“I’m getting blood on your shirt,” she said through her sobs.
“I don’t care about my shirt,” her mother said, leaning down to inspect her face. “Thank God you had your helmet on. Oh, honey. We’re going to the hospital.”
Teddy instinctively looked toward her dad to see if he was going, too, but he wasn’t standing there anymore, and Teddy’s mom didn’t call out for him.
In the car, Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” played on the radio as they drove in silence. Teddy’s mom put on the blinker at a stoplight and reached out to grab Teddy’s hand. She squeezed it, and Teddy knew what was coming: words of wisdom, an emotional speech, a declaration of love that she’d remember for the rest of her life.
Her mom gave her a tiny smile, then looked back at the road as the light turned green and Nelly instructed everyone to take off all their clothes. “Your dad’s an asshole,” she said, hitting the gas.
* * *
—
THAT MONDAY AT school, everyone knew three things:
Teddy’s dad had moved out.
Teddy had broken her arm.
Vicki wasn’t Teddy’s best friend anymore.
“I told Ashley P. what you did,” Vicki whispered to her before Science class started. “You know her dad owns the theater? He could have you arrested.”
Teddy thought about pointing out that Vicki had been there, too, that although she was an unwilling accomplice, she was an accomplice all the same. But Teddy couldn’t help focusing on a more pressing fact. “He couldn’t have me arrested.”
“You’d go to jail for the rest of your life,” Vicki said smugly, sitting back in her chair, and even though, logically, Teddy knew that most twelve-year-olds didn’t get life in prison for sneaking into an R-rated movie, she still felt that nervous, “pee your pants” feeling she got when she was in trouble.
“Really?” she asked.
“Oh.” Vicki leaned over again. “And I told the girls about that gross movie you made me watch. We all think it’s disgusting.”
The girls? We? Vicki was a “we” with Ashley P. now, and probably Ashley M. and Ashley T., too. Apparently Vicki and the Ashleys had gotten together to discuss all the things that Teddy had done wrong.
Teddy thought that this might be a temporary situation, but she sat alone at lunch. And when she came home, her dad was still gone. And Teddy knew, no matter what anyone told her, that it was all because she’d decided to sneak into that movie.
In her dad’s absence, her mom stepped up. She started working longer hours at multiple jobs, leaving Sophia in charge. Their lives were scheduled down to the minute, and the idea of biking to the movie theater by herself and doing something against the rules no longer sounded fun. It sounded dangerous. Teddy stayed at home and read more, climbing the maple tree in the backyard not to jump out of it, but instead to read comforting books in its branches. She sped through the YA classics and soon moved on to adult classics, reading Toni Morrison and Carson McCullers and Shirley Jackson far before she understood their words. All she knew was that the words were on paper. Static. Safe. Sometimes they were challenging or confusing, but they would never get her in trouble.
Her dad sent cards and even visited for one awkward birthday party where he and Teddy’s mom stood side by side, arms crossed, like two people who didn’t know each other. But they’d all moved on. Their family unit no longer needed him, and he didn’t need them, either. Eventually he remarried, had a baby, and started over.
So Teddy let her mom take control. She let Sophia take control. After a week of watching Vicki and the Ashleys from across the cafeteria, she started eating her lunch in a sympathetic teacher’s classroom. While Mrs. McBride graded papers, Teddy came up with a plan. From now on she’d stop making decisions on her own—especially ones that would affect other people. She’d go along with what everyone else wanted, stop causing trouble, and maybe this would all get better. Maybe the guilt from breaking up her family would fade. Maybe she’d even make friends again.
And so instead of forging her own life, Teddy became Sophia’s shorter, almost identical shadow. Teddy’s mother referred to her, with a smile, as Tagalong Teddy because of the way she followed Sophia everywhere. Teddy didn’t mind. Maybe being a tagalong was better than being hell on wheels, anyway. At least tagalongs didn’t get broken arms or cause arguments.
She liked Sophia’s friends, the way they always knew exactly which movies you were supposed to watch (the ones with cute, floppy-haired boys—not the ones with blood sacrifices), which nail polish you were supposed to wear, and how to dress so you fit in. Sophia never cared that Teddy crashed all her sleepovers; in fact, she seemed to like it, as if having a little sister who looked up to her made her feel cool.
Teddy remembered one night when it was just the two of them at home. Their mom was working the night shift at one of her many jobs—Teddy lost track of where she was at any given time. Teddy woke up with a start, covered in sweat, certain that someone had broken in to kidnap her and Sophia. Too nervous to go downstairs and check, she’d crept into Sophia’s room.
“Soph?” she’d whispered. “Are you awake?”
“Teddy?” Sophia asked, her voice thick and groggy with sleep. “Is everything okay?”
“I had a bad dream,” Teddy said, suddenly feeling ridiculous, like a stupid little kid. Maybe she was a stupid little kid. Who else would wake up their older sister to complain about a nightmare? “Sorry. I’ll go back to bed.”
“Come here.” Sophia scooted over and patted the bed. “You can sleep here.”
Teddy slid into the bed in relief. She tried to take up as little space in Sophia’s twin bed as possible, holding her body still so Sophia wouldn’t change her mind and tell her to go back to her own room. She studied the lines of Sophia’s face, almost exactly like hers but still somehow different. Sophia had the face of someone who wasn’t afraid of everything. She had the face of someone who knew what she wanted.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Sophia said without opening her eyes. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll always be here.”
Teddy had smiled then, feeling a sense of comfort she hadn’t felt since she broke her arm and her dad left. He might be gone, and her mother might be at work, but at least she had one other person. At least she had Sophia.
But then Sophia had gone to college, and the occasional phone calls dwindled to almost never. Her visits home weren’t the same; she spent most of her time on the computer doing work or chatting with her roommate. Teddy told herself that this was normal, that it was what happened when people grew up—they grew apart.