Chapter 6 - Night in My Dress
I didn't change out of my dress. Mom would have made me if she was home, she always said don't sit on your good clothes, you'll wrinkle them. But nobody told me to change, so I just sat on the edge of my bed with my legs hanging down and my white socks getting gray on the bottom.
Downstairs, chairs scraped. Somebody laughed too loud and then stopped. Car doors slammed out front one after another until there weren't any left. I counted in my head to keep track. When it got quiet, the quiet was worse.
My name is Lily and I was ten and that afternoon I'd smashed my brother's birthday cake on the living room floor.
My feet still had frosting on them. A little spot of blue on my right big toe. I rubbed it with my thumb and it smeared. Orange was stuck under my nail and I couldn't pick it out. I kept smelling sugar every time I breathed in.
I laid back on my quilt and stared at the glow stars on my ceiling. They weren't glowing because the sun was still coming through my blinds in lines. I tried to think about the video again, frame by frame, the way I'd watched it on my phone that morning.
She'd been standing at the counter with her back half to the doorway. I remembered because I was crouched by the coat closet with my phone held sideways. On the screen, her green dress looked almost black in the kitchen light. She took something out of her purse. Not big. Smaller than my hand. A little glass bottle with a white cap, the kind medicine comes in when you have an ear infection. She unscrewed it with two fingers and poured it fast into the metal bowl. Clear liquid. It didn't even make a color. She stirred it with the spatula twice, then put the bottle back and zipped her purse shut.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to see the label. There had been a label. White with little black letters. I couldn't read it from where I was. I remembered the shape, though. Short and fat. Square, maybe.
Where would it be now? I sat up. My heart was beating in my ears.
Trash. She'd have to throw it away somewhere. Nobody keeps an empty poison bottle in her purse all day at a party. Unless she took it home. My stomach dropped thinking about that. If she took it home, there was nothing to find.
But I remembered after the baking, she'd tied up the kitchen trash herself. I'd seen the white bag in the big can under the sink when I went in for a juice box. She'd said, "Let me get that mess cleaned up for you," all sweet. At the time I thought she was just being nice.
I got off the bed and pressed my ear to the wall by my desk. Our rooms shared that wall — mine and Jason's. I could hear his voice through it, low and blurry at first.
"You think I liked that?" That was Jason. My brother. He wasn't yelling like before, but his voice had that tight sound like when he was trying not to.
"I think you humiliated me," she said. Melissa. Her voice was higher and shaky. "In front of everyone. You told me to get out, Jason."
A pause. I held my breath so I could hear better.
"I saw the video," he said.
"It's flavoring, how many times do I have to say it? It was lemon. For the batter. Ask anyone, lemon makes it—"
"You poured it like you didn't want anyone to see."
I pressed my palm flat against the wall. Dust from the paint got on my hand.
"Because I knew how it would look," she said, and now she sounded like she was crying. "I knew a kid was filming me in a doorway, yes, I should have announced it to the room. Come on."
Another pause, longer. I heard his bed creak.
"Where is it now, then?" he asked. "The bottle."
"I threw it away. At home. This morning before we came."
My chest went tight. I mouthed the words to myself: threw it away. At home. That meant not in our trash. That meant I couldn't find it.
But then Jason said, "Which trash?"
"What?"
"Kitchen or bathroom? If it was this morning—"
"Jason, stop interrogating me." Her voice cracked. "You're choosing her over me. A ten-year-old who ruined your cake."
He didn't answer right away. I could hear him breathing through the wall, slow in and out.
"Go sleep on the couch," he said finally. "Please. I need to think."
"No," she said. "I'm not—" Then footsteps, then a door shut hard enough that my glow stars seemed to shake.
I backed away from the wall and sat on the floor. My dress puffed up around me. The net underneath scratched my legs.
She was lying. I knew she was lying because the bottle had still been in her purse at our house. I'd seen the shape of it when she dug for her lipstick during presents, that little square corner pushing against the lining. She hadn't thrown it away that morning. She was making that part up because Jason asked too fast.
So it could still be here. In our kitchen trash, or in her purse downstairs on the couch.
Trash pickup was Tuesday. Dad always put the cans out Monday night at the curb. Today was Saturday. That meant I had time, but it also meant if she stayed over, she could take the bag out herself when nobody was looking.
I had to look tonight, before everyone went to sleep and before she could grab it.
I walked to my door and opened it a crack. The upstairs hall was dim, the bathroom light off. Downstairs I could hear the TV on low, some man talking about weather. Then water running in the kitchen. Then quiet again.
I wasn't supposed to be out of my room. Jason had told me, "Stay up here until I come talk to you," and he'd put my phone in his pocket. I didn't have the video anymore. All I had was what I remembered.
I left my door cracked an inch and went back to my bed and sat down to wait. My legs stuck to the sheet. The lines of sun moved off my quilt and turned orange on the wall. My stomach growled loud.
May you like
I decided I wouldn't go down until the house went fully quiet. Until Jason went to his room and Melissa stopped moving around and the TV clicked off. Then I'd go barefoot so the wood stairs wouldn't creak. I'd check the can under the sink first, then the garage can if I had to. I wouldn't turn on the bright light, just the little one over the stove.
I pulled my knees up inside my dress and wrapped my arms around them. The frosting spot on my toe had dried hard. I stared at it and waited for the quiet to come.
