Catch the Light by Kate Sweeney

Author:Kate Sweeney [Sweeney, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2021-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

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The whole way home, I’ve been preparing myself for some kind of big, awkward moment with my mother, but when I get to the house the kitchen is empty. The living room is empty. No light under her bedroom door.

I can’t tell if I’m relieved or angry or hurt or anxious, but as I stand in the middle of the purple-blue darkness, I can’t remember the last time I felt this alone. Suddenly tears are springing up into my eyes. I mash my palms against them. I step back, lean back against the counter and breathe, waiting for the skin of ice to freeze back over everything inside, numbing it all out.

I open the fridge and see a big pot of chicken soup inside. Stuck to the side of the pot is a green sticky note with a drawing of a heart. El is in Saratoga, teaching her Wednesday-night design class, but somehow she’s also here trying to hold us together with food.

“Bea!” I yell upstairs.

“What?” she yells back down.

It feels like we are miners inside of a great big cavern.

“Want some dinner?” I yell.

“No,” she yells back.

I close the fridge and rest my head against the front of it. I could stay down here, wait for my mother. Turn the lights on and let the dogs into the kitchen. Drag Bea out of her room.

But not today.

When I get upstairs, Bea’s door is open. She’s lying on her bed in purple scrubs, reading Jane Austen.

“How was it?” she asks. Her voice is flat.

“Fine,” I say. “Weird.” Then, “Wanna hang?”

“Nah, that’s okay,” she says, her eyes on the book, moving back and forth across the page. “I kind of just want to be alone.”

Something in her voice tells me I’ve messed this up again. And I feel so frustrated because I don’t understand how I did it.

So I cross back over to my side of the hallway, flip on my lamp, and close my door. And then I’m alone in my room that’s not really my room. In this house that’s not really my house. Out there, Bea, Hannah, Mom, all of the people in my family are just orbiting around the same void, silently, separately, each of us on our own path.

Right before I fall asleep, my phone vibrates with a text from Bennett:

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