Afterparty(17)

I say, “The man seems to be threatening some form of benevolent house arrest. Eating baked goods may soon be my sole form of recreation.”

I realize that we are drifting toward the quad while everybody else is drifting toward class.

“That doesn’t sound so benevolent.”

We’re sitting on a bench, out of sight, behind the library, but I have no idea how we actually got here.

I say, “It’s my own fault. I virtually waved a Bloody Mary in his face. Then I waved Siobhan in his face.”

“And people come down on me,” he says. “One whole Bloody Mary and Siobhan.”

“Do you enjoy making fun of me?”

“At least I have the sense to drag home a respectable friend.”

I say, “Not all of us get to have the secretary general of the UN as our best friend. I heard he’s already taken.”

Dylan laughs, an outright laugh.

He says, “Gotta go.”

I start to say something, but he’s already half sprinting across the quad, and not in the direction of class.

? ? ?

“Tell me,” Siobhan says when we’re standing outside homeroom.

“Am I an honorary Lazar yet?”

I shake my head.

She claps her hands over her mouth with sort of fake amazement, but sort of not. “Was I a shit Bo Peep? I didn’t get you in more trouble, right?”

“Here’s a helpful hint. In general, the sheep shouldn’t be cooking meth.”

We are walking toward the wooded hillside that forms a semicircle behind Latimer. We’ve been cutting junior class assembly, anything related to pep, and the occasional boring class on this hill since we figured out Latimer’s completely lax attendance policy.

When we are lying in a stand of twisted scrub oak, Siobhan says, “That girl in the picture with that baby is your mom, right? What is she now, like thirty?”

Oh.

It occurs to me that in addition to not telling Siobhan about the extent of my geekiness, the fact I like Brahms, and my irrational devotion to Dylan Kahane, I might have skipped the story of my life.

I mean, she knows she left and never came back, but that’s pretty much it.

I want to be doing anything other than having this conversation.

Siobhan snaps her fingers in my face.

I say, “Did anybody ever tell you that’s annoying?”

“What’s annoying is people who zone out and don’t come back when their best friend is talking to them.”

“Sorry. I’m preoccupied. I have to do physics lab.”

“Not due until Friday. What’s wrong with you? Why are you changing the subject? Is that your mom or not?”

I do not, in the worst way, want to be doing this, but I don’t see a way out.

My dad says that most human misery can be staved off by a deep breath followed by ten seconds of rational thought. I don’t actually believe this works, but I take several deep breaths while Siobhan sits there staring at me, anyway.

I say, “All right. The thing is that she’s dead.”

“Shit!” Siobhan says. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Why would you do that to me?”

“The way it happened—really personal.”

She starts punting eucalyptus pods, shooting up clouds of dirt. “Like I haven’t told you personal?? Like I didn’t tell you how Missy Rogers tried to kiss me in the locker room?”

She storms down the path toward the stable, and I go after her.

“Why would you hide things from me?” She faces me, damp tendrils of hair sticking to her forehead. Her fingernails dig into the flesh of my upper arms through my blouse. “You’re supposed to be my best friend&?! Do you want to be or don’t you?”

But Missy in the locker room is an after-school special. My parents’ marriage gone bad, gone worse, and gone, is an oldie-but-goodie film that melts off the reel as soon as it starts running.

It begins as flaky girl meets buttoned-up guy, opposites attract, springtime in Montreal, cue the French music. Except that, in my parents’ case, it didn’t exactly work out.

Probably it would have helped if the flaky girl hadn’t been clinically insane.

It would have helped if the guy hadn’t been her psychiatrist.

Because psychiatrists are not supposed to get it on with their patients. They are not supposed to fall in love and have a baby. And, when they do, all hell breaks loose and there’s a giant scandal.

The outcome of the scandal was me.

Not to mention, the fact my mother liked drugs better than me (despite all the free, on-site psychiatric help from my dad) was a disaster. And it’s not reassuring to know she stayed clean through the pregnancy because that’s how much she loved me.

How much she loved me before she left me.

Even when my mom died—which I don’t remember, not her, not her dying, not having her and then not having her—people didn’t feel sorry enough for my dad to save what was left of his completely wrecked career. She was gone, I was a screaming baby, and he was the embodiment of bad judgment, well-known as a screwup all over the province of Quebec.

You read The Scarlet Letter in ninth grade. You write a paper about poor, ostracized Hester Prynne who screwed up and produced baby Pearl, evidence of all her badness. Not whining, but try being Pearl. Only Hester OD’s and you end up with the buttoned-up dad whose goal in life is to keep you from turning out anything like her.