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  “How did you hurt your neck?”

  Marnie smiles, kind of. It is more of a grimace. “Riding a mechanical bull … it was stupid.”

  “Well,” the nurse says, “it wasn’t smart.” She has lank, colorless hair and a smushed-in face. I’ll bet if Marnie weren’t so annoyingly beautiful, she would use a nicer tone.

  “She was awesome!” Presley calls out, doing a kick and a spin. “She stayed on for, like, four seconds!”

  The nurse ignores Presley. “Scale of one to ten. How much pain are you in right now?”

  “I don’t know,” Marnie says. “An eight?”

  “Wait here,” the nurse orders. She huffs her way past Harper, Scarlett, Caro, and Presley, then huffs back a minute later. “Come with me,” she says to Marnie. Then, to the line dancers, “This is a hospital, not a bar. Go wait in the waiting room.”

  “Sorry,” Harper says. “We’ll be good.”

  “Sorry, you guys,” Marnie whispers on her way out the door. She tries to turn her head to blow us a kiss, then grabs her neck and cries, “Ouch!”

  The Sisters head out into the waiting room, where there are at least a dozen people waiting. A dozen people staring at us in our bedazzled tiger-paw tank tops. It is completely mortifying. Also, kind of thrilling.

  * * *

  We don’t get back to Westside until after two a.m. Marnie has been given a neck brace, a muscle relaxant, and two kinds of painkillers. Harper sets her up on the pullout couch with a bunch of blankets and a heating pad. As soon as Marnie lies down, she calls my dad. As soon as she hangs up, the pills knock her out.

  I lie awake on a blow-up mattress under the pool table, recapping the night. That was fun, I think. And, yes, crazy. But not in a defective brain chemistry kind of way. More in a wild night out with your girlfriends kind of way. Normal crazy, not sick crazy. I think about our outfits. I think about Marnie snorting sweet tea out her nose. I think about Jeremy the Waiter, and Fu Man Chu, and Nurse Sourpuss, and the Sisters line dancing through the emergency room at midnight.

  Eventually I fall asleep to the sound of Marnie snoring.

  Sometime later, I wake up to the sound of my own whimpering. The image in my head is so real it can’t possibly be a dream. My mother is dead; I am sure of it. She is lying on the sawdusty floor, eyes bulging, face blue.

  I pinch my thigh hard. Twice. Three times.

  No. I am not at Mustang Sally’s, looking down at my mother’s broken neck. I am on an AeroBed in Westside Atlanta. I can hear Marnie’s snores, coming from the pullout couch.

  I think about waking her up, saying, I had a bad dream.

  And Marnie would say, Tell me.

  But as I catch my breath I realize how stupid I am being. My mother isn’t dead. I know, because if she were, Regina would call my cell phone. She promised she would call if there was a problem, and she hasn’t called. So everything is fine.

  Go back to sleep, I tell myself. And somehow I do.

  * * *

  When I wake up again, sun is streaming through the window and Marnie is lying on the pullout couch, squinting at the ceiling.

  “What time is it?” she groans.

  “What time is it?” Harper releases the window shade and flops on top of Marnie. “It’s ten o’clock, you sloths!”

  “Ow!”

  “Serves you right!” Harper says, steamrolling her. “We took off work for you. What do you think this is? College?”

  “Ow!” Marnie cries again. “My neck!”

  “It still hurts?” Harper sits up.

  “Yes, it still hurts. I pinched a nerve. This was my one chance to sleep in and I couldn’t even find a comfortable position.”

  “I’ll get you some coffee,” Harper says.

  “I can’t drink coffee. I’m nursing. My boobs are rocks right now.”

  “Tea? Cocoa?… Orange juice?”

  “Juice would be nice.” Marnie’s voice softens. She reaches out one stiff arm to pat Harper’s shoulder. “Thanks, Harp.”

  “You got it … Anna? Juice?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  My throat is thick, my brain foggy. Last night’s dream is still in my head, but I reassure myself that this is all it was: a dream. An arbitrary firing of brain cells—nothing more. Even though deep down I know that dreaming about my mother dying is not arbitrary.

  I will not think about her today.

  I will not think about her today.

  I will not think about her today.

  I sit up and follow Harper into the kitchen so Marnie can call my dad and pump in peace. I drink my juice and eat my cereal. I listen to Harper, Caro, Scarlett, and Presley argue about whose job is worse and which of them is the most justified in blowing off work to hang out with us. Event promotion assistant, food critic intern, middle-school drama teacher, or temp. My vote is for temp. Poor Scarlett. She has to answer phones for a construction company and she keeps hanging up on people and getting yelled at.

  The whole time, I am not thinking about my mother. But then Scarlett says, “I would rather clean houses than answer phones.” And, without any warning, a memory pops into my head. It is of my mom cleaning our whole kitchen—every crevice and nook and cranny—with Q-tips. She must have used five hundred Q-tips. I don’t know how old I was, but I remember walking downstairs one morning and seeing her hunched over the counter, scrubbing away at one square inch of granite. I remember the strange, vague feeling that what I saw wasn’t normal mother behavior.

  Was she ever normal? I wonder. When did the crazy kick in? Then, of course, I start thinking about the dream again. I know that I will be thinking about it all day if I don’t do something.

  So I cave. I go out onto the patio and call Regina.

  Regina answers in a good mood. She tells me that my mother ate breakfast this morning.

  “She did?”

  “Yup. Oatmeal and raisins.” It may not sound like progress, Regina says, but this is the first solid food my mom has eaten since she got out of the hospital. Until now, all Regina could get her to swallow was a few sips of Ensure. “Baby steps, Anna. Baby steps.”

  “What is she doing now?” I ask.

  “Sleeping.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m right here in the living room with her, honey. I can see her chest rise and fall. She’s fine.”

  I consider telling Regina about my dream, but decide that it is something I will keep to myself. Instead I tell her about our big day ahead. Harper planned the whole thing. We will drive to Stone Mountain—“the largest exposed piece of granite in the world”—and ride the cable car. We will visit Martin Luther King Jr.’s gravesite. We will drive around Midtown and see all the sights—the historic neighborhoods and Piedmont Park. Even though it’s completely touristy, we will visit the World of Coca-Cola and have lunch at Underground Atlanta. Finally, we will cap off our day at the Peachtree Center for some shopping and dinner at the Sun Dial.

  “Whoa,” Regina says. “Fun.”

  “Yeah.”

  Through the sliding glass door I see Marnie shuffle into the kitchen in her neck brace, with her two bottles of milk. She very stiffly puts them in the refrigerator.

  “I have to go,” I tell Regina.

  “Have a ball, honey,” she says.

  “I will.”

  “Don’t worry about your mom. She’s in good hands.”

  “Okay.”

  When I hang up, I picture Regina cupping her big, strong palms together, holding the most fragile egg.

  CHAPTER

  15

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, we are back on the plane. Marnie is quiet. I am looking at the hundreds of pictures I took with my phone. The Sisters, hamming it up on a cable car. Harper, sucking ice cream out the bottom of a cone. Presley, carrying Scarlett on her shoulders. Caro, hanging upside down from a Coca-Cola sign. Marnie, doing the robot in her neck brace.

  My favorites are the ones from the Sun Dial. Last night, we got all dressed up and ate d
inner 723 feet above the city. We had a 360-degree panoramic view of the Atlanta skyline. It was surreal. It felt like I was eating shrimp cocktail on another planet. I was older up there, more sophisticated. I used three different forks and drank virgin piña coladas.

  I thought I would feel like a tagalong on this trip, but I didn’t. They made me feel like I was one of them. And unless Marnie tells me I can’t, the next time she goes to Atlanta, I am going with her.

  After I look at the pictures so many times they are burned on my brain, I put away my phone, sit back in my seat, and think, Maybe I’ll go to Clemson. Maybe I’ll pledge Tri Delta. Maybe, after I graduate, I’ll move to Westside Atlanta. Wouldn’t that be the life? Eating breakfast every morning with your four best friends, laughing all the time, going out every night?

  And then Marnie ruins it. “I’m sorry, Anna,” she says.

  I hate when that happens. When the perfect bubble you’ve been blowing pops in your face.

  “For what?” I say.

  “For … all of this … I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It was fun. Isn’t that why we came?”

  “It was—” She tries to look at me, but she can’t turn her head. So she shifts her whole body in the seat. “This stupid neck brace. I feel like an idiot.”

  “Don’t feel like an idiot.”

  “I do, though. I wanted this trip to be different.”

  I think about when we got back to the apartment last night. I assumed the Sisters would stay up all night, reminiscing and painting each other’s nails. Instead, they went straight for pajamas.

  “Wait,” Marnie protested. “It’s our last night together. Aren’t we going to hang out?”

  And Scarlett said, “I have to get up early. Work.”

  “Me too,” Caro said.

  Scarlett said she had to get up early and quit her temp job. “You’ll just have to come visit again, Marn,” she said. “Or move back.”

  There was a flurry of hugs and kisses and It was so great to see you’s, until it was just me and Marnie in the living room and Harper standing in the doorway, wearing a blue baby-doll nightgown that made her look even taller than usual.

  “You guys need anything?” Harper asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Marnie said. She was just sitting on the pullout couch in her Clemson sweatpants, pumping. She had a funny expression on her face—the kind where you’re trying really hard to look cheerful but your eyes give you away.

  Which is how she looks now.

  “I want to be a good role model,” she says. “For you.”

  “You are,” I say. And she is. I hate to admit it, but she is. The whole time Harper, Scarlett, Caro, and Presley were drinking beer, Marnie drank iced tea. She wouldn’t let Harper drive. She said no to cigarettes. She called my dad so he wouldn’t worry.

  Marnie tries to shake her head, but she can’t. “Fighting with your father in front of you … it wasn’t fair.”

  For a second I don’t even know what she’s talking about. Then I remember the towels. You call that fighting? I think. You should have seen him and my mother.

  “Leaving Jane, dragging you here … I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m still … figuring things out. How to be married. How to be a mom. How to not … erase myself in the process. Does that make any sense?”

  “Kind of,” I say.

  “I needed…” Marnie sighs deeply. “I guess I just needed to check in with the old me. To make sure she was still there.”

  “Is she?”

  “I think so. It’s just … weird … I thought we would all move on to the next phase together. We’d have our crappy entry-level jobs and our wild nights out and then we’d all fall in love, and be in each other’s weddings, and have babies together, you know? I never thought I’d be doing it alone.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “I know. It just feels that way.” Marnie fiddles with her necklace. “I had all these friends, you know? In the Tri Delt house? And then half of us moved to Atlanta together, which was great, because it was basically an extension of college. But then, suddenly I meet your dad and I’m pregnant and I’m moving to Rhode Island. And now I have this baby, who I absolutely love, but I’m home with her every day and we’re not exactly having stimulating conversations. And the other moms I’ve met…” Her voice trails off.

  “What?”

  “They’re just … I don’t know … older. They already have their little groups. When I took Jane to story hour? At the library? None of the other moms even talked to me. They just looked me up and down and went back to their conversations. You know? Like I wasn’t good enough.”

  “They’re jealous.”

  “What?”

  “They’re jealous. Because you’re so pretty.”

  Marnie waves a hand in the air like I’m being ridiculous.

  “It’s true,” I say.

  I remember the first time I saw her. How mad I was. How I wished, for my mom’s sake, that Marnie were plain-looking, even ugly. Dad’s ugly new girlfriend. But wouldn’t that have been worse, in a way? Even more ego crushing for my mom? Marnie couldn’t win, I guess. She was doomed to be hated either way. And now I feel kind of bad. All year I have given her the cold shoulder. If I were a mom at library story hour, I would have ignored her, too. It never occurred to me that she might be lonely. She has my dad and Jane. The perfect little family. What more could she need?

  “So, what…” I say. “Do you wish you still had your crappy entry-level job? And your wild nights out?”

  “Sometimes,” she says softly.

  “You could go back to work,” I suggest. And then, almost as an afterthought, “You and my dad could go out for a wild night and I could babysit.”

  “Thanks, Anna.” Marnie smiles a little. Then, “I really do love him, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “When I met him … we met in the first month of my first real job. My first sales conference. I know this sounds stupid, but I was really excited about that conference. I guess I wish … if that had been my hundredth conference, if I had been thirty-three instead of twenty-three … But you can’t choose when you fall in love. It just happens, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Like I’ve ever been in love.

  “Remember Harper’s toast? At the rehearsal dinner?”

  I nod.

  Harper gave this funny speech comparing people to bagels and describing the kinds of bagels she could and could not be friends with. Pumpernickel: there for you in an emergency. Marble: two-faced. French toast: overly sweet. Onion: nice to hang out with occasionally, but sticks around too long and can’t take a hint. The everything bagel, Harper told us, was the noblest bagel. The all-of-the-above friend, the partner for life.

  “I remember,” I say.

  I also remember how I felt when Harper said that Marnie and my dad were everything bagels. Pissed. If anyone was an everything bagel, my mom was an everything bagel. She was the partner for life.

  “Right,” Marnie says. “That’s what Harper told everyone. That your dad and I were made for each other. But then she drank a bunch of margaritas and cornered me in the bathroom and told me she thought I should wait. I shouldn’t marry him yet. I was too young. Anna, do you know what I did? I got mad. I accused her of being jealous. Of not wanting me to be happy. We had this big fight, the night before my wedding. And you know what, she was right! I was too young. Sometimes I feel like I’m … just … I don’t know … playing house. But the thing is, I love your dad. And Jane and you. And I feel so lucky. And I’m really sorry I dragged you into my drama.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. I’ve been an emotional roller coaster lately.”

  Emotional roller coaster? Really? If my mother is the Goliath ride at Six Flags, with 194-foot drops and 102-foot reverse loops, Marnie is the kiddie coaster.

  “I think it’s the hormones.”

  “No offense,” I say, “but you’ve got noth
ing on my mom.”

  “Oh, Anna. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” I say, cutting her off. “Just … I’m glad we came.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. I had fun.”

  Silence for a moment.

  Then, apropos of nothing, I say, “Bob Ferrari.”

  And Marnie laughs, like I knew she would.

  * * *

  My father and Jane are waiting in baggage claim. Marnie runs—literally runs, neck brace and all—to meet them. She unstraps Jane from the BabyBjörn, hugs her, leans into my dad, and bursts into tears.

  “Hey,” my father says gently. “Hey, bucking bronco.”

  Is it my imagination, or are his eyes shiny, too? Sheesh. Talk about drama.

  “Hi, Anna,” he says. He puts an awkward arm around my shoulders. This is how we do the hug thing.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Marnie is now ripping off her neck brace and kissing Jane everywhere. Ear. Cheek. Belly. She’s going to eat her, it looks like.

  “How was the trip?” my father asks me.

  “Good,” I say.

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Marnie holds up one of Jane’s feet. Polka-dot sock. She holds up the other one. Stripes.

  “What can I tell you?” my father says. “We had a wild time. We made sales calls. We ate organic rice cereal.”

  Marnie smiles. They kiss, pull apart, then kiss again.

  “Don’t mind us,” I say. I look at Jane, who’s peering at me over Marnie’s shoulder. “Your mom and dad are gross, huh?”

  CHAPTER

  16

  AT LUNCH THE NEXT DAY, Sarabeth holds up one of the flyers that have been posted around school. Got talent? SHMS Talent Show: Friday, November 4, 7:30 p.m.

  “We need a name for our act,” Sarabeth says, and right away Nicole says, “The Moon Goddesses.” Shawna snorts, but that doesn’t stop Nicole and Chloe from coming up with a bunch of other gems. The Widdershins. Mortar and Pestle. Black Magic.

  The rest of us exchange looks.

  “We are not naming ourselves anything Wiccan related,” Shawna says.

  “Fine,” Nicole says. “Why don’t you come up with your own name, then? We’re not even in your act.”