My sister hasn’t left her room since mom left for the store. I’m sitting and waiting to hear the creak of her floorboards, the hinge of her door, the nothing of her gait. The house is silent. Maybe she figured out which floorboards to avoid.
I think she learned her silence from me. I walked to class with her when we were younger, and she saw my quiet steps and how they hardened as we crossed onto school-sanctioned linoleum. She was there when I built a smile as we turned corners and saw a familiar face. I never hid from her the scaffolding of my personality, and that was my mistake.
“Jake?” Jenny says from the doorway, and I jump at the sound. She’s leaning her head in when I look up from my dark phone screen. Her smile is like cracked wood.
“Yes?”
“When’s Mom home?”
“Soon, I think,” I say. “Do you need something?”
She leaves before I can finish the question.
I pull my headphones back on. I can’t do anything about it. She’s probably gone out the door and is sitting on the stoop, hesitating over the send button on her hand-me-down phone. It used to be mine.
The front door slams open, too loud to be Jenny. I pull off my headphones like she’s about to walk in, like she’s here for me.
“I’m home!” Mom yells. She walks into the kitchen. Every footstep is like she’s digging at my chest with a spade.
It’s all very normal.
For dinner we have fish, and Jenny takes it to her room.
I’m sitting in the corner of the couch, balancing my plate on the arm. Mom is leaning over her plate on the coffee table, TV remote in her hand. I take a bite of food.
“It’s like she hates us,” mom says. She snorts, shaking her head at me with a smile far too empty and far too strong. I chuckle and nod and take a bite of the fish.
“She’s a kid,” I say.
“I mean,” she gives me a look like I should know what she means, “you weren’t like that though.”
I set down my fork and look back into the hallway behind me. It’s long and there’s nothing on our walls. With the lights off, it looks a lot like the empty middle school halls. It’s unnerving. At the end of that hall, blue light glows from under Jenny’s door. She just started middle school.
“I’ve got to use the bathroom.”
My socked feet barely make a sound as I navigate around the squeaky floorboards all the way to Jenny’s room. I knock until she opens the door.
“Do you need something?” she asks, older than herself. I look at her.
“No.” I try not to make any sort of face. Any sort of noise. I try to fit into her world of posturing pre-teens for just a moment, just long enough. Jenny watches as I push past her and closes the door behind me. The old phone lays on her bed, open to an unsent text to a busy group chat. Jenny sits on the bed and shoves her phone under a pillow, staring at the
floor like she’s waiting for me to leave. I sit at her desk and search the room with my eyes.
“Did you like the book?” I ask, nodding to Bridge to Terabithia sitting on her nightstand. Jenny looks at me, then the book, then me again. Then she nods and starts explaining, and I think what I see is her real smile.
Atticus Garrow 