Cousins Forever (Snowy Cove High School Book 2) Read online

  Genna smiles and munches a radish.

  “Give!” Briana says.

  “Yeah, give,” I say. “I want my lunch to be all special, like a fancy tiny picnic for one. It looks like you should be in a fairy tale.”

  In front of me, my Band-Aid-colored cafeteria tray holds soggy, deep-fried fish sticks, oozing oil, accompanied by not nearly enough french fries.

  What Genna has looks like something that English chef, Jamie Oliver, would approve of. He would weep over the state of school lunches if he saw what I was chomping down on.

  I've watched him on TV and YouTube videos, and he's big on colorful food, like green salads and blueberries. He says anything in its fresh, natural form has more nutrients, and natural color is a strong indicator. Purple, red, and orange are good colors for food. Beige, by comparison, is the color of the reconstituted fish parts I'm currently dunking in tartar sauce, which is ecru.

  My thoughts about colors are interrupted by the ruckus behind me. My cousin and her new friend Dana are banging on the table and laughing. I scowl at Genna, who shakes her head disapprovingly.

  More laughter rings out across the cafeteria.

  I say to Genna, “They can't possibly be having that much fun over at the Band geek table.”

  “What could be so hilarious?”

  “They're making noise for the sake of noise. For attention.”

  Down at the other end of our own table, sharing it as they usually do, are the Annual Committee Gals, as Principal Woo calls them. Amanda, Autumn, and Cameron are pretty close, and while Briana, Genna, and I don't consider them part of our closest friends, they are in the next circle out, and we always invite them to our parties.

  Amanda, at the end, stands up to get a better look at Genna's Bento box, then says to me, “Cameron tells me your sister's driving you nuts.”

  “She's my cousin, not my sister.”

  “Right! That's what I meant. How does your cousin like life here in The Cove?” She twirls one of her black dreadlocks and waits for an answer.

  “I don't know,” I say.

  Briana interrupts to say, “How do you not know? You do live together.”

  Amanda says, “Does she like it here in The Cove or not?”

  Now they're all staring at me, waiting for an explanation.

  “I never asked if she likes it here.” I mash at my deep-fried fish parts with my plastic fork. “She seems to be settling in. Obviously. I think she's mad at me right now, about what, I don't know. She's a bit ...”

  “Scary,” Genna says.

  Amanda glances over to the Band geek table and then back at me. “Odd.”

  “Misunderstood,” Briana says.

  I take another bite of my fish stick, and within a few seconds, the girls move on to another topic—the graffiti that's been appearing on school walls recently. I try to focus on enjoying the scant fries remaining on my tray, with as much ketchup as possible, but I feel uncomfortable, like my shoes are too tight and all my clothes are scratchy.

  My friends called my cousin scary, odd, and misunderstood. All of those words would be fine for me to say, but not for them. They don't even know her. She's my cousin.

  Genna waves her hand in front of my face. “Lainey, do you want to learn to make your own Bento boxes?”

  “No, but I want to eat them.”

  “I'll make you a list of where you can get things in town. Like this.” She holds up a thumb-sized bottle with a little cartoon frog head on top. “Soy sauce,” she says, squirting a little out onto her noodles.

  “Sounds complicated,” I say. “How about I hire you to be my personal Bento chef?”

  She tilts her head and looks up at the ceiling for a moment, considering it. I'd meant it as a joke, but it's not that crazy, actually. I get money from my parents to buy lunch every day, and they'd be happy to know I'm eating healthy food.

  After I found out about her family losing the house, she admitted her allowance had been all but suspended. Her new clothes, including the yellow jeans, were from a consignment store.

  “Genna.” I take her hand and commit to my role, like we're doing an improv skit in Drama. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my personal chef.”

  She fans her face with her free hand. “I said I wouldn't cry. But, yes, a thousand times yes.”

  Briana pushes away her brown cafeteria tray, empty except for half a fish stick. “How do I get in on this personal Bento chef thing?”

  “I already have the supplies to do the three of us,” Genna says.

  “I'm interested too,” Amanda says from down the table. “No rush or anything, but my mother packs my lunch and today I got a tofu sandwich. She's doing this vegan thing. A tofu sandwich! Here, smell this.” She sticks it in front of her friend Cameron's nose. “Has it gone bad or is tofu supposed to smell like that?”

  Cameron pretends to retch.

  The other Annual Girl, Autumn, says that she would also be interested, once Genna has all the supplies.

  Behind me, Tick lets out another long squeal of laughter. The sound is familiar, yet horrible.

  She laughs again.

  She's so irritating! That voice. It really does grate the nerves.

  “What's so funny?” Genna asks me. “Why are you making that face? Did you smell Amanda's tofu sandwich?”

  “No. I was just ... thinking about homework,” I lie.

  Briana says to Genna, “It was the other Murphy. The Murphy laugh.”

  The Annual Girls at the end of the table stop their conversation and stare our way. “Eerie,” Amanda says. “The Murphy laugh. It's true. You guys sound exactly alike, which is why I keep thinking you're sisters. You're practically doppelgangers.”

  “That's not what I sound like,” I say, shaking my head. “I don't laugh like a ... like a monkey, super loud, over and over. I have a regular laugh, and a regular voice.”

  I slap my hand over my mouth. As I was saying the word regular, I heard Aunt Trudy's voice, coming out of my mouth.

  Is it true?

  Briana says, “Still. It's pretty similar.”

  Genna pats my hand. “There, there. It's not all the time. It's just ...” She snickers. “Just when you open your mouth.”

  I bow forward and bonk my forehead against the table repeatedly.

  Behind me, Tick tells her table about “a friend” who had her swimsuit bottoms pulled off at the pool. She's not mentioning me by name, but ever since the story came out in Drama class, I'm sure the entire school knows it was me. I hear Kevin utter the dreaded phrase, “Lainey Godiva.”

  I say to Genna and Briana, “Can we talk about something else? Are we going to have some sort of late party for Briana's birthday?”

  The two of them muse over this for a few minutes.

  Now that I hear her voice—really hear it, it crawls inside my head, and I can't tune it out. I listen to Tick, regaling her boisterous new friends with the sordid tale of our dinner out at The International. She's telling them about the entertainer—the sitar player's wife, I'm guessing—who did some belly dancing later in the evening, and I don't need to look over my shoulder to know she's gotten up from her seat and is demonstrating.

  Briana catches my attention and says, “That story sounds interesting. You didn't tell us about that. Why isn't she sitting over here where she belongs?”

  “What? I thought you guys didn't like her.”

  “We like her fine,” Genna says. “She needs a little house-training, yeah, but she shouldn't have just abandoned us like this.”

  “I wish we were the fun table,” Briana says.

  The Annual Girls overhear this and all nod in agreement. “Somebody tell a joke,” Amanda says.

  Nobody says anything, let alone a joke, and within a few minutes the other girls are checking their phones for messages. They all play with their phones until the bell rings.

  * * *

  My cousin and I walk home from school together, in silence. Sunset is still more than an hour away, b
ut the sky is dim in preparation.

  Everything feels wrong, and I know that when my emotions feel all mixed-up like this, I've usually done something bad and must make amends.

  I thought I was being smart, solving a problem, when I pushed Tick to make other friends, but I had no idea it would make me feel this way.

  I'm jealous of her having fun with other people, but more importantly, I feel guilty. I feel like I've betrayed my family.

  I scoop up a ball of snow from a yard next to the sidewalk and offer her a bite.

  “Diet ice cream,” Tick says. It's the first friendly thing she's said to me in ages.

  I laugh, hear my laugh, and abruptly stop myself. “Do you think our voices sound the same?” I ask. “Do we have the same laugh?”

  She waits so long to answer, I worry that she's back to giving me the silence treatment, but finally she says, “Kinda-sorta-maybe.”

  “Genetics?”

  “I guess so. Like have you noticed we have basically the same shape of face? Your cheeks are a little rounder, or we could be twins.”

  “I've always wanted a twin.”

  “Me too!”

  We smile at each other.

  I say, “You seem to be enjoying yourself with the Band geeks.”

  “They don't like to be called that.”

  “Really? What should I call them?”

  She scoops up some snow, makes a tiny ball, and rolls it down the sidewalk like a bowling ball.

  “Strike!” I say.

  “You don't hafta lie,” she says.

  “Okay, so it was a gutterball.”

  “No. I mean you don't hafta pretend we're best buds and stuff. I get it. We're totally different, and that's a good thing.”

  “But we are friends.”

  “We're cousins,” she says. “Family. You don't get to pick your family, but you love them anyway. Just because you love them, though, doesn't mean you actually like them.”

  “You don't like me?” My voice sounds sad and pinched thin, dissipating in the fog of my breath.

  “I only like people who like me back,” she says.

  We walk the rest of the way home without talking, and when we get inside the house, she disappears to the den, which is doubling as her mother's bedroom.

  I go up to our bedroom and turn on the computer to look for my sister. She's not there.

  I take my hair out of its ponytail, give my scalp a thorough scratching, then type up an email for her:

  Olivia:

  You promised me when you went away to college that you would STAY IN TOUCH WITH ME! Now you're gone all the time and you don't even ANSWER MY EMAILS! You're so selfish! I hope you're happy with your stupid boyfriend.

  HAVE A GREAT DAY.

  Chapter 7

  Wednesday.

  I got in the shower first this morning and decided to give my hair an extra-long conditioning, accidentally using up all the hot water.

  Tick didn't talk to me on the walk in to school.

  All through morning classes, I stew over it. I've lost friends before, like Sonya, who moved to Florida, and isn't even on Facebook. Some of the other girls here at Snowy Cove High School used to hang out with me and Genna and Briana more than they do now. We still talk to them, but we don't exactly have snowball fights and sledding parties. A lot of the girls are too cool for that now, and some of them are even dating boys.

  Tick and I didn't grow apart, though. She literally friend-dumped me.

  I'm so annoyed by her that I grab my History books and sit in an empty classroom for ten minutes before I realize everyone else is at lunch.

  In the cafeteria, Genna presents me with an emerald green plastic box, wrapped with a bright yellow bow.

  Genna says, “Save the bow. It's re-usable.”

  My Bento box. I completely forgot.

  Briana's already eating stuff from hers, but I avert my eyes so as not to spoil the surprise of what's inside mine. I'm as excited as I was on Christmas day, opening my stocking.

  “Open it, open it,” Genna says, possibly more excited than I am.

  The first layer contains squares of white, orange, and yellow cheeses, and tiny seed-spotted crackers. Below, I find an artfully-arranged assortment of cucumber rounds, sliced carrot sticks barely wider than wooden matchsticks, and slices of apples—red, and green—and orange squares of something I don't recognize. I pop one of the slick-feeling cubes in my mouth. It's sweet, smooth, and almost buttery.

  “Mango chunks,” Genna says. “From frozen, because they're not exactly in season now, but as they thaw, they keep everything cold. Brilliant, right?”

  I tell her she's a genius and I gasp at the bottom layer: a peanut butter sandwich with a side row of potato chips.

  Genna points at the chips, saying, “You can crumble the chips inside the sandwich, or just eat them as a side.”

  “Thanks! I love it already.” I hand her my lunch money and Briana does the same. Genna stares at the cash for a moment. I can only imagine what she must be feeling, but if I were her, I'd be proud. She hasn't even had her first job yet, and she's practically running a business.

  Genna lets out a sob, her face in her hands for a second, then jumps up and runs out of the cafeteria.

  I stand to go after her, but Briana calls me back.

  “Give her a minute,” she says. “This already happened once before you got here.” Briana's speaking quietly, and we both look over to at the Annual Girls, who are chatting away about candid photos for the annual and not paying attention to us.

  Whispering, I ask Briana, “What's wrong? Is it PMS again? She gets it so bad.”

  “Worse. Her allowance got completely cut off as of today. She needs a little time to process.”

  Sure enough, Genna reappears a few minutes later, her makeup perfect and her eyelashes freshly curled up. Her silky black hair is impeccable. Any outside observer would guess Genna has the perfect life.

  I don't trust myself to say the right things, so to show my appreciation, I eat the contents of my Bento box as slowly as I can, making lots of happy eating sounds. It kills me to eat so slowly, but each dainty bite and mmm sound seems to make Genna sit up straighter.

  Before I'm completely finished, I notice a feeling in my stomach. A full feeling.

  I assure Genna that everything's perfect, but I'm going to leave a bit for a snack later, so I can avoid the siren lure of the vending machine. I tell her I'll get the boxes back to her at the end of the day.

  As I pack the containers, resealing all the lids, I remember some of the diet tips I read online. Specifically, I read about how eating slowly is good, because you enjoy the food more, plus you give your stomach time to process that it's full.

  Honestly, I'm more than a little stunned to realize it's true. I thought the advice to eat slowly was one of those can't-be-true things people repeat ad nauseum, like the urban legends on the Snopes.com website.

  * * *

  In my afternoon classes, I notice I'm not that sleepy. With Tick not talking to me, I got my regular amount of sleep last night, but it's not just that. Since I started high school, I've always felt like taking a nap after lunch, but instead, I actually raise my hand in History class and volunteer answers without being prompted.

  This is a lot for me to figure out in just one day, but I think all that stuff Jamie Oliver says about deep-fried food might be true. It might have been the french fries and apple fritters that were making me dozy.

  * * *

  The three of us eat the Bento box lunches on Thursday and Friday. Friday's assortment is less bountiful than the previous day's selection, and I find myself fantasizing about the vending machine all afternoon. Oh, those chocolate-covered granola bars are calling my name, but I resist.

  I feel great, and I don't mind that my cousin doesn't pay me much attention. At least she isn't fighting with me or trying to ruin my life.

  On Friday, we start to walk home from school together, as usual, and she breaks the silence and
asks me some questions about homework. We talk about teachers, and how cool Mrs. Linklater is, with all her tattoos and piercings. Tick says she'll get a tattoo as soon as she's old enough to get one without her mother's permission.

  I want to convince her not to, to tell her she'll regret it, and that God wouldn't like us marking up our bodies with graffiti, but I imagine how my saying that would make her upset, and stop myself.

  “What kind of tattoo would you get?” I ask.

  She does a quick skip so that our strides match perfectly, with both of us stepping left, then right, together. “Probably a butterfly.”

  “But not on your neck, right? You should get it somewhere you can hide it with clothes, if you want.”

  “Hmm. Yeah, I suppose you're right. Maybe on my back?”

  “I think that would be nice.”

  “You can get one too,” she says.

  I laugh, really hard. “Thanks for giving me permission,” I say. “I'll let my parents know you said it was okay.”

  We talk about neutral subjects the rest of the way home.

  The weird thing is, now I keep thinking about this butterfly tattoo I might get one day in the future. I'm not saying I will, but it's fun to consider. Just a small one, of course.

  * * *

  On Saturday, my mother takes both of us shopping. She gives us each a budget to spend on some school clothes. My favorite store is having a sale, and Tick and I both reach for the same Esprit sweater, which has beige and white stripes. It also comes in black and white, but the beige is the prettiest.

  I tell her to try it on, and she can have it if she likes it.

  “There's a whole stack of them. We can both get one,” she says.

  “Why? I could just borrow yours sometime.”

  Tick nods and says, “Sure.”

  When Tick goes into the change room to try the sweater on, my mother grabs me in a big hug. “I'm so proud of you!” she says. “I'm so proud to see you making an effort to get along with your cousin.”

  “She's not that bad,” I say, refolding the mess of sweaters on the display table.

  Mom hugs me again. “You're my good girl.”