Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(31)

It’s been bothering me more and more that I can’t ever see anything objectively, that every observation I make is filtered through my personal lens whether I like it or not. I mean, all my favorite novels are like that. F. Scott Fitzgerald basically is Gatsby, so obviously it’s Gatsby’s book, and Daisy comes off like a flake. But maybe in Daisy’s unwritten book, Gatsby is a flashy, patronizing * who thinks he could win her with money and fancy stuff. And that might be an even better book.

Eventually, sometime around when dawn breaks and I hear the jingle of Dawn’s keys landing on the kitchen island, I fall asleep wishing more than anything that I could float outside my head and see things for what they truly, honestly, objectively are . . . and kill the tiny voice in my head that constantly questions whether that truth even exists.

Whatever. One thing at a time.





Chapter 13


THANKS TO THE MORONIC SHUFFLING OF JASON TOUS— I can tell by the imprint that it was his neon green-and-yellow Air Jordans—the zinnias cannot be salvaged. But some of the American Beauty roses are okay, and the snapped lavender bunches can be dried and hung. (Ruth is not the sort of person who would do that, but Dawn is at least the sort of person who would make an obsessive Pinterest board full of intricately hung dried lavender and then not do it.) “I’m gonna come back and fix this as best I can tomorrow, okay?” I ask.

Ruth shrugs and nods. I can tell she’s still pretending she doesn’t care as much as she does about her flowers. Apparently there is no expiration date on this “pretending not to care” nonsense. I have a hunch that she thinks openly caring that much about a garden is encroaching on Tuesdays with Morrie territory.

Instead, I focus on the eggs, which oozed like gross gelatinous grenade-lumps on Ruth’s roof until they half froze in the chill. As I scrape and wipe them away, the smell of weed drifts tellingly by. Underneath me, Ruth is sitting on her porch, wearing the same rumpled high ponytail she slept in. She’s vaping. Who the hell got her a vaporizer?

“I’m gonna pay you extra for this,” says Ruth.

“No, don’t.” I make a face as I shovel the remnants of one cracked egg into the plastic bag on my arm.

“What?” she yells from below.

“Don’t pay me extra!” I call back. I think agreeing on a certain amount of money an hour is fair, but I don’t like bonuses; they always feel like charity.

“That’s very sweet of you,” she says.

Finished, I sidle on my butt over to the ladder, climb down a few rungs, and jump the rest of the way. I wipe my flat palms together with a sense of accomplishment.

“Your roof is normal.”

“Not as long as I’m living under it,” she quips.

“That’s true.” I peel the disgusting icicle-eggy gloves off and balance them on the porch rail.

“So . . . it’s a destruction holiday,” Ruth says, trying to grasp the concept of Mischief Night, which I explained to her as I prepared for aborted-chicken-zygote battle this morning.

“In essence.”

She exhales a white cloud that lazily rises. “Did you know them?”

“Yeah, they go to my school.”

She nods, a small reaction, because she probably guessed.

“What did you do last night?” she asks with a pointed tone that I don’t like.

“Lost my temper. You know what I did last night.” I busy myself picking flecks of egg off the gloves and flicking them away.

“You didn’t go out?”

I wrinkle my nose. “No.”

“What was Avery doing?”

“I have no idea. Probably studying for the SATs.” Probably studying for Mike Neckekis’s junk.

“You didn’t want to go out with the boys who came here?” She makes it sound like they came over to sip Arnold Palmers and play charades.

“Uh, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a douche.”

Ruth shrugs, vapes delicately with her pinkie in the air, and lets it go again. “When I was your age . . .”

“You prank called a stegosaurus?”

“Very funny. Actually, whenever we had a bad substitute teacher, I’d get the whole class to throw their textbooks on the floor very hard, and he’d reflexively duck under his desk—that’s what we were taught to do during the war if a bomb fell.”

“Dark.”

“You should take advantage of your youth while you’ve got it. Drink some whiskey. Spend some time with boys—or girls, if you want. Egg an old lady’s house.”

I make a Come on face.

“Not for you?” she asks, sounding amused.

“I’m not an *.”

“You’re sixteen. By the time you’re twenty-one, they’ll expect you to be a real person. This is your * window. It’s wide open.”

“Ew, don’t talk about my * window.”

“I just wish you’d raise a little hell! You know? Soon it’ll be too late.”

“Um, too late? I think I’ve got a while.”

“You really never know how much time you’ve got.” She looks off into the distance for a second, focusing on something far away. Then she snaps back into the present. “For instance, I read in the newspaper today that a lovely straight-A student at the Hun School passed away last week.”