I drove her to school. She held the bag in her lap the whole way like it was a sleeping baby. She was so excited to help Annie that she kept tapping her foot against the floor of the car.
When we pulled up, she jumped out before I’d even fully stopped.
“Good luck!” I called.
She turned back and grinned at me. Then she was gone, running up the steps with the bag held against her chest.
That was the last time I saw her smile for two days.
That afternoon, I waited for Lily to tell me how it had gone.
I got home from work early, for once. I made lemonade, which was silly, because it was October. I sat at the kitchen table where the sewing machine still was, with a few blue threads still caught in it, and I waited to hear the front door.
It opened at 3:40.
I heard her drop her backpack. Then footsteps going straight up the stairs.
“Lily? How’d it go?”
Nothing.
I went to the bottom of the stairs. She was halfway up. When she turned around, I saw her face. Her eyes were swollen almost shut. Her nose was red. Her cheeks were blotchy, the way they used to get when she was little and had cried herself sick.
“Honey. What happened?”
She went up the rest of the stairs and slammed her bedroom door so hard the pictures in the hall rattled.
I followed her. I stood outside her door.
“Did someone say something about the dress?”
“Please, Mom. Leave it.”
“Did Annie not like it?”
“I said leave it!”
“Was it Trevor? Did that boy say something? Because I swear, Lily, I will call that school…”
“MOM. Please. Just leave me alone.”
I stood there with my hand flat against her door. I could hear her crying on the other side. Muffled, like her face was in her pillow.
I went back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. I stared at the sewing machine for a long time.
At six, I made her favorite grilled cheese. The way Michael used to make it, with a thin layer of mayonnaise on the outside instead of butter. I cut it into triangles. I put it on a plate with a pickle and took it upstairs.
I knocked softly. “I’m leaving this out here.”
No answer.
An hour later, the plate was still outside her door. The sandwich was cold. She hadn’t touched it.
I called my friend Gloria from work. She has three teenagers.
“They do this,” she said. “Something happened with a friend, probably. Some drama. She’ll talk when she’s ready.”
“She’s never done this. Lily tells me everything.”
Gloria laughed, not unkindly. “Beth. Honey. Nobody’s sixteen-year-old tells them everything.”
I wanted to argue with her. I didn’t.
Later that night, around eleven, I heard Lily crying again. Not muffled this time. Real crying. The kind with hiccups.
I knocked.
“Lily. Baby. Please let me in.”
“I said I don’t want to talk!”
Her voice cracked in the middle. It was the voice she used when she was thirteen and sitting on the kitchen floor next to her father, holding the phone, while the 911 operator told her what to do.
I went back to my room. I didn’t sleep.
