I Liked My Life(20)

“And that girl’s not fat. You saying otherwise was unkind.”

“But, I—”

Mom was never a fan of the word but. She turned back to Paige, leaving Lauren looking foolish at the sideline. Something changed that day for those of us who saw it—we stopped giving Lauren the power to stomp on us. She switched to private school the following year, and I always thought we had my mom to thank for it. I wanted to be exactly like her.

So what do you do when you find out the person you most admire hated her life?

In the ambulance after the accident I ignored the EMT moving around the stretcher with air masks and tubes and his personal judgment showing in huffs, and thought about how unfair life is. My mother was wrong; there’s not a reason for anything. I don’t even know what to want anymore. I don’t want to die, but I’m no longer excited to live. Not that I can say that to my dad. He’d freak and ship me off to some high-end loony bin for suicide watch.

“I still don’t understand how you ended up in a car with John on Route 9.”

Why can’t he drop it? The case is closed. With John’s family connections, the city got everything settled in four days—John lost his license for two years and I got thirty hours of community service—yet here we are a week later still on it.

“It just … happened. Everyone was talking about Mom and then Mrs. Anderson was wasted and asked if I picked out the dress with her beforehand and I lost it. I had to get out of there.”

“Christie Anderson is a douche bag. Your mother and I used to call her Cruella de Vil.”

Finally something he and I agree on: Mrs. Anderson is a douche bag. The channeling has stopped; Mom never would’ve admitted that.

“The thing is, Eve, you should’ve called. I would have picked you up, no questions asked.”

That’s crap. He would’ve picked me up, but he would’ve been a pain in the ass about it. And he probably would’ve been as drunk as I was. I debate calling him out but decide it’s not worth it. “Well, you don’t have to worry. That was my last school dance.”

“Still, you’re grounded.”

“Fine, I’m grounded.”

I don’t even ask how long. There’s nowhere I want to go with a runway of missing hair where my wispy bangs used to hang, and there’s no one to hang out with anyway. John’s father is on the Massachusetts Supreme Court and viewed our actions as a call for help. He added thirty days in rehab with no communication from me to John’s sentence. John’s friends are mad at me and my friends are tired of begging me to care. I have officially become what I’ve felt like for months, an outsider.

Dad gives me a weird look, then jumps to his feet as if he forgot something. He returns with a book tucked under his arm. “It’s your mom’s journal,” he explains, rubbing the cover. I reach for it, but he pulls it close to his chest. “I’ve been reading an entry a day. You have to respect that these are her personal thoughts and there’s only certain pieces you’ll benefit from at this point.” He flips through a few pages and hands it to me opened on June 23, 2013, my last day as a freshman. “I thought you’d appreciate this one.”

Well, Eve is officially a sophomore. The cliché “Where have the years gone?” doesn’t seem so trite when it’s your child. I’d never hear the end of it if she read this, but sometimes I stop and smell her laundry before putting it in the wash. She’s my favorite smell.

As anticipated, the status of our relationship swings wildly based on her needs, fears, and struggle for independence, but I continue to find evidence there’s more going on in her head than she lets on. Today I told her I was proud to be her mother. I expected an eye roll but instead she said, “Thanks for not judging me.” Just like that, a compliment.

She’s wrong, though, I do judge. She’s perfect.

Mom had a journal? She loved my smell? She thought I was perfect?

I was wronged, cheated out of a gift that was right in front of me at a time when I was too selfish to open it.

I ask Dad if I can read more, but he gently tugs the journal from my hands. “Someday,” he says. “Some of it will serve you better later. As I read ones like this, about you, I’ll pass them along.”

“’Kay.” There’s no point fighting about it. The man is never home. What’s he gonna do, lock it in a safe?

Out of nowhere he asks if I want a party for my birthday in two weeks. I don’t point out that he just grounded me. It’s a short conversation.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

If he pushes the list is long: because most likely no one would come, because I’m not excited enough about life to celebrate, because it would be a total sham if I got presents after driving my mom off a rooftop. Luckily for both of us he just says, “All right.”

It’s not really, but I’ll keep pretending.

Brady

If Paige hadn’t printed a wiki page on why it’s disgusting not to, I would’ve left the bedding from when Dan and Meg stayed for the funeral. But here I am, home from work an hour early, in a three-way wrestling match with sheets and a mattress.

Paige has morphed into a representative of Maddy’s previous interests, operating a step ahead of my next mistake. How she knew I planned to throw a guest into a dust-mite haven I’ll never know.