Free Wake by Lisa McMann Page A

“I’m sick,” she sniffles. “I can’t come in tonight.”
    Everyone is sorry. The secretary. The nursing home director. “Feel better soon, sweetie,”
    the director says.
    But Janie knows there is no “better.” This is it. This is her life. She falls back in bed.
    12:10 p.m.
    Janie drags her ass out of bed and, sitting on her bedroom floor, does the homework she didn’t do the previous night.
    She can’t stand getting behind in school.
    She works ahead, even.
    Her mother shuffles around the house, oblivious to Janie’s presence. The sleaze-bitch. It’s her fault for giving birth to me, she thinks. She’d blame her father, too, if she knew who he was. Briefly, she thinks of her mother’s kaleidoscope dream. Wonders if the hippie Jesus is her father. Wonders what happened that made her mother give up on absolutely everything. She’ll probably never know.
    Maybe it’s better this way.
    2:55 p.m.
    The phone rings. Janie’s mother answers it.
    “She’s at school,” she slurs.
    Janie didn’t know her mother ever answered the phone.
    4:10 p.m.
    Janie sits wrapped in a blanket on the couch, a roll of toilet paper next to her, watching The Price Is Right. Carrie lets herself in.
    “Hey, bitch,” she says cheerfully. “You missed a good one today. You sick?”
    “Hey. Yeah.” Janie blows her nose loudly in some toilet paper to prove it.
    “You look like hell,” Carrie says. “Your nose is all red.”
    “Thank you.”
    Carrie sits on the couch next to Janie.
    “Funny…Cabel looks like hell too,” she says lightly.
    “You sure you don’t have something you want to tell me?”
    “Pretty sure, yeah.”
    Carrie pouts. Then, she ruffles through her backpack and pulls out a folded piece of paper. She tosses it on the coffee table. “This is from him. You’re not preggers or something, are you?”
    Janie looks at Carrie. “Ha-ha.”
    “Well, jeez. Whatever it is, it’s got to be a big deal to keep you home from school. You haven’t missed a day since eighth grade. And, sorry to say, you might look like shit, but I don’t think you’re sick.”
    “Think what you want,” Janie says dully. “I think you have to have sex in order to get pregnant, last I heard.”
    “Aha, so it’s a sex thing!” Carrie shouts triumphantly.
    “Go home, Carrie.”
    Carrie grins. “You know where to find me. Sex tips and advice—just holler out the window.”
    Janie holds back an urge to strangle her. “Good-bye,” she says pointedly.
    “Okay, okay. I can take a hint.” She heads to the door and turns back to Janie, a curious expression on her face.
    “This, by chance, doesn’t have anything to do with Cabel messing with drugs this weekend, does it?” She blinks rapidly, grinning.
    “What?”
    “He’s sort of a dealer, I guess—or, you know. One of those guys who works as a gobetween. Whatever they’re called. So Shay danced with him at a party Sunday night. She was really high, though. I heard he got busted. Is that true?”
    Janie’s stomach twists and shreds.
    She’s going to be sick.
    “No,” Janie says slowly, “it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Tears well up in the corners of her eyes and she presses them back with her fingers. Carrie’s face falls. “Oh, shit, Janie. You didn’t know.”
    Janie shakes her head numbly.
    She doesn’t notice when Carrie leaves.
    October 19, 2005, 2:45 a.m.
    Janie lies awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. Arguing with herself. She knows she shouldn’t do it. But she has nothing to lose.
    Feeling like a total creep, she gets dressed and slips out of the house. Runs softly through the yards, avoiding the houses with dogs.
    Sneaks up to Cabel’s house and sits outside his bedroom window, in the bushes. She leans up against the house and waits. The bricks snag her sweatshirt. It’s chilly. She puts her mittens on.
    Her butt falls asleep.
    And her legs.
    She gets terribly bored.
    5:01 a.m.
    She slips away while it’s still dark, feeling like a