When I complained about deleting the Lara picture, she yelled at me. “Breanna, the good Lord gave you brains. Could you use them for a change?”
Her ragging on me for not being the sharpest tool in the Connors shed is nothing new. Mom knows Liam is the smart one. My brother can do no wrong in Mom’s eyes. Me, on the other hand — I can do no right.
Seriously, it’s not like I was the only one posting stuff about Lara’s trip to the ER. Lots of other kids had status updates that night like Did you hear Lara Kelley OD’d? and stuff like that.
At least I didn’t make it sound like she died.
I’ve been thinking about what would have happened if Lara had … you know. I hadn’t really thought she’d go as far as trying to commit suicide. I mean, I knew Lara was super insecure and everything, but killing herself? That’s so extreme. I was really mad at her, but not enough to want her to die. I guess I just wanted her to hurt as much as I did. It didn’t seem fair that she was on top of the world all of a sudden. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to be with us. I was always the leader of our pack. Even when it came to making the rules for the tree fort, I was the one in charge.
And then she’d laughed at me. I just wanted to restore things back to the way they should be.
I saw Liam go out to the tree fort the other night. When the flickering light came on in the tree fort window, I realized, with relief, that it wasn’t a stinky hobo living out there, or some random freak. It was just my stinky, freaky little brother.
He was out there for about an hour. When he finally got back to his room, I went in and asked him why he’d been up there.
“None of your beeswax,” he said, like we were still little kids.
“You’ve been going out there a lot. I’ve seen the light in the window.”
“Maybe I just needed to get away from you,” he said.
“Fine. Be a jerk,” I said, spinning on my heel to leave his room. But at the doorway I turned back, because I had to know. “Are all our posters still up?”
“You mean the stupid boy bands?” Liam said. “Yeah, they’re still there.”
For some reason, that made me happy. It’s not like I even like those bands anymore — at least not that I’d admit to anyone — but even so, I was glad that they were still smiling down from the wooden walls of the tree fort.
I guess maybe it’s because even though I thought everything was so confusing then, I’ve realized that compared to now, it was way, way simpler.
The following evening, the doorbell rings and I answer it to find a uniformed police officer and a guy in a jacket holding up a badge.
Omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg.
“Hi, is your mother home?” Badge Guy asks.
Relief. Maybe he’s after Mom for a speeding ticket or something. She has this problem where she thinks she’s that race car driver Danica Patrick.
“Yeah. I’ll go get her.”
I leave them standing on the doorstep and run into the kitchen.
“Mom! There are two cops at the door. They want to talk to you.”
My mother drops the paring knife she’s holding and puts her hands on the counter, her head bowed and eyes closed. She takes a loud, deep breath and then straightens up and says, “Did they say what it’s about?”
“No. They just asked if you were home and said they want to talk to you.”
“If they ask you anything about that Christian thing, you say nothing,” Mom says. “Do you understand? Nothing.”
Wait. Is she telling me to lie to the police?
“But, Mom …”
“Nothing. I want you to keep your mouth shut. For once in your life, Breanna Marie Connors, just do what I tell you.”
She goes to the door and I wait in the kitchen, freaking out. Hoping that this is about her, and not me. Or maybe, I think, maybe someone else saw Liam lurking around in the tree fort at night and got scared and reported him. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know what to do if it’s not about those things. I’m supposed to obey my mother, but lying to the police? I’ve watched enough Law & Order reruns to know that’s Serious Business.
Mom comes back in the kitchen, grim-faced.
“They want to speak to you, Breanna. In the living room.”
This was just supposed to be a prank to teach Lara a lesson. It was never supposed to get this serious. Not hospitals. Not suicide attempts. And definitely not the police.
Mom makes a zip-it gesture as I walk past her. All my life, I’ve been brought up to believe the police are the good guys. So if I lie to them, does that make me one of the bad guys?
But on the other hand, I don’t want to end up in juvie over a stupid joke. I’m not the kind of girl who goes to juvie. Isn’t juvie for really screwed-up bad kids? Definitely not for girls like me.
Badge Guy introduces himself as Detective Souther. Uniform Guy is Officer Timm.
“We’re looking into the Lara Kelley incident,” the detective says.
“Oh, I know, isn’t that terrible?” Mom says. “That poor girl.”
It strikes me then what a seriously awesome liar my mother is. I guess maybe that’s a quality she needs to be the real estate queen of Lake Hills. “Everything I touch turns to sold.”
Maybe that’s why she’s so disappointed with me. Everything I touch seems to turn to dog crap.
“The two of you were close friends at one time,” he says to me.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “In middle school.”
“Speak up, Bree,” Mom snaps.
“In middle school,” I repeat more loudly. “Not so much now.”
“Was there a specific fight, or did you just drift apart?” Officer Timm asks.
“They drifted apart,” Mom says. “Poor Lara has always been … troubled. It became a little too much for Bree, having to act as therapist as well as friend. She needed to have a life of her own.”
“Understandable,” Detective Souther says. “How long ago was that, would you say?”
I open my mouth to say a little over a year ago, when we started high school, but Mom is there first.
“They started drifting apart the summer before high school. And of course once Bree got to high school, there were so many new faces, it was only natural she’d want to spread her wings and make other friends.”
These guys are going to think I can’t speak for myself. Mom couldn’t make it more obvious if she tried that she doesn’t trust me to say the right thing.
“I have a teenage daughter,” Officer Timm says. “These things happen. One minute they’re best friends forever, the next week it turns out ‘forever’ meant until they had a fight.”
“We didn’t fight,” I say. “It wasn’t like that. It was more … just … gradual.”
“So has there been any antagonism between you and Lara Kelley at the present time?” Detective Souther asks.
What is this, the PSAT or something? Antagonism?
“No, we weren’t pissed off at each other, if that’s what you mean.”
Mom gives me a look and I get it. Cut the attitude, Breanna.
“Do you know a young man by the name of Christian DeWitt?” the detective asks.
I’ve never actually been punched in the stomach, but I imagine this is how it feels. Like all the air is suddenly sucked out of your lungs and there’s a second of total panic because you can’t breathe and you wonder if this is it and you’re going to die before you pull yourself together and manage to inhale.