This room was the same as it ever was. The same purple bedspread with little white flowers all over it. The same matching curtains with a burn mark on the corner from my one day as a smoker. I got grounded for that. My parents didn’t notice the burnt curtain, lucky for me, but they had caught the cigarette smoke as it wafted down the hallway. After that I was forbidden to hang out with Neena Hobbs, the only girl in my grade who was allowed to shave her legs—and who had made me want to smoke like she did.
My dresser was cluttered with the usual teenage girl stuff. Old tubes of glittery lip gloss that had been expired for years. Bundles of headbands and hair elastics. Notes from my best friend, Sammy. Well, Sammy was my best friend until she married a soldier and getting a hold of her became impossible. Gel pens in every conceivable color. Everything had a memory attached. Some more than one. I couldn’t bring myself to toss a thing. Not the hair accessories I had worn for years through multiple hair colors and multiple bad haircuts. Not even the sticky lip gloss that my mom snuck me when my dad said I couldn’t wear makeup until high school. I picked them up now and rolled them around in my hand. They had names like Berry Beautiful, Pucker Pink, and Sweeter Than Sweet. Funny, though, once you got them on your lips, they all had pretty much the same rosy color, the same sugary and sticky shine that always caught in my hair.
I hadn’t been in my new place that long, but this room already seemed like a time capsule. Come to think of it, this was the first time I’d stepped into the room since I’d moved out. I wiped my finger in the dust on my dresser. Estelle made sure every room in the house was clean, except this one. What about Austin’s room?, I wondered. Did she do her Martha Stewart thing in there? Probably. She had different rules for the men in her life.
I realized that I hadn’t changed any of the furniture since seventh grade or so. I remembered sitting in that purple beanbag chair when Josh, the cornbread-gifter and the first boy who kissed me with tongue, broke up with me. I was fool enough to believe him when he made the excuse that his mom had told him he needed to work on his grades, keep his head clear, and stay away from girls if he wanted to pursue his supposed football career. But he started dating one of the popular girls the very next day. Word around school was that he had dumped me for her. Seventh grade really did a great job of inflating my insecurities. And, spoiler alert: Josh was now in and out of jail, not on a football field.
That beanbag chair was the indoor equivalent of the porch swing, full of drama and dreamy memories. There were a lot of teenage tears in that fabric—no wonder I have a visceral reaction today to the color purple.
The nightstand was stacked high with my old books. My econ textbook from senior year peeked out beneath a hardcover copy of You by Caroline Kepnes that was collecting dust. I had bought a second copy of You when I realized I’d left the original at my dad’s and didn’t want to go back there to retrieve it. Dad and Estelle hadn’t been married very long then, and I hated being around the newlyweds; I left every chance I got. That made two copies—three if you counted the audio. I bought that to hear the characters come to life in a voice other than my own. It was one of my favorite books and I was happy to keep a copy at both houses. It became one of the few stories that my dad and I both loved. I reached for it and cracked open the spine. I could use the distraction: YOU walk into the bookstore and you keep your hand on the door to make sure it doesn’t slam. You smile, embarrassed to be a nice girl…
When I heard the knock on the door, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Shit!”
“Karina?”
“WHAT?!” I sounded angry, like you do when you’re scared.
“Karina, are you okay?” It was Kael. “Can I come in?”
“Come in,” I said, and nodded, though he likely couldn’t see me through the crack in the door. He entered slowly and, once inside, gently closed the door. The little click sounded so loud. So definite.
“You okay?” he asked, as he walked toward me, stopping a few feet away from the bed.
I sighed. “Yeah,” I said, shrugging, closing my book.
“So do you always read at parties?”
When he said that, it reminded me of a novel I was reading last year—an angsty good girl?bad boy trope. I had a love-hate relationship with those books, but was currently waiting for the next one in the series. So I was in love at the moment.
“I just . . . I don’t know. I got overwhelmed? That girl”—I raised my hand in the air, holding the book—“she heard me say that stuff, and now Austin’s being a dick and she probably feels like shit.”
Kael nodded. “You didn’t know she was going to walk up.”
“Still.”
“Try not to worry about it. I know you’re going to beat yourself up over it, that’s just who you are—”
“You know what?!”
Now he was the one who looked caught. It was clear that he hadn’t meant to say what he had. Or maybe he’d meant to word it differently. His mouth hung open a little.
“What do you mean that’s just who I am?” I accused. He’d better not have meant what I thought he did.
He took a breath. “I meant that I know you worry about a lot, and you put a lot of pressure on yourself. A lot of blame.”
I wanted to stand up, to tell him to get the hell out of my room, but I sat there, holding tight to my book, keeping my legs crossed underneath me.
“And you know that how?” I asked, not really wanting to know what he was going to say. I had already become this girl to him, the one he needed to check in on, maybe take care of. I despised the idea of that.
No way was that going to be me.
No way was that me.
“Come on,” he pressed me. He no longer looked unsure about what he had said or would say; he looked annoyed.
“You’re acting like you know me. You’ve been around for, what—a week? And half of that time you were MIA.”
“So you missed me when I didn’t come back?” he asked.
Why was he talking so much all of a sudden? And how could I get him to stop?
“That doesn’t matter. My point is that you don’t know me, so don’t say that I’m doing something or being a victim or whatever.” My voice sounded screechy and dramatic.
“That’s not what I’m doing.” He sighed, rubbing his cheeks with both palms. “And I sure as hell didn’t say anything about you being a victim.”
“You said, ‘You put a lot of pressure on yourself.’”
“Never mind,” he said, defeated. “Forget I said anything.”
I felt so angry, so embarrassed and upset. I didn’t know I was directing all my feelings toward Kael. He came up to my room, I assumed, to check on me. That was a nice thing to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m frustrated and I’m taking it out on you. I guess this fits, since I’m”—I hooked my fingers into air quotes—“‘always pissed.’”
“I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself. People do shitty things. It’s what we’re made for,” he told me.
He was trying to change the subject, and I was grateful because I felt like crap. Any sort of buzz that I was feeling was basically gone at that point, but Kael still looked different than he had before tonight, even without my vodka glasses.