Before I cold finish the thought, the door to the bedroom popped open.
“Katie, are you here?” My mom said as she stepped into the room.
I whirled around toward her, my arms still stupidly raised above my head. I felt like I should be covering something, but I didn’t know what. Everything was wrong. I needed to cover my whole body. “Uhhh,” I said. “Hi, mom.”
My mother was still wearing her pale gray scrubs from work, and I could tell she was exhausted, but instead of screaming at me, she flashed a smile. “Oh, Katie. It’s great to see you back in your gear. And you’ve cut your hair!”
Cut my hair? I ran my fingers through my short brown bob and glanced over my shoulder at the mirror. Since quitting the team that fall, Katie had been letting her hair grow and had dyed it midnight black, but I was a copy of Katie from last summer, and my hair matched hers from competition days. “Yeah, well,” I said. “I was getting tired of it the other way?”
Mom bit her lip, and I could see this insane hope come into her eyes.
“Sweetie, are you thinking about getting back on the team?”
I knew that I should say no, but I hated to crush mom so completely. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
She stepped toward me and grabbed my hands. “Honey, there’s still time for you to get a scholarship. I know there is.”
“I’ll think about it, mom. Really, I will.”
Mom stared at me for a moment longer. I could see that she wanted to say more, but the relationship between mom and Katie over the last year had mostly consisted of yelling. She was probably afraid of pushing too hard. Instead she dropped my hands and turned toward the door. “I brought Chinese,” she said. “Come on into the kitchen and eat with me. Have you seen your brother.”
“She... He’s in my... I mean his room,” I said
Mom shook her head as she stepped into the hall. “No, he’s not.”
I hurried after her. It occurred to me that if Katie saw me wearing her bodysuit, she’d never let me forget it, but that wasn’t what worried me. I grabbed the sides of the door to my room and looked in.
Mom was right. I wasn’t there. I mean, Katie wasn’t there. And neither was the VCR. Under my TV there was just some disconnected cables.
“Holy fuck.” I said quietly. It really was the phrase of the day.