Anything but Ordinary(9)
“I wish someone had said something.” Bryce took a deep breath, wheeled across the tile, and reached to open the door to her room.
The light was the same, hazed a little bit by the plants in the window wells. Dust swirled in the soft beams pouring in. Her trophies were gone from the dresser, and they’d taken down her John Wayne posters. A little part of Bryce expected her bed to be unmade like she’d left it. Her jeans to be on the floor. Her dirty dishes stacked on her dresser.
There was noise from upstairs—her parents were starting dinner. Bryce looked at her sister standing near the closet, turquoise fingernails tapping on her phone. “Well, at least there are no weird statues in here,” Bryce sighed.
“Right?” said Sydney. She put away her phone as Bryce wheeled back toward the door. “Hang on,” she said.
Bryce stopped.
“I just want to say this while Mom and Dad aren’t, you know, hovering.” Sydney looked down at her feet, twisting her shirt in her hands. “I’m sorry I was drunk when you woke up.”
Bryce almost wanted to laugh at how much like the old Sydney she looked just then. Like she was being forced to apologize for biting her sister.
“It’s okay, Syd.” She tried to smile reassuringly. “How often do you go out like that, anyway?” Bryce asked. She wondered every time she saw the dark circles around her sister’s eyes, or smelled her smoky clothes when she entered a room. What was Sydney doing? Who were her friends?
“Oh god, not you too.” Sydney stiffened. “I didn’t know you were going to wake up that night, okay?”
“Chill, Syd. I was just wondering.”
“Well, it’s none of your business, pastor.”
The look in Sydney’s eyes told Bryce it was time to let it go. But who was this person gazing coldly back at her? She flashed back to the girl who had come home crying from her first middle school dance, the silky dress they had picked out together wrinkled, the mascara she’d “borrowed” from Bryce smeared. Bryce remembered stroking her soft hair as Syd explained, between sobs, how the boy she liked didn’t want to dance with her. That felt like just a few weeks ago. Now Syd’s face was hard. She didn’t look like a girl who cried anymore.
“Hey, listen—” Bryce was going to ask her sister if they could just start over. Things had been off between them ever since she woke up. But Sydney had already turned back to her phone, making her way to the stairs.
“Look, I appreciate your concern and all,” Sydney said, taking the steps two at a time. “But I don’t need someone else telling me everything I do is wrong.”
Bryce wheeled around the front hall upstairs, feeling like a stranger. Like she should ask her mother for a tour, or something. Before, family photos had dotted the long entryway, as if introducing the house’s residents in grand fashion as you entered. But the photos now sat on a circular table hidden in the corner. She wondered if anyone ever looked at them anymore. Her eyes landed on a familiar shot: a picture of her at her first diving meet when she was seven, her hair tucked beneath a cap and goggles, her father and mother hunched down next to her, beaming in matching T-shirts. But most of the photos were new. Sydney with braces, Sydney at the wheel of the van, and another that made her stomach drop—the three of them looking pale and cold, standing outside of the hospital with a Christmas wreath. Their faces were drawn and tired.
The sitting room, too, had been sleekly remodeled, modern paintings made of streaks and dots hanging where the old paintings of Mississippi barges had been. Only the den had remained the same. She touched the ratty orange sofa with a sense of comfort. She opened the top drawer of her father’s desk, where he always kept the plans for the two-seater plane that he had been working on for years. They were there, rumpled from having been unfolded and folded a million times. And there was the small TV, a stack of DVDs on top of it. She and her dad would hole up here, watching tape together. She moved toward the pile of Vanderbilt diving-highlight DVDs, and paused. The last DVD was dated four years ago. She held it in her hand, a hard knot forming in her stomach. Why was there nothing more recent?
She didn’t want to know, but she was afraid that she already did. It was a relief when her mom called her to dinner.
In the kitchen, the Grahams sat facing each other on black, hard-backed chairs, eating Bolognese off of oversized white plates. The plates were so big, the food looked like dabs of paint.
“This isn’t bad, Beth. You haven’t made it this way in forever,” her father said.
“Maybe because we ate takeout every night for the last five years,” Sydney murmured, rolling her eyes.
“Mmm, gotta carbo-load,” Bryce said, ignoring her sister. “Just like before a meet. I’m going to walk tomorrow.”
“Bry,” her mother warned. “You’ve had a lot of excitement, you don’t want to push it.”
“Sure she does,” her dad chirped. Her mother stopped chewing. “Well, that’s why she’s progressing, Beth. Because she knows how to train properly.”
Her mother gave a fake laugh. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re an expert in physical therapy.”
“Unlike you, I’m trying to encourage—”
“I’m done,” Sydney interrupted, taking her napkin from her lap. “I have to go.”