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A spell that bites at my tongue.
I only say it when I’m all alone in my room and no one is there to witness the small spasms of my body and hear the tiny gasps that escape me.
In public though, I usually refer to him as my sister’s boyfriend or the love of my sister’s life.
So I don’t know what I’m going to call him now.
Because he’s not with my sister anymore.
He’s not my sister’s boyfriend.
How’s that possible?
How is this real life?
How am I supposed to cope with this?
So it’s during the group activity that I decide to take a drastic step.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since last night, ever since we came back from the bar and I found my roommate sleeping soundly in her bed.
Anyway, I think I’m going to do it.
I’m going to take that drastic step or I’ll go crazy.
I’m already going crazy during the group activity.
Which is gardening by the way.
Because it’s Saturday and at St. Mary’s, we plant gardenias on Saturdays.
It’s in the school crest and it’s there because gardenia represents purity and innocence. It has an inherent goodness to it. So it’s basically an example for us girls. Bad girls, I mean.
To become good and leave behind our rule-breaking ways.
But that’s not the only thing that gardenias represent.
“Secret love,” Poe tells me while clipping dead leaves. “It also represents secret love.”
“Yup. They just don’t know it.” Callie snickers, looking at the teachers loitering around, keeping an eye on us; Miller is one of them.
“Which is so weird.” Wyn shrugs. “Because you can just Google it.”
Secret love.
I’m growing secret love.
I could laugh at this.
I should laugh at this.
It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s a joke.
The universe is kidding.
The girl in secret love is growing secret love.
How tragic and poetic and totally not funny at all. And somehow it gives me the strength to make the decision. “I wanna call my sister.”
Because I need to know what happened.
I need to know what was so horrible that they would break up when they were on the verge of getting married.
I need to know.
But the thing is that I can’t call my sister.
I don’t have the privilege of making outgoing calls yet. But then, I have access to an illegal cell phone. Which its owner herself, Poe, reminds me about.
“You can totally use it,” she tells me and Callie nods for emphasis.
Wyn nods too, in fact.
I think it’s because they have sensed that something is up. Moody silences after the press conference video; disappearing in the bar and then returning with a pale, shocked face will tell people that. But like that day in the classroom when they gave me space and let me keep my secrets, they do the same now too. They don’t ask questions.
So I find myself inside the third-floor bathroom, with Poe’s illegal phone in my hands, while they stand guard at the door.
Tightening my chunky sweater around myself, I psych myself up to dial my sister’s number.
I tell myself that I can do this.
I can call my sister.
I mean yes, we haven’t talked in months and I don’t usually call her or email her, except on her birthday and special occasions when I send her cards and gifts, because she doesn’t like when I bother her.
But this is an emergency, right?
A breakup is an emergency and I wanna talk about it. I wanna ask her how she’s doing.
I can ask her that, can’t I?
She’s my sister, for God’s sake.
Even though we’re different.
We’re so, so different and she doesn’t like me very much.
But I absolutely love her and admire her.
Like I loved and admired my mother, who was also very different from me. The only thing is that my mother – as exasperated as I made her – loved me back.
My mother was a highly educated college professor who brought up two daughters all on her own after her husband left her. Until her heart gave way and she died suddenly, leaving us to be raised by her closest friend whom she’d always been in touch with, Leah.
But my mother had been a planner and along with her updated will, she also left us both some money for college.
Sarah is very much like her, actually. Ambitious, driven, beautiful.
Back when we were kids, I idolized my sister.
I idolized her beauty, her straight shiny hair.
I’d follow her around with my toys in tow. I’d ask her to play with me, play with my dolls.
She was my big sister. She was my best friend by default.
Or she should’ve been.
But she never thought so. She always found me annoying, a nuisance. An overenthusiastic puppy, I think. Well, she described me as such to one of her friends because I wouldn’t leave them alone.
That was super hurtful. I think I cried.
But when I grew up, I understood why.
Why Sarah never liked me. It’s because she’s perfect.
