Invisible by Carla Buckley Page A

to the refrigerator, she pulled it open and pretended to be interested in its contents. Her stomach flipped at the sight of milk, cheese, bottles of ketchup and salad dressing, endless containers of crazy sorry-your-mom-is-dead food. She waited for her dad to say something, but it was Dana who spoke.
    “I’m going for a walk.”
    The room felt better after she left, familiar again. Peyton let the refrigerator door wheeze closed. Her dad hadn’t shaved. His face was puffy and his shoulders slumped. “She’s right, Dad. You used to go to meetings all the time.” He’d always come back quiet and withdrawn.
    “I will.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
    He certainly didn’t convince her. “It’s been months, Dad.”
    “I
said
I would.” The newspaper snapped open.
    Fine. She grabbed a box of crackers from the pantry. Cheddar goldfish, the kind her mom used to get when Peyton was a kid. Dana must’ve picked it up. She’d probably scanned the grocery store shelves and thought they looked like something Peyton would eat. She tore open the package, aware of her dad rustling the paper behind her.
    “Two days,” she said.
    “What’s that?”
    She nodded at the half-empty case of beer cans beside the sink. It would never have dared make an appearance while her mom was alive, and Peyton had even gone with her dad to get it. It felt like the unraveling of something, and both she and her dad were taking turns picking it apart. “We can’t even get through two days without Mom.”
    Carrying a handful of crackers, she went to her room, sat cross-legged on her unmade bed, and reached for her cellphone.
    Fingernails scratched against the mesh screen. Peyton rolled over on her bed and peeped through the blinds. Eric stood on the other side of the window.
    She met him at the back door. “It’s okay. No one’s home.” Dana was still on her walk, and her dad was out buying the wrong flowers for the funeral. She knew better than to hope he’d found an AA meeting. Not that her dad would care that Eric was over. In his present state of mind, he wouldn’t notice that Eric was playing hooky. “Let’s sit out here.”
    She pulled over one of the plastic lawn chairs and propped her bare feet up on the railing.
    “Sorry I took so long. I would’ve got here sooner, but Connolly caught me.”
    “Ugh. Don’t talk about him.” The sun warmed her legs and the top of her head, fell along her arms like a golden cloak, wreathing her in light, and keeping the darkness climbing the walls of her house inside, where it belonged.
    “I thought you liked Connolly.”
    His arm rested on the armrest beside hers, the muscles in his forearm thick, leading to the tender curve of the inside of his elbow, up to the point where the biceps bunched. She could remember when his arm was thin and hairless and looked exactly like her arm. Now it was like they were two different species. “He and Dana were drooling all over each other last night.”
    “Yeah?”
    “My dad was so pissed off.”
    “How come?”
    “I don’t know. They got into a huge fight. It was crazy.”
    A little brown bird hopped hopefully along the rim of the old birdbath. He shook himself, then flew away.
    “What’s she like?”
    “Dana? It’s weird. She’s always staring at me. And she stays up all night. Her light’s always on.” She didn’t know why that bothered her so much.
    The corner of his mouth crooked. She knew what he was thinking: that in order for her to have known that, she had to have been up, too. Whatever. “My aunt Karen’s coming for the funeral.”
    “The one in California?”
    Like she had a million aunts. Until Dana arrived, Peyton had just had the one. Her aunt Karen was sweet and nice and uncomplicated. She spoke softly and always made Peyton’s mom laugh and Peyton’s dad relax. Even so, it was going to be awful having her there. She’d only make Peyton realize just how small her family had become. “She’s bringing