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Jesus. Still having no idea where to go with all that, Cooper finally landed on, “She told me, too, so she won’t be mad at you. But why do you think I needed to know?”
“Because she said you’re a friend now, and I think she’d be sad if you weren’t. If you’re a friend, that’s good. Siena doesn’t have one. Not a real one. Except for me. She was sad when I was mad at her for making me go to school. Now I don’t have to be around mean people, and I don’t want her to be, either. So I want you to be nice to her, even when she gets upset.”
Those sentences had taken a few turns, but he thought he got the gist. “You think I’m mean?”
“You are when you’re mad. You were mean to us.”
He ignored the impulse to defend himself and said simply, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Even good people can be mean sometimes. It’s the ones who are mean for fun you have to worry about.”
Cooper laughed. “That is some true wisdom, kiddo.”
“I don’t like it when you call me kiddo. I’m almost fifteen.”
Talking to this girl was simultaneously charming and off-putting. She just ... came out with shit. He liked it more than not, but it was a little weird. Most people ran their thoughts through a filter before they made them words.
“Sorry,” he said again. “But Robin is okay?”
“It’s silly, but I don’t mind that one. Because Siena and I are Batman and Robin. I’m going to go in now and finish making toast. Thank you for opening the jar.”
“I am here for all your jar-opening and high-shelf-reaching needs.”
“We have a stepstool for shelves. Bye.” With that, Siena’s little sister turned and went back into her house.
Cooper turned and did the same. He’d had stranger, more oddly emotional conversations in his life, probably, but he’d surely been wasted at the time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As she waited on hisdoorstep, Siena kicked herself for not exchanging numbers with Cooper. If nothing else, she’d rectify that this afternoon. In fact, maybe only that should be her goal today. Nothing else. She was probably too stressed for anything else.
It hadn’t been a bad day, really. She’d set Geneva up with assignments to do the homework she’d gotten at school, mainly because they were just getting started with virtually no planning ahead of time. Siena had found a few little literature activities online that seemed totally safe to do unattended, so she’d added those to Geneva’s assignments, then a few chores as well. All easy things with no fire, sharp objects, or other dangers involved. She’d also made a list of rules for things Geneva had to do, should do, could do, and must never do.
Geneva accused her of treating her like a baby.I’m almost fifteen!she’d said about a dozen times last night and this morning.I know how to stay safe!
Siena recognized the fairness in the complaint; she realized that she perceived her little sister as herlittlesister. Her whole purpose in life was to keep her safe and happy. But for the same core reason she’d failed to keep her happy or safe in school, she was afraid of what would happen when Geneva was left alone for hours at a time: she was younger than her years. Autism or ADD or any other set of letters might be the diagnosis, but the result was that Geneva thought too much about some things and not enough about others, and usually the things she wasn’t thinking about enough were things like ‘wait for the light to turn before you cross the street’ or ‘don’t forget about the pot on the stove.’
Actually, it wasn’t right to say that the core reason for her troubles was the same at school and at home. At school, Geneva’s differences weren’t the reason. Other kids’ cruelty was. And she wasn’t even that different! Just a little bit odd.
But wasn’t that the way it always was in high school? It wasn’t the kids with tremendous, obvious differences and disabilities who got bullied and abused. Only the most irredeemable sociopath would pick on the kid in the wheelchair or the one with real cognitive challenges. But most kids would at least exchange shitty looks at the classmate who was just a little bit different, and the bulliesfeastedon them with near impunity. Lord knew Siena, in her own high school days, hanging with the popular kids and trying to keep her place in that realm, had been shitty enough. Not an active bully, but standing right behind them, laughing at their ‘pranks.’
Maybe that was why she was so stressed about the whole school thing. An extra layer of guilt lying over her failure.
After she’d left Geneva with plenty of work to fill her day and plenty of rules as guardrails, Siena had gone to the high school and met with Dr. Granger. She’d gotten no pushback at all—in fact, she got the strong sense that Dr. Granger was relieved. Probably all the school staff were relieved. Geneva was no longer their problem.
