Free Don't Fail Me Now by Una LaMarche Page B

the same time—which is funny, because that’s still what I do every single day.
    I’m tugging some leggings over my still-damp thighs when I hear the TV go off and feel a pang of guilt. I’ve barely spoken to my siblings all day, aside from some grunts in the car. And while I know I need to tell them about what happened, I just don’t know how. They’ve been through enough in the past forty-eight hours, and I can’t stand seeing them hurt again.Besides, I don’t even know if Buck’s really dying. All I have to go on is what Tim said, and he flat-out lied about Leah not being there with him. Before I do anything else, I should make sure that’s true, at least.
    I tiptoe across the hall into Aunt Sam’s room, which I usually avoid both because I fear her wrath and because of the
Hoarders
-level foot-high layer of wrinkled clothes and romance paperbacks littering the floor. Luckily her laptop is partially visible under a towel on the unmade bed. Hunched and hovering, trying to keep my wet curls from dripping any evidence of my presence onto the duvet, I turn it on and open a Google search box.
    â€œBuck Devereaux California,” I type quickly, keeping an ear open for the sound of a key in the front lock. No matches. Just a listing for Charles Buck in Georgia (work on your reading comprehension, Google), a Wikipedia entry about some old MLB player with our last name, and a reddit thread about the Milwaukee Bucks.
    â€œAllen Devereaux California” gets one legitimate hit, but when I follow the White Pages link, it turns out that guy is sixty-four years old. Try again.
    â€œDevereaux California dying” is a stretch and gives me nothing but unrelated obituaries and funeral homes. I even type in “hospice California,” thinking maybe I can call around to places and ask if he’s there, but without a city to filter by, there are enough listings that I’d be glued to my phone for a month straight.
    Then I remember what Tim said about finding me on Facebook, open a new window, and sign in to my account. Ironically, I only created it in the first place to search for Buck,when I was twelve. Now I have a couple hundred “friends,” but no one my age really updates. The top story in my feed is from one of Mom’s weird junkie pals/ex-babysitters named Violetta.
    Buck didn’t have a Facebook page five years ago, but I type his name into the search bar anyway, holding my breath. Nothing. I don’t even bother looking under Allen, since he would sooner show up at our door with confetti and one of those giant TV checks for eleven years’ worth of child support than identify himself by his given name on anything but government paperwork.
    â€œLeah Devereaux,” I type instead, holding my breath. Three profiles pop up, but two are way too old, and the last, very promising one, a super cute black teen with glasses, lives in Ontario. “Tim Harper,” I try, and even though I get eight names this time, I recognize him immediately. First of all, he’s listed as “Timothy,” which definitely fits with his wannabe-yuppie vibe, and he’s the only one who’s wearing something other than a wifebeater or suit and tie. I click on his photo, in which he’s leaning on a wooden fence with some kind of livestock in the background, and scan his page. His posts and all but his profile and cover photo are private, but he’s listed as a student at McDonogh, which is a swanky private school outside the city. And under “Family” there are three people: Jeff Harper, Karen Harper, and . . . Leah D. Harper. Bingo.
    I click on my long-lost half sister’s face, feeling what I know is a very modern sense of dread. A century ago, you could probably have a secret sibling and never know about it as long as they didn’t live next door or write you some kind of confessional letter while they were dying of polio. Now