all his artists. I hate his parties, but he’s making me go, so I was wondering… Would you like to come with me?”
