Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

Author:Sara Zarr [Zarr, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-11T10:18:27+00:00

I pulled the comp book out from behind my bed and stared at a blank page for half an hour.

I didn’t want to write about the girl on the waves anymore.

I was scared to write about anything else.

7.

Early the next morning, my mom drove Darren down to Safeway to pick up the Nova. Stacy had left a note in the car: “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry.” Nothing about where she was or why she left or if she was coming back. Mom and Darren called in sick to work, but Dad said he couldn’t afford to miss a day just to go chasing after Stacy.

“She’ll be back,” he said. “She just wants the attention.”

Darren didn’t respond, but I saw his hand clench around April’s bottle.

“What kind of a mother leaves her baby?” Dad continued, looking around the kitchen for some kind of support.

“Don’t want to hear it, Dad,” Darren said.

For once, Dad actually shut up about Stacy and left Darren alone. He didn’t exactly offer to help or say anything to make it better, but at least he stopped talking and left for work.

Mom poured a cup of coffee for Darren, who sat at the table with April cradled in his arms. “Let’s just stay by the phone,” Mom said. “I bet we’ll hear from her any minute.” She rested her hand on Darren’s head for a second in a way I hadn’t seen her do for a long time. “Stacy probably just needed to get away for a little bit.”

As usual, Mom refused to see the reality of the situation, choosing instead to believe that everything would eventually work itself out by some sort of magic.

“Mom,” Darren said quietly, “if she needed to get away all she had to do was tell me. She knows that.”

“Well. You never know. Hormones can make a young mother crazy . . .”

Darren got up with April and left the kitchen. I followed him into my room. “What are you going to do?” I asked. He put April on my bed on her stomach and shoved his hands way down into his pockets, eyes on the floor.

“I don’t know.” His voice broke and his shoulders started shaking and then he just stood there in the middle of my room, crying but trying not to make too much noise, my big brother who could deal with anything. April stopped her own sounds and lifted her little head as best she could to look at Darren. Neither of us had ever seen him cry before. He covered his face with both his hands. “I’m sorry.”

If I were a different kind of sister, a better kind, I would have hugged him and told him everything would be okay. Maybe if we were out of my parents’ house, in our own place, we could be that kind of family. But here, we were the same old Lamberts we’d always been. And besides, for all I knew, nothing would ever be okay again.

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