Saint Anything(26)
Author: Sarah Dessen

MY MOM and I had not discussed Family Day at Lincoln since she’d brought it up the first time. I’d thought this was a good sign. Four days before it, I realized how wrong I was.

“So,” she said from the stove, where she was stirring a pot of soup she’d made for dinner. “We should probably touch base about this weekend.”

This was a typical conversation—she liked plans and schedules, and always made sure both were set days ahead—so I didn’t realize what she was referring to. “I’m going over to Jenn’s for her birthday on Friday. And Layla invited me over for dinner on Saturday, if that’s okay.”

She took a taste of the soup, her back still to me. Then she said, “Friday’s fine. But we’ve got Family Day on Saturday. We might be back late, so it’s probably not a good idea to have other plans.”

I was silent for a minute, taking my time to figure out how to react. Finally I took a breath and said, “So Peyton said I could go with you guys?”

A pause. Then, “Your father’s got a conference. So it’ll just be us. And he did submit a form for you, so I’m taking that as a yes.”

Unlike my mom, my father did not visit Peyton that often. He’d made the first couple of trips with her, always returning looking haggard before disappearing into his office. For someone who made his living fixing things, seeing his only son in a situation for which this was not possible couldn’t be easy. He did talk to Peyton and made sure he had everything he needed in terms of commissary money and other allowed incidentals. But I had a feeling that, for him, it was easier to think my brother was just away, and not know too much about the place where he actually was. Out of sight, pretending it was out of mind.

Clearly, I was not going to have this option, even if my brother and I both preferred it. When my mom was set on something, she rarely backed down. Like it or not, I was going on Saturday.

“Wow,” Jenn said after I told her about this when we met to study at Frazier the next day after school. “I’ve never been to a prison.”

“Most people haven’t,” I replied glumly, taking a sip of the complicated coffee drink Dave! had yet again talked me into. It was frozen and thick as mud, barely able to make it up the straw, but delicious. “Just us lucky folks.”

Meredith, who was having a rare free afternoon, looked at me from across the table. “It’s gotta be weird, right? Are you freaked out? Like, about the other people that will be there?”

This actually had not even occurred to me. Other convicted criminals I could handle; it was my own brother that made me uneasy. “I just really don’t want to go. I wish I didn’t have to.”

They both looked at me, their faces sympathetic. Then Jenn reached over, squeezing my hand. “We’ll have fun Friday night, though, okay? Margaret’s coming, too, so you can finally meet her.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Jenn had mentioned that she’d made friends with a new girl at school who’d just moved from Massachusetts. Since then, we’d hardly had a conversation where her name had not come up. Apparently, Margaret was incredibly funny, so cool, and even smarter than Jenn, something I wasn’t even sure was possible. Even Meredith, who was impressed by very little except anyone who could vault better than she, had told me Margaret both spoke Mandarin and had once dated a guy who was a cousin of an actor on one of our favorite shows.

“Great,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“You will love her,” Jenn said. “She’s so funny.”

“Oh, my God,” Meredith chimed in. “The other day, during PE, when we were doing vinyasa? She fell sideways out of her tree pose and hit the floor. It was hilarious.”

They both laughed at this, and I’m sure I would have, too, if I’d been there. But even after just a few weeks at Jackson, I couldn’t imagine doing yoga for PE. The life I’d had at Perkins seemed so vastly different now. It didn’t help that we weren’t hanging out as much. With Jenn’s tutoring job at the Kiger Center and Meredith’s always-busy practice schedule, we were lucky to see one another at all. I hadn’t thought our friendship was so based on school until we didn’t have it in common anymore. The truth was, I’d changed.

Most of this—okay, probably all—was due to Layla. Since the weekend she’d stayed with me, we’d been in pretty much constant contact. It was like one day we weren’t friends, and the next she was the closest I had. It seemed impossible that someone I’d not known at all six months earlier was now often the only person who understood me.

But that was the thing: Layla got it. Not just my uneasiness with Ames, but also how I felt about Peyton. Rosie might not have been in jail, but her problems had spilled over to affect all of the Chathams in one way or another. I knew Jenn and Meredith loved me and were always willing to listen. But there was an element of anger and shame involved they just could never understand. Now that I’d found someone who could, I realized how much I had needed it.

* * *

“Ugh. These are so subpar. You can tell I’m in a bad state. Normally I wouldn’t even consider them.”

I looked at Layla, who, despite this statement, was still preparing the fries she’d gotten from the ice rink snack bar with her typical meticulousness. A double layer of paper napkins covered part of the bleacher between us, the fries arranged in a single row across them. Two ketchups had been mixed in a plastic cup. She hadn’t bothered with her custom blend, which she treated like gold.

“The thing is,” she continued, picking up a fry from the center and dipping it, “nobody frustrates me like Rosie. If annoying people were her sport, she would have made the Olympics. No question.”

I smiled, then took a fry of my own when she offered it, pulling my sweater around me with my other hand. It had been years since I’d been to the Lakewood Rink, where my mom used to bring Peyton and me sometimes as kids. He went on to play hockey there a couple of seasons in middle school, but I myself had never graduated from the caved-in ankle stage. It was the last place I’d expected I’d end up when I’d gone to Seaside after the final bell, but I was learning that when it came to the Chathams, anything was possible.

That day, we’d put down our backpacks and were just about to order our customary slices when Layla’s phone rang. She contemplated the screen for a moment before she answered.