Piper
Tati and Davis spend all weekend apart.
Her phone doesn’t move from its charging port on the kitchen counter. I peek at its screen every time I walk by. Davis has called a few times. He’s sent a lot of texts too, but I can only see one, stacked on top of the rest: Can we please talk?
As far as I know, Tati doesn’t respond.
Henry and I keep our distance too, though there are scattered texts, and a couple of choppy phone calls..
With the exception of eating and peeing, I spend all of Saturday and most Sunday in my room.
I get sad every time I think about how Friday fell apart, and Tati’s as frigid as ever, but what’s really bothering me is knowing how much better I’d feel if I could talk to Gabi.
She’s the best buffer when it comes to my sister and me, and she’s a master at putting boy troubles into perspective.
If Damon hadn’t screwed everything up, I’d text her now.
She’d be at the door in half an hour with magazines, face masks, and a pint of Peanut Butter Fudge.
I worry about her. She thinks she’s found a prince in Damon. She thinks her parents and I judge him unfairly because he’s rough around the edges. She won’t—can’t?—see who he really is, and that terrifies me. Friends or not, I love her. I never want her to experience her boyfriend’s cruelty.
Late on Sunday afternoon, I draft a message in my Notes app, not the text thread Gabi and I used to blow up at all hours. God forbid I accidentally hit send—I’m not ready for that. But I am ready to put words to the truth.
Damon wants you to believe I started what you saw. I didn’t. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want him to kiss me. I told him no, but he wouldn’t listen. I don’t know how far he would’ve pushed if you hadn’t walked in. He’s not good for you, Gabi. He’s dangerous.
I close the app and toss my phone onto the bed.
Maybe now my wounded heart will scab over.
Restless, I go to the kitchen. Tati’s there, sifting through papers at the table, half a mug of coffee to her right. She’s dressed and made up, but it’s a front. Her ragged cuticles and bouncing knee betray her agitation.
I pull a seltzer from the fridge, then say mildly, “You should call him.”
She taps the edges of the papers on the tabletop, aligning them, avoiding my gaze. “You should mind your own business.”
“Come on, Tati. You can fix this if you want to.”
“I shouldn’t have to fix it.”
“He’s trying. He’s called. He’s texted. You’re not giving him a chance.”
“Piper, I swear…I don’t want to talk about Davis.”
“But you care about him. I know you do.”
She flings the papers. They go sailing across the table, then flutter to the floor.
They’re lease applications, I see now, and they’re everywhere.
She shoves her chair back so hard it rams into the wall, leaving a scuff, then pushes to her feet, snapping, “Sometimes caring isn’t enough.
Sometimes caring leads to more trouble. More hurt. ”
I blink, taken aback by the way she just voiced the position I maintained right up until I reconnected with Henry.
She adds, “You only want me to call Davis so you can make peace with Henry.”
“How do you know he and I aren’t at peace?”
“Because he hasn’t been over here all weekend, and you haven’t left the apartment. You miss him, hence your opportunistic suggestion that I call his father. Everything you do—everything you say—is self-serving.”
Something heavy materializes in my stomach. Why does she always put me down? “That’s not true. I’ve been watching you mope since Friday. Is it such a stretch that I want you to be happy?”
“Yes,” she says, taking an antagonistic step into my space. Her gaze flicks to the stud in my nose before she meets my eyes. “You go out of your way to push my buttons, to wear down my patience, to make me worry, all because I’m not—”
She’s standing so close I can smell her jasmine perfume. She overlined her lips, faking a fuller mouth, before she layered on her Ruby Woo. God, she pisses me off.
“You’re not what, Tati?”
“Nothing.” She sets her mouth in a hard line, breathing heavily for no good reason.
“Say what you were going to say. I’m sure it’s nasty, and that’s what you want, isn’t it? To hurt me?”
“Yes, Piper, that’s always my goal,” she says, rolling her eyes. “What I was going to say is that you make me feel like shit all the time because I’m not Mom and Dad. Because I can’t be Mom and Dad.”
“You’re right about that. Mom and Dad loved me. They gave me chances, and taught me things, and wanted me to grow. To thrive. All you want is for me to turn out like you.”
She shakes her head in disgust. “I want you to be an independent, productive member of society. Not a drunk. Not a criminal. Not a leech.”
I got wasted at Gabi’s party.
I broke into the Marine Conservation Park.
I lost my first and only paying job, and I’m too cowardly, too embarrassed, to tell anyone.
Tati’s accusations might be malicious, but they’re not untrue.
“I’m not mean for the joy of it,” she goes on. “It’s not easy, putting in forty hours a week at a job I dislike, taking care of a teenager who hates me, living in a town I spent my adolescence desperate to leave. I’m lonely. I’m stressed. And I’m tired.”
I feel bad for her—a part of me has for years—but my pity is overshadowed by animosity.
“I’m so sorry Mom and Dad left you to do the dirty work,” I say, my volume rising. “At least you had a normal childhood. At least you got to grow up with them!”
“Yeah, lucky me,” she replies with so much disdain I lose my breath.
How dare she disparage our parents?
Can’t she see that I’m hurting? Doesn’t she care?
“They shouldn’t have chosen you to be my guardian,” I tell her. “They should’ve known you’d treat me like a burden. They should’ve known you wouldn’t want this life.”
She stares at me, her eyes sparking with an emotion I can’t name: fury is inadequate, devastation too weak.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.
Crying hot tears now, I sink down, squatting on the kitchen floor with my chin to my chest. She stands over me, offering no comfort, patronizing as usual.
“Piper,” she says finally, and because I’m desperate to be looked after, I raise my gaze.
But her tone is vicious. “You always do this. You say something ugly or do something stupid, and then you make this big production of falling apart. But you don’t want to be comforted.
You want to go on feeling sorry for yourself.
You like believing the world is against you, so you push people until they break.
You do it with me, and you probably did it with Henry. You sure as shit did it with Gabi. “
I straighten. I’m done letting Damon’s actions make me look selfish and slutty. “I didn’t push Gabi, and I didn’t break her. I didn’t kiss her boyfriend, either. If you’d asked me what actually happened, I would’ve told you: Damon kissed me.”
Tati huffs.
I barrel on. “He trapped me in Gabi’s room and got in my face.
He touched me. I’d been drinking, yeah, but I told him to stop.
I told him I didn’t want to be with him, that it’d crush Gabi, and that—” I trip over a sob, but I’m in too deep to stop now.
“I told him he was hurting me. I told him no. If Gabi hadn’t interrupted when she did… ”
Tati gapes at me, her face horrifically pale. I’m humiliated under her stare, scarred by the memory I just unearthed from its dark hole so I could throw it in her face.
Hands shaking, chest heaving, I attempt to rebury it with shovels full of dirt and denial.
I wasn’t sure Tati would believe me.
I wasn’t sure anyone would believe me.
I think my sister believes me.
“Piper—”
“Don’t. You assumed the worst of me, same as Gabi.”
I shove past, ramming her shoulder with mine.
I hear her call after me, but I don’t turn back.
I go to my room, retrieve my phone from my bed, and open the Notes app.
I copy the words I wrote for Gabi, then paste them into our text thread, the one that’s been unused for weeks.
I stare at the blinking cursor for a long moment, and then, because I am reckless and impulsive, because maybe I do want to be miserable, I fire off the message.
Delivered, my phone assures me.
Later, when I’m sure Tati has left the kitchen for her room, I sneak down to the pool, hoping Henry will show. Hoping he’ll sense my need the way he has in the past.
He doesn’t.
For hours, I sit in the dark, alone.