Don't Fail Me Now by Una LaMarche

Author:Una LaMarche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Thursday Afternoon/Thursday Night

Indiana-Illinois Border Bristow, OK

Goldie’s noise is getting worse and worse. She starts okay but sounds like a vacuum cleaner sucking up quarters once she gets going. Tim frowns at the dashboard approximately every sixty seconds, trying to diagnose the problem. I took him up on his offer to drive, and I’m trying really hard to focus on watching the trees whoosh by as we pass into Illinois. But ironically, the silence in the car is making it hard to relax.

Remember, you’re sisters, Tim said. Like I could ever forget. I’ve been holding on to Leah since I was seven years old—the idea of her, anyway. I always fantasized I would know her if I saw her someplace random, like she’d shine in a way only I could see. Then we’d walk slowly toward each other and hug, instantly bonding over the shared pain brought on by our lowest common denominator. In my head it was always us versus Buck, us versus the world. It never even occurred to me it might be me versus her.

“Hey, Tim?” Denny pipes up from the backseat. “You said your sister . . . was my sister’s . . . sister.” He speaks in a slow, probing way that makes me realize he’s been trying to figure it out since we left the hotel. Leave it to this kid to be a lightning rod for the tension on everybody’s mind.

“Yeah,” Tim says.

“We’re half sisters,” Leah says pointedly with her face turned to the window.

“What does that mean?” Denny asks.

“We have half of the same parents,” Cass says. “The same dad but not the same mom.”

“You and Michelle and Leah?”

“Yup,” she sighs.

“But if you guys are sisters, then is she my sister, too? Can she go on my tree?”

“What’s he talking about?” Leah asks.

“He’s making a family tree for school,” I say.

“Yeah,” Cass deadpans, “this trip is for extra credit.”

“So are you my sister?” Denny asks.

“No,” Leah says. “You have to have at least one of the same parent to be siblings.”

“Hey,” Tim says, feigning injury.

“So you’re her brother . . .” Denny says, starting to piece his puzzle together again.

“Stepbrother,” Tim corrects. “My dad married her mom.”

“Do you and I have the same dad?” Denny asks hopefully.

“No,” Tim says with a smile. “I wish.”

“Oh.” Denny thinks for a minute. “But if they have the same dad, why does she have a different mom?”

“You wanna take this one?” I ask Tim with a smirk.

“No, ma’am,” he laughs. “All yours.”

“Well, our dad kind of . . . switched moms,” I say. It sounds silly reduced to first-grade vocabulary, but I know it’s still a trigger subject for Cass, so I glance back to check on her. Amazingly, both she and Leah are smiling a little bit, staring out their respective windows.

“You’re allowed to do that?” Denny asks incredulously, and Tim stifles a laugh.

“If you’re a jackass,” Cass mutters.

“So he switched from our mom to her mom?”

“Yup,” I say, biting my own lip to keep from grinning.

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