You'd Be Home Now (73)

“I don’t even like that chair, Mom. You picked it out. You never asked me what kind of chair I wanted or if I even wanted a chair in my room. You pick out my clothes. You tell me what classes to take. You tell me to take dance. You wouldn’t even let me take my pain pills and I was in pain. I’m still in pain. You got rid of my friend. My only friend.”

    I’m rambling now, kicking clothes out of my way. I rip down the Polaroids of me and the girls on the dance team that I carefully clothes-pinned to a fairy light in my room. Throw them to the floor. I put them up because that sort of thing went with a girl with an overstuffed pink chair in her room. That sort of thing belongs to the daughter my mother wants.

“And I go along with it. Because I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. Joey is trouble. I just keep quiet, waiting for you to notice me. And look, now you only notice me when you see a picture of me literally naked in a window. That’s what it took.”

I wipe the tears from my face. It feels good to tell her this but scary, too.

She’s just staring at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open.

“And I stole stuff. And it felt good. That I could take things for myself and have something that I chose. And maybe that was wrong, what I did with Gage, but that felt good, too, like somebody was paying attention to me, finally. Do you think I want to spend time in a smelly hoagie shop on a Saturday night? I deserved to be kissed after that, that’s the way I see it. I love Joey, and I love you, but I shouldn’t have to…have to…with you it’s like it was with Gage, and wanting him to dance with me, where people could see. I shouldn’t have to ask. I shouldn’t have to wait for the scraps of whatever you have left after dealing with Maddie and Joey.”

I can’t say any more, I’m crying too hard.

My dad is standing in the doorway, his eyes surveying the mess.

“Abigail? Emory?” His voice is worried.

My mother puts the hatbox on the bed very carefully and stands up. She passes by me, brushes by my father, and then I hear the door to their room closing.

    “Emmy?” my dad says.

“Can you just leave me alone, please? Please?”

“Emmy, talk to me.”

“Dad, no, not right now.”

He closes my door.

I climb onto my bed. I feel empty. Tears just pour down the sides of my face onto the pillow and I let them.

My phone pings several times, one after the other. I lift it up. Check the messages.


Let me know when the pool house opens It’s always the quiet ones


You doing another window peep show 2-night



I turn my phone off and throw it across the room so it lands on the stupid overstuffed recliner I never liked.

Then I bury my head under a pillow and cry myself to sleep.

If I was Joey, I’d be pawing through the house looking for anything, something to dull all this down. Forget I’m even me.

I get it now. I really get it.



* * *



—

At some point in the night, I open my eyes to Joey setting Fuzzy next to me.

I blink. “Stay?” I say.

He hesitates, then nods. He curls up next to me, his cheek swollen, the bruising starting to pop out.

    We don’t say anything.

We just fall asleep together.

I dream that Joey is standing far away from me, on the beach in San Diego, telling me he’s sorry, that he always lets everyone down and it won’t ever happen again. The sound of the waves carry his voice to me and I try to call back to him, tell him it’s okay, that everything will be okay, but the waves drown me out.

When I wake up, he’s gone.





30


I WAKE UP TO THE sound of shouting. My mother’s voice, something about grades and disappointment, and then Nana chiming in, “Easy, now. Everyone take a breath.”

And then Joey’s voice, “I’m never enough, am I?”

I scramble out of bed, but before I can get to the door to go downstairs and see what’s up, it flies open.

I brace myself for my mother, but it’s Liza who is standing there.

“Whew,” she says. “Your brother just took off in a hurry. I could hear yelling all the way outside on the sidewalk.”

I sigh. “I guess they were fighting.”

Liza takes one look at the floor and sits right down and begins folding my clothes and straightening up the things my mother threw out of my drawers. She glances briefly at the crumpled Polaroids, smooths them out, stacks them in a pile.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. “You should be in school.”

She shrugs. “My grandmother called in for me. I can miss a day. I haven’t been in your room in so long. When did you become such a slob?”

I sigh. “My mom kind of freaked out and tore my room apart. Somebody sent her…the photos.”

“Oh, wow,” Liza says. “Aye. That’s…not good. I’m kind of impressed, by the way. I didn’t tell you that yesterday. You’re famous. That’s really why I’m here.”

    “What do you mean?”

“Damage control. I know how these things work. Where’s your phone?”