“You’ll stay with me, or I’ll tell my mom you went out without telling anyone.” Sean nodded toward the empty slushee cup in her hand. He had her cornered, and she knew it. We weren’t supposed to leave the house without telling each other, but that slushee had come from the convenience store half a mile away.
Sean grinned at her, somewhere between friendly and evil.
Helen narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, I would.” He gently steered her out the door. “She’d give you what for, and then she’d tell your dad, and then you’d be grounded for a week. And it would be such sweet revenge for that time last year when you ‘accidentally’ left a box of my tapes in the backyard.”
Helen stopped and looked from me to Sean with a measured glare. “Fine. Whatever. And that was an accident. You locked me out in your backyard when Leah showed up. So I went home. Not my problem you forgot your precious tapes were outside in ninety-degree heat. And it’s not like anything good was in there anyway, other than Run-DMC.” She tossed the slushee cup into the garbage can by Sean’s bedroom door, turned on her chunky platform shoes, and stomped down the hall like an angry, knock-kneed baby giraffe.
“She really knows how to make an exit,” Sean said, shaking his head as we listened to her clomp down the stairs. “But... I should probably go with her, so she doesn’t ‘unintentionally’ wreck something else of mine. And you should go call your mom.”
“I think she’s gone beyond those unintentional days,” I said. “All her acts are fully intentional now, no scare quotes about them.”
I followed Sean down the stairs. By the time we got to the living room, Helen had already sprawled across the couch in front of the TV, legs extended, so that no one else could sit with a good view of the TV unless they specifically asked her to move. The only bit of courtesy she offered—and it was clearly for Mrs. Estelle, not Sean—was that she’d taken her shoes off before she put her feet up on the couch. Mrs. Estelle was like family, which meant she’d give Helen the same punishment she’d dole out to Sean for disrespecting her couch.
Sean tilted his head toward Helen. “I can handle it from here. I don’t think our prisoner is going to make a break for it. Though I can’t see why she risked you ratting her out in the first place by sneaking out for a sugar rush. It’s not like slushees are that appealing. Unless it’s some guy who works there.” With widened eyes, he gestured toward his midriff, then pointed dramatically at Helen.
I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Helen’s belly shirt. Both Sean and I were still in our school uniforms.
“I can hear you!” Helen shouted from the couch. “And there’s no slushee guy! I just happen to like keeping up-to-date with fashion, unlike either of you.”
Last night, Helen had been so eager to try her uniform on, and now she couldn’t wait to change into something less institutional. But I could figure that conundrum out later. For now, I had to call Mom.
Still, I found myself hovering by the foot of the stairs, alternately shooting looks between Sean and Helen. I wanted to talk this out with him, but I didn’t want to talk about my weird feelings about Mom in front of Helen. Despite being so different from each other, Mom and Helen could somehow talk on the phone for hours. But I, the supposed junior feminist, never could figure out what to say to her.
Sean nudged me toward the door. “Go on. Git. Move along, cowgirl. I’ve got this.”
“Can I talk to you outside for a minute?” I sounded conspiratorial, and even though what I wanted to talk about had nothing to do with Helen, she’d probably think it did.
“As long as you’re not talking about me!” Helen snapped, right on cue. She never, ever stopped listening to me and Sean.
“Not everything is about you, Helen,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
Sean followed me outside, closing the door behind us. “Are you sure something isn’t going on between you and Helen? Because I’m getting a high level of tension from you two. You’re both...unusually hostile, to a point that’s made you forget all about that guy you were bugging me about.”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t forgotten about him. And it’s really not anything more than the usual with Helen.” I sighed, dropping down onto one of the two plastic chairs Sean’s mom kept on their tiny front porch. “I mean, I guess it is. Sort of. This was our last summer in Oregon, right? Mom’s starting a new job at NYU, and something about that makes me feel like we’re going to see her a lot less. So maybe it has to do with Helen, too, but not just the two of us. More like Helen and Mom, and Mom and me, separately.”
My throat tightened as I trailed off to nothing. None of this should be a big deal. Mom had moved many times before, starting when she went to grad school at Duke. She and Dad were still married back then, and her academic stint in North Carolina was supposed to be temporary. Helen and I had believed her promises, but anyone who wasn’t under ten years old saw where things were really headed.
By now, we should be used to following her to new places. I should be treating her new move as something exciting, because it was New York. Instead, I felt as if I was one more step away from Mom’s life.
“Anyway,” I finally said. “I’m supposed to call her, and I have no idea what I should say. I saw her a few weeks ago, but now she’s in New York, and I don’t know what to say about that, because I’ve never been there, and it’s not like we can talk about all the fun things we did in Oregon this summer, because we didn’t. Do anything fun, that is.”
Sean sat down next to me, leaning back in the plastic chair, which creaked as much as plastic can.
“I know how you feel. My dad only lives in Houston, but...” He shrugged, looking out into the empty street. “May as well be Mars. When I went to the family reunion with him in July, he kept calling me by his younger kids’ names, probably because they’re the same age I was when he and Mom split.”
Sean’s parents got a divorce the year after Mom and Dad, and his dad had carried out a full do-over on his life, complete with a new wife and a set of twin sons who looked like tiny cloned versions of Sean.
“Oh, man,” I groaned. “Mom’s always calling me by Helen’s name, too. But at least Helen’s not seven.”
“Yeah, right? Point is, every time I see him, I have to get to know him again,” he said. “And I think your phone calls are kind of like that, right? You spent the summer with her, but now she’s moved for the millionth time. You’re starting over yet again, kind of like me and my dad every Thanksgiving. And family reunion. And birthday.”
“So I’m not an emotionally stunted freak for not wanting to call my mom?” Sometimes I felt like Sean was the only person I could voice my inner fears to out loud.