Backlash Read online

  In memory of my father, Stanley Paul Darer, who taught me to observe and, more importantly, to care about the world around me

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE: NOW

  LARA

  SYDNEY

  BREE

  SYDNEY

  LIAM

  BREE

  LARA

  SYDNEY

  BREE

  LARA

  LIAM

  SYDNEY

  LIAM

  LARA

  PART TWO: TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  LIAM

  LARA

  BREE

  LIAM

  LARA

  BREE

  LARA

  LIAM

  BREE

  SYDNEY

  BREE

  LIAM

  LARA

  BREE

  LARA

  PART THREE: NOW

  SYDNEY

  BREE

  LIAM

  LARA

  BREE

  SYDNEY

  LARA

  SYDNEY

  LIAM

  BREE

  SYDNEY

  BREE

  EPILOGUE: TWELVE MONTHS LATER

  LARA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY SARAH DARER LITTMAN

  COPYRIGHT

  THE WORDS on the screen don’t make sense. They can’t.

  He says: You’re an awful person.

  He says: You’re a terrible friend.

  He says: I know you’ve been checking out dresses for the homecoming dance.

  He says: What makes you think I’d ever ask you out?

  He says: I’d never be caught dead at the school dance with a loser like you.

  He doesn’t say it in a private message. He posts it publicly, on my Facebook wall, where everyone can see. Twenty-five people have already liked what he wrote. Even people I thought were my friends. Why would anyone like something that mean?

  A few people have posted defending me, saying that I’m not a loser, that he’s a jerk for posting that.

  But my eyes keep going back to Christian’s words. I don’t understand. I thought we were friends. I thought we were more than friends.

  Wasn’t he flirting with me? Did I get that wrong, too?

  My fingers tremble on the keyboard as I IM him.

  What did I do wrong? I don’t understand.

  I wait for him to answer, so numb with hurt and panic that I can’t even cry.

  When the answer comes, I wish it hadn’t.

  He says: You’re a loser. The world would be a better place without you in it. GOOD-BYE, LOSER!!!

  My lungs feel paralyzed. I can’t breathe. Why is he saying this? What changed from yesterday to today?

  Tears roll down my cheeks as I type back.

  Why? WHY?!!!!?????????

  But when I press Return, it won’t let me send it. He’s blocked me.

  I hit the keyboard in frustration, shaking my head. No, no, no.

  I can’t ask him why. I can’t ask anyone why.

  The only person left to ask is me.

  LARA’S HOGGING the bathroom — again. I swear it’s like this every single night. She gets in there first, takes forever, and uses up all the hot water. She better leave me some tonight because I have to wash my hair. I’ve got auditions tomorrow for Beauty and the Beast, the eighth-grade musical. Maddie, Cara, and I have spent, like, forever practicing our audition pieces, and the last thing I want is for Ms. Brandt to be distracted from my acting and singing talent by gross hair.

  I knock on the door for the second time. Okay, this time I’m banging more than knocking. “Lara, come on! Hurry up! You’ve been in there for forty minutes!”

  Tonight she’s even more annoying than usual. She doesn’t even respond with Go away. I’ll be out in a minute! or something typically charming and Lara-like. There’s just dead silence, which makes me even more angry and frustrated. I give one last loud bang with my fist and stomp down the stairs to complain to Mom.

  My mother is in that post-dinner “I’m finally sitting down and reading my boring political papers so don’t bother me with your arguments” kind of mood.

  “Mom. I swear, if I have to take another cold shower —”

  “Sydney, I have been sitting down for all of” — she checks her watch — “three minutes. I am not getting involved until I’ve had at least ten minutes to unwind.”

  “But, Mom …”

  “Ten minutes, Syd,” she says, giving me her palm and going back to whatever deathly dull papers she’s reading for her position on the city council. She’s muttering something about budget cuts as I walk away.

  Maybe if I started acting all moody and depressed like Lara, Mom would give me a pass on being a jerk, too. Even now that Lara’s doing better, my parents let her get away with stuff because she was so depressed before.

  If I were into all that stupid cheerleading like Lara, I’d make them do this cheer:

  2-4-6-8

  Who’s the girl that’s REALLY great?

  Sydney! Sydney!

  HELLO?!!

  I stomp back upstairs and bang on the door again. “LARA! GET OUT OF THERE! I need to take a shower!”

  Silence. No running water. No splashing. No snarky reply. Nothing.

  That’s when I get the first tingle of unease, the feeling that something is different tonight. I try turning the door handle, but it’s locked. It’s not the locked door that freaks me out. Lara always locks the door when she’s in the bathroom. It’s the silence. It’s the fact that she’s not yelling back at me through the door.

  “Lara?” I call, concern starting to nudge out anger. “Are you okay?”

  Nothing. Not even the tiniest movement of water. Panic rises to the back of my throat as I run downstairs, almost tripping on the last three steps.

  “Mom — I think something’s wrong with Lara!”

  That’s what it takes to get Mom’s attention away from her paperwork.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s locked in the bathroom, and she’s not answering when I bang on the door.”

  Mom’s face pales. She throws the papers on the table and runs for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I follow her, feeling more scared as I climb each step.

  “Lara! Open the door! NOW!” Mom shouts, knocking on the door with both fists.

  Nothing. Still nothing.

  Mom rattles the handle and shakes the door, like that’s going to magically make it open.

  “Do you hear me, Lara? Open the door!” she yells.

  More nothing. Scary omigodwhatishappeninginthere nothing.

  Mom turns to me.

  “Call nine-one-one,” she says. “And Dad.”

  I stand there, shocked, staring at her. 911? That means …

  “NOW, Sydney!”

  I race into my parents’ bedroom, grab the phone, and dial 911.

  “What’s the nature of your emergency?” the dispatcher asks.

  “My sister’s locked in the bathroom and she won’t answer. And she’s been in there for a really long time.”

  “What’s your location?”

  I give her the address, expecting her to send an ambulance, but she’s got more questions.

  “How old is your sister?”

  “She’s fifteen,” I tell her.

  “Are you sure she’s in there?”

  “Yes!”

  “What gives you reason to think this is an emergency?”

  “Because she’s not answering!” I shout, feeling my throat start to close up.

  “Do you have any reason to believe she’s come to harm?”

  “Ye
s! That’s why I’m calling you!”

  “Why do you think she might have come to harm?”

  No one in my family wants to admit this publicly but … “She had depression and saw a shrink and stuff.”

  “Has she made any suicidal comments?”

  “Not recently, at least that I know of, but she did a few years ago.”

  “Okay,” the dispatcher says. “Ambulance and police are on their way to you.”

  I slam the phone in the cradle and run back into the hallway. Mom’s jamming at the lock with some weird metal pin thing.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s supposed to be the key to unlock the door from this side,” Mom says from between gritted teeth. “Except it’s not working.”

  That’s when I realize I forgot to call Dad. As our resident handyman, he would have had the lock open by now for sure.

  I slip into my bedroom and call him on my cell. “What’s up, sugarplum?” he asks.

  “Come home,” I tell him. “It’s Lara.”

  “What happened?”

  He’s suddenly brusque. Lara’s crises do that to our parents.

  “She’s in the bathroom with the door locked and won’t answer. Mom’s trying to get the door open. I called nine-one-one,” I say in a rush.

  Just then the sirens, which had been faint in the distance, start getting loud down the street. I hear him curse under his breath.

  “Tell Mom I’m on my way,” he says before hanging up on me.

  Mom’s still struggling unsuccessfully with the lock and is mumbling her own angry curses.

  The sirens are now earsplittingly loud — the ambulance must be right outside.

  “I’ll go let them in,” I say just as the doorbell rings.

  It’s not the ambulance. It’s the police. A policewoman, uniformed, with a gun at her hip.

  She flashes me her badge.

  “Officer Hall, Lake Hills PD. I have a report of a fifteen-year-old female with a psychiatric history who is nonresponsive and locked in a bathroom?”

  I nod. “My sister.”

  “Where?” she asks.

  I point up the stairs, and she goes up without asking me any more questions. I hear Mom talking to her, starting to cry, frustrated; she still hasn’t been able to get the door open and “Why isn’t the stupid key working?” Explaining how Dad got it in case Lara locked herself in and tried to do something stupid.

  The police lady says she’ll take over with the key thing, speaking in a low, steady voice to calm Mom down.

  So my parents expected something like this to happen? Am I the only one who didn’t?

  I start wondering why I’m always the last to know about stuff that ends up affecting my life, but my brain is too busy being blown into a million shards by a new round of sirens — this time the ambulance. I let the EMTs in and point them up the stairs. This time I follow. By the time we get up there the bathroom door is open, and I glimpse the pill bottles lined up on the edge of the bathtub like birds on a telephone wire.

  Oh, Lara. Why?

  The EMTs ask Mom to leave the bathroom so they have room to work on Lara. The policewoman leads my mother out into the hallway. Mom is crying. She tries to look back into the bathroom, but the EMT guy shuts the door.

  Work on her. I guess that means Lara’s still alive. For now at least.

  I can’t say how many times I’ve wished that I were an only child. But now I’m whispering frantic prayers, over and over, that I won’t be.

  AS SOON as I hear the sirens coming down our street, I know. They’re coming for Lara. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. I mean, she’s been messed up for a while. Since we were in middle school. Not everyone knows that, because her parents tried to keep it hush-hush, with her mom being a politician and all. But I know, because we used to be best friends. Her being so messed up is part of the reason we’re not anymore.

  I pick up my cell and call Mom, who’s still at work.

  “Hi,” she says when she picks up. “I’ve got an important showing in two minutes, so make it snappy.”

  I look out the window. “There’s a police car out front of the Kelleys’ house. They came down the streets with lights and sirens.”

  “That’s not good,” Mom says, stating the obvious.

  Just then I hear more sirens. “I think an ambulance is coming, too,” I tell her.

  “I hear them,” she says. “Listen, my clients just pulled up. I’ve got to go. Just hang tight and stay inside so you don’t get in the way. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “Do you think she’s —”

  “I don’t know, Bree. I’ve got to go. This could be a huge commission. Just stay in the house.”

  And the line is dead silent.

  “What’s going on?” my brother, Liam, asks. His freckled face shows only typical eighth-grade-boy curiosity as he comes to the window. He is alternately red and blue from the flashing lights on the police car.

  “Something’s going on at the Kelleys’,” I say.

  “Wow, I never would have guessed that by the police car that’s parked out front. Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

  Liam can be such a snot. And him being smarter than me is something my mother never fails to point out.

  “So figure it out yourself, Einstein!” I retort.

  We can hear the sirens getting closer. I see curtains twitch across the way. Everyone is wondering what is going on.

  And then they get louder and louder, and we see the ambulance turn onto our street. Liam sticks his fingers in his ears as sirens scream deafeningly outside the window. Then they stop, with a weird hiccup, as the ambulance screeches to a halt behind the police car.

  We watch, our noses pressed to the glass, siren lights still flashing as the medics run to the Kelleys’ front door. Curious neighbors have started gathering outside.

  “I’m going to go out and see what’s happening,” Liam says.

  “No!”

  He stares at me, shocked by my sudden, vehement command.

  “Mom said to stay inside till she gets home.”

  “Why?” Liam asks.

  My brother was born asking that question. It’s like he’s wired to refuse to take no for an answer.

  “Because Mom said so, okay? Why can’t you just listen to her for once?”

  “ ’Cause she didn’t tell me,” the little brat says over his shoulder as he heads toward the front door. “And because the Kelleys are our friends.”

  “Liam. Mom said to stay inside.”

  He opens the door, ignoring me. Why does he always have to be such a pain? Especially now.

  “I’m going to tell Mom —”

  The door slams on my threat.

  The Kelleys are our friends.

  Were our friends, is more like it.

  I watch him drift toward the gathering crowd by the ambulance, sidling up to Spencer Helman from down the street and talking to him. I want to go out, too. I pick up my cell and decide to ignore Mom’s instructions. If she gives me a hard time, I’ll tell her the truth, which is that Liam left the house first.

  As I walk up to the crowd, one of the EMTs comes out of the Kelleys’ house with the policewoman. He opens the back of the ambulance and takes out a stretcher.

  My stomach turns over. A stretcher could mean anything from a corpse to a sick person going to the hospital, right?

  “What happened?” It’s one of our neighbors, Mrs. Gorski. She’s an old busybody, always looking out her window to see what’s happening on our street. A few years ago, Josie Stern skipped school and came home with a bunch of friends while her parents were at work. Guess who called her parents and told on her so she got grounded for a month? You guessed it — Mrs. G.

  “We can’t release any information at this time,” the policewoman says.

  The two of them wheel the stretcher back into the house.

  “I hope Syd’s okay,” Liam mutters. He’s strangely pale beneath his freckles.

  “I�
��m sure she’s fine,” I tell him. Because I know this has to be about Lara.

  “Maybe Mr. Kelley had a heart attack,” he says.

  I check the driveway.

  “He’s not even home,” I observe. “See, his car’s not here. Besides, Mr. Kelley is in pretty good shape. He’s not the heart attack kind of guy.”

  Unlike my father, who needs to lose weight, as Mom never stops reminding him. Dad has the physique of a middle-aged teddy bear.

  “I bet it’s the older girl,” Mrs. Gorski says, wagging one of her liver-spotted bony fingers for emphasis. “Laura. That one’s been giving them trouble for years.”

  How does she know? Does she, like, hide in the bushes and listen to conversations through open windows? Seriously, she can’t even get Lara’s name right.

  It’s not like she was Lara’s best friend for years. It’s not like she had to listen when Lara was depressed and kept talking about how she hated life and hated herself and hated her body and why did she have to be so fat — for hours. Not exaggerating. One time we were video chatting and it was 176 minutes of her complaining about life. I timed it. I finally lied and said I had to go, because I couldn’t take it anymore.

  High school was such a relief. Bigger place, new people. Made it easy to escape, to hang out with other girls.

  We were best friends. Then we weren’t. It happens all the time. Just read any teen-magazine advice column. There’s nothing unusual about our story.

  Except now there’s a police car and an ambulance parked outside Lara’s house.

  The front door opens and I hold my breath, waiting to see if Lara is alive or in a body bag.

  Two EMTs are wheeling out the stretcher … and … Lara’s strapped to it, with an oxygen mask over her face and an IV in her arm. She’s alive.

  I can breathe again. Just barely.

  But Mrs. Kelley is walking next to her unconscious daughter, holding her hand and sobbing. What does that mean? Does it mean there’s a chance she won’t make it?

  Sydney shuts the door behind everyone and walks to her mother’s car, her arms wrapped around herself like she’s eaten something bad and got a terrible pain in her stomach.

  This is so unreal. What did Lara do? Marci won’t believe this. I can barely believe it.

  But Marci doesn’t know yet. So I take out my cell and surreptitiously snap a picture of Lara’s pale face as they wheel her by on the stretcher.