Chapter 1 #3
“You had seventeen years to make a better plan, and you frittered it away playing house!” he snarls through his teeth.
“You don’t get a say. This is a courtesy, not a discussion.
” And then the anger passes, tamped down with brutal efficiency.
He straightens, checks his corners, the street, the neighboring houses, the lighthouse resuming its haunted vigil.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter where either of us go.
You’ve seen the signs. It’s getting worse; we can’t outrun it.
By next year…” His eyes pass straight through me, grim as a funeral. “What have you told her?”
Side by side with him, I stare at my mother framed in the storm door, every muscle in her body locked, fists balled, eyes burning, and I don’t recognize her.
Concentrating hard—I’m a ghost, I can go where I want—I force myself through the wall of the house in a haze of freezing, stinging pinpricks to get a better look at this strange new mother creature, some random TV show character coincidentally sharing my mother’s features—but only if you squint, if you take away the fury and the fact that she cares, one hand clenched on the handle of the screen door, ready to kick it open and fight a man.
“My daughter is my business,” she says, every word a threat. “Now get the hell off my porch.”
My mother swings the door shut hard enough to rattle. Outside, the stranger punches his fist into the door in answer. Mom doesn’t flinch. Unafraid, her eyes scroll from the windowpanes, their shuddering frames, the dead bolt, the hinges, tallying up faults and flaws and disappointments.
I should know; she does the same math every time she looks at me.
“This is inevitable, Chloe,” the stranger calls through the door. “You can’t fight nature!”
Face fixed, my mom marches over to the disarray of cardboard boxes.
Ripping one open, she unpacks in chilly silence.
She ignores the man’s face still framed in the doorway; sets the sugar, flour, and rice canisters up on the counter; unloads silverware—including spoons, fricking finally—into a drawer.
At last, she unfolds a set of curtains. With mechanical precision, a wind-up toy gone domestic, she pulls down the rod, slots the curtains into place with two swift tugs, and closes them on the stranger’s exhausted glare.
Hidden now, her face crumples. She lifts a shaking hand, pressing hard into the sudden downturn twitch of her lips.
“Of course I can, you idiot,” she whispers, throat squeezing on the words. “That’s what started this whole mess.”
I don’t know what to do. Don’t know what this means. I close my—not eyes exactly. I don’t have eyes outside my body—or else I’m only eyes, just a cloud of awareness floating along—but I turn off the movie projector, bring up the house lights.
Out in the overgrown garden, soaked to the bone, I push myself away from the table.
I stand on shaking legs, gone cold and clammy in the rain.
Algae rubs off the tabletop, staining my palms green.
I force my rusty fingers to bend around the handle of my bag, joints screaming, frozen stiff.
A steady bead of water drips from its sodden belly.
I lift it, arms protesting every step of the way, and peek inside.
My stuff looks dry, I think, the carpet thick enough to keep the rain out for now. But I know from experience it’ll stay damp all day, exuding a wet animal and thrift store musk.
Great. I love that for me.
On the other side of the house, the garage door grunts open.
My mother whips out in her little Prius so fast she almost bashes off the sideview mirror.
With a squeal, she races out into the street and I’m home free.
I can sneak back inside, play hooky, call it a day.
Maybe with whatever blackmail material I just accidentally stumbled into, I can finally convince her to let me homeschool so we can quit this carousel farce of new schools, new states, twice a year.
But I’m not that lucky.
Mom doesn’t even look at me—when does she ever look at me?—but the moment the corner of her eye catches me standing soaked in the shriveled, sun-bleached garden, her entire face locks down. She stomps on the brakes, sucks in a deep breath like I’m stealing her oxygen specifically.
Realizing it’s too late to escape now, I plod across the yard.
Mom spends that whole long thirty seconds very obviously doing math in her head, leaving me standing in the October drizzle, mascara spiderwebbing down my cheeks.
After a couple calming calculus equations, when she feels less like killing me, she rolls down the window.
“Persephone,” she says. Just that. Just the literal worst name she could have saddled me with, all my flaws and nuisance weighing down those four fat syllables.
I walked over here meaning to tell her the bus never came.
I had an excuse ready, an argument prepared.
But the way she can’t even look at me, my name in her mouth like a disgusting thing—here it comes—the delayed explosion, the boiling water finally filling up my broken cup. The porcelain inside me pops.
Black-chipped fingernails denting the rubber window seal, I explode.
“Was that my dad?”
My mom’s beige fingernails leave dents of their own in the steering wheel.
“Get in the car.”