Free The Good Sister by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

she’d assumed, that a lot of things about him weren’t as she’d assumed.
    “You know what they say,” Nicki used to tell her, with a big grin. “Whenever you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’!”
    Carley loved that clever saying, but she never repeated it because she tried to avoid using words like “ass”—unlike Nicki, who delighted in it.
    On that day, the day she found out she’d been voted Spring Fling princess, everything Carley had ever assumed about anything seemed to have been proven all wrong.
    She ran home from the bus stop to share her big news with Mom, who was so thrilled that of course she started crying, because that’s how Mom is.
    “Oh, Carley! Oh, I’m so proud of you! See? I told you! I told you!”
    Her joyful tears were contagious and Carley found herself crying, too. Crying and trembling and laughing in her mother’s embrace as they stood there in the front hall on a glorious winter afternoon when the sky was a deep, perfect blue and the sun was shining . . .
    Or maybe it wasn’t.
    Maybe Carley just remembers it that way.
    In any case, that day was drastically different from today.
    Drastically different, too, from the day not long after when Carley found out the truth: that it had all been a cruel prank.
    The social worker, Sister Linda, called Mom and told her.
    “Sweetie . . . are you okay?” Mom asked when Carley came home from school that afternoon.
    That time, Carley didn’t say she was fine.
    She said, simply, “No.”
    There were tears in Mom’s eyes, and this time, too, they threatened to be contagious.
    “You don’t have to go back there,” Mom said. “Not ever again. I’ll arrange for you to switch to Woodsbridge right away.”
    Woodsbridge—with Nicki.
    Carley longed to say yes; longed to leave Sacred Sisters behind without a backward glance.
    But . . .
    At Woodsbridge, she’d have to see Nicki every day. Plus . . .
    What are you going to do, Carley? Leave school? Let them win?
    She forced herself to tell Mom that she wanted to stay at Sisters. Then she went straight upstairs and shut herself into her room, where no one could see her as she wept toxic tears laced not just with grief, but with shame.
    Ever since that day, Mom has behaved differently toward Carley. Either she’s bending over backward to be nice, trying to engage her in awkward conversations, or she’s looking at her sadly, maybe critically, as if she wishes she could make Carley over into the perfect daughter.
    As if she’d been hoping I’d turned out differently, more like her. As if I let her down.
    Dad gives off pretty much the same vibe, when he’s around—which isn’t very often now that it’s tax season. He’s always busy at work, worried about losing his job like a lot of other people at his company.
    Only Emma treats her the same as always—which is, basically, like crap. But she almost welcomes her kid sister’s bad attitude these days, because it makes her feel like her old self.
    Carley tears the gold foil wrapper from another candy bar and crams the whole thing into her mouth. Chewing hard, she feels a twinge in one of her molars as the chocolatey caramel coats what is probably the beginning of another cavity.
    Great. She had perfect teeth until she turned thirteen.
    “You’re the lucky one,” Mom used to tell her. “You won’t even need braces like Emma.”
    No, but she needed two fillings and a root canal.
    There are worse things, even, than needles in your gums and drills in your teeth and braces.
    Worse things . . . like having everyone you know turn against you—including your ex-best friend.
    That, more than anything else, is what hurts. She could probably have handled everything the girls at school have dished out—the taunting, the snickering behind her back, even the Spring Fling nightmare.
    But what Nicki did? She can’t bear to even think about it.
    So don’t. It’s over. It happened months ago. Who cares about