The Ravenous Page 2

  Both girls scrambled over themselves to comply.

  Because, despite the fact that they were all old enough to take care of themselves, and despite the fact that they argued so much over everything under the sun, if there was one thing all of the Cane sisters could agree on indefinitely, it was this:

  When Juliet told you to do something, you listened.

  Chapter 2

  The day after the ice cream cones, Mona woke to the sound of the vacuum running at six in the morning. It roared from the living room on the floor below, back and forth, back and forth, bumping into things, the wall maybe, or perhaps the sides of the bookshelves. Mona sat up and clenched her teeth. She knew right away that their mother had finally come out of her bedroom, for better or for worse. It always happened like this.

  “Goddamn it,” Anya yelled from beneath the black comforter piled on her bed across the room, a single arm hanging over the edge of the mattress. From the next bed over, Rose moaned and pulled her pillow around to cover her face and ears.

  “This has been building up for a long time,” Mona said, slowly bringing her legs over the side of her own mattress. Her stomach was starting to twist around itself, dread laced with anxiety at what awaited them downstairs. “We knew she’d come back to us eventually.”

  When their mother was in one of her checked-out phases, it was like she didn’t exist at all, like the girls lived in the house by themselves. But when she came out of those spells, the transition was always something that was heard, seen and felt by everyone. Mom made sure of that.

  “That doesn’t mean I have to accept her little tantrums.” Anya sat up, her hair in a remarkable state of bedhead. “You guys just love to go along with this shit, like it’s normal and okay. I’m going to ignore it, because that’s the opposite of what Mom wants, and screw her.”

  Below them, there came another hard thump as the vacuum ran into the wall again. Anya peered across the room at Mona, and her eyes narrowed just the slightest bit. “You’re all just enabling her to keep acting like this when you trip over yourselves to ask her what’s wrong. She needs to use her words, like a goddamn big girl.”

  Mona thought back to when she and Anya, her older sister by one year, were great friends. They even used to pretend they were twins. But then their differing opinions over Mom had driven them apart. Anya started ditching Mona more and more often, always leaving to hang out with the school friends she never had a hard time making, and it hurt like hell. Suddenly, they weren’t the counter team to Taylor and Juliet anymore.

  Now, the year of distance in age seemed enormous to Mona: Anya had her learner’s permit, and a girlfriend, and a real, paying job at the day care across from the high school. It was like a whole other level of existing. Mona didn’t have anybody special, a boyfriend or a girlfriend or even just a best friend, besides Lexa, anyway.

  Thank goodness for Lexa. Mona had started talking to her a little while after a big fight with Anya, one where their relationship had gone from swinging on a hinge to full-blown fallout. It’d been the most alone Mona had ever felt, but then she’d met Lexa online. Talking to Lexa was like talking to the old Anya, before she’d started disagreeing so strongly with Mona about how to “handle” Mom. Finally, she had someone to talk to again.

  Lexa’s family couldn’t have been more different than Mona’s. Her parents were happy, crazily in love, and she and her siblings all got along just fine. Maybe it was because of this that Lexa was able to so confidently tell Mona that it wasn’t normal to be afraid, truly afraid, of her oldest sister, or that it didn’t really sound like Mom was okay, or that what had happened with Anya was awful. And while these were all hard things to hear, Mona couldn’t help but feel a touch of relief that somebody, anybody, not only understood her but had concern for her, as well.

  Still, at the end of the day, Lexa wasn’t a real-life friend, and could only do so much from the internet. So when Anya acted like this about Mom, like she was some unfeeling monster hell-bent on ruining their lives, it pissed Mona off. You don’t have to care because you have other people in your life, she wanted to scream. This home is all Mom’s got. This is all I’ve got.

  “Wow,” Mona said to Anya instead of yelling at her. She couldn’t stop the sarcasm from weighing her words down, couldn’t help but stare coldly at her sister with unblinking eyes. “What a great way to look at it. It’s not like Mom is clinically depressed or anything, she’s just ‘acting’ this way, right?”

  “Guys,” Rose interjected, finally pulling her pillow down to uncover her face. “Stop.”

  It was this very thing that ended up driving Anya and Mona apart in the first place. Every few days came yet another reminder, it seemed. Mona wondered if it would ever stop.

  Down the hallway, Mona heard the sound of Juliet and Taylor’s bedroom door opening, followed by moody stomping footsteps that let her know things were about to get even louder at this ungodly hour.

  “Turn it off,” Mona heard Juliet’s voice screech from downstairs. “Turn it off!”

  Another crash as the vacuum ran into the wall, followed by the shatter of breaking glass. A picture must have fallen, Mona thought. Anya lay back down and pulled the covers over her head again.

  Rose sat up and stepped into her slippers, biting her lip, her dark eyebrows furrowed. Mona watched her with a frown. She remembered how Rose had recently cut her hair short, how Mom had yelled at her until she’d cried, convinced her that she’d made some sort of awful, hideous mistake.

  “Nobody at school wants to be my friend,” Rose had admitted to the sisters afterward, as they were gathered in her room to provide comfort after Mom’s stress-induced tirade. Rose pulled at the ends of her hair with such intensity that Juliet had to physically stop her. “Now I’ll go from being the new freak to being the ugly new freak.”

  “It’s okay, Rose,” Mona said now as her sister shrugged into her baby-pink robe. “You don’t need to go down there.” The vacuum finally turned off downstairs and was followed by eerie silence.

  “Yes I do,” Rose responded simply. She looked up at Mona, her lips pursed together. “Juliet shouldn’t have to face her alone.”

  Mona hated conflict and would do almost anything to avoid it, even if that meant being a total coward and letting Juliet be their mouthpiece, as she so often was on days like this. The problem was, Juliet’s opinions on Mom fluctuated depending on her mood; she could go from Anya’s cold apathy about the situation to Mona’s more pitying approach in a heartbeat. You never knew how situations like this would turn out.

  Rose stood and left the room, offering Mona a weak smile before she stepped out. Mona glared at the lump of blankets and limbs on Anya’s bed, then threw a stuffed animal at it.

  “Ugh,” the lump grumbled without moving. “Don’t be a bitch.”

  “No,” Mona answered, forcing herself to stand. “You’ve got that part down pat.”

  There was some guilt when she said it, and the knowledge that things wouldn’t get better with Anya unless she tried a little harder, but that was mostly washed away by the unease that settled in her mind when she realized how weirdly quiet it suddenly was. Too quiet after the angry vacuuming and Juliet stomping downstairs.

  Mona left her bedroom and made her way down the hallway, passing Juliet and Taylor’s empty room. The hallway was dark and cramped; Mona deeply wished there was a skylight to make it less murky. She always went up and down the carpeted stairs with a bit of urgency, to spend as little time as possible on them, to escape the invisible arms she always imagined were reaching for her ankles.

  The bottom of the stairs opened up into the living room, where Mona spotted a small vase in pieces on the floor. It must have fallen from the shelf it had been sitting on and hit the corner of the coffee table. A few feet away from the jagged pieces, Mona’s mother was standing with her hands on her hips, clearly upset.

  “Let’s ask Mona what she thinks,” Mom said when she noticed her. “Mona, why do you think I missed a call from your dad this morning?”

  The word dad set off a whole new series of anxious feelings. Mom’s inability to consistently parent the girls and live without struggling seemed to revolve around Dad’s absence. Whenever he came home, Mom was a completely different person, or at least she seemed to be. She got up every morning, she showered, she made coffee and breakfast and suggested fun day-outings where they could be together as a family.

  Those times always felt like a surreal sort of heaven-on-earth to Mona, even though she never got to spend real quality time getting to know Dad. Everything was always a rush, an enthusiastic attempt to do as many things as possible before he inevitably had to return to being a colonel. Mom never seemed to be able to get enough of him while he was home, always pulling him into their bedroom for an hour at a time, always taking his attention during conversations by talking over the sisters. He only ever called late at night or early in the mornings, depending on where in the world he was. Missing a phone call from him was not a small deal.

  “I don’t know,” Mona said, her eyes darting around the room to see where Rose was, eventually spotting her sitting on a bar stool at the island in the kitchen. Standing beside her was Juliet. “Why did you miss a call from Dad?”

  “Because Juliet didn’t remember to take my phone off silent after you all came home from your little outing yesterday.” Mom took her hands off her hips to pace around the room, picking up random pieces of discarded clothing and some magazines left behind from last night.

  Juliet let out a frustrated sigh and crossed her arms. Mona could tell she was having a hard time staying quiet. During her “napping days,” Mom constantly set her phone to silent, and any unwanted stimulus was grounds for a meltdown.

  Mom looked with dismay at the coffee table, which had a mixing bowl lined with unpopped corn kernels and salt sitting on top of it. “Do you girls even know what it means to clean up after yourselves?” she asked. “Goddamn it!”

  “We have been cleaning,” Mona said defensively, remembering all the times Juliet had assigned them chores, the dishes and the trash and the vacuuming. “Every day.” And you haven’t been doing anything.

  She hated the toxic feeling she got whenever her mother acted like this. She would not give in to it like Anya did, would not let the feeling turn into hate or resentment, that wasn’t how family was supposed to work. She had to support Mom if there was any hope of the depression receding, even just a little bit. She had to be strong. She had to be loyal.

  Where Anya saw a one-dimensional villain, Mona saw someone who wanted to do better, but just...couldn’t. Mom’s mopey demeanor, combined with her short temper, hardly ever made for a pleasant exchange, but Mona refused to forget the times when her mother had worked so hard to hold on to a consistent routine, before it inevitably fell between her fingers like sand and everything collapsed again. Mona didn’t want Juliet to be the family’s backbone, she wanted Mom to be, and she needed to do whatever she could to help her mother get there.

  “I’ll do it,” Mona said, stepping forward to take the clothes and magazines from her mother’s arms. “I’ll clean this stuff up. Just try to rest. I’m sorry about the missed call.”

  “I’ll do it myself,” Mom nearly yelled, jerking her arms away roughly and dropping a magazine, and that was when Mona realized that she was drunk. She felt stupid for not noticing before.

  “Calm down, for Chrissakes,” Juliet sniped from where she stood near Rose. “I said I was sorry for forgetting. Don’t you think it’s kind of ridiculous for you to get mad at us over one little mess when you can’t even change the volume on your phone yourself?”

  Mom glared at Juliet, and Mona took the opportunity to step away, back toward the stairs. She spotted Taylor hiding around the corner, sitting on the last few steps, listening. “What are you doing?” Mona whispered.

  “Just let Juliet take care of it,” Taylor replied, twirling her long hair around the end of her finger and biting at her lower lip. “The fewer of us that get involved, the better.” Typical Taylor to hide behind Juliet. And Mona hadn’t even wanted to get into the argument in the first place.

  “How dare you!” Mom screamed at Juliet, but her face reddened in embarrassment. “You understand more than anybody what I go through, with my chronic pain. It confines me, Juliet. Do you think I want to be in my bed for days at a time?”

  Again with the chronic pain, Mona thought. Mom brought it up whenever she wanted to defend her behavior, which Mona hated. There was no reason Mom should have felt like she had to defend whatever it was that she was going through. The pain was unreliable, and manifested itself in a different way each time, often conveniently close to whenever something especially stressful or tiring was happening. Mona just wished her mom would admit that she needed more help than she was letting herself accept. She deserved more than pain and bad feelings.

  And so did Mona’s sisters.

  “Weeks at a time,” Juliet corrected. “And you keep saying it was your stomach that was hurting, but you were somehow able to eat an entire pie while we all went into town yesterday? That was supposed to be for Rose’s birthday.”

  Please don’t push her, Mona thought. She glanced back to Taylor, who was sitting on the stairs and looking as though she was trying to shrink into herself. As much as Mona hated confrontation, she knew it affected Taylor even worse.

  “I...needed the sugar,” Mom spurted, not quite slurring her speech but nearly there. “I was having a crash. None of you realize how very much I’ve done for you, the things that I’ve sacrificed—”

  “Yes, sacrifice,” Juliet said, her eyes narrowing even more. “I would know nothing about that.”

  The room went deathly quiet for a brief moment. Once, Juliet had been a magnificent pianist. She still was, Mona figured, but you’d never know it because she’d quit playing. She had been offered a full ride to Juilliard, but when she realized how ill-equipped Mom was to handle her absence, she’d turned the scholarship down.

  After all those years, talking about escape and independence and concertos. Just like that, Juliet’s dazzling future burned to ashes. When she gave it up, something inside of her changed, died.

  “Of course we realize, Mom,” Rose cut in, her tone with far less edge than Juliet’s. “And we appreciate it.”

  “I really don’t think so,” Mom snapped back, again turning her attention to cleaning up the living room. She couldn’t just pick something up or set it down; she had to snatch it up with a huff, or slam it down hard against something. Her anger radiated throughout her every movement, and her breathing, and her profanity-laced mumbling.

  Mona was considering her options when Juliet made a dramatic movement to the trash can and yanked the bag out, causing a few pieces to spill and slide across the floor.

  “Don’t you start too,” Mona mumbled as she made her way past Juliet to help pick up the spare bits of trash. She thought of Mom, and of Anya upstairs. “We don’t need a house full of angry women.”

  “Oh, get over yourself,” Juliet replied with enough bite to make Mona flinch. “You should have stayed upstairs if you weren’t gonna do anything but set her off even more.”

  “You’re the one who insulted her about the phone,” Mona grumbled under her breath. “And you’re the one who brought up the pie, we could have just gotten another one—”

  “Please,” Rose cried out suddenly, putting her hands over her ears. “Everybody, please just stop it!”

  Why did they always have to fight? Why couldn’t all days be like yesterday, when they actually got along for a few solid hours. Even dinner went better than usual, she thought. She had hoped it would last a few more days, or at least through today. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she knew the root of why things went wrong so quickly.

  “I’ll stop it,” Mom said, “when Juliet stops being a bitch.” Mona could see the regret in Mom’s eyes as soon as the word fell out of her mouth, but it was too late. It was always too late.

  Juliet stopped dead in her tracks from taking out the trash and turned toward Mom. She raised the bag of trash up in front of her before purposefully letting it go, sending it to break open over the tile of the kitchen floor.

  Mona felt ill and afraid at the same time. These arguments had gotten pretty out of hand before, but now they were starting to get worse with every fight. Mom just called Juliet a bitch. Juliet, the one who had taken care of them all for years when Mom couldn’t.

  Rose kept her hands over her ears. Juliet stormed away from the mess, and Mona and Rose followed her, despite their mother’s demand that somebody stay behind to help her clean it up. Must get away, Mona thought urgently, desperately. I can’t handle seeing her like this. Maybe Anya was right for hiding in bed after all. Maybe if they left Mom alone, she’d have some time to calm down and realize that she needed to apologize to Juliet.

  When Juliet saw Taylor cowering against the wall of the stairs, she exhaled sharply and snapped, “Didn’t I tell you to stay in our room?” Instead of defending herself, or saying something that Mona wished she would say like I’m a part of this family, too, Taylor bubbled over with apologies as she scrambled to keep up with Juliet, immediately trying to comfort her with insults about Mom and what just happened.

  The two older girls reentered their bedroom at the top of the stairs, and Juliet slammed their door shut. Mona reached out for Rose, a lump in her throat, but her little sister scurried ahead. They entered their bedroom, and Anya was still in the same spot beneath the covers of her bed. Rose sniffed and rushed into the shared bathroom that connected their room to Juliet and Taylor’s, then shut and locked the door. Mona could hear her crying from the other side.