“Does it…change how you feel…?”
A blank stare greets me. Anxiety drives hard and fast through my limbs like I’m wearing vibrating armor. I’d rather text Ario than have a meltdown at the dinner table, so I collect my phone and Mr. Hannigan’s envelope and leave. I’m rounding the breakfast island, almost to the stairs, when Mom charges after me with brand-new, furious energy:
“And don’t go online and talk about me! I know you do it.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“How do you know? You don’t know my account!”
“Gina sends me screenshots.”
Gina. Beneath the kitchen archway where the tile meets carpet, I spin around with shock. BE-TRAY-AL. My cousin Gina, with her condescending, asshole lawyer husband, has got nothing better to do but snitch on me and breastfeed her fugly baby. How come everybody in my family wants to literally kill me?
“You’re all scum!” I roar. But anger never works on Mom; it only makes her more self-righteous. Her tears have already dried.
“Do not discuss our private business with anyone else or online. Am I clear? And you’re gonna take down your kissing pictures.”
“No.”
“You have to take them down or you can’t—”
“THEN I’M OUT OF HERE!” I don’t give her the satisfaction of finishing her threat: —or you can’t stay. I kick the kitchen tile so hard, I think my foot might crack it.
Still, Mom never blinks.
She’s really doing this to me. I’m really getting kicked out? Where will I even go? Dad lives in a totally different country, and he cares even less about me than she does, if that’s possible. Maybe I could crash with Ario…I’d hate to burden him with my family drama more than I already have, but I don’t have a choice and his mom would jump at the chance to help me.
She’s so nice. She’s so normal.
How come everyone else gets a mom who’s nice and normal, and I get this mess?
I fight for a full breath while pins and needles unfurl a cape of anxiety down my back. Don’t faint. I need music—Carly Rae. Ariana. I’d take anyone at this point if it would pull me out of my spiral. Finally, I nod—numb from head to toe—and drag myself upstairs. I pass a wall of glazed, ceramic crucifixes and framed portraits of my parents’ wedding—colorful, tacky dresses and dapper men in suits. A true collision of Floridians and Englishmen. I’m somewhere in these pictures, a four-month-old fetus. The secret wedding guest. And my parents, the happy liars. They’ve been split up almost half my life and she’s telling me what’s cool and not cool with God.
This isn’t forever, Connor, I remind myself.
I have time to change her mind.
Finally, I’m alone in my room. My charger slips in, and after thirty eternal seconds, my phone wakes from its coma. This oasis of privacy. I haven’t felt private in weeks (lonely isn’t the same as private). In my bottom desk drawer, an overlarge SAT prep book rests where my Nintendo Switch used to be. A sticky note on top reads: