Nice Girls(81)

“Jesus, you need to pull yourself together. Do you know how tired I am of this shit? The school thing—you assaulted a girl, for fuck’s sake. That’s the kind of thing that follows you forever. And now you can’t even keep a nine-dollar job?” Dad asked, enraged. “What the hell happened to you?”

I felt my mouth drop open, but no sound came out.

“I know you have problems, Mary. But why the hell did you let things get this bad?”

I think I’d always known that Dad had been ashamed of me. Except he’d kept it unsaid. I preferred it that way—I liked being in denial. I liked pretending that I had at least one person who stuck by, regardless of what happened. That was family. But I’d known the truth.

And it hurt.

“Why can’t you try to be normal, Mary?” Dad asked, his eyes looking through me. “None of this crazy bullshit.”

I felt the tears welling in my eyes.

“Fuck you.”

Dad blinked, his face turning red. I had never sworn at him before. We could do it to other people, but never to each other.

“Mary, you say that again and—”

“Fuck you.”

Dad’s face was bright red, but his hands stayed clasped on the kitchen table.

“You keep acting like this, and you can’t stay here anymore,” Dad said, his voice low.

I wanted to say something that cut. I wanted him to know that I would have turned out just fine had Mom not died, if only he had raised me better. I wished they would have traded places.

Instead, I said nothing. My body moved on its own, out of the kitchen and up the stairs into my room. I slipped into a ratty high school hoodie with a faded George Washington on the front and a pair of jeans.

I’d left my Goodhue Groceries uniform in a pile on the floor. I took both the shirt and the pants and dumped them in the wastebasket near my desk. I imagined the blood rushing out of Jim’s face if he’d seen.

When I grabbed the car keys downstairs, Dad was still sitting at the kitchen table, his hands folded together, the coffee untouched. He didn’t look at me.



In the car, I tried to put distance between me and the house. I wanted to clamp down on the gas pedal, winding through the streets until I was long past Providence Hill, Carver, the state border. But the snow continued to fall hard and thick, covering the view ahead on the roads. I felt Mom’s car glide on the slush and the ice, even as my foot pressed on the brake.

I made it about as far as Espresso Haus before I got irritated. I pulled into the parking lot and hurried inside. I ordered a dark coffee and a breakfast sandwich. The barista asked me if I was okay, and I pretended not to notice that my eyes were teary.

As I waited, I saw a picture of the Willands on a newspaper rack nearby. The photo had been taken two days ago, after the funeral. It showed them walking out of St. Rita’s, holding hands. Mrs. Willand had fixed her makeup.

Due to the blizzard, the coffee shop was empty. The table that Kevin and I had shared was free. I clambered into where he’d sat and scarfed down my sandwich, as if I hadn’t eaten in days. Then I nursed my cup of coffee, watching as the snow wafted down outside.

I doubted that Dad had kicked me out for good, but I knew our relationship had changed. Things couldn’t go back to how they’d been, the two of us passively coexisting. As family, we knew best how to hurt each other. Everything would now be tinged with bitterness.

I knew that Dad was ashamed of me. Dad knew that I no longer respected him.

We couldn’t pretend anymore.

I was alone.

My friends at school no longer cared for me. I’d cut ties with Jayden, Charice, even Jim from the grocery store. I wasn’t close enough with the Willands or Mr. Nguyen.

And Madison was gone. I’d crossed a boundary in attacking her father. A decade of friendship was over. I suppose that rivalry had always stirred between us. Her father just became the kindling. In the end, she knew the truth—she should’ve gone to an Ivy, not me.

I was a fluke.

I had spent my life trying to believe otherwise. I put so much stock into school. I wanted to succeed. I was willing to do anything to prove myself to the people who’d snubbed me, doubted me, abandoned me.

I was worth something.

In the past three years, I’d even believed it.

But the delusion couldn’t last forever. I had to learn that eventually.

And I had learned it, now that my life had crumbled around me.

And all for what?

The girl who had abandoned me all those years ago.

Olivia Willand.

I didn’t know her beyond our childhood. But I remembered our summers in the woods together, Olivia trekking on her own while I lagged behind.

All these years later, I was still chasing after her.

I just wanted her to see me.

Outside, the snow continued to pelt onto the city. I wondered what it would feel like to walk out and scream into the stillness. After my lungs gave out, I would fall asleep in the cold, my eyes closed, snow dotting the tips of my lashes. It sounded nice.

I cradled my head in my hands, my eyes closed.

But in the dark, I saw only the arm at the lake.

Neither of the girls had a say in the end. Someone else had chosen it for them. The end had been violent, brutal. Now we said the case was over, and we’d chosen to end it at Dwayne Turner.

But it wasn’t finished. There was more going on, and I was the only one aware of it.