Storms 01 - Family Storms

they hadn’t followed me up. “What am I supposed to say?”
    She opened the door partway and looked out at me with a face so full of anger it took my breath away. I stepped back.
    “Tell them whatever lies you want,” she said. “I’m tired of covering up for you.”
    “What?”
    She slammed the door. I stood there dumbfounded. When I looked toward the stairway, I saw that Mrs. March had come up and was standing there gaping at me. I hurried to my suite and went in quickly. My head was spinning. I was still woozy and a little confused from what had happened on the boat, but this added so much weight to it I felt as if my head had turned to stone. I sat on my bed, dazed,my heart thumping. I hadn’t closed my door, so I heard Mrs. March knock on Kiera’s door. Instead of the usual unfriendly “What do you want?” I heard the door being opened, muffled voices, what sounded like Kiera crying, and then the door being closed.
    I sat absolutely still, trying to hear something more, but I heard nothing for the longest time. Then I thought I heard heavy footsteps in the hallway and got up to listen at my doorway. I heard Mr. March ask, “What’s this all about?” Then he, too, went into Kiera’s room, and the door closed again. I closed my door softly and retreated to my bathroom. From the moment I had stepped off the boat, I could think of nothing else but a hot shower. I felt so dirty inside and out. I decided to wash my hair as well. Afterward, I wrapped a bath towel around myself and went to my vanity table to blow-dry my hair and brush it out.
    The shower had refreshed me, but I could feel the deep fatigue in every muscle in my body, even in my bones. My eyes wanted to close and did for a moment. When I opened them, I saw both Mr. and Mrs. March captured in the mirror. They were standing behind me, looking very upset. I spun around.
    “Sasha,” Mrs. March began. “Do you have a tattoo very low down on your back?”
    For a moment, I couldn’t speak. My throat tightened so hard I couldn’t breathe. Why would Kiera have told them about that? There was no other way, no other reason, they would be asking about it.
    “Yes,” I finally said.
    “I’d like to see it,” Mr. March said, more to Mrs. March than to me. “Now,” he emphasized so sternly that I winced.
    “Please turn around again, Sasha, and undo the bath towel so we can see the tattoo,” Mrs. March asked. She looked as if she was going to burst into tears any second. “Please,” she added.
    I fumbled with the towel so I could open it and cover the front of my body while lifting the towel enough to expose the tattoo.
    Mr. March stepped closer and looked at it. “Where’s Alena’s digital camera?” he asked Mrs. March.
    “Donald, please.”
    “Where is it?” he practically shouted at her.
    She looked flustered for a moment but then went to a drawer in the desk and took out a camera. She brought it to him. He turned it on and took a picture of my tattoo.
    “You ask about the rest,” he said. “I’m going to my office to send this to have it checked.”
    He left the suite, and I wrapped the towel around myself again. I had no idea what I was supposed to do or say. Had someone informed Kiera’s parents about the VA club? Were we all in trouble? Mrs. March, her body looking as if it was slipping off her bones, slinked over to a chair and sat.
    “Kiera is upset,” she began. “She says you stole her boyfriend today, Ricky Burns. She says you were intimate with him on the boat and didn’t care that everyone knew it. She says you seduced Ricky.”
    It felt as if a sheet of ice was sliding from the back of my head down my back, over my stomach, and down my legs to my feet.
    “That’s not true,” I said.
    “She was so upset that she broke down and confessedabout other things. She told us she took you to buy those clothes because you wanted them, and she thought we’d want her to make you happy.”
    “What?”
    “I knew they weren’t her clothes. They looked new, and they fit you.”
    “That’s not true, either. She’s lying. I don’t know why, but she is.”
    “She said it was your idea to lie about the play audition.”
    “No.”
    “Otherwise, why would you go along with it? She says you have a reputation as a big flirt in school, and all the boys were after you, and she was frankly embarrassed about it since we had described you as her cousin. She claims she tried to get you to calm down, but today was the end. You