A Simple Thing by Kathleen McCleary Page A

Were you wearing life jackets?”
    â€œNo!” Katie said. She stood in the middle of the living room, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Because we’re not freaks! We had life jackets with us, but we didn’t have them on. Baker and Hood go out in the kayaks all the time without wearing life jackets.”
    â€œThat’s Baker and Hood.”
    â€œAnd it should be us! I can’t stand you. You’re crazy!”
    â€œI am not crazy,” Susannah said. She could not get over her reflex to defend herself when criticized. “It’s my job to make sure you’re safe.”
    â€œIt’s your job to ruin my life,” Katie said. “If you want to know why I did stuff like go that party with Zach it’s because I don’t want to grow up to be like you .”
    Susannah pulled her lips together. “That was your bad decision,” she said.
    They glared at each other. Susannah could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest, a lump in her throat. She was exhausted, and ready to cry herself. “I’m going to unpack,” she said, and walked into her room and closed the door.
    She took one look at her suitcase and decided to save unpacking for the morning. Instead, she collapsed into the bed, not even bothering to get undressed, and pulled the quilt over herself. She felt heavy and yet hollow, like a leaden pipe, spent with fatigue. She closed her eyes.
    Minutes later, a scream from Quinn penetrated the door. Susannah jumped up and ran into the living room, where Quinn knelt on the floor, crying.
    â€œShe killed Otis’s wife!” Quinn cried. “She killed Otis’s wife!”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShe threw Otis’s wife at the wall,” Quinn said, wiping the tears from his cheeks with the back of one hand, and pointing at Katie. “I hate her!”
    â€œHe started it,” Katie said. “He’s so dumb! He said—”
    â€œI don’t care who said what,” Susannah said. “How could you break Otis’s wife? You know how important it was.”
    Otis, whom Quinn had owned for six years, was a mild-mannered box turtle with one obsession: a ceramic turtle, roughly his own size, that Matt had found on a trip to Mexico. Otis loved this turtle with all the energy in his little carapaced self. He slept next to it at night, returned to it after his outside-the-cage forays during the day, and even made love to it, his shell clanking insistently against the ceramic. Often Quinn would find Otis on his back in his cage in the morning, unable to right himself after a particularly vigorous session of lovemaking.
    â€œDid you know male turtles in the wild sometimes fall backward just like Otis after having sex?” Quinn had told Susannah. “Only they don’t have me around to put them back on their feet and they can die of starvation . Really.”
    Quinn loved his bizarre turtle facts as much as he loved Otis, which made it all the more outrageous that Katie had just hurled Otis’s wife against the wall.
    â€œI’ll pick up the pieces,” Susannah said. “Quinn, go get ready for bed.”
    â€œWhy?” Susannah asked, after Quinn left the room. She stood facing Katie, both hands on hips. “Why would you do that?”
    â€œLike you care why,” Katie said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She picked up her iPod, inserted the earbuds, and turned it on.
    â€œI’m not finished talking to you,” Susannah said.
    Katie sat down on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table.
    â€œHow dare you. TURN THAT OFF .”
    â€œYou never see my side of anything,” Katie said, her voice loud because of the music pounding through her headphones. “You assume your beloved little Quinnie would never provoke someone, right?”
    â€œWe’re not talking about Quinn,” Susannah said. “We’re talking about you . What you