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

my closet, the old quilts still lay neatly in their sea captain’s chest. She had simply made a statement to me, like the one involving the car. This room was hers too, and she was here to stay.
    I drew a deep breath. Okay, I told myself, it’s okay. It’s nasty, but it isn’t actually insane. It’s a lot of hard-earned money strewn on those walls, but it isn’t my life or anything.
    I turned to go back downstairs. Thumbtacked to the inside of the door was the jacket of Ashley’s one and only record. Her flash-in-the-pan hit. Ashley’s face and neck, upside down, her features grotesquely altered, music pouring out of her slit throat like blood.
    Had that ever been in style—that vicious evil kind of music? Or had Ash succeeded by momentary shock value?
    Well, she had shocked us. I hoped it made her happy.
    Today the fan belt and the cassettes.
    Tomorrow …
    From the street came the sound of an unmuffled motor. A van that could only belong to Ashley’s boyfriend was pulling up. Holding the curtains at an angle so I couldn’t be seen I peered out. The boyfriend was very very fat. I could not imagine Ashley, who had said such dreadful things about my poor mother’s thick waist, being around such obesity. He was fat to the point of revulsion.
    My skin crawled. I ran downstairs. I did not want to be alone when Ashley and this person walked in.
    My mother was still clinging to her teacup. “But why did she come home?” she cried.
    â€œA place to stand for a while,” said my father. “To regroup. To get ready to try again, I suppose.”
    My mother set her cup down. She straightened herself up, and like a little girl repeating a pledge or a memorized prayer, she said, “I will always give my daughter a place to stand.” It reminded me of a lot of prayers. A last-ditch attempt to postpone reality.
    Very quietly my father said, “No, Janey. Not always. Sometime or other we will not give her another chance.”
    I hung on to the table. I actually felt as if I would faint.
    My father, who has coached adolescents all his life, helping them through drugs and failed grades, humiliation on the field and parents getting divorces—my father writing off Ashley like that.
    His daughter.
    My sister.
    He’s wrong, I thought. She cannot be that bad. I said, “The bedroom isn’t so bad. I can get used to tape on the walls, I guess. Maybe Ash and I can talk tonight and sort it all out. Don’t make a big issue out of it, okay?”
    Ashley walked into the kitchen with the obese man. All thought of tangled tape left my mind. Chins rippled under Bob’s mouth and stomachs jiggled under his T-shirt. She certainly liked her men in layers. If not extra heads, then extra chins.
    I had no idea how old he was. I just knew if he sat on one of the kitchen chairs, the legs would snap.
    â€œHello, Ashley,” said my father quietly. “Hello, Bob.”
    She smirked at us.
    I gasped. “Ashley!” I cried out. “What are you wearing? What is—is that—oh, Ashley, that’s my sweater! That’s my designer sweater!”
    Ashley laughed. She pirouetted before me, like a model on a runway. She had taken my best sweater, so expensive it took all my birthday money, and sliced off the sleeves. Violet and teal blue yarn dangled from the cut edges. She’d tugged the threads to roughen it. She was wearing my seashell earrings, but she had both pairs in one ear and none in the other. A thin length of leather was wrapped around her neck, rather like a noose.
    Actually, she looked very striking, like a high-fashion model wearing things real people don’t wear. Things that appear and exist exclusively for expensive glossy magazine pages.
    My clothes, I thought. I found myself wanting the sweater more than I wanted Ashley. Was it wrong to care so deeply about a sweater?
    It’s just a sweater, I told myself. In the great parade