Backlash

“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?”

“Yes! 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.