Backlash

Mom is reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t know what to do, so I just keep thinking, Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup.

And then, almost as if she’s heard me, Lara’s eyelids start to flutter.

“Pete! I think she’s coming to!” Mom half whispers, half sobs.

“Lara … Lara, sweetheart, can you hear me? It’s Dad,” my father says, squeezing my sister’s hand so hard I’m surprised she doesn’t wake up just to tell him to stop breaking her fingers.

She groans. The machines start beeping faster.

“Syd, go get the nurse!” Dad orders.

By the time I get to the door, the nurse in panda-print scrubs is already on her way in. She races to Lara’s side, eyeing the monitors.

“Lara, open your eyes for me,” the nurse says. “Your parents are here, and your sister. They want to see you.”

She tells Mom and Dad to keep talking to Lara.

“Wake up, darling,” Mom says. “We love you.”

“Come on, honey, you can do it,” Dad urges.

“Lara! Wake up!” I shout suddenly, fed up with the waiting, with Lara, with everything and everyone. Mad that it looks like I’m going to miss auditions tomorrow because of my sister and her never-ending drama.

She groans and tosses her head back and forth on the pillow. Dad turns to me angrily and is about to open his mouth to tell me to be quiet or something, but Mom gasps because Lara’s eyes have fluttered open.

“Welcome back,” the nurse says.

“Thank goodness!” Dad says, grabbing Lara’s hand and kissing it.

Mom sobs with relief.

Lara is trying to pull at the tube in her throat.

“Leave that, honey,” the nurse says. “We have to wait for the doctor to come to make sure it’s okay to take it out.”

Lara looks scared and confused, her eyes blinking from the brightness of the lights.

“You’re at Central Hospital,” the nurse says. “You overdosed on medication.”

The nurse shines a penlight in Lara’s pupils to see if they contract. As she checks Lara’s reflexes, a doctor comes in wearing a white lab coat over his scrubs.

He talks with the nurse, looks at Lara’s chart, and then moves to near Lara’s head.

“Lara, I’m Dr. Delman. We’re going to remove the breathing tube now. I want you to exhale on the count of three. Nod if you understand what I’m saying.”

My sister’s head moves up and down slowly, her eyes blinking as if she is in pain.

“Okay, here we go, Lara. One … two … three …”

I have to turn the other way and close my eyes, because the thought of it makes me squeamish. But I can’t close my ears, and I hear Lara groan and gag, followed by Mom’s sharp intake of breath. I guess that means the tube is out, so it’s safe to look again.

“Your throat might feel a little sore for a while,” the doctor tells her. “You can try gargling with salt water or drinking some warm water with honey and lemon.”

Lara looks at him, her eyes wide and shadowed. I get the impression warm water with honey and lemon is the last thing on her mind. I wish I knew what was on her mind. I wish I knew what made her do this when everything seemed to be going so well for her.

Why did she have to mess up things for me when I’d been working so hard for auditions? I deserve an explanation.

But I know better than to ask. I’ll just get a lecture about how self-centered I am and how can I be thinking of myself at a time like this. Because it’s all about Lara. Just like it always is.

Turns out I don’t have to ask. My father is the one who can’t hold back from uttering the question we’re all wondering.

“Why did you do it, Lara? Why?”

The heart-rate monitor starts beeping faster. Lara closes her eyes.

My mother hisses, “Pete!” and gives Dad an angry look. Better him than me.

A tear trickles slowly from the corner of Lara’s eye, down her skim-milk-colored cheek.

When she says the word, it’s so faint we barely hear it.

“Christian.”

I CAN’T believe Bree took pictures.

Even worse, I can’t believe she posted them.

Why does she think that’s okay?

I check Sydney’s Facebook to see if she’s posted an update about Lara, but there’s nothing. Her last update is from earlier today — a selfie with her friends Cara and Maddie with the caption Break a Leg! Ready for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST auditions tomorrow!

Her bright smile is in total contrast to how pale and totally freaked out she looked as she followed her mom to the car after Lara was put in the ambulance.

I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to say … I don’t know, that I’m here. That even if we haven’t hung out for a while, even if Bree and Lara aren’t friends anymore, that I’m still here.

But my friend Spencer was standing next to me, and he’s one of the major reasons I stopped hanging out with Syd so much in the first place. He started with the “Syd and Liam sitting in a tree” stuff in fifth grade, hassling me nonstop about whether she was my girlfriend or not. By the time we got to middle school, he’d started telling the other guys I was probably gay because I spent all this time with Syd and hadn’t even tried to kiss her.

No way I could let people believe that, because I want to have a girlfriend someday. I guess I could have lied and said I did kiss her, but that didn’t seem right, either.

So I drifted away from Syd, pretending I was too busy to hang out. And I never told her why, which was a jerk move, now that I think about it.

Some friend.

Maybe I can make up for it. Maybe I’ll text Syd to see if she’s okay.

I pick up my cell, thumbs hovering above the touch screen.

And then I put it down, sighing, because I’m afraid she’ll think I’m trying to get info on Lara’s condition to post on Facebook, just like my awful sister.

A BUNCH of people piled onto Christian’s post on Lara’s Facebook page, saying, Yeah, Lara’s fat and ugly, and some of the kids who went to our middle school even brought up the nickname she hated so much, Lardo. It’s crazy, there are, like, twenty comments, just one thing after another. A few people say Christian’s a jerk and ask where does he get off saying stuff like that, but someone else even comes out and says why doesn’t Lara kill herself? I wonder if she saw that before she decided to … you know, do whatever she did that made the ambulance come. And I wonder — what will happen if she dies?

Oh God. What if she’s already dead?

I check my Facebook page. There are fifty likes on the picture of Lara on the stretcher being wheeled to the ambulance, and it’s been shared a bunch of times. People are already speculating in the comments.

She looks dead.

Is Lardosaurus dead?

RIP Lardo.

Corpse Girl.

Mom’s still not home. I wish she would get here.

And then I remember … Liam.

My brother is in his room, doing his homework. He’s got his headphones on and his foot is tapping to a beat I can’t hear. Liam and I have always marched to different drummers, or however that saying goes.