Page 92 of The Starfish Sisters

The door was yanked open—angrily, I thought—and a girl stood there. It took me a full breath to realize it was Suze. Her yards of hair had been shaved off, and only a soft blonde fuzz covered her scalp. She wore a smocked shirt that belled out over her pregnant belly, so shockingly weird that I didn’t know what to look at first—head or tummy. She didn’t help, just stared at me with the tiniest quiver of her lower lip. Her eyes burned like eerie marbles in her face, bright bright blue. I felt embarrassed for her. And sad. And awkward. And hurt. She’d excluded me from everything. She had sex and never told me! How could we really be friends?

I didn’t know what to do or say or where to look. A roar filled my ears and I glanced over her shoulder to a window, where a thin curtain lifted in the breeze. “You’re going to freeze to death,” I said.

“Nah, I’m always hot.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”

I slid by her, turning sideways to slither by like a snake. The room was furnished with a single bed against the wall, a metal chest of drawers, and a desk with a gooseneck lamp. Over the surface were pencils and paper, drawings I couldn’t make out. “You’re drawing a lot.”

“Your grandma sent me some art supplies.”

“That’s nice.” I was standing in the middle of the room, waiting for some signal, some indication of what I should do. Like how did youact when somebody had been through something so big? My hands felt awkward beside my body so I tucked them in the back pockets of my jeans.

She ran a hand over her head, a soft blonde cap coming back, and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I look so weird,” she said. “He shaved my head to punish me.”

“You don’t,” I said, and did what felt like the only thing I could do—I hugged her. Her belly bumped into me hard, but I pushed my butt backward to make room and held her shoulders tight.

She sobbed silently, tears wetting my neck. “I hate him so much,” she said. “Hate him.”

“I know,” I said, understanding that she meant her father. “I know. I brought you some books.” I gave her the bag of paperbacks I’d collected. I had remembered that she’d wanted to readThe Driftersbecause Joel liked it, so I got that one, and some other things I thought she would like.

She looked in the bag, and pulled outThe Drifters. Tears filled her eyes and she dropped it back in the bag. “Thanks. I don’t really have much to do.”

“We should have my dad take us to Powell’s.”

“Hello?” she said, gesturing. “Jail.”

I ducked my head. “Sorry.”

We sat on the bed. An awkward silence rose, and I didn’t know where to look. Her eyes burned like spotlights from her face. Her skin was broken out. “I wish I could see the church burned down.”

“I should have taken a picture.” I rubbed my hands on my thighs. “How are things here?”

She gave a short, awful laugh. “Terrible. Every girl here is somebody who is thrown away.”

“No! You’re not thrown away. It’s only for a little while and you’ll be out.”

“I’m not going back to my dad’s house,” she said fiercely. “I’ll never live with him again. Ever.”

“Amma said he moved to some town in Texas.” I touched her hand, but I privately thought there was no way around her dad taking ownership of her again. He’d put her in here, and he would come back and get her.

“Have you heard anything from Joel?” I asked. I thought of the letter tucked away in my drawer.

She stared at me hard. “Back to crushing on Joel?”

“No!” I sucked in a breath. “Also, that was really mean.”

She looked away, but her mouth was still sullen. “Poor Phoebe. Life is so hard, isn’t it? Your poor dear parents divorcing.”

I blushed, painfully hard, and dug my fingernails into my palms. “Why are you being so horrible?”

“You’re the one! I’ve been in this place for nearly a month and this is the first time you’ve been here.”

“It’s hard to get here! And you’re kinda not easy right now.”

“Gosh,” she said sarcastically. “Sorry I’m not nice enough.” She rolled her eyes. “You just don’t get it, Phoebe. You’re so spoiled!”

“That’s not fair! My life is not perfect, either.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” She bent her head into her hands, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. The noise in her throat was filled with such frustration it might have come from a wild animal. “You think you get it, but you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like to live with a parent who hates you. Who hurts you.” Her spotlight eyes bored into me. “When he found out I was pregnant, he dragged me by my hair. He beat me with a belt until I couldn’t even stand up. And then he shaved my head.”