This was when I missed my mom the most. It would have been nice to be able to talk to her about this sort of thing, to have someone to confide in, to have her listen without judgment. Has it always been like this?, I’d ask her. And she’d tell me, No, it was never this bad, social media and selfies and the Kardashians have made everything so much worse. Or she’d say, Yes, it really has always been like this. I used to compare myself to Charlie’s Angels back in the day. Then she’d get out her old photo album and we’d laugh at her eighties hair.

Who was I kidding? That would never have happened.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

My bedroom door was closed. Was someone inside? It wouldn’t have been unheard of to find a soldier passed out on my bed, or a couple hooking up. Not Austin and Katie, though. They were still in the kitchen, probably talking about me. Katie would be over her hurt by now, and, smart girl that she was, she would have turned the situation around to her advantage, used it to get closer to my brother. United against a common enemy and all that. And Austin would have known that he was onto a sure thing, so he’d likely be going on about how annoying I was, how I’d always been so uncool. He had two sides to him, one that fiercely defended me, no matter what. And one that used me as a prop, a pedestal that elevated him to cool-guy status. I didn’t need three guesses to know which one was down in the kitchen.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t rid myself of the habit of imagining what other people were thinking or saying about me. I did it all the time, even though I knew no good would come of it. It was like picking a cuticle, scratching and nipping at it until it started bleeding. I was doing that now, picturing everyone in the kitchen, wondering what they were saying or thinking. Even the ones who didn’t know my name, they’d think of me as that prissy chick who badmouthed sweet Katie. Someone would ask who I was, and they’d say, Oh, that’s Austin’s sister, and then they’d remember me as the girl who went around picking up empty bottles and pizza boxes as if she was working the night shift at Fridays.

Ugh.

I hated the way my brain worked. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t do anything too horrible, that people would understand I was mostly joking. I never would have talked like that had I known she was there, even if what I said was true.

I was grasping now.