Tell Me Three Things(13)
“Thanks,” I say. “Sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks, I guess. By the way, can you please start eating the food in the kitchen? Gloria keeps bugging me about you. She said all that ramen is going to make you guapo.”
“The ramen is going to make me handsome?”
“Gordo. Gorda. Whatever. It’s going to turn you into a big fat fatty fat fatty. All right, my community service is done for the day.”
“Wow, still an *,” I say, but this time I let my smile seep into my voice. Theo is actually not that bad either. Not great, but not that bad.
“So I’m probably still not going to talk to you at school,” he says, and for one fleeting second, I wonder if he could be SN.
“I figured as much,” I say, and he gives me one quick guy nod before turning his back on me to go inside.
CHAPTER 6
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: I’m out of clever titles.
Ever feel like your life is one long nightmare and you just keep hoping you wake up, but you never do?
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: Sleeping Beauty
ummm, yeah. things that bad?
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: More like drama queen
No. Not really. Sorry. Just feeling a bit self-pitying tonight. Never should have written.
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: my fortune cookie advice
nah, no need to apologize.
you know, they say how happy you are in high school is indirectly proportional to how successful you will be in life.
To: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
From: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
Subject: In bed
Yeah? Well, then yay for me, because that means I’m going to be CEO of the whole effin’ world.
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: Re: In bed
nope. I will.
It’s midnight now. I lie in bed and listen to the unfamiliar noises outside. California even sounds different. Apparently, there are coyotes in these hills, plus wildfires and mudslides to worry about. This place is always on the verge of an apocalypse.
I can’t just lie here and wait for sleep or tomorrow to come, whichever happens first. My brain is spinning out. A cup of tea. That’s what I need. Something warm and comforting. Chamomile has the same flavor in Chicago or LA. So I pull off the covers and put on my bunny slippers—the ones my mom gave me for my thirteenth birthday—even though the bunnies are kind of creepy now that they’re each missing one eye, and I head downstairs, taking each step carefully so as not to wake anyone.
In the dark, the kitchen feels far away. I need to cross the long living room to get there, and I’m scared of knocking something over. I walk slowly, arms outstretched, and that’s how I’m standing when I first see them: like a cartoon sleepwalker.
My dad and Rachel sit close together on the couch in the den off to the side, a single reading light turned on above them. They can’t see me, thank God, because I’m now hiding behind a pillar. I feel embarrassed stumbling upon them like this and a little stunned too, since I can see that they are not merely strangers who decided on a lark to elope. They look like a real married couple.
This is intimate, and not in the way it was at dinner, when Rachel put her hand on my dad’s, a gesture that on reflection seemed more for Theo’s and my benefit. Now they are bent together, forehead to forehead, and there’s a photo album I’ve never seen before open on their laps. Must be Rachel’s. Is she showing my dad her before pictures? Her dead husband? Pictorial evidence that this house used to be filled with a functional family? I can’t hear what Rachel is saying, but there’s something about the hunch of her shoulders and the way my dad reaches up and touches her face—cups it between his palms, like it’s something precious and easily shattered—that tells me she’s crying. He might be too.
My heart pounds, and I feel sick to my stomach. I imagine the photos on her lap. Maybe there’s one of Theo, age five, being swung in the air between his parents. We have that picture in our before album. My mom on the right, my dad on the left, me in the middle, caught right at magic liftoff. I am smiling so big you can see that I’m missing a tooth. Did my dad show Rachel our pictures? Hand over everything—our entire history—just like that?
My eyes fill with tears, though I fight them. I’m not sure why I feel like crying. Suddenly, everything feels irrevocably broken in that way it can in the middle of night when you are alone. In that way it can when you are watching your father comfort his new wife. In that way it can when you too are hurting but there’s no one there to comfort you.
I walk backward, a silent moonwalk, a trip that feels so much longer going back than it did coming. I pray that they don’t see me, pray that I can get away before they start kissing. I cannot watch them kiss. When I finally get to the stairs, I force myself to go up slowly and noiselessly, one at a time. I force myself not to run away as fast as my creepy bunny slippers will take me.