Ripped (Real, #5)(11)
My pride prickles. “I don’t need tips. I’ve got this. She’s been giving me tips for six years.”
“Fine. Just get back here in one piece and in time to get measured for your bridesmaid dress. Pan, it’s my wedding, so suck it, bitch.”
I groan, and she laughs and slaps my butt as I get out of the car. Mel is always excited. Always upbeat. She’s not like me. And I’m happy for her. I am. But I also hate that I feel mad because she’s so happy. Sometimes I feel like I can’t stand happy people.
I just don’t f*cking understand them.
I head into the apartment, trying not to make noise. In case you haven’t guessed it by my name alone, my mother didn’t want me, and she never lets me forget it. The words “So you don’t make the same mistake I did” have been ingrained in my head since I got my first period, and I’ve never quite forgotten that the mistake was me.
I should probably live alone. But my cousin Magnolia saved my mother and me. She lost her mom, my mother’s sister, to leukemia, and came to us as a baby a few years after my dad’s death. She pulled both my mom and me from a deep sadness. If it weren’t for seeing her perceptive little gaze every morning, I’d be on drugs. Or booze. Or both. I don’t know why I’m drawn to drugs or booze or both, but when my dad died and Mackenna left, and my mom slapped me every time I cried and told me to get a grip, be strong . . . I just didn’t feel like life had a lot to offer at the time. Until little Magnolia came to us. My mom focused her efforts on her, and so did I.
I ease into the bathroom we share, turn on the shower, and pull free of my clothes. The water rushes over my head and I see his eyes, glittering silver and angry, and my stomach knots because I thought I’d feel better after hurting him. I felt that little rush at first, when we attacked him during his concert, but then I saw him, and all I know right now is that I don’t feel good.
After my shower, I can’t sleep, so I sit on the living room couch, listening to the patter of soft rain and the whoosh of wind outside. I tiptoe into Magnolia’s room and look at the way she’s twisted on the bed, all innocent, her dark hair fanned out on the pillow. She, like Melanie, really likes the pink streak in my hair.
“PanPan, read this for me,” she said only two nights ago.
She pulled out a princess story, and I cleared my throat and began reading. Magnolia remained quiet and in rapt attention, until I lowered the book. “Mag, look, I don’t think these books give you the right expectations of what a man is really like,” I said. She has no father figure, no brother, no male influence in her life, and it worries me. “You’ll fall in love with this prince and never find him.”
“Eww!” She jumped on the bed, yelling, “I don’t read these for the princes! I read them for the magic!”
“But soon you’ll be lured by a prince—”
“No prince! I want the dragon to eat the prince. Helena says that the boys with crowns in these stories don’t even like girls anymore. They like boys!”
Shit, I laughed my ass off at that.
And then I worried a little.
She has a friend with two dads, and fortunately, Magnolia’s completely not jealous of her friend’s bounty of fathers. “Why would anyone want two dads? I have none and am super all right—right, PanPan?”
She sounded confident when she asked, but I have such fond memories of my dad, I just don’t know. Still, I said she was right, because I didn’t have a dad anymore either. But is she truly all right?
As the sun rises, I write her a short note in case I leave before she wakes, then I go and get my electronic cigarettes from the nightstand. The key to quitting smoking is to always keep ’em fully charged. I’m on a two-month streak, and I’m not going to start smoking again because of a f*cking * like Mackenna. I shove the e-cigarettes into my bag and, on impulse, go to the shoebox in my closet where I’ve hidden some old stuff. Prized among those things is a stupid rock he gave me. Why did I save it? I don’t know. It’s a real rock, not a bling rock. I tripped on it once, when he walked me home.
“Kick that,” I said angrily, cupping my bleeding elbow.
“If we kick it, it’ll only trip you again next time you come around. The key to never tripping with the same rock is hang on to it,” he said with a smirk. “You can make sure you’ll never trip with the same rock if you grab on to it and know where it is.”
Thank you, Mackenna, for that nugget of wisdom. I’m going to make sure I never trip over you!
There are people who have an effect on your life. And then there are people who become your life.
Like he did.
I was always a solitary, withdrawn girl, my mother a workaholic, my father a workaholic, both of them strict and pretty much expecting me to focus on grades and grades only. They were always wary of me having bad influences, or even friends, really. This, for some reason, and my choice of clothes, made me the cool girls’ favorite attraction—or distraction. I was the only goth in our grade, and they loved to snicker about my all-black clothes and call me a cutter. But there was this one boy, the coolest bad boy, who stopped the teasing one day. He approached me with a purple scarf I had seen one of the girls wearing earlier, and he draped it around my neck, pulling me to him almost intimately close. “I’ll see you after school,” he said and kissed my forehead. The other girls shut up.