Every Other Weekend(8)

And Shelly couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t let her braid my hair?

It took everything I had to not flinch from her. I wasn’t thirteen anymore. I viewed her past friendship with me like the stain it was, and I wasn’t about to alleviate her occasional pangs of conscience by pretending otherwise.

I locked eyes with her. “I remember everything.”

Shelly nodded at me, once, twice, and dropped her hand to her thigh. “Okay. I get it. You hate me. I might hate me, too, except I think I might be smarter about it.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

“I put up with a lot, and not just from you and your mom.”

I propped up my head on my arm and raised an eyebrow. “Oh no. Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise?”

“You’re trying to get slapped, aren’t you?”

My other eyebrow rose. For all her talk—and with Shelly there was always a lot of talk—she’d never once threatened me. I hadn’t thought she had it in her. I once saw my mom throw her out of the house by her hair, and all Shelly had done was cry. Was there an actual spine hiding behind the Barbie-doll facade?

I suppose the proper reaction to an adult threatening to hit you would be fear, but Shelly wasn’t the kind to inspire anything. She had maybe ten pounds on me—not counting her boobs—and not even as many years. I had friends with siblings older than she was.

I think Shelly realized that her scare tactic had been a bust. She sighed. “Things are going to change around here. I promise you that.”

“Sure they are.” I successfully fished the remote out from under the cushion and gestured for her to stop blocking my view. She didn’t move.

“I know you think I’m temporary, but one of us is sorely mistaken.”

I turned on the TV and leaned so that I could focus on the screen. “You don’t really think he’s going to marry you, do you?”

Shelly shot to her feet and held up a not-quite-steady hand. “Why does he want you here? Did you ever think about that?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Unlike your new friend next door, your dad wasn’t here for you, was he? It’s the weekend, and he’s choosing to be at work. Again.”

I gripped the remote tight enough to turn my knuckles white, but I kept my voice flat. “That’s one of the many fundamental differences between us. I know I’m here because my dad enjoys taking things from my mom, even things he doesn’t want.” I felt my own eye muscle twitch at that admission, convinced of it as I was. I couldn’t fully embrace the indifference I tried to show Shelly. I gave her the kind of smile usually reserved for videos of cats failing to jump over things. “You’re here because my dad thinks paying for sex is gauche.”

I think Shelly would have slapped me if she’d been within striking distance. Instead, she looked at me with tear-filled eyes, then strode purposefully into the room she shared with my dad. She slammed the door so hard that one of the pictures on the wall crashed to the floor.

I left it there.

Grabbing the nearest pillow, I found a Full House marathon and spent the rest of the evening in magical TV land. Or I tried. I maybe should have picked a show where the family more closely resembled my own. Something on Animal Planet, where the father left and the mother ate her young.

I clutched that pillow tight enough to burst it.





   ADAM

I knew something was wrong the minute I woke up. It was a cacophony of little things that combined into that overwhelming roar of wrongness, like when you rent shoes at a bowling alley. Even before I opened my eyes, I felt the scratchy stiffness of my sheets when I shifted. The sound was wrong, too. No birds. Instead there was a muffled rush of traffic spilling past and the occasional blare of a horn. Then there was a clicking noise, followed by a deep, groaning wheeze as warm air gushed into the room. The wrongness didn’t dissipate when I opened my eyes, but comprehension sharpened its edges.

Thin drapes the color of rust hung over the sliding balcony doors and let the gloomy September light show me much more of the room than I cared to see. Last night I hadn’t turned on the lamp, preferring instead to let the shadows conceal details I detested on principle.

Dad had only just moved in himself and had the entire building to fix up, so it wasn’t like I’d expected him to have decorated the place, but the spartan, thrift-store furniture wasn’t helping my unease. The showstopper was the print that hung over the bed. It was an apple orchard. I wondered if Dad had hung it on purpose, or if it came with the apartment. Either way, the mockery of it drove me from my bed as though I’d been doused with water.

At home, I could have looked out the window and seen real apple trees and breathed in crisp, slightly sweet air. There wouldn’t have been the sound of one car assaulting my ears, let alone hundreds. We didn’t live on a working farm or anything, just a house nestled back from the main road surrounded by trees and quiet and, as Mom had reminded me yesterday, the occasional deer.

Had it been only yesterday? Last night, really? I sat on the bed with my back to the orchard print and fished my phone out of my jeans from the floor. It rang twice before she answered.

“Hello?”

“Mom, your phone shows my face and name when I call.”

She laughed, but it sounded relieved more than anything. “I know, but what if someone else had your phone?”