Puddin'(43)

He chuckles.

“And I’m just looking for a nice lady my age who doesn’t want to make me buy clothes that might be considered in some way fashionable or current.”

“Hey,” he says, “my style is classic.”

“If classic means boring, then sure. You’re like a cartoon character who wears the same outfit over and over again. Like, does Bart Simpson just open his closet and have endless red shirts and blue shorts?”

He shrugs. “Never have to worry about what to wear.”

“Boring,” I say again as I turn up his music. My dad has different playlists for different things. Showering, cooking, mowing the yard, working. But they’re all the exact same eclectic mix of Rod Stewart, Maná, Bruno Mars, Selena, the Bee Gees, the Beastie Boys, and Jay-Z. If I could only get him to throw in a little bit of Drake and Kesha, it might not be so bad.

Once we’re on my street, he pulls down our alleyway behind the house. It’s mere seconds before my mom is walking out the back door in her signature bright-red lipstick—which she’s totally reapplied and I know it’s because she knew she’d see Dad. I don’t have any grand illusions of them ever getting back together, but things like her lipstick still make my gut twist over what might have been.

“Cal, wait for me inside while I talk to your dad, okay?”

I nod and give my dad a one-armed hug so as to not drip any ice cream on him. He presses a kiss against my cheek, and his stubble tickles.

“Thanks, Dad,” I tell him.

“Siempre, mija.”

I feel those tears prickling up again. I don’t give in, though. Instead I hop out of the truck with my backpack and devour my cone as I jog up the stairs and wait for my mom inside.

“Mom?” Kyla calls from her room as Shipley trots down the stairs to greet me.

“It’s just me. Mom will be back in a minute.”

“Okay.” Her voice pouts.

After a few minutes, the sliding glass door opens and Mom gestures for me to sit at the kitchen table.

Her whole body ripples with a sigh. “You skipped class.”

I nod.

“You broke into the wrestling-mat room. You destroyed personal property. And you disrupted a whole hallway of classrooms. All at my place of work.”

“It’s my place of school, too,” I remind her. “If anything, the lines here are a little fuzzy.”

She’s quiet, and that’s my cue to explain myself. I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow. I can’t cry again today. I can’t. “He broke up with me,” I say. “It’s like the last year and a half didn’t even happen. And there’s not even another girl. He just doesn’t want me anymore.”

She reaches across the table for my hand. “Oh, baby. Baby, baby, baby.”

“I’m sorry, Mama. I shouldn’t have done any of that. I know. But I just—I have no friends and no life.” My voice cracks a little on that last syllable.

“Which is your own doing,” she reminds me unapologetically. But then her whole body sinks toward me as she uses her foot to tug on the leg of my chair and pull me closer to her. “But you’re hurtin’, and when you hurt, I hurt.”

We sit there in the quiet stillness of the house where I’ve spent nearly my entire life. Finally I say, “I like your lipstick. Looks nice and fresh.”

She blushes lightly. “Always gotta remind ’em what they’re missing.”

She’s right. I can’t wait for that moment—because I know it’s coming someday—when Bryce looks at me and he sees all that he missed out on. Or at least I hope it’s coming, because I’m clinging to that. But right now I just feel like a total slob who stuffed her face with soda, Oreos, and ice cream all day and made a huge scene at school. Tomorrow all anyone will be talking about is how crazy Callie is and how I overreacted. Drama queen. “That girl has lost it,” they’ll say. “First the dance team. Now this.”

“Can I be excused?” I ask.

She nods. “Come down and help me with dinner at five thirty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stands and opens the cabinet above the refrigerator where she keeps her champagne flutes from her and Keith’s wedding. “Hold your hand out.”

She places my phone with its gold, sparkly case in my hand. “Is this a trick?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I figure today might have gone a little smoother if you’d had a phone. And I was thinking what if there was some kind of emergency or whatnot.”

I nod fervently.

“You’re still on house arrest,” she reminds me. “Still totally, completely one hundred percent grounded.”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand.” I hold the phone to my chest as I walk upstairs to my room with Shipley a few steps behind me. I feel like I’ve finally got some kind of lifeline back.

But then it hits me. A lifeline to who? To what? There’s no one out there waiting for me to rejoin the social world. I’m grounded forever, and it doesn’t even matter because I’ve got nothing left to be grounded from.

The thought is tragically freeing.





Millie


Seventeen


A bowl of mixed balled melon with a side of cottage cheese (my mom’s extremely sad idea of dessert), a homemade apple-cider-vinegar facemask I found online, my fluffy notebook of achy feelings, and my completely unwritten essay for my summer program application. I am the picture of Friday-night excitement.