“Why?” I ask. “Why would you be mad at yourself?”
He drives along Frost River. The rain is still coming down, giving the world outside the car a smeary, dreamy look.
“What kind of father am I if my daughter can’t come to me and tell me she’s having trouble with a boy? Or if I ignore my son, hoping his problems will fix themselves? Your mother likes to manage things. She’s good at it. But I let her do it alone for too long. And for that, I’m sorry.”
“I wish you were home more,” I say. “I miss you. I never see you.”
He glances over at me. “I’m going to try to do better.”
He looks away from me, his face deepening into a frown. I follow his gaze to the river.
“Dad? You okay?”
“I usually don’t get out this way very much,” he says. He pulls into the Frost River parking area, just a dirt patch, really. It overlooks the river and the beach.
We both look farther down, by the bridge.
The sea of people has grown. There are mountains of trash. People sleeping in piles, close together.
“What,” my dad says slowly, “in god’s name is going on down there?”
Before I can answer him, Joey texts me.
I’m home.
29
JOEY IS SITTING AT the kitchen island with Nana, a baggie of ice against his face.
“Roly Martin,” he says, pulling the baggie away. My dad presses Joey’s swollen cheekbone with his fingers.
“Nothing’s broken,” my dad says.
“Thank goodness,” Nana clucks, nibbling a cookie.
“How did this happen? Where were you? We’ve been texting all afternoon.” My dad takes off his jacket and hangs it on the chair.
Joey hands him his phone. “I was here. You can check the tracker. Roly jumped me on my way out of the locker room after PE. Mad about Gage, still. I’m not much of a fighter. I took off when I got loose and I drove around for a while. Just needed some time alone.”
Time alone. I try not to be obvious about it, but I sneak a look at his eyes, to see if they’re red, or slidey, like they were the night of the dance. He’s not Jell-O-ey and sloppy, though. He’s sitting up straight on the kitchen island stool.
He looks at me and Dad. “I’m not high. You can give me a test. I’m telling the truth.”
My dad shakes his head. “I believe you. Are you in a lot of pain?”
“No, but…Emmy, you should go upstairs. Mom’s up there, and it’s…not good.”
* * *
—
The door to my room is open. I stop short, my heart beating in my ears.
Clothes, blankets, jewelry, books, everywhere, littering the floor. The drawers of my dresser are pulled out, socks and underwear a mess.
My mother is sitting on my bed, the vintage black velvet hatbox on her lap, the lid off, dropped on the floor.
“This is mine,” she says softly, petting the velvet. “This was passed down to me. You…stole it from me.”
I’ve never heard her voice so low and it chills me.
“Mom,” I say weakly. “I can explain.”
“I got a call from Principal Patterson after I got out of court and I was so confused. The things she was saying to me. I didn’t understand them.”
She raises her eyes to me.
“And then I got the most horrible photos on my phone. I don’t know from who. Of you. In that window, there. For everyone to see. And I thought, That can’t be true. That’s not my daughter. My daughter wouldn’t do that.”
“Mommy.” I don’t know what else to say.
All my secrets are out now.
She runs her fingers through the stolen items in the hatbox, sifting them through her fingers, letting them fall and clatter back into the hatbox.
“And I came in here. I thought, Maybe she’s on drugs. Maybe she’s like her brother. And I found this. And these.”
She holds up the glamorous, expensive watch. It gleams in the palm of her hand.
“This isn’t yours. Where did this come from? All of this? Where? This money? These…things?”
“Mommy, please,” I say.
“You’ve been lying to me this whole time. A thief and a liar and…”
She looks at the window, the one I stood in, where Gage took the photographs.
When she looks back at me, her eyes are lost.
I think I’ve broken my mother in a way that Joey didn’t. A way that’s maybe worse because she never saw it coming.
“Mom,” I say. “Mom, please.”
“I don’t even know you. I don’t even know my own daughter. Why did you do this? Why on earth would you do all these things?”
My mouth trembles. “I…I felt lost.”
“Lost?”
“You don’t even see me. You’ve never seen me.” My voice is shaking. “You see Maddie, and you see Joey, but you don’t…see me. You never have.”
“You’re not making any sense. Of course I see you, you’re my daughter.”
I bend down and start picking things up randomly, throwing them on my overstuffed pink recliner chair. Suddenly I hate that chair.
“I don’t even like that chair, Mom. You picked it out. You never asked me what kind of chair I wanted or if I even wanted a chair in my room. You pick out my clothes. You tell me what classes to take. You tell me to take dance. You wouldn’t even let me take my pain pills and I was in pain. I’m still in pain. You got rid of my friend. My only friend.”
I’m rambling now, kicking clothes out of my way. I rip down the Polaroids of me and the girls on the dance team that I carefully clothes-pinned to a fairy light in my room. Throw them to the floor. I put them up because that sort of thing went with a girl with an overstuffed pink chair in her room. That sort of thing belongs to the daughter my mother wants.
“And I go along with it. Because I don’t want to cause you any more trouble. Joey is trouble. I just keep quiet, waiting for you to notice me. And look, now you only notice me when you see a picture of me literally naked in a window. That’s what it took.”
I wipe the tears from my face. It feels good to tell her this but scary, too.
She’s just staring at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open.
“And I stole stuff. And it felt good. That I could take things for myself and have something that I chose. And maybe that was wrong, what I did with Gage, but that felt good, too, like somebody was paying attention to me, finally. Do you think I want to spend time in a smelly hoagie shop on a Saturday night? I deserved to be kissed after that, that’s the way I see it. I love Joey, and I love you, but I shouldn’t have to…have to…with you it’s like it was with Gage, and wanting him to dance with me, where people could see. I shouldn’t have to ask. I shouldn’t have to wait for the scraps of whatever you have left after dealing with Maddie and Joey.”
I can’t say any more, I’m crying too hard.
My dad is standing in the doorway, his eyes surveying the mess.
“Abigail? Emory?” His voice is worried.
My mother puts the hatbox on the bed very carefully and stands up. She passes by me, brushes by my father, and then I hear the door to their room closing.
“Emmy?” my dad says.