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“How do you know where I live?” I ask, the words falling out of my mouth before my brain can think to make them sound less offensive.
She stops, turns to me, and looks at the floor again. “I’ve heard Mom say you live here. I looked for your name on the mailboxes and found your apartment number.”
“Oh,” I say. Makes sense. We stand in silence for a moment, me with the door wide open and her picking at her nail polish in the middle of my living room, backpack at her feet.
“Are you moving or something?” she asks. Shit. I forgot about my move-in-secret plan. I close the door, ensuring that no one else will overhear. “Um,” I start, briefly wondering if I could make up some lie that will seem convincing, but not coming up with anything. “Yeah.”
“When?” she says, looking at me in the eye for the first time since she arrived. I smile, hoping it will make her smile too. It doesn’t.
“Oh you know.” I scratch my elbow and shrug. “Right now.”
She sucks in a long breath of air and sighs. “Figures. I didn’t know that, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, no it’s fine. Really. I can move tomorrow.”
“Who moves in the middle of the night, anyhow?”
I throw my hands in the air. “Someone who wants to keep it a secret.”
This gets a tiny smile out of her. I take that tiny smile and roll with it—hoping to lighten the tension in here. “So I guess I’ll have to kill you now that you’ve caught me.”
This does not get a smile out of her. She swallows, her eyes far away. “That would be great, actually. Can you make it quick and painless?”
“Uh, what?” I smile stupidly, wishing this was still a lighthearted moment, but knowing it’s not.
“Slow and painful is okay too. I don’t really care.”
I sit on the arm of the couch. “Miranda, what’s going on?”
She opens her mouth to speak, closes it, opens it again and says, “Can I have some water? I’ve been walking for hours.”
I find the box marked Kitchen, rip it open and make her a glass of water. Miranda takes the glass with shaky fingers and drinks a small sip. I get my phone off the coffee table and unlock it. “I’m calling your mother. She’s probably worried sick about you.”
“No!” Miranda rushes forward and pushes my hand, forcing the phone to press against my chest. “She’s not worried about me. She kicked me out.”
“What?” There’s no way my sister would kick out her own daughter. All she does is brag about her and borrow her clothes. I point to the couch. “Sit.” With eyes wide like a toddler, Miranda sits as she’s told. The more I look at her, the worse she looks. There’s a large purple bruise on her upper arm, and her eyelids are swollen. It’s dawning on me now that there’s a completely different side to my sister that I know nothing about. “Tell me everything,” I say, my voice soft.
Miranda takes another sip of water, obviously buying for time. “Where are you moving?” she asks.
“Tell me what happened,” I counter, my hands on my hips.
“Hollywood? Paris, maybe?”
“I don’t know where, actually, I’m just going.”
“Wow.” She nods, biting her lip. “That’s totally bad ass. I heard you quit your job.”
“I didn’t quit—I—” The look on her face says she knows I didn’t quit. No telling what Maggie has said about me. “I—, I just decided I needed a new, er, career.”
Miranda looks around the room but her eyes are far away. “I want to come with you. Take me with you. I don’t care where we go.”
I frown. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can. I’m eighteen.”
“You have school.”
“No I don’t.”
