Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(13)

“I don’t know.” I sigh. “She’s not entirely devoid of personality. She just fakes being all awkward and shy and nerdy. Maybe it’s just what guys want now. Fake-awkward. She pretends to not know what she’s doing when she’s doing it.”

Avery reluctantly nods.

“But that’s what I mean,” says Ruth. “You’re genuine. There’s no artifice in you.”

“Often to your own detriment, bro,” mumbles Ave. I glare at her. She looks away innocently.

“You’re not the way you are and you don’t talk the way you talk because you think that’s what other people want from you.” Ruth shrugs. “It’s better. If you keep acting a certain way just because guys—or anyone—want you to, you’ll regret it.”

“It’s like she’s intentionally trying to make things—oh my GOD.” I drop my rake, struck with a massive realization.

“Are you okay?” Ave asks, alarmed.

“I’m Anne Hathaway and she’s Jennifer Lawrence!" I exclaim.

They both look at me like I’m insane.

“No, hear me out. Anne Hathaway is a celebrity. But she’s a real person—like, nerdy and loud and enthusiastic and excited about stuff, and people think she’s abrasive and they hate her.

“Whereas Jennifer Lawrence is, like . . . Anne Hathaway 2.0. I mean, she’s the new and improved version. Her PR team COULD make her come off totally perfect. But she’s designed precisely to seem like she’s been programmed with similar ‘real person’ bugs—but in a super-appealing way, nothing too weird or unrelatable or abrasive. She sort of just seems to not give a shit. And everyone loves her because she’s such a ‘normal person,’ even though she’s not. You know?” I proclaim triumphantly. “Well, other than me.”

There is a long pause.

Avery rolls her eyes and says, “You are just, like . . . an endless font of bullshit sometimes.”

“Do those girls go to school with you?” Ruth asks, confused.

I’m about to reply when my phone signals I’ve received a text. I reach into the back of my shitty gardening jeans and pull it out. It’s from Dawn, and it says: Emergency. Come home right now.





Chapter 6


AS I RUN UP THE STAIRS OF OUR HOUSING COMPLEX TWO BY two, a gaggle of eleven-year-old boys start snapping those little dollar-store firecrackers in the parking lot. I flail. They laugh. Mission accomplished.

We’re not poor, but after people at school—people whose families have refrigerators with water dispensers and ice makers built into them, or in-ground pools, or houses with an upstairs and a downstairs—started bitching about how the “middle class” is ignored by financial aid packages, I concluded that we are lower-lower middle class. Springsteen class, if you will, although I failed my written driver’s test and therefore have avoided the highway jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive.

I stick my keys in the door and slam hard against it—it’s always jamming. This time it gives way easily, and I stumble inside. Dawn’s sprawled on the sofa still wearing her baby-blue house-keeping uniform. Bridget Jones’s Diary is on in the background.

“What is it?” I’m gasping from the running.

She looks at me and starts sobbing words. All I can make out phonetically is something like, “I JUST, MRAAAAAA.”

“Whoa, hey, holy shit.” I drop my backpack on the floor and rush over to the sofa. She slides to the very end to make room for me, pushing herself with just her feet the way a kid would, her upper body remaining limp. A half-empty value pack of Twizzlers is tossed on the coffee table, the packaging ripped nearly in half. This is a bad sign, as Twizzlers are her sad food.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, alarmed.

She continues to cry and shakes her head.

“Can you . . . try to tell me?”

These crying jags are frequent enough that I’ve developed an efficient strategy: half Gilmore Girls, half Jeopardy! I’ll take Is It a Guy? for five hundred.

“Is it a guy?” I ask.

She nods, her face scrunching up and her eyes squeezing closed. It usually is, although occasionally it’s a work thing, and, in one particularly scary white wine–fueled instance, an “I should have been a better mother” thing. This I could deal with.

“I thought we agreed to save emergency texts for actual dismemberment,” I joke. She just looks at me. Her makeup has dripped down her face.

On our tiny TV, Bridget Jones bemoans how fat she is. In the two years since my dad left, I have watched a countless number of these movies with Dawn, but I will never get over how f*cked up they are. I wrinkle my nose.

“I’ll be honest with you; I’m not sure this is helping.”

I mute the movie, and Dawn smiles, wan. She appears to have gotten a little calmer and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, sniffling.

“So, what happened?”

“I went on a really good date.” She sighs.

“From Match?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re crying? I don’t understand.”

“God. It’s just not gonna work out. You know?”

“Why? Is he married or something?” Or a squatter? Or a twenty-five-year-old who said he’s thirty-seven because he “likes cougars”? Or prone to saying “I know I’m not black, but . . .”? Just a couple of her old chestnuts.