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“Be careful!” Grandma Lola squeals. “Don’t drop the doobie!”
Jeanie teeters precariously near the edge for half a second before regaining her balance. “That was close.” She barely gets the words out before the shingles beneath her break free and she disappears over the side with a bloodcurdling shriek.
“Jeanie!” I scramble to the edge and peer over, unable to catch my breath. My chest goes quiet as I gape down at her still form sprawled across the top of a thick boxwood shrub. She can’t be dead. Not her, too.
In the shrub below, Jeanie groans, her arm twitching.
“Call 911!” I throw a leg over the side and shimmy down the vine-covered post before the rational side of my brain takes over. The second my feet touch the ground, I race to her side, high on adrenaline as I kneel on the damp grass and grab her wrist to check for a pulse. She moans at the contact, and I release a breath. “I thought I’d killed you!”
She cracks open one eye. “Not unless hell looks like Western Pennsylvania. But . . .” She opens the other eye and winces. “I’m pretty sure I broke something.”
Relief washes over me, allowing anger to sneak in. “I told you drugs were dangerous!”
Jeanie’s glare threatens to burn me to a crisp. “You seriously have your priorities messed up, Zo.”
3
The Jean Genie
Grandma parks her ancient Cutlass in front of the house just as the first glow of morning crests the horizon. It takes both of us to help Jeanie out of the car without bumping the cast holding her leg together.
“G-Lo, your car is gross. I need to be disinfected.” Jeanie glares at her Nissan still parked in the driveway and snatches the crutches out of my hands. Even high on pain meds, irritation oozes from her pores as she hobbles toward the house. “I can’t believe neither of you know how to drive a stick shift.”
I stab my key into the lock a little harder than necessary. “I would’ve asked someone to teach me if I’d known you were going to fall off the roof.”
“Fall?” Jeanie growls, balancing on one crutch as she teeters on our front stoop. “I didn’t fall off the roof.” She points at me with her bandaged hand. “You pushed me!”
My mouth falls open. “Did not!”
“Did, too, and I have the broken bones to prove it.”
“Let’s not argue over who did”—Grandma Lola wipes the smile from her lips—“or didn’t push who off the roof. There’s something else I’d like to discuss with you both.” Her eyes dart toward Jeanie. “I know we’d planned to go together, but since Jeanie won’t be in any condition to travel for the next six weeks, maybe I should—”
“I’m going.” The words bubble past my lips before I realize the weight of what I’m saying.
“Honey, your sister needs someone to—”
“You stay with her,” I snap, suddenly angry with everyone for taking my choices away. From Mom keeping her diary secret, to Jeanie ordering me to pack a bag without bothering to help me understand her reasoning. She read Mom’s damn diary. She knew why. Even Damian, for thinking he gets a vote as to where and when I start school. I’ll be damned if I let another person tell me what to do. I swing the front door open and step inside. Today is the day I take control of my own destiny. “I want to go.”
With the words fresh on my lips, I realize how true they are. And not because I’d do almost anything to avoid playing Jeanie’s personal nurse while she recuperates. Or because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for close to two years. But because, for the first time since Mom got sick, I have a sense of purpose.
I’d be lying if I said I understand why Mom wanted her ashes spread across the country, but if I have any hope of understanding how she felt at the time, why she asked us to make this trip, I need to read her diary in the places she wrote it. And maybe . . . just maybe . . . I need to start living my life for me for a change.
Jeanie snickers. “Good one.”
“I’m not kidding.” But the terrifying realization slowly sinks in. I may be more than a little unhinged for even considering something so bold.
I’m doing this by myself.
“What? No!” Jeanie’s left eye twitches—from pain meds or panic, I’m not sure. “You can’t go!”
“Yeah, I really can.” Straightening my spine, I gaze at my sister, refusing to back down. “Listen, I know I wasn’t on board with the whole ashes thing from the beginning, but you said it yourself. This is what Mom wanted. And by the time you’re cleared for travel, it’ll be too late.”
“But . . .” Jeanie trips over her own tongue as she struggles to spit out the words. “You can’t drive stick, remember?”
“I have Mom’s car.”
Her eyes go wide and she gestures toward the dark shadow parked in the driveway. “You mean the piece-of-shit Explorer that hasn’t been serviced since Mom got sick?”
