Page 38 of Broken Secrets
My phone buzzes against my leg. I glance around to make sure Mrs. Devonne isn’t looking, then check the message.
Emma: Good morning! Hope you’re having a good day at school. Still up for video chatting tonight?
I type back quickly: Definitely. Looking forward to it.
“Miss Kline, is there something more important than Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy that you need to attend to right now?”
I shove my phone into my bag, face burning. “No, ma’am. Sorry.”
“As I was saying, Gatsby’s problem isn’t that he loves Daisy. It’s that he’s in love with an idea of Daisy, a version of her that exists more in his imagination than in reality.”
The observation hits uncomfortably close to home. How much of my interest in Jeremy is about him as a person, andhow much is about filling in the blank space where a father should be? How much of my excitement about Emma is about her specifically, versus the idea of having a sister?
Maya catches my eye from across the room and raises her eyebrows in a questioning look. I shake my head slightly, indicating I’ll fill her in later. She’s known me long enough to recognize when I’m spiraling, and she’s also known me long enough to know when to wait for me to come to her.
The rest of English passes in a blur of literary analysis that I can’t focus on. When the bell rings, Maya intercepts me at the door.
“Spill,” she says without preamble.
“Can it wait until lunch? I need to actually pay attention in calculus or I’m going to fail the quiz.”
She studies my face, taking in the dark circles under my eyes and the way I’m fidgeting with my phone. “Emergency level spilling, or regular level spilling?”
“Somewhere in between.”
“Lunch it is. But I’m holding you to that.”
Calculus is a special kind of torture when your brain is already working overtime. I manage to take notes on derivatives, but I keep writing “Emma” in the margins without realizing it. By the time the class ends, my notebook looks like I’m practicing writing my sister’s name instead of learning about rates of change.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Here I am, studying rates of change while my entire life is changing faster than I can keep up with.
Lunch can’t come fast enough. Maya grabs my arm the second I walk into the cafeteria and steers me toward our usual table under the palm trees. Sophie’s already there, flipping through her phone and complaining about Tyler’s latest text message crimes.
“Okay,” Maya says once we’re seated. “Talk.”
So I do. I tell her about Emma’s message, about the conversation with Mom and Robert, about the video chat we have planned for tonight. Maya’s reactions range from excited squealing to thoughtful questions to protective concern, cycling through emotions almost as quickly as I’ve been experiencing them.
“You have a sister,” she says for the third time, like she’s trying to make it real by saying it out loud. “An actual sister who wants to know you.”
“I know. It still doesn’t feel real.”
“What does she look like? Do you have pictures?”
I show her Emma’s Instagram profile, watching Maya’s face light up as she scrolls through the photos.
“Oh my God, Liv, you two look so much alike. Look at this one,” She holds up a photo of Emma at what appears to be a school dance. “You have the exact same smile.”
Sophie leans over to look. “Wait, who is this? You never told me you had a sister.”
Maya and I exchange a glance. Sophie doesn’t know the full story about my father, just the sanitized version about him not being in my life.
“It’s complicated family stuff,” I say. “I just found out about her.”
She’s not one to pry into drama that doesn’t directly involve her.
“She’s really pretty,” Sophie says. “Are you going to meet her?”
“Maybe. They’re thinking about visiting for spring break.”
