The Cheerleaders(6)
Brandon said my name again. “This is a bad idea.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
He didn’t push me away when I kissed him. He wanted it, I could feel how badly he wanted it, and when he asked, “Are you sure? Are you really sure?” I nodded. He leaned over and opened his glove compartment, tracing stubbly kisses around my neck the whole time.
It happened two more times before the beginning of the last week in August, when my mom took me for my annual gynecologist visit and the doctor asked when my last period was, and I said I didn’t know because I honestly didn’t remember, and she frowned and made me pee in a cup.
I called in sick for what was supposed to be my last shift at the country club, three days before school started. Brandon didn’t text me to see what had happened—why I never said goodbye.
Friday, I swallowed the first pill in Dr. Bob’s office. I spent Saturday curled up on my side on my bed, sobbing into my pillow and praying I wouldn’t throw up from the second pill, because then it wouldn’t work.
In the morning, I had a text from Brandon, asking if we could talk. I’m so stupid, I thought maybe he wanted to see me again.
But he was trying to warn me that he’d gotten a job at my goddamn high school.
* * *
—
Mom doesn’t speak to me as she collects me from the nurse’s office, signs us out, and leads me into the parking lot without uttering a single word.
The rain has turned to a light mist. I tilt my head back and let it cool my face as Mom unlocks the car.
I keep my eyes on my lap as I buckle my seat belt. “I’m sorry. I threw up.”
I watch her from the corner of my eye, searching for any indication she might ask me if there’s something else going on. She starts the car and flicks on the wipers. “You can’t keep taking painkillers on an empty stomach.”
The truck in front of us stops short. Mom slams on the brakes and all I can think is pain. I’m sweating, ears ringing. Her voice breaks through—she’s saying my name over and over. Shaking me.
I blink away the black spots clouding my vision. We’re pulled over, and my mother is staring at me. “Did you just pass out?”
“I don’t know.” Pressure builds behind my eyes. “Mom. I just want this to stop.”
“I know.” Her hand lingers on my shoulder. Her touch is light. I imagine her cool fingers brushing my hair behind my ear like she did when I was little, before my sister died and my mom stopped touching me. As if I’d become breakable.
She withdraws her hand and doesn’t say anything else until we get home.
* * *
—
Mom is the manager of a playhouse—it’s too small to be called a theater—in town. She has to pick up booster forms for the upcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest, but she drops me off at home first and makes me chug Gatorade to get my blood sugar back up.
From my bedroom, I hear her on the phone with Dr. Robert Smith. I wonder if his name is actually Bob Smith, or if he changed it to something so generic no one could find him and pipe bomb his house.
“Naproxen can make people sick to their stomach. He called you in some nausea medication,” my mother says when she sticks her head in my doorway. “It should be ready by the time I leave the playhouse—I’ll pick it up on my way home.”
As she’s shutting my door, I call, “Mom?”
“Yes, Monica?”
My heart is still racing from the sight of Brandon this morning. The adrenaline is the only explanation for the fact that I have the urge to tell my mother the real reason I asked her to pick me up.
My mom and I don’t exactly have an open relationship; she had to find out that Matt and I broke up by running into his sister at Starbucks. Even if I did tell her things, it would be totally demented to admit that I had a summer fling with the new cross-country coach.
I’m not seventeen. Brandon is in his twenties. Tom is a cop. I tamp down the thought as quickly as it comes to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
She studies me for a moment before shutting my door. It almost hurts, how taken aback she looks at my acting the slightest bit grateful. It makes me wonder why anyone would ever want children. I can’t think of a more thankless job.
When I hear the front door slam downstairs, I sit up in bed. Flinch at the fresh swell of pain in my lower body. I haven’t had a painkiller since before I went to Demarco’s office this morning.
Every second my mom is gone feels like an eternity. When I can’t bear it any longer, I drag myself out of bed and head downstairs.
The naproxen bottle isn’t on the kitchen island where my mother left it this morning. I don’t even know half the places in this house that she could have hidden it.
I pause outside the downstairs bathroom, eyeing the door to Tom’s office. Tom’s back has been messed up since his car accident last year; some dumbass kid stole an ATV and led Tom and his partner, Mike, on a chase through Sunnybrook. The kid blew through a stop sign and hit a BMW, which then hit Tom and Mike.
My mother made Tom stop putting off the surgery in the spring. The doctor gave him Vicodin for his recovery; on a bad pain day this summer, I saw Tom sneak a couple pills from the bottle in his desk drawer.