Where I Want to Be Read Free Page B

pool.”
    There’s a quiet flutter in my blood. “What?”
    “I wasn’t going to tell you, but…”
    “Tell me.”
    Now Caleb speaks in a rush, like he’s been holding it in all evening. “It was during kick practice. I had the five through eights. My kids are all lined up with their paddleboards in the shallow end, and I’m standing in front of them, I’m yelling
Kick! Kick!
, the water’s churning, and I’ve got this whole line of noisy little squirts kicking like crazy.” He pauses to smile. He loves his job. “All I was thinking about was making sure nobody kicked too close or hard—no fighting, no biting. And then.”
    “And then?”
    He clears his throat. “You know that kinda prickly thing that happens on your skin if someone’s staring at you from behind? It was like that. But stronger. Only when I turned to look? Nobody. All day I’m trying to think how to describeit, but the best I came up with is it felt like a piece of cobweb or something had landed right…here.” He reaches around to the small of his back. “Except as soon as it happened, I thought—no, I
knew
.” Caleb corrects himself.
    “Knew…?” My fingertips still hurt. I press them against my neck.
    “Look, I’m not saying Jane was watching me for real.” Caleb darts me an uneasy look. “It’s more like she was there because she’s in my head. She’s…I dunno.
Around
.” He swipes a hand back through his hair. “Ah, just tell me to shut up. Hearing myself talk about it, it sounds totally insane.”
    “No, it doesn’t.” I shake my head. “So, what did you do? At the pool, I mean.”
    “Got out. Cooled off. Let Maureen take over for a few minutes.”
    Caleb is being serious, but I’m not really sure what it is that he’s told me, so I’m not really sure how to respond. “I was in Jane’s bedroom earlier tonight,” I confide, “and I had the same feeling. I think. Caleb…” I slide up on an elbow to look at him. “Do you ever feel guilty?”
    This is exactly the kind of question Caleb hates. Something close to panic holds his eyes; one a bleached blue, the other a dark, marbled navy. Odd, definitely, but I think they’re amazing. Even if the whites are bloodshot from pool chlorine and his chronic lack of sleep.
    “The thing you can’t forget in all this…” He stops. I waithim out. “What you can’t forget, is that you weren’t responsible for how Jane was.”
    “You say that, but I know I could have helped her better. Somehow.”
    Caleb shakes his head. “We’ve had this talk a zillion times, Lily. There was no way for you to have known. You keep beating yourself up for not noticing, for not seeing the changes. But nobody else saw them, either. Why do you put all the blame on yourself?” His confidence envelops me, almost.
    “Because I’m her sister,” I answer, “and I should have been able to do more. For all I know, I was part of the problem. Maybe we both were.” With this last sentence, my voice is so low, I can hardly hear myself.
    But Caleb hears me fine. He looks angry. “How were we the problem? Just by existing? By being us?”
    “By being happy.” I know I’m on shaky logic ground here. “Maybe it made us selfish. It must have hurt her.”
    Caleb’s bony shoulder flinches in defense. “Being happy isn’t our fault.”
    “Okay.” I make my voice dull, agreeing and not agreeing. Our zillion-and-oneth talk is not going anywhere. I drop it. Lean back against him and try to anesthetize myself with TV. I imagine kids arriving at Mike Heller’s house. Mike’s a senior, and I picture his party crowded with other seniors—Jane’s classmates, although I’m better friends with most of them, mostly on account of dating Caleb.
    Heller’s would be a total scene. First kids would make this whole big joyfest of seeing me,
oh, hey, wow, glad you made it, great to see ya,
and then there’d be the usual gossiping behind their hands, scrutinizing me, passing judgments about how