Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(16)

“I was feeling better.”

“You were feeling better because of the medication.”

She lifts her hands in surrender. “My prescription ran out.”

“So you get it refilled.”

“Wanna watch a movie? They put the Rob Zombie version of Halloween on Netflix.”

“Mom. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“I’ll refill my prescription and start taking my meds again.” Her face is wan and tired.

“Thank you.” I take a bite of pizza, pull another letter off the stack, and open it.

“We can go through that later. Get your dinner and let’s watch Halloween.”

I’ll say this for my mother: she’s very good at making me feel less lonely in this world, even when she has no energy to take care of herself. But I need to make sure I’m being heard. “I do not want to have to bathe with baby wipes because our water’s been cut off because, like, our water bill is sitting—”

My phone buzzes.





I walk in the front door, Buford jingling behind me, and follow the sound of the TV to the living room, where my dad sits, with no particular light of interest in his eyes, watching a show about sharks. My mom’s curled up next to him, reading. My younger sister, Alexis, sits cross-legged on the end of the couch, texting or Snapchatting. Buford slinks over to his bed in the corner, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

I squeeze in between my mom and Alexis, who huffs in annoyance.

“Hey, Jo,” my mom says. “How’d filming go?”

“You need to wash your face,” Alexis says.

“You need to go put on vampire makeup like me. Your face is too plain.”

Alexis hmphs and goes back to her texting.

Mom stink-eyes us. “Josephine, Alexis, I hope y’all are not going to ruin my peaceful Friday night with bickering.”

“She’s the one—” I start.

Mom puts down her magazine and gives me the look I imagine she gives her jailbird clients when she is thoroughly not having even a little bit of it. “How often do I care who started what?”

“Never,” I grumble, then slump back and start texting Delia to tell her that Instagram thinks I love watching turtles hump.

“My question earlier was not rhetorical,” Mom says. “How was filming?”

“Fine,” I mutter, not looking up from my phone. “We mostly didn’t screw up.”

“This the episode that’s gonna make you a star?” Alexis also fixates on her phone.

I delicately reach over with the toe of one of my witchy black stilettos and kick her phone out of her hands.

Alexis mewls indignantly. “Mom.”

“When I become famous, I’m going to have my bodyguards do that. You’ll be on your phone and they’ll come up and be like boop and kick it out of your hands. And I’ll watch and laugh,” I say.

“I’m so sure you’re gonna make enough money doing your corny show on channel six to hire anyone.”

“I’m mo mure you’re gonna mew mew mew to mire manyone,” I say in a high-pitched voice.

Dad uncrosses his arms from over his belly. “All right, now. I’m going to start taking away phones and car keys if this fussing at each other doesn’t stop. Y’all heard me?”

“Yes,” Alexis and I say in unison.

“We were having a perfectly pleasant evening until you two started in,” Mom says.

“Well, I was having a perfectly pleasant evening until I saw Alexis, so she’s obviously the problem.”

“I don’t care that you’re eighteen. I’ll send you to your room,” Mom says.

I read Delia’s reply to my text. Oopsie. I shouldn’t have texted her with trivialities while she was expecting a big email.

“Although,” my mom continues, “Alexis has made a worthwhile point, in a roundabout way.”

I roll my eyes. “I am going to my room. You don’t even need to ask.” I begin to rise.

“Your mother is talking to you,” my dad says.

I slump down and stare at the TV.

“I know you have fun with it, but you need to consider that doing a low-production-value show on public access is not the fast track to a career in television,” my mom says.

“I never said it was.”

“You have an opportunity to get experience at Food Network, a national station.” She turns to my dad. “Brian, turn it to Food Network. I want it playing while I make my point.”

My dad picks up the remote and changes the channel. Guy Fieri, that graffitied bulldog, is alternating between jamming swollen sandwiches in his mouth with both ring-bedecked hands and hollerin’ in ecstasy.

“Mom, I’m not interested in Food Network. Besides, I wouldn’t actually be on TV there. Here, I am.”

“Whether you’re interested in ultimately making a career at Food Network is beside the point. You need real experience at a real channel, and you have that chance in a city where you’ve gotten into college.”

“Jo,” my dad says, “we’re not trying to be hard on you. We want what’s best for you and your goals.”