The Exact Opposite of Okay(36)
He then grabs Danny’s tulips from my hands, hurls them to the ground and starts stamping on them like he’s trying to kill a cockroach. He does this for at least thirty seconds before I ask, “What are you trying to achieve exactly?”
Vaughan stops abruptly. “Do you have any idea what kind of pressure I’m under? To support my father, to go to law school, to be successful? To be the perfect fucking model son with the perfect fucking grades and the perfect fucking life?”
“No, I don’t,” I say matter-of-factly. “Because my parents are dead.” Adrenaline is ringing in my ears. “I’m going to walk away now because you’re pissing me off. Come and talk to me when you’ve calmed down and we’ll figure out how to fix this mess. I will either be here or in Mexico. It’s really anyone’s guess at this point.”
8.54 p.m.
New plan: go home, talk to Betty about my disastrous existence, maybe purchase and consume a vegetable because, on top of everything else, I’m probably at real risk of developing scurvy at this point.
9.28 p.m.
Betty’s pretty weary after a double shift at the diner, and to be honest she smells like old fries, but I still hug her super tight the minute she walks in the door. She’s damp from the rain outside, which is nice because when I cry silently all over her woolly yellow cardigan she barely notices.
“Kiddo! What’s all this about?” she asks. We’re standing in the doorway, her sodden umbrella dumped next to the shoe rack, me clinging to her like a limpet to a rock pool. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy sudden and alarming displays of affection as much as the next girl. But this isn’t usually your style.”
“Sorry,” I sniffle, finally pulling away. Betty pushes the door shut, locking and chaining it while still looking at me with deep concern.
Her glasses are spotted with rain, but instead of wiping them dry she just peers at me through the kaleidoscopic droplets. “Rough day?”
“You could say that.”
She ushers me into the kitchen and immediately gets to work filling the kettle. It’s one of those unnecessarily heavy beasts which she inherited from her grandma, and she can barely lift it despite the Popeye arms she’s developed over decades of manual labor.
Once it’s simmering away on the stove, she takes a seat at the table with me. It’s still covered in crumbs from our bacon sandwiches this morning. I fill Betty in on the Danny situation, but somehow, when I come to tell her about the leaked nudes, the words get stuck in my throat.
“That’s sweet of Danny to buy you flowers,” Betty says, missing the point entirely.
“No, it’s not.”
The kettle whistles on the stove and Betty goes to get up, but I gesture for her to stay seated. She’s been on her feet all day. I busy myself making tea in the biggest mugs I can find.
“Why isn’t it?” Betty asks, propping her feet up on the chair I left empty.
Stirring milk and a third spoonful of sugar into each cup, I sigh. “It was a way to assert his male dominance over me as a woman by not respecting my decision not to partake in a romantic relationship with him. Did you not read that Feminism 101 book I got you for Christmas?”
“I don’t think this exact scenario was in there.”
I bring the tea over to the table and take a seat, propping Betty’s feet up into my lap. Dumbledore sniffles around the floor, hoping for some rogue bacon juice or even a mini marshmallow from last night’s hot cocoa, even though he’s probably checked this exact spot a hundred times today. I scoop him up onto my lap too, so he can act as a footwarmer for Betty. He wiggles uncomfortably at first, but soon settles into the strange sort of cuddle, accepting my gentle strokes of his soft brown fur.
“Anyway, the hows and the whys are sort of beside the point,” I say. “I’m just feeling kind of exhausted by it all. School. Danny. And . . . some other stuff.” I trail off vaguely.
I’m not sure why I don’t want to tell Betty about the website, or the nudes. Mainly I don’t want to worry her, especially when she’s so damn exhausted herself. In fact, I feel kind of guilty about complaining, given all the sacrifices she makes to her health just to keep me alive and in full-time education.
But it seems like she’s not really listening. She traces a wrinkly thumb around the rim of the teacup, staring intently at the steam. It looks like she wants to say something heartfelt, but she often needs to give herself a pep talk before spouting a sentence containing actual emotion, so I give her the space she needs to build up to it.
“Listen, kiddo,” she starts, throat hoarse like it so often is at the end of a long shift. “I wish your mom was here to see you now.” Her voice catches. “You know your own mind, and you’re not afraid to speak it, you know?”
Tears press heavily against my eyes.
No, I’m not, I want to scream. ?If my parents were here, they’d see nude pictures of me all over the internet!
I can’t talk about this. I can’t. And from the tension on Betty’s face, she’s too exhausted to see the conversation through to the end. So I shut it down.
“Anyway,” I say, swallowing my comparatively meager pain, “how was your day?”
10.01 p.m.
Once I’m alone, I take a deep breath and open the World Class Whore blog. Not in a self-flagellatory way; I just want to wrap my head around what’s happening, and the way it went down with Vaughan in the woods made it hard to do that. As much as I’m an insane extrovert and love being around people, when something major goes down I need time to process it alone.