Don't Blame the Music by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

talk about it, she hates them.
    I said, “But Ashley—”
    My mother interrupted me, setting the teacup down hard, and splashing the contents slightly on her hand. It must have cooled off. She didn’t even notice. “Last time she was home we got tough on her,” said my mother, remembering. “She left. For good. Without a word then or ever. Do you know what I went through, Susan?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I was there, remember?”
    â€œYou don’t know!” she cried. “I’m her mother. And I never knew, one night, one minute, if she was dead or alive, or hurt or safe, or starving or overdosing!” My mother was shuddering almost convulsively. “I can’t go through that again. I’d rather see the evil that Ash does than lie awake at night wondering if she’s dead.”
    The evil that Ash does.
    What a thing for a mother to say.
    I wanted to call Cindy. Tell her everything, share like best friends. But I didn’t. Evil? How could I talk about evil on the phone where we usually talked about clothes and boys and hair and boys?
    â€œAnd when we came home from the doctor’s,” said my father, “Ashley had—how shall I put this—redecorated your bedroom.”
    My skin crawled. Had she used a knife there too? Had she sliced something in my room?
    My lovely sunlit bedroom under the old sloping ceiling, with its tiny dormer windows and its pair of matching pencil poster beds? The portrait of my great-great-grandmother and the sampler that her daughter finished the month before she died of diphtheria? I didn’t want to hear about it yet. Trying to breathe normally, I said, “I thought you were taking her clothes shopping.”
    â€œShe didn’t want to go. She said she’d wear your clothes instead.”
    I am a size ten. Thin as she was, I doubted Ash was more than a five. I could think of nothing I owned that would fit or appeal to her. I didn’t like to think of my clothes on her. Immediately I was ashamed. This was my sister, and she had nothing but the clothes she stood in. Of course she could have anything she wanted.
    â€œBrace yourself,” said my mother, her bright cheery front gone.
    Ash had been home twenty-four hours, and the bloom was off the flowers.
    A rhyme, but I had no urge to set it down in my journal. “Where is she anyhow?” I said.
    â€œIt seems she has a boyfriend,” said my mother. She used the word boyfriend as if it meant sewage. “He came for her in a van. Bob is his name. They said they’d be back later.”
    Could it be the greasy creature with the layered heads? But he had not driven a van. Nor acted like a friend of any kind. Someone else, then. Or something else.
    â€œGo look at your room,” said my father. “I’m sorry, Susan.”
    Whatever had happened to my room was bad enough they had not cleaned it up, then. Perhaps it was beyond cleaning. I went upstairs, with absolutely no idea what to expect. I felt like someone in a horror film, stupidly opening the door she knows leads to mutilation and death.
    But it was nothing like that.
    The portraits and embroidery were gone from the pale flowered walls. Tangled black spiderwebs hung like fouled Christmas tinsel from the hooks, molding, and window frames. The movement of the door made a tiny breeze and the huge black fronds shivered like dying grass. When I took a step into the room my feet crunched on splintered glass.
    I forced myself to touch the hideous black tangle. It was cassette tape. Nothing but cassette tape. And the splinters on the floor were the clear plastic containers that had held my collection. She had smashed and ripped apart every single tape I owned. And I owned a lot.
    My hands were cold.
    And yet, it wasn’t as terrible as I had thought. Cassettes were hardly immortal heirlooms. The portraits and embroidery were lying on my bed, undamaged. My clothing still hung in