Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway Page A

followed him out to the car, tears streaming down my face. I was shaking and I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d narrowly escaped punishment, or because I hadn’t gotten it.
    When we got in the car and shut the doors, he turned to me, his eyes burning with fury. “What do you have to cry about?” he said. “I just fixed it for you. You’re a damned idiot, Rachel. First the swimming. Now this.”
    Through my tears, I was stunned. “I couldn’t help the swimming.” Then I realized. Oh my God. He was right. I’d worked out too hard.
    It was all my fault.
    He turned on the car. “If you’d listened to me about form, you wouldn’t have gotten injured. Very simple. You’ve never listened to me.” He started backing up. “Just do me a favor. Keep out of trouble until you’re out of school. I have business in this town, and I don’t need you fucking it up with your antics. Got it? No more, or you’re out on your ass.” He slammed his palm on the steering wheel, beeping the horn. “No more!” he screamed.
    I nodded mutely and bit my tongue, concentrating on that pain so I’d stop crying. I swallowed down the hard lump in my throat. I didn’t worry about getting kicked out because I was going to be good from now on. “I won’t mess up again. I promise.”
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    We didn’t speak of it again. I stopped going out to the parking lot at lunchtime, knowing that the principal would be specifically watching for me, waiting for me to mess up. I ate lunch alone, in a far shady corner of the campus, behind the P.E. building, where couples went to make out. At nights I lay awake, imagining creatures out of the dark shapes in my bedroom, wondering what I was going to do with my life. Wondering what the point of it all was. My grades had dropped so much this semester I doubted any college, even the local state school, would take me. I wasn’t able to bring myself to care anymore. I’d have to live at home and go to the community college. And what would I do after that, marry somebody, end up like my mother?
    I longed to talk to her, to cry into her shoulders, and several times I almost did. I went to her quilt room where she sat sewing, sewing, sewing, like she was in some kind of factory with an imaginary deadline. As I stood in the doorway, watching her head bent under the orange yellow desk lamp, I knew two things to be true. She had her own demons. And because of those, she’d be unable to be a mother in the way I needed a mother.
    Mom looked up at me and if she’d invited me in, maybe things would have been different. She didn’t say anything, just waited, blinking blearily. The sewing machine hummed. She frowned as she searched my face. As if I was a door-to-door salesman bugging her.
    I reached out and grabbed the doorknob and shut the door. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a bottomless canyon, looking down, and very much wishing I could jump.
    I retreated into my room and locked the door. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. I longed to cry, but nothing would come. I felt like I was inhabiting some permanent dream world, where I’d never be the slightest bit happy again, or even sad.
    I went to the window, imagining what would happen if I leaped out onto the concrete driveway. It was only two stories. With my luck, I’d probably just break my neck and need to live with my parents forever. I went to my closet, looked at the clothes bar, wondering if it’d support my weight. I pushed down on it experimentally. Maybe. I picked up a belt, made it into a loop. Would suffocation be quick?
    Somebody pounded on my door. “Rach?” The sound of Drew’s still bell-sweet little girl voice jolted me back into reality. My heart restarted. I gasped, tears springing into my eyes. I threw the belt down. “Do you want to