This was my unfortunate calm. Unfortunate because it quickly snapped.
Almost like a switch flipping, I felt hot, and angry and sad, and stupid and a million other fucking things all at once. I felt too many things. Way too many to hold onto or control.
Like a rushing tide all of my fears and my worries came flying at me at once. My neck prickled with hot irritation. My skin feeling itchy and warm. I could feel my jaw start to tighten, my teeth grinding in the back of my mouth, my muscles constricting into a tight pull that hurt. Finally, my vocal cords worked their way back from being frozen, everything else still a blur.
“Melissa, what the hell is wrong with you?” I asked.
“What?” she said, sounding caught off guard.
“What. The.Hell. Is wrong with you?” I repeated. “Why would you do this without asking me?”
Straightening her shoulders she had the nerve to look at me like she didn’t expect me to ask this. She crossed her arms over herself and jutted her entitled fucking chin into the air as she said, “You’ve wasted this whole summer aimlessly. I thought this would give you some direction.”
I just looked at her. Around me I vaguely registered that the boys had gravitated toward us, and the girls had stopped their tittering in the kitchen to listen on.
Lis fidgeted under the sudden attention. “We’ve all been Ceci. If you don’t like RIU you can transfer somewhere else later.”
Aimless. Waste. The words felt like little knives in my gut. Stabbing me right where I’d tucked the hope that my family would actually accept my chosen future. Leaving me bleeding any aspirations of ever living up to the rest of them dry.
Blinking, I realized it wasn’t the folder I dropped earlier, but the tortillas. The dish now on the floor in small, fragmented pieces all around us, the rest of our family alert and cautiously watching the scene in front of them.
I watched the little blue folder as it shook in my already shaky hands, whispering hoarsely, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“What?” she asked again, like I wasn’t speaking English. That just made me madder.
“I’m going to kill you!” I said again, louder. Charging straight over the broken glass I stomped toward my sister as I pointed the little folder her way, launching the papers at her chest. “I should take your fucking grad school and shove it down your throat!”
“Agh!” Was Lis’s only response. Sliding around the island in her stocking clad feet, she scooped up a big flat pan to protect herself.
I scanned the kitchen too, clocking the fruit bowl in the middle of the island and picking up the little round orbs inside without a second thought. Lis looked horrified. She backed away from the kitchen slowly, holding her hands and the pan out in front of her placatingly. “Ceci. Let’s use our words. Calm down and we’ll talk about this.”
I threw the first piece of fruit. It bounced off the center of the pan and thudded down to the wooden floor with a thump.
“What? Like we talked about grad school?” I asked, an apple flying from my hand next.
“Ceci!” someone roared. I couldn’t care less. I was angry. So angry. And I was sick and fucking tired of this, dammit. I threw another fruit.
“Was it not enough, Lis? Is it not enough that you fucking hate your job and your life on your own? Did you have to try to drag me into it too?”
“What!” she squeaked. Lowering the pan, she flicked an anxious gaze to Ox. This left her exposed, and I chucked another fruit at her, knocking her shoulder in a perfect hit. She yelped and scuttled a few more steps backward. “That’s not fair! And it’s not true!”
“Nothing’severfair for you!” I said, tracking her out of the kitchen and throwing more fruit as she backed away. She regressed into the main living area just as I ran out. Dropping the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter, I stared at her but I didn’t see my sister. I saw all the insecurities of the summer just piling up into one shitty mess. “You’re always judging everyone else and when someone gives it back, you run away! You always want what everyone else has. Well here, Lis. I want to fight, so you must want it too.”
She paused, dread in her eyes. I paused, fire in mine.
It only took one step forward before she was turning and running. Opening her lungs and screaming, “Ox!”
We were no strangers to a fight between us sisters. This reminded me of when we were kids and would get into it over almost everything. Lis was always the runner, Alta was the one to stay and fight, and Ox was always the one to break us up. But unlike those times, we weren’t kids anymore. I knew I should probably know better, but she should know better, too.
I chased Lis, determined to catch her and (if not deliver on my promise) at least shake her a little for being somean! I know sometimes I could get mouthy or even a little rough around the edges, but I had never been so careless as to dig my salt stick into my sister’s wounds. She was my big sister, and maybe she didn’t really know how much she’d be hurting me with the gesture (Isure didn’t until just now) but she could have just asked. God,bothof them. They could have just come straight out and asked me.
Now talking was out the window. As I chased her around, dodging my brothers and ducking the Fergusons, talking waswayout the window. I was so mad. So, so mad. And I had developed blinders. Literally chasing her down like I was on a hunt.
As me and Lis played cat and mouse, the rest of them wised up, getting two steps ahead of us without us even knowing. By the time I ran Lis into a hallway and to a dead end, Clinton Ferguson was already waiting there. At which time he simply hooked a finger into the back collar of Lis’s button-down blouse and pulled, stepping in front of her and slipping his hands into his pockets as he guarded her there—an unenthusiastic expression on his face. Mattí had slid between them and me, blocking me from the front while the rest of them were standing behind me, closing me in. Everyone looked horrified.
“Ceci, stop it,” Mattí said as he tried to reach out to me. I jerked away from him before he could touch me. He grumbled, “Just take a walk and calm the hell down!”
I didn’t answer.
