Free What Happened to My Sister: A Novel by Elizabeth Flock Page B

creature?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Then I promise I won’t get mad,” I say. “What is it, honey?”
    “Um, well …”
    “Stop picking.”
    “Okay so I didn’t know it and I don’t think anybody did but today was dissecting day in lab because the frogs came yesterday and Mr. Taylor didn’t want to wait until the dissecting chapter because he can’t wait to rip open frogs and I told you I wasn’t going to do it and you said I didn’t have to, remember? You said I didn’t have to dissect a frog, you said that and so I told Mr. Taylor that you gave me permission to leave the room but he didn’t believe me so I waited but when I smelled the formaldehyde the frogs had been soaking in I told him I was sick at my stomach and needed to go to the bathroom and could I please have a hall pass and he gave me one and I left the room and it’s a good thing I did because I knew I was gonna hurl and if I’d done it in front of everybody I’d never be able to show my face in school ever again ever ever ever. It’s bad enough as it is.”
    “All right now, honey,” I say. “Remember what the doctor said about taking a breath in between every other sentence. It helps with the concentration.”
    She is so damn cute. I see her take a breath and blow it out like she was holding a bubble wand. God, I miss those days. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I just can’t figure out how she got to be almost thirteen so fast.
    “Okay good. That’s real good. Now go on.”
    “I made it to the girls’ room just in time and no one was there so I threw up and no one saw me. When I went back in the hall Icouldn’t figure out where I could go to hide until the bell for the next class and that’s how I came to be following the ninth graders to the auditorium, where they were having some assembly I didn’t know about which is weird because I always read the bulletin board but I never saw anything put up about a ninth-grade assembly so I wanted to know what all they were going to see because everybody knows ninth graders get to watch movies like all the time pretty much every day. No one even noticed me or if they did they ignored me so it was easy to hide in the back row of seats because they were empty because Mr. Learson said for everybody to gather up front—he didn’t want any lollygaggers he said. Lollygaggers. Lolly-lolly-lollygaggers … you know where we got that word? In the encyclopedia it says—”
    “Stay on the story, Cricket. Focus.”
    “Mom! You totally just ran that red light.”
    “It was yellow. Go on.”
    “Okay so then he talked into a microphone he really didn’t need because there weren’t many people there to not hear his voice it was just the ninth grade. He told them that because they had agreed to attended the assembly—”
    “ Attend the assembly, not attended . Go ahead.”
    “Because they had agreed to attend the assembly, and only if they signed in and out, they could have a half day on Friday and they all clapped and one kid even whistled and Mr. Learson had to say people, people, come on now, people! Then they showed a movie and Mama you would not have believed it—it was so gross I thought I might throw up all over again! With pictures of babies in bellies, killed little bitty babies on bloody hospital floors and sad-looking pregnant girls who looked real young to be having babies and Mama I was so embarrassed because they looked like Cousin Janey’s age and that means they did the nasty and do you think Janey’s done it, Mama? I don’t but do you? Has Janey gone all the way?”
    When I try to swallow, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and I realize my mouth’s been hanging open. If I let on how shocked I am, though, she might flitter on to another something and it will be like marching in quicksand getting her back to this. I know how it goes. There’s a time limit. So you’ve got to get the information you need real quick before it slips through your fingers