This Broken Road by A.M. Henry

Author:A.M. Henry [Henry, A.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elk & Owl Books
Published: 2019-06-05T05:00:00+00:00

25.

“We’re going out to Wellsboro for Thanksgiving. Mairéad and the kids will be there, too.”

Dad has all three of us gathered in the kitchen—Casey and I just home from school, and Rachel came home from college for a week. Two months of laundry sits on the kitchen floor in black garbage bags.

“Are we staying over?” Casey asks.

“Of course we’re staying over,” Rachel says, trying not to make a face. “It’s four hours away.”

“Yes, we’re staying over,” Dad says. “Wednesday afternoon until Saturday.” He looks upset about this.

Grandma lives in a little yellow house in northern Pennsylvania, right smack in the middle of nowhere. Literally. You can see pretty far across fields and woods from her yard, and you can’t see a single neighbor.

*

“So Dad says you’re sleeping with the enemy.” Rachel piles her dirty laundry into the washing machine.

“I beg your pardon?” I sit on the dryer, un-balling her socks.

“You’ve been going out with Ryan Reagan.”

“We’re not ‘going out.’ Just… hanging out.”

“You were spotted making out in his car. Twice.”

Mom’s spies: everywhere.

“How the hell did that even happen?” Rachel asks, trying not to laugh.

I shrug and hide my face in my Gryffindor scarf, beating one of her rolled up socks against the dryer until it unrolls.

Rachel’s expression turns more serious. “You’re allowed to date, you know.”

“I know. But it still feels wrong if I think about it for too long.”

She hops up next to me on the dryer and wraps an arm around my shoulder. She smells like flowers and bubble gum and books.

“I don’t know how to make you feel better about that,” she says. “But you seem happier than last time I was home, and that can’t be wrong. Right?”

“I guess.”

She gives me a squeeze and then drops back down to the floor and continues loading the washer, frowning at my hair. “What is up with the braids? I didn’t think you had enough hair to do it up in braids like that.”

“Ryan digs the Viking look.”

Rachel buries her face in her hands.

“You should do yours to match,” I say. “We’ll need the strength of our ancestors to get through four days with Mom and Mairéad.”

“Ugh. No kidding.”

*

Mom and Dad put all my old clothes in boxes in the attic, to save them from the damp in the basement. After a struggle up the stepladder, I sorted through them and brought most of them downstairs.

“So is this Rebel Angela 2.0?” Rachel asks.

She and Casey barged into my room to make sure something drastic hadn’t happened—I haven’t shut my door or blasted my music since before the accident.

“Viking, not rebel,” I say.

I abandoned most of the pants in the attic. All of them are super-tight skinny jeans in various colors—mostly black, red, and purple—and I can’t really maneuver my left leg into them without calling the fire department to get me back out again. I brought down all the shirts—also mostly black, red, and purple, all of them altered by me with scissors and safety pins and ribbon and shoelaces.

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