Chapter Eighteen

I sit at our too-long kitchen table, penned in by my parents on either side, and trap my hands between my own knees to keep them from shaking. For all my parents' many expectations of me, I have never seen them look at me as though I've shattered every single one of them at once.

I've never seen them look at me the way they once did at my sister.

"Tell me," Mom starts, "what in the blazing hell were you thinking, Eliana? Getting into the car—the stolen car—of a girl you barely know, who doesn't have her license? Her poor grandmother had to call all the way from Italy in the middle of the night to find out where she was. She lied to her father about her plans, do you know that? Neither of you were answering your phones. You could've been seriously hurt, or arrested."

As if that's the worse option by far.

"And where did you get that?" Dad chimes in, eyeing Max's jacket slung across the back of my chair. Like it's a feral cat that snuck into the house alongside me and might take a swipe at him at any time.

If only I didn't have the jacket. It's unlikely that I could've lied my way out of trouble, but I could maybe minimize the consequences. Say we just drove into Deerfield to the DQ for Blizzards, or better yet, that we never even crossed the town line. But I can't think quickly enough to explain away the jacket.

Still, if I can make them understand why we did this … If they would just stop looking at me like that …

"I was trying to help," I say, and hate how small my voice sounds.

"Help who? That girl?" Mom's eyes narrow. "What kind of trouble is she getting you into, Eliana?"

"What? No, she didn't—I got her in! Just … listen. I got a postcard from Max, remember? A few weeks ago?" I ignore my parents' identical winces at the mention of their oldest daughter. "She asked me for her jacket back, and I went to Jolene's shop to see if it was there. It wasn't, but that's where I met JoJo. She was just being a good person, trying to help me track it down. And then one of Max's friends said he had it, and that he knew her address—"

"What were you doing, talking to your sister's friends?" Dad cuts in, looking horrified.

"I just told you. He said he knew where Max was, but we had to meet him or he wouldn't tell us, and—"

"So." It's Mom who cuts me off this time. "Not only did you girls steal a car and drive it without a license, you arranged to meet up with a man you don't know at all, who could've been a serious danger to you both, in a random location that he picked?" Mom sums up, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Please tell me, Eliana, how we're supposed to trust you again after this series of unbelievably poor choices."

The worst thing is, I can't argue with her. Those were the choices I made, and on paper, they were pretty poor. I see how this looks from the outside.

But instead of feeling guilty, there's this anger growing steadily inside me, like magma rising toward the surface. The more I think about it, the greater my fury. Because don't I get any credit for seventeen years of careful choices? Seventeen years (give or take) of studying on weekends, and volunteering at the Hebrew school, and weeding the garden beds as soon as I'm asked, and flossing twice a day and wearing my nightly retainer post–middle school braces, and keeping tabs on Max when my parents couldn't, and never putting a foot off track?

It's suddenly so important to me that, for once, they look at me for the kid I am, the kid who's been here and been reliable, the kid who's planning on going to the sports medicine program at UNC, and not as some miniature version of the kid they tossed away.

"I wouldn't have done any of it if you were looking for Max," I insist. "You never want to talk about her, but for all we know, she could be hungry or in trouble. Maybe she wants to come home, but has no money to get here. Somebody had to find out." I lean back in my chair, arms barred across my chest, trying to keep my gaze as cold and steady as Mom's, and trying not to notice how wounded Dad looks. Actually, my mother's lips seem to be trembling, too.

But that's probably rage. Because when she speaks again after a long silence, she sounds politely icy. "There's nothing any of us can do to bring Maxine home," Mom says, as if it's an indisputable fact.

"How do you know?" I demand. "Have you even tried? Do you even care?"

I jump in my seat as Dad pounds a fist down on the table, snapping, "Enough, El. Enough of this. You're grounded."

After I recover from the shock of Dad losing his cool, I snap back, "I have the volunteer club. And work."

"Quit."

"I can't—it's my club! How will that look on college applications if I quit my job and the program I started halfway through my junior year summer?" Not that Putt by the Pond itself was going to get me into college, but it's the principle.

"How will it look if you wind up like your sister?" Mom bursts out, the ice cracking at last. "You're sneaking around, stealing, hanging out with the same people who dragged her down."

I don't know what she's talking about—yeah, Max drove our parents' car into the Founder's Fountain, but she didn't steal it, and I don't see what Riley or any of those skeezballs had to do with it, since Max was alone when it happened. But I'm so swept up by the fight now, it's practically an out-of-body experience, and I truly can't stop myself. "So instead of picking her back up, you tossed her out."

Dad is up now, pacing the room. But Mom is cool and calm again when she says, "We did not. Your sister left."

"That's a lie. She'd never leave … she wouldn't have left her bike," I insist.

A ragged laugh bursts out of Dad, who's halfway across the kitchen. "If your sister cared about us as much as she claimed to care about that bike." He scrubs a hand down his flushed face. "We need to let go and move on, El. We should've sold that bike months ago—"

"No!" I nearly scream, bolting up from my own chair.

"It isn't doing her any good," Mom agrees with him, "and it isn't doing us any good. If you can't understand that this is for you, Eliana, then I just hope that someday, even if it isn't until you have a child of your own, you will. I won't lose another daughter by making the same mistakes all over again." She folds her hands on the tabletop and stares down at her knuckles, evidently done with looking at me.

"The bike goes," she pronounces, "and you're grounded. You can keep your phone tonight to let Zaynah know she'll need to take over the club for a while, and to tell your boss you won't be in tomorrow. And I suggest you separate yourself from this girl JoJo while you're at it. Because I don't think she's a good influence on you at all."

I'm too furious to name the ways my parents are, as a united front, burning my life to the ground before my eyes. Instead, I rip Max's jacket from the back of my chair, not intending to tip it over. But as it starts to fall, I let it. The chair hits the floor with a heavy crack. I'm out of the kitchen a second later, and my parents don't call me back.

It's another twenty minutes before I hear them climb the steps and pass my locked door on the way to their own, barely pausing outside of my room, where I lie on my floor (petty as it sounds, I'm way too angry to want to be comfortable). I wait another half hour, counting every second, then ease open my door to creep down the hall to theirs. The lights inside are off, and I don't hear any murmuring voices or restless creaking of the mattress.

Time to move.

I change into jeans and the work boots I'd put in the back of my closet for the summer, and slip on Max's jacket. The last time she let me try it on, I swear it was too big. Now, it's a little tight across the shoulders. But it'll do.

I shove a few things into my school backpack. A jumble of toiletries scooped from my bathroom counter. A fistful of T-shirts and sports bras and socks. A pair of pajamas. My wallet. My postcard collection. I hover over the retainer case on my nightstand, throwing it in at the last moment; I am who I am.

It's easy enough to sneak out the sliding door in the kitchen, back to the shed where the R1 waits. I already have the keys, and among Max's bagged-up gear in the corner where I expected to, I uncover a pair of helmets—hers and the spare she kept for me—along with her hard-shell motorcycle backpack. My school bag squeezes inside it with the spare helmet. I put on my sister's helmet and backpack, and then comes the first tricky part: walking the R1 down to the street, where I have a chance of starting it and taking off without my parents hearing. From the left side of the bike, I pull the clutch in and use a foot to put it in first, then lift the lever with my toe to put it in neutral. I push it forward with a hand on each bar, leaning it slightly toward me so if it falls, it doesn't fall away. It's tougher to muscle the bike across the grass, but I send a silent prayer of thanks to the Husqvarna for my upper-body strength. Once I've steered it around the house—it's not far to the driveway—I push it all the way down to the street.

Out on Cider Lane, I pull my phone from Max's jacket pocket, but I pause just a moment before I text Jo, to consider not texting Jo.

I could still put the gear and the R1 back. Go inside. Seethe in my dark bedroom. Wake up to a world where I have no parental trust, no job, no club, and no girlfriend (at least, not practically, because after tonight, Mom and Dad will hardly let Jo into the house while I'm grounded, which might be until school starts).

And absolutely no chance to find my sister and bring her home.

I press Send on the text.

Then, for the first time ever, I straddle the bike and shift it into drive without my sister's watchful gaze nearby. Panic flares up in me, but I push it down, deciding to be fearless instead.