When We Collided(33)

It’s a totally sensible purchase. I already have my motorcycle license because the guy I was dating when I turned sixteen had a bike. And it’s a GT—fast enough for the highway! Now I won’t have to borrow her car all the time.

“This was thousands of dollars, Vivian.” I hate that she keeps saying my full name like it’s a swearword. “From a credit card you stole from my wallet!”

“It’s my card! And money Grandma left me! It’s not stealing when it’s mine!”

Her voice becomes hushed, scary. “I confiscated that card from you because you couldn’t act responsibly with it. It was understood that purchases go through me first.”

I am incandescent with rage, lighting up the kitchen with the redness of my face. “Stop treating me like a child! Do you even hear yourself? I’ll be eighteen next year!”

Her eyes narrow, but I can still see her pupils trying to pierce into me. “You’re not taking your pills, are you?”

“YES! I! AM!” I am taking them. Well, one of them. The other, I’m taking, too! To the cliff every day so I can watch them fall to their deaths.

“Let me see your purse.”

“What? No! Why?” But then I realize: I have nothing to hide. “Fine. Here.”

She extracts both prescription bottles and dumps the pills out on the table. She counts them and finds—I’m sure—the exact amount there’d be if I were swallowing them all daily.

I see her shoulders sag, in defeat or relief I’m not sure.

“You can’t blame me for being worried. This is how it started last time. Next thing I know, you’ll be getting another tattoo without permission!”

My eyes blur over with angry, hurt, everything-all-at-once tears. She knows I hate the stupid watercolor lotus inked on my side, that I’m getting it removed, that I recoil from it. “Don’t talk to me about last time! I’m having a wonderful summer, and I’m better, and you’re ruining it by not trusting me.”

She has no idea. She was there, but she has no idea how scary it got—like my brain, my body, my whole life was on fast-forward and I couldn’t push stop or even pause. How low it got after, living with what had happened. And then how numb. How much I missed feeling music in my bones.

I remember so much of it, and I would surrender my best vintage sewing patterns to forget. My mom doesn’t know the worst of it because I’ve never told her, because saying it out loud would be reliving it, because I know she’d never look at me the same way again.

“I think I’ll cancel tonight,” she says quietly, but she’s bluffing—she has to be. The gallery is showing one of her paintings.

“Well, do whatever you want, but I won’t even be here,” I say, as controlled and prim as I can muster. “I’m going over to Jonah’s. He’s making me dinner.”

Okay, he’s coming over here so we can be alone, but eh—details, schmetails.

Her posture relaxes even further, fists unclenched. “Well, that’s sweet of him. He’s quite the cook, isn’t he?”

“He is.” As far as my mom’s concerned, Jonah can do no wrong. He’s so normal, so stable—living proof that I’m doing fine. She saw him at the farmers’ market one day with the littles and wouldn’t shut up about how sweet and responsible he seems, how wonderful it is that I’m spending time with such a nice boy. She’s right, of course, but he’s not so nice that he won’t come over when she’s not home and make me dinner and spend the rest of the evening in my bedroom. I cover my mouth, as if I am thinking very hard. But I’m just hiding my smile.

“All right,” she says, picking up her keys. “This conversation is not over, but we’re tabling it for now. The Vespa’s going back. I’m not happy, Viv.”

Jonah shows up an hour later with a brown paper grocery bag. For some reason, this draws me to him even more, imagining he’s my older, live-in boyfriend bringing home groceries to our big, modern beach house.

“This is good timing,” he says. “I’ve been working on a few new recipes for the restaurant. You can try one tonight instead of waiting until your birthday party.”

“I’m getting a birthday party?” I clap with delight, and I’m already imagining silly hats and fairy lights.

Jonah rolls his eyes. “You said what you wanted for your birthday was for me to fix up the patio, so that’s what I’m doing.”

I watch him unpack the groceries and lay them on the table, and there are plenty of things I don’t recognize—something green and leafy that is not exactly normal lettuce, a vegetable that looks like a cross between a potato and a radish. We find pots and pans and spatulas together, roving through Richard’s kitchen because my mom and I almost never use it, so I don’t know where anything is. Jonah puts salmon in the oven, and he places the potato-radishes—which he called red potatoes—into a saucepan of boiling water.

My mom said she’d be home late. But, even after our fight, I won’t be surprised if she has a few glasses of champagne and goes home with another tortured artist. I’ll get a regret-filled text message by midnight, but it won’t be so regretful that she actually changes her mind. I’m not judging her—I don’t want it to sound like I am—because I understand; I do. My mom wants someone to love her, and I recognize that having a daughter who loves you is not enough and that she craves to be adored by a steady, interesting, kindhearted man. I’m not saying I think going home with randoms is the best way to figure it out, but it might be fun and it’s certainly better than staying home and meeting no one.