June shoved me and I landed so hard on my ass, I bit the inside of my cheek. I hated her so much, I vibrated with it.
“You are such a fucking traitor,” she shrieked, blocking the door. “You have zero loyalty. You’re so selfish, you make me sick. You don’t deserve to be in this family.”
“Family?” I screeched into the empty house. “Do you see a family anywhere?” Dad was at work, again, desperate to avoid us, leaving us to fend for ourselves with no explanation.
June needed to wake up. “She’s gone. She doesn’t give a shit about us. You could be fucking valedictorian and clean the house spotless and go to church every day and pray your ass off and it still won’t make her come home. She’s gone. She doesn’t care.” Mom didn’t have to say it for me to know. Her voicemail was full. We’d filled it up. And her silence broke my heart.
It had been a month, and I’d moved on. As far as I was concerned, Mom leaving was the best thing that could have happened to me. If she could forget about us, I could sure as shit forget about her first. I’d smoked pot for the first time. I’d stayed out on a school night, drank gin, and puked so hard I’d thought I’d lost hearing.
I summoned all the hauteur in my entire fifteen-year-old body to push past her. I added a snotty head tilt. “I’m going out. It’s not my fault you have no friends. Fucking loser.”
June lunged for me. I kicked her off and swung the door open. As I ran down the drive, sandals slapping at my feet, wind lifting my hair, I felt high. I slipped Mom’s ring onto my finger without looking back.
* * *
The car jerks forward.
“Maybe Mom was sick,” says June. Her face is haloed in a red glow from the brake lights in front. “She looked insane when she came back.”
Mom returned three months later. It was early in the morning. She was drawn and pale and immediately went to take a nap.
“God, Dad was sad.”
“Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t let him go to church by himself.”
In the car ahead of us, the driver reaches for four full bags and two holsters of desserts.
“Who gets food at DQ?” June muses.
We both shake our heads in disgust and drive up.
“Oh, hey,” says June to the cashier. I hear acid in her tone and duck my head low to see what she saw. I recoil quickly, face burning as I feel June’s eyes flick over to me. I recognize him right away when he wouldn’t know me at all.
It’s Holland Hint’s little brother Willy.
With a constellation of acne on his cheeks, he’s lengthened out in the last few years, seemingly as tall as Holland but less filled out from what I could see.
Two years younger than Holland, he wouldn’t know either of us, but I realize I’m holding my breath.
A horrible fear gnaws at my guts that his brother works here too, even though the last time I stalked him, he’d enlisted in the air force. I turn to see if I can spot a beat-up blue Nissan truck in the parking lot. All those memories. Driving around with the radio on, rarely talking, him making me duck whenever he thought we saw someone we knew.
I hear Willy give her the total. June primly unbuttons her wallet clasp and hands him a twenty.
I pull out my compact. I’m oily. And my lips are flaky.
He hands over her change and tells us to drive up to the next window.
June throws the car in drive. I jerk forward when she slams the brakes.
“That’s the brother, isn’t it?” says June, jaw set.
I don’t respond. If anything, I’m surprised that she remembers. I check the rearview, making sure he’s not within earshot, making sure June doesn’t see me checking.
She shakes her head, studying me. “Fuck if these assholes don’t look exactly the same.”
I sense her seething gather steam.
“Why didn’t you say hi?” she hisses.
“June, stop.”
She grabs my compact from me and snaps it shut.
“Do you honestly think he’s about to go call his brother and tell him how you looked?”
I stare at the powder puff in my hand. I wasn’t aware I’d gotten it out.
“June.”
“He doesn’t know you,” she says, dumping her change in the center console. “And even if his brother were here, he’d pretend he doesn’t know you either. Just like high school.”
The anger comes off her in waves.
“Look.” I shrug. “I barely even remember high school.”
“You’re so full of shit,” she says. Even in the dark, I can see there are twin splotches of red high on her cheeks.
I sigh and look out the window.
“Let me guess,” she says. “You don’t want your ice cream.”
She’s right about that. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Fine,” she snaps. June guns the engine, spinning the wheel wildly to the right, and I’m convinced she’s going to clip the tail lights of the sedan in front, when she throws the car in reverse at the last second.
“June!” I scream. My hand shoots up to the ceiling as my feet grind the floor.
“Shut up!” she says. Horns blare.
I turn my head, catching the surprised eyes of a Mexican family behind us. June curses while inching out so we can leave. “Thank you!” We both wave in our rearview, but just as our car lurches forward, we almost pitch into the van coming into the parking lot at a wide angle from the road.
June slams the brakes again. And just like Mom, she sticks out her arm to brace me, but she ends up hitting me hard in a clothesline, elbowing me right in the sternum.
“Ow. Fuck.” I rub my chest, glaring at her accusingly.
The van flips us the bird.
“Jesus Christ, June, will you just pull over? Just park for a second.”
“Fine.” June silently slides into a spot.
There’s a maroon van parked next to us. On the back windshield there’s a sign written in white shoe polish. NEED A KIDNEY. BLOOD TYPE A OR O. And a phone number.
“Why are you so weak?” She’s staring straight ahead and I’m braced for the insult, but the last word slices clean through my defenses. She inhales sharply, eyes clenched closed. She exhales shakily. “Look, I know you can’t help it. But you’re just so fucking…” June smacks the bottom of her steering wheel with the heel of her hand.
* * *
When I popped open the door of Holland’s blue truck, Mom’s rubies on my finger, my sister’s voice ringing in my ears, I thought I was going to be his girlfriend. That’s how it felt. I was finally the lead. I was the love interest. I was the one they were singing about in every single pop song.
“Hey,” he said, expression unreadable. I’d expected a smile. I’d hoped for a hug, but he seemed put out. As if I was an imposition. It’s true that I’d been the one to surreptitiously approach him while my friends were in the back of Planet K, the head shop where he worked, but he’d asked me to hang out. When I’d hoisted myself up to the cab of the truck, I was startled by the empty plastic bottles of soda on the floor, the stink of tobacco, the grid of duct tape on the navy pleather seat, and the gristle of coiled spring trying to elbow its way out and dig into my ass. I tried to keep the distaste off my face. I didn’t want to be accused of being high maintenance. It knew it to be the worst possible insult that could be hurled at a girl.