Page 14 of The False Flat

I took several deep breaths. I’d spent too much time in the bathroom. They were going to start thinking I was having an intestinal issue if I didn’t get back out there. I blotted my face with a tissue—pulled from a rustic wooden box—took one final deep breath, and opened the door, tripping over thoughts of what to do next.

CHAPTER 6

LIFE REALIZATION #4: FRIENDS ARE OVERRATED

“I’d be even luckier if you hadn’t had that third helping of roast,” William was saying as I entered the living room. “What will I snack on tonight, Deanna?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Is that how you treat your guests?” Grant feigned offense in a proper English accent.

“You aren’t a guest.”

“Still angry about that twig, I see.” Grant rocked back and forth on his feet beside the wheat-colored sectional in Deanna’s living room.

“It was the size of a tree! I could’ve really done some damage, possibly skinned my knee!” William glanced at me, affronted. “They’re one of my best features.”

I didn’t know what to do, so I stood, rapt with morbid fascination.

“Oh, here we go again,” Deanna said. “On their last bike ride, Grant ran into a twig . . . branch,” she corrected when William cleared his throat. “And it flew into William’s wheel. They won’t let it go.”

“You can’t help that you married a weenie, Deanna.” Grant gestured grandly with an imaginary sword, then slid it into the invisible scabbard around his waist as if he were the victor.

William sprang to his feet, dislodging a fluffy couch cushion, pulled from his hip, then passed nothing between his hands. “I beg to differ. In fact,” William said, stressing the two words, “I think it was all part of your elaborate plan. But”—he shifted the sword that only he and Grant seemed to be able to see into his right hand and pointed it at Grant—“my adept skills and catlike reflexes not only—”

“Did you say ‘inept’?” Grant interjected.

William lunged forward, stopping a sword’s length away from Grant, who inhaled and looked down his nose as if the tip of William’s blade were hovering just shy of his skin.

“You. Know. I. Didn’t,” William replied.

Grant moved sideways, rolled across the couch cushions, and leaped to his feet, drawing his nonexistent weapon once again.

I leaned toward Deanna. “Is this really happening?”

“Oh, it is. Though I’m a little surprised it’s happening in front of you this soon.”

“I . . .” This was like a Shakespearean flash mob in Deanna’s living room . . . with two guys . . . over a serving of pork roast.

“Oh, it’ll get worse if we allow it.” She turned to the men. “Stop it, children. You’re being ridiculous. William, knees are no one’s best feature.” She tossed her hair and reached toward the coffee table to pick up a small black box with the words OUR MOMENTS written in all caps on the front. “It’s time to play our game.” She opened the box.

“Game?” I asked. No one had mentioned a game.

“Have you ever played? It’s a get-to-know-you card game. I thought the four of us could play.”

I had a flash of fifteen-year-old me sitting next to my aunt Tif in a small waiting room as I bit my fingernails and slammed my heels together like that could transport me to a home where Brandon was. Tif had taken me to a therapist because she knew I was depressed, but she’d done it without my mother’s approval or knowledge. A little girl on the floor a few feet from our chairs drew numbers with faces and fancy clothes on a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. She was talking to them; she was soothing herself with them. I was transfixed by that little blonde head as she cheerily conversed with the numbers on the page, except Naughty Nine and Sinister Seven, whom she scolded and threatened with an eraser. It was the first time I’d smiled probably that whole year, but I stopped smiling when the door to the waiting room was flung open and my mother stood, red faced and tight lipped. She’d been running. She walked over to me, grabbed my arm, and lifted me to my feet.

She scowled at her sister. “How could you?”

“Aurora, she needs to talk to someone.” One of Tif’s hands wrung the other as she stood and followed us toward the door. I looked back at the little girl on the floor, and she smiled and waved at me, then said, “Bye, One.”

“Maybe if we’d done this when we were kids, when Mom . . .” Tif paused and then continued in the hallway: “Things might’ve been different.”

Aurora stopped. “You need to mind your own business.” She was calm. No one would’ve guessed she’d just plucked her daughter from a therapist’s office or that she would never speak to her sister again. Aurora looked straight into Tif’s eyes, and Tif nodded like my mother had said something. And that was it, the last time I saw Aunt Tif, the last time I’d entered a therapist’s office. I’d never understood how my mom had let her sister go like that, especially since their parents had been killed by a drunk driver when she was fifteen, and the two sisters were the only family each had.

“I’m . . . I’m afraid I need to go,” I stammered. I glanced at Deanna’s door. So very far away.

“Oh, come on. One question.”