Hot Potato

We sneak into abandoned places all the time. Well, Samantha and I do. Melissa hates when we do it, and she doesn’t even know we sneak in with backpacks full of beer. We’ve climbed the old water tower and we’ve left tags so many places…when we get back we always put a gold star on our old paper map of the town and now it’s mostly covered in this cloud of sparkly gold stickers like you’d get for good behavior in school, but this is like an anti-good behavior chart instead.

Out of all of us, Melissa is the most “what it says on the tin”, I guess. She’s loud and her hair is always weird colors and she got a straight edge tattoo when she was fifteen. Yes, we pointed out the irony of lying about her age to make a declaration about following rules. I guess she sees it as like when religious people do something bad for the greater good or in the name of Jesus or whatever.

Melissa was ten when Samantha was born and eleven when I came along and eighteen when my parents stopped trying to round out the family with four living kids. Now she’s almost thirty and she lives at home with my dad because she’s afraid he’ll randomly combust if she moves out. She started school on the west coast but after the first year my parents were officially getting divorced and she used it as an excuse to drop out and come back and do nothing. Now she works at the mall and she’s got a bad attitude about it.

Rebecca is buried downtown and sometimes I think the three of us try to be more than we can possibly be, because we’re trying to make up for her. We’re trying to pass her spirit between us like a non-corporeal hot potato, like somehow if we all sing and dance and cover old country clubs with glittery spray paint and cook recipes that stink up the whole house then maybe it won’t matter how many of Rebecca’s birthdays come and go while we’re huddled around her in a graveyard.

Sam and Mel and I celebrate the best we can, usually the night before, with grocery store sheet cake that we order with Rebecca’s name on it. We pick a theme and dress up and share our stories with her, keep her up to date. It never takes long because none of us wait more than a few weeks before we go back and see her. We drop off flowers and little notes that we bury under the dirt. Sometimes we leave awards we won at school. Melissa had to get a second acceptance letter when she got into college because she left it with Rebecca, and it had her login information to create a student account.

Our parents don’t like going to see Rebecca. It’s not surprising since they don’t like seeing any of us, it seems. Alive or dead we’re all just reminders of the stuff that didn’t work out for them. I don’t think my mom really wanted to be a mom. She wanted babies, that’s for sure, but she forgot or ignored that they tend to grow into full humans. And Rebecca will always be a baby, but mom doesn’t get to keep her—not really. She doesn’t like spending time with more than one of us at a time because we’re “too close” and we “leave her out” and I think she’s mad that Rebecca is just one more way we do that. She got so mad when she found out about the sheet cake, and that she hadn’t been invited. But she was busy with her new family, and sisters don’t send out invitations when they spend time together.

I think my dad just wanted a family to pop up around him and love him without him having to do any of the work. Mel hasn’t caught on that if she left, he’d only be upset because there’s no one sitting around lying to him about how involved he’s been in our lives. I think they blame Rebecca for not living because otherwise the family might have stayed together. It still would have been a lie, but it would have been a better hidden lie.

Maybe not.

Samantha has been angry since the day she was born, I think. She’s always coming up with these ways to express it, but she never wants to address it. When Rebecca died, she didn’t shed a single tear in public. She was six and she didn’t cry. Not when mom and dad told us what happened, not at the funeral home when everyone shuffled through to say how sorry they were, and not when we placed her tiny casket in the ground. She didn’t cry in family therapy, or on the bus when Tim Young teased us for having a dead sister. Kids tease other kids for the weirdest things.

Samantha did cry the first time she rode Space Mountain and she cries every time she watches Jaws. She cried when the Cubs made it to the world series. She’s never even been to Chicago; she was just really moved by how excited everyone else was. There were four different times Sam and I weren’t talking.

1.  She crashed my plastic Barbie Jeep into a huge tree in the backyard and it wouldn’t drive straight again. She was trying out some new tricks and insisted I trust her.

2. The year of her senior prom and my junior prom, she picked out the same dress as me even though I picked it first. She called seniority and said that because it was her last prom and my first I still had a chance to wear my first pick. I wouldn’t back down and neither would she and we wore the same dress to our respective proms and honestly I’m still pretty mad about it.

3. I asked Sam what a blowjob was when I was thirteen and instead of answering me, she told me she didn’t know. Instead of answering me, she told my mom that I had asked. She told Mel that I had asked, and she told her loudly, in the hall at school.

4. Sam applied to the same school Mel dropped out of, on the other side of the country, and she got in. She told me this information as we were sitting on the old water tower and we were drinking together and leaning against each other and making up constellations and what they meant about our future. She told me like it was just information you casually share with your sister that won’t dramatically change the entire family moving forward. Well, my parents probably won’t care, but it’ll change the family that matters.

Sam knew it would mess me up because she didn’t tell me she’d even looked at the school, let alone applied. Mel wrote a recommendation letter for her. The year she was there, she’d been on a scholarship and kept a 4.0 GPA in addition to qualifying for some advanced placement “global student” program or something. She didn’t apply anywhere else because she said if she hadn’t gotten in, she’d just leave. Like road trip across the country until she figured out what was next.

I guess I thought we’d stay here forever, where we all hate it equally. That game of hot potato doesn’t really work if one of us leaves the circle. The potato gets dropped and then where would we be? When Mel left there was a ticking clock, a sort of understanding that she’d be back before too long. If Sam left, though, she wouldn’t look back. She might send postcards, but they wouldn’t be too frequent, and none would have any good details in them. If there were any details, it’d be tough to tell if they were true or made up.

After a week or so of not talking to her, I told Sam that regardless of where she went, I was going with her. I’d drop out of school if I had to and drive around with her or find a way to finish school in California or graduate early and start earning credits at a community college. Sam tried Mel about my plan, and she lost her mind. She lectured me within an inch of my life and she must have treated Sam to the same, because all talk of the pacific ocean and school in the sun ended shortly thereafter.

That year, Rebecca’s birthday celebration was awkward. We all showed up but no one knew what to say, so I started things off.

“Hey girl. We’re back, and it’s your birthday again! The cake has green frosting this year and the bakery had some rainbow candles so we got those for you.” I put the cake on the ground and started cutting pieces, getting comfortable up against her headstone. “Everyone’s trying to get out of here, Becks. Mom peaced and she left town. She moved in with that guy she was seeing and now they’ve got a house together.”

“She took the dog.” Sam mumbled.

“She did. We’re all pretty pissed about that. I don’t know if she’ll be around tomorrow. She might not make it til later this week.”

“At least she’ll make it.” Mel joined in, taking her piece of cake. A corner piece. We always started with the corner pieces. “Eventually.”

“Probably.” Sam sat down, too.

“That all happened way faster than we expected, I think.”

“Way faster, right?” Mel asked. Sam nodded in agreement.

“Way faster. And hey! Sam got into school!” I looked over at her and she nodded again, but her eyes had gone dark. Everything was quiet, so I continued. “Mel’s store went beyond their sales goals this week.”

“It’s the change of the season—everyone’s shopping for vacation.”

“And I’m…I picked out classes for senior year.”

“She’s taking science fiction film.” Mel shouted with her mouth full. “An excuse to watch Princess Bride in school.”

“It’s a legit class! I have to write papers. I may as well write them about something I like!” Sam stood up and walked a few steps away, then stormed back.

“I can’t do this anymore. I have to go.”

“Just finish your cake, kid.” Mel pointed at the ground with her fork.

“No, Melissa. I have to GO. I can’t stay here a single day more. I love you guys…so much…but I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

“Slow down. Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. Hit the road.”

“I told you I’m going with you—”

“No. I’m going by myself. If I don’t go now, I’m going to keep staying and it’s going to kill me. And I’m staying for the sake of someone who’s already dead and I don’t want to…”

We didn’t talk about Rebecca being dead during birthday parties. Not before that night. But Sam had tears streaming down her face and we knew that this wasn’t an argument or a discussion, it was an announcement.

Sam drove off that night and we were sure we wouldn’t see her again until someone got married or had a kid.

 *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next morning, bacon and eggs were piled high on the kitchen table long before my dad woke up. Mel woke me and dragged me to the table.

“Whole wheat or regular pancakes?” Sam stood at the stove, flipping the first few flapjacks.

“Regular.” Mel and I answered in unison.

“With chocolate chips?” I asked.

“Already in progress.”

We’re all here, hating things together, trying to keep the hot potato moving. But one day, someone’s going to leave the circle for real. Someone has to. We’re all just afraid of being the one to let the potato drop.