Chapter 5
The apartment was quiet in a different way the next afternoon. Vanessa had left to run errands and my dad hadn't gone to his laptop right away. He stayed on the sofa with me, his white shirt sleeves pushed up, and we didn't turn on the TV. The city outside was gray and bright, not night lights, and I could hear the air conditioner humming.
I was sitting on the rug with my crayons spread out. I'd tried to color but I kept checking the coffee table where the two halves of my blue book were lying. Dad hadn't taped them yet. He'd said we would do it together later, when we had the right tape. I kept looking at them to make sure they were still there.
Dad said, "You want to show me what you were drawing at school last week? That dinosaur one?"
I nodded, but I didn't go to my folder right away. I went to the low cabinet where I kept my things. I pulled out the bottom drawer where I hid stuff. My hand was shaking a little and I had to breathe before I could talk.
I took out my other book, the one with the dogs on it. It wasn't torn, but the first three pages were scrubbed. Someone had taken an eraser and rubbed hard until the paper went fuzzy and thin. The colors were gone in patches.
"She did it," I said quietly. "Last Tuesday. When you were on your computer."
Dad took it from me and opened it. His eyebrows came together. He ran his thumb over the rough spot where the paper had pilled.
"Did you tell me about this?" he asked.
I shook my head. I hadn't. Vanessa had smiled after and said I colored too messy and she was helping me keep my books nice. She told me not to bother Dad while he was working. I told him that now, in pieces.
He didn't say anything right away. He just looked at the book and then at me, and his mouth got tight the way it did when he was trying not to get mad in front of me.
Then I took out another thing. A folded piece of paper, creased from being shoved under my socks. It was my drawing of me and Mom and Dad at the park. Mom's hair was long like mine. Vanessa had drawn a big cross over it in black marker, then scribbled it out, then erased part of it until the paper tore. I had tried to hide it.
Dad unfolded it slowly. I watched his hands. He didn't say "Enough" like she had. He just stared at it and I saw his jaw move.
"Sophie," he said, his voice low. "When did this happen?"
"Before the blue book," I whispered. "She said I shouldn't put that on the fridge."
He stood up after that. He walked over to the bookshelf behind the black sofa. That's where we kept my things mixed in with his books. My school picture in the little silver frame, the clay handprint from kindergarten, the drawings I taped to the shelf edge.
They were gone.
The shelf was neat in a way it never was when I touched it. His books were straight, and there was a small vase with dried flowers where my picture had been. My handprint was on the bottom shelf behind a stack of coasters. My drawings were gone completely.
He picked up the vase and set it down harder than he meant to. He looked back at me where I was still kneeling by my drawer.
"She moved them," he said. More to himself than to me. "She moved everything."
I nodded. I remembered Vanessa doing it while Dad was at his desk with his headphones on. She'd said the shelf looked cluttered and that big girls don't need so many baby things in the living room. She'd done it quick, while the laptop light was on his face.
I felt my eyes get hot and I hugged my knees. "I said please give it," I told him. The words came out small. "I said 'Please give it' and she said 'Enough.' Then she tore it."
I hadn't said that part before. Last night I'd only cried. Now I got the order right, the way it really happened. I didn't add anything or make it bigger.
Dad came back and knelt on the rug in front of me so we were eye level. He didn't fix my hair or tell me it was okay. He just looked at me and let the silence sit for a second.
"You asked her to give it back and she said enough," he repeated quietly, making sure he'd heard me.
"Yes," I said.
He closed his eyes for a second and breathed out through his nose. When he opened them again they were red at the edges.
"I was right there," he said. "At the desk. With the laptop open. I thought if I stayed out of it you two would work it out."
He wasn't talking to Vanessa now. He was talking to me, but I knew he was really talking to himself. He picked up the dog book again and the folded drawing and held them together.
"This wasn't just last night, was it," he said. "The book wasn't the first time."
I shook my head. It hadn't been.
He put his hand on my shoulder, light, and didn't move it. He looked over at his dark desk with the silver laptop closed on it, then back at the bookshelf where my things used to be.
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"I kept telling myself she was stressed. That I was busy," he said. "I wasn't watching."
I leaned into his side. The apartment felt too tidy and too quiet without Vanessa there, and for the first time I realized Dad had finally seen what I'd been seeing for weeks when he was turned toward his screen.
