That’s when I know that this is about me.
Pulling my feet from under Syd, I jump up from the bed, and run out into the hall.
“What happened? What was that phone call about?”
Mom’s hand flies to her mouth. She looks paralyzed with fear.
Dad turns to me. He’s in his tartan pj bottoms and a faded Chicago Bulls T-shirt and slippers. Is he planning on going out of the house to exact retribution on someone like that? Tell me you’re not planning on leaving the house like that, please, Dad?
“You want to know what that phone call was about? It was a reporter from the Independent. She wanted to know my reaction to the news that it was our neighbors and former friends who’d set up that fake account.”
Neighbors and former friends?
No … It can’t be. He can’t mean … No way. Bree would never do that to me. Not Bree. Never. Christian couldn’t be Bree … He flirted with me.
I feel sick.
“Wait … you mean …”
It’s too hard to process, much less say the words I’m thinking.
“Yes,” Dad snaps. “I mean the Connorses. Your best friend, Bree, and her mother, Mary Jo. That’s who you’ve been talking to all this time.”
Christian … who used the L word …
Then told me the world would be a better place without me in it … was really … Bree.
My best friend, Bree.
My former best friend, Bree.
And her MOM.
Did they sit there laughing at me while they did it? Was messing with my head all some big joke to them?
I almost killed myself because of Bree and Mary Jo Connors.
How … can … this … be … real?
The dizziness comes over me so suddenly I have to put my hand on the wall to stay upright.
“I’m going over there right now,” Dad says.
“You can’t, Pete. It’s eleven-thirty at night,” Mom tells him, gripping his arm. “You’ll wake up the entire neighborhood.”
“You think I care?” Dad shouts, pulling his arm free of her grasp. “What kind of neighborhood is this when you can’t even trust the people you thought were friends? Huh, Kathy? Answer that for me.”
He turns on his heel and stomps down the stairs. A few seconds later we hear the front door slam so hard, the framed school pictures of Syd and me lining the wall of the stairway rattle against the wall.
Mom heads toward her bedroom. “I better go out there before he gets himself arrested,” she says in a voice clipped with anger.
Why does it seem like she’s angrier with Dad than with the Connorses?
She comes out, tying the knot on her bathrobe, her bare feet stuck hastily into a pair of pink running shoes.
“I’ll be back,” she says, her face grim, as she marches down the steps to save Dad from himself.
“Are you okay?”
Syd puts her hand on my shoulder, tentatively, like she’s afraid I’m going to shake it off. But I don’t. I’m grateful for it.
I shake my head no, not trusting myself to speak.
“I bet …” Syd puts her arms around me cautiously, like I’m an unexploded hand grenade that could go off any minute, and gives me a gentle but awkward hug.
Syd’s afraid I’m going to lose it again.
“I’m doing better than Dad,” I say, patting her back.
“No kidding,” Syd says, pulling away from me. “He’s scary.”
And that’s when we hear the commotion in the street. Shouts and screaming.
Syd and I look at each other and run down the stairs, through the door, and out into the street, neither of us caring that we’re in our pj’s and barefoot. The grass is cold and damp beneath my feet, and it sends a chill up my body, but not nearly as much as the scene in front of the Connors house. Dad is trying to get to Mrs. Connors like he wants to strangle her, and Mom and Mr. Nunn from next door are holding him back. Mr. Connors is standing between Dad and his wife, his fists clenched, ready to deck Dad if he gets any closer. Liam stands behind his mother, watching wide-eyed.
Mom is screaming at Dad to calm down and go home. Mr. Connors is telling him he’s crazy. Mrs. Connors shouts that she’s calling the police. Syd clutches my arm, and I hug her back for comfort and warmth.
And then I see Bree, watching the scene from their living room window. She has her cell phone in her hand, and she’s probably recording this whole thing to put on Facebook. Putting my family’s worst moments on Facebook seems to give her pleasure for some screwed-up reason. Why else would she have posted that picture of me on the stretcher?
Up and down the street, people are turning on their outside lights and coming out to check out the source of the noise, to see what the heck is going on.
More shouting.
“Hey, do you mind putting a sock in it? You just woke up my kids!” That’s Mr. Campbell from three doors down.
Mom grabs Dad’s collar so she can pull his head toward her. “Pete, you’re making a scene. We have to leave. NOW.”
People are holding up cell phones. This whole surreal scene is being captured for posterity or YouTube, whichever comes first.
And as none of us Kelleys are ever allowed to forget, Mom is running for reelection.
Syd starts crying. “Dad, come inside,” she wails.
I’m hugging her, not sure if I’m giving or seeking comfort. Despite all the tears I’ve shed since the night I took those pills, tonight my eyes are dry. Other than the cold grass under my bare feet and the wind that occasionally blows my hair across my face, I hardly even feel. Because this … this scene I’m a part of now … it’s not real. It can’t be. It’s too surreal. It’s a movie that I’m watching, that’s about my life, with familiar characters acting in unfamiliar ways.
And then we hear the sirens approaching. That’s when Mom loses it, too.
“Pete, get in the house,” she screams. “You’re making things worse.”
“Listen to Kathy, Pete,” Mr. Connors snarls. “Get off my property. Go home and leave my wife alone!”
When the police car pulls to a stop in front of the Connors house, the red and blue lights create a strobe effect, flashing off the houses, the gawking and videoing neighbors, my parents and Mr. and Mrs. Connors.
A police officer gets out and walks over to where my parents and the Connorses are standing. Mrs. Connors is still holding the cordless phone she used to call 911, brandishing it like a weapon in my father’s direction.
Dad, who has been like an attacking Rottweiler held back by Mom and Mr. Nunn, droops visibly when he sees the blue uniform. Mom and Mr. Nunn drop their hold on him, and he glances over at Mom, who doesn’t meet his gaze. She is marble — cold, hard, impassive, but I know underneath she is calculating the damage to our family image and her campaign and figuring out how to repair them both.
Can something like this even be repaired?
Mom catches sight of Syd and me shivering together on our front lawn and gestures for us to go inside. Syd wipes her tears away with the sleeve of her pajama top.
It’s like being at a sleepover when everyone else wants to watch a horror movie. I’ve seen enough that I don’t really want to watch any more, but I still want to know how it ends. But Mom gestures again, this time mouthing, “Go inside now,” and knowing the kind of mood she’s going to be in after this, it’s better to just go with it.
“Come on, Syd. We have to go in.”
“But what about Dad?”
“Mom says.”
We head back to the house. My sister casts a look back at my parents, and when I look back, too, I notice that Liam’s gaze is focused on us, not at what is going on with our parents and the police.