Subscribe to Me by Tracey Scott

Author:Tracey, Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I wake up close to midnight, and when I stumble out into the hall, the house is not as quiet as I expect. I head down the stairs, tracing towards a haunting melody of a piano. Gigi is curled up on the couch, swallowed up in an oversized blanket and listening quietly in front of the fire. The fireplace is one of those ones that’s made to look as real as possible, but the flames that emerge are turned on by an electric switch, and the wood never actually burns.

“What are you still doing up?” I rub at my eyes, trying to taking in the meager amount of light in the room and failing. I head over to the love seat on the far side of the room. We each have our normal seats in the living room - Dad always takes the side of the couch with the ottoman in front of it, Gigi takes the other side which offers the best view of the fireplace, and I sit by myself in the chair.

She doesn’t seem to hear me at first, and when she does finally turn my way her movements are languid. It’s hard to tell in the firelight, but I think she’s been crying. Her face is scrubbed free of makeup, and her wet hair is tossed up in a bun.

“Hey, I didn’t hear you come home,” she says, wiping at her eyes. There’s a blotchiness to her skin that’s just starting to fade. Gigi thinks that she’s an ugly cryer so she never lets anyone see her do it.

I don’t correct her, because it’s much better to have stayed out late than to have fallen asleep before it even got dark outside.

“What’s wrong?”

A wall goes up immediately and the porcelain mask of my sister looks blankly in my direction. “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just thinking.”

I point up towards the ceiling where the speakers are recessed. “And you’re listening to sad piano music because you’ve just got too much energy and needed a contrast.”

Gigi gives me a level look from across the room. “I’m still older than you are,” she replies.

As if I could ever forget. Gigi has lorded being the oldest over me for my entire life. Part of it is probably because Mom always put her in charge, and she took that responsibility very seriously when I was a child. Very, very seriously.

Sometimes Mom would put her in charge while she ran a simple errand - like return a dish to the old couple that lived across the street from us. Gigi would present her with a one page report, written in her best second grade lettering, about all of my infractions in the five minutes Mom was gone. It took Gigi longer to write the list than she was in charge for.

“Why are you still up?”

“Why are you?”

I settle into my seat and study my sister for a minute. “You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

She’s quiet for a long time. I’ve never known Gigi to be quiet.

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