Chapter 15
“The girls are here!” my mom yells from downstairs.
I push my bathroom door closed so no one stumbles in before I finish this heated conversation with Amari.
Ever since I promised to meet up with her, she’s been pestering me about when.
I feel bad putting her off. I keep imagining her all alone in that big fancy house, and I wonder if her parents are still giving her the silent treatment.
But seeing her is proving more difficult than I thought, now that I’m in the mix of things here. My phone buzzes with another DM.
Amari:
This is really messed up. You said we’d try another day a week ago and now you’re ignoring me. You promised.
Me:
I’m not ignoring you. I just don’t know when I can. It’s not that easy with my mom.
Amari:
Your mom or your new friends?
Wait, do your new friends even know the truth about you?
Me:
Amari, stop. I’m trying.
Amari:
Tinsley Picture House. Wednesday at 3:30. Can you be there?
I take a deep breath. I can’t put this off forever. I’ll be there.
I hear footsteps approaching my room. When I open the bathroom door, Deanna’s standing by my desk.
She looks at me suspiciously. “No flushing?”
“I was just fixing my hair,” I say, running my hand over my half-up, half-down ponytail, hoping it looks neat.
She walks over and plants a kiss on the corner of my mouth. “I like your hair like that, by the way.”
“So, we did a thing…” Kenny says, appearing in the doorway.
“Yeah, a thing to my hair,” Alice yells, pushing her way past Kenny into the room. She drops to the floor and puts her scarf-covered head in her hands.
Kenny laughs and throws herself on the bed.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad, Alice,” Deanna reassures her, joining Kenny.
Mel and Kayla arrive and spread snacks out on the floor next to Alice. I catch a Cheez-It Kayla throws my way and smile to myself watching everyone hang out comfortably in my room.
Alice groans. “I’m sure my chances at homecoming queen are nonexistent now,” she whines.
“Just show us,” Kayla says.
Alice sighs loudly before pulling off her scarf. I gasp when I see the thick streaks of bleached strands haphazardly scattered throughout her hair. The other girls are dead silent.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me, Jasmine!”
“I wasn’t going to, I promise. Who did that?” I ask, looking at the other girls’ faces.
Alice points to Mel and Kenny.
“You practically forced us to help you. It might have been worse if we didn’t,” Mel says.
Alice glares at her.
“You’re definitely going to be the center of attention now,” Kayla says, choking back a laugh.
Alice covers her face. “My mom is going to kill me,” she says. “Like dead.”
Kenny snickers. “Let’s make an appointment to get it fixed, it’ll be fine.”
“Where you go for that?” Alice snaps, pointing at Kenny’s hair. “No thanks.”
Deanna taps Kenny like she’s trying to stop her from engaging and Kenny just shrugs it off.
“You’re such an ass,” Mel says. “I doubt anyone wants that in a queen anyway.”
“Can we not?” Deanna asks plaintively.
Kayla slinks out of the room just as Deanna sits with Alice. “Sorry, guys, it’s just really freaking ugly,” Alice whines.
Kenny groans and joins them on the floor. They start coming up with a plan to get Alice’s hair back to normal when my phone lights up. I tense until I see it’s Deanna, sharing a menu for the place they’d been talking about.
“I’ll have what you’re having,” I say to avoid any chance of opening my messages and seeing something from Amari right now.
Deanna adds another BLT with fries to the order and turns to the other girls.
I think about how content everyone seems to be to have me around. This is what I wanted. I won’t let anything ruin it—not even my unresolved feelings for Amari. But three thirty on Wednesday looms large in my mind.
A few days later, I get to the car after school and Kayla is mid-selfie.
“Hey,” I say, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Take a pic with me.” Kayla waves me over. I throw up a peace sign, which used to be my signature pose. “Cute!” she shrieks.
Kayla tells me she’s posting it on IG, which makes me a little nervous.
Most of the pictures have just been on her story or Snapchat—and those eventually disappear.
This is more permanent. I haven’t posted anything since I’ve been out, and though we don’t have any mutuals, I’m still a little uneasy.
Still, it’s flattering that Kayla wants to feature me in such a prominent way, and it’s hard to say no to her.
She brainstorms a caption out loud and shows me proudly when it’s done: sister, sister <3.
The music pauses and Kayla’s phone rings on the Bluetooth speaker. “That’s my mom.” She stares at the number on the console. “I’ll call her back.”
Her mom. I’m so used to Kayla talking about my mom that I sometimes forget she has her own.
The music resumes.
As we get closer to the house, I think to myself, Now, Jasmine. My voice barely goes above a whisper when I ask her. “Do you want to talk about her? Your mom, I mean?”
Kayla sighs as she pulls in.
I don’t regret asking. I think this is what sisters do. “I’m not trying to upset you. I just care,” I say.
“I know,” she says. I follow her in silence up the path and into the house. She calls out to see if anyone is there and no one responds. “Let’s go to my room,” she decides. We head upstairs and I make myself comfortable on her floor, as I normally would. She sits at her desk and starts to talk.
“Most of the time, I’m okay about it. Like, my dad has made this nice life for us, and your mom is cool, and now you’re here. But some days…”
“Some days you can’t help but think about her?” I venture.
She hesitates. “It’s mostly when I get sad, or anxious about things, or there’s something I wish I could get her opinion on that my dad isn’t gonna help me with, like my dress.”
“I get that. You can always talk to me about it, if that helps,” I say.
She fidgets with her skirt but looks relieved to hear it. “Do you ever wonder where my mom is? I’m sure it’s weird no one talks about her.”
I almost mention the time before the carnival but stop myself. I don’t want her to think I’m nosy. “I mean, I have, but…”
She slides to the floor and leans against the chair. “It’s okay, it’s a weird situation but we’re family now, so I’m glad we’re talking about it.”
We’re family, I repeat to myself. “I promise it’ll stay between us,” I tell her, honored that she wants to share.
“It’s not some big secret. My mom used to live here, you know?”
“Wait, like in our house?”
She laughs. “No, my dad sold our old house. We used to live by Alice before my mom moved upstate to live with some boyfriend. Dad bought this new one when he married your mom.”
I knew something had happened to change their family structure, but this is a lot. “I’m sorry, Kayla,” I say, uncomfortable about how my mom fits into the story.
She shrugs. “It’s cool,” she says. “Your mom was very respectful in all of this. Not even the least bit of homewrecking.”
“Well … that’s good to know,” I reply, laughing nervously.
“So anyway, that’s how I know the girls. Our moms have been friends since we were babies.”
“Are they still friends?”
“Kind of? I mean, definitely not as close as they were…” She trails off. “They don’t understand leaving your kid for a man.” Kayla shrugs. “But I guess she wanted to be free.”
I think back to that day at the supermarket and the strained interaction with Kenny’s mom.
She was trying to be friendly to the woman who’s mothering her friend’s daughter.
I try to imagine what it must be like for Kayla, who’s grown up in this place and day in and day out has to face a whole community of people who know her mom up and left her.
“My dad said it had nothing to do with me,” she continues. “She always had a thing about being in one place too long.”
“I don’t even know what to say. I’m really sorry, Kayla.
” I wonder if things would have gone differently for me if I’d been able to cope the way she seems to have.
I was a baby when my dad left, so I can’t imagine having been old enough to know your parent made that choice. In a way, that’s probably worse.
“And don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes it’s really hard to see you and your mom in the same room together,” Kayla says, her voice getting shaky.
“I think that’s why I was so harsh in the beginning.
Not to excuse my behavior—I know it was wrong.
It was just so hard at first to see a mother and daughter together under the same roof.
I remember when that was me and my mom, and it makes me miss her more.
It’s stupid, but sometimes I even miss us fighting …
I miss everything,” she finishes. Her eyes are filled with tears.
“Well, you know, since we are sisters now, you can fight with my mom whenever you want. I mean, you can even stand in for me,” I say, hoping to make her smile.
She laughs so hard that the tears come running down her face. “On second thought—I’ll just stick with my dad!”
“Well, good thing he’s cool,” I tell her, which is the truth. I’ve come to like Travis, even if I don’t know much about him yet.
“Cool in the dad sense, yeah, but he was kinda badass back in the day. I’ll deny it though, if you ever tell him I said that.” She smiles.
I don’t want to pry, especially since she’s already shared a lot about her mom, so I make a mental note for another day. Travis seems too square to be bad. But maybe that’s why he’s so calm now, so hardworking—he’s had a lot to make up for.
“Thanks for telling me all of this,” I say instead.
“Since we’re sharing…” she begins.
“Uh huh, ask me anything,” I reassure her, fully expecting a question about Deanna.
“Okay, here goes anything—what was that place like?”
In a way, I’m surprised she waited this long to ask again, and I find I don’t mind it.
After all, I was curious about her mom; why wouldn’t she be curious about my past, too?
I think about what I can tell her that will satisfy her curiosity without requiring me to get too deep.
There are so many things I could say about that place, but I don’t want to ruin either of our nights.
“To make a long story short, it was a dysfunctional high school with bars on the windows and horrible food.” I chuckle at just how much that really sums it up.
“Stop! That sounds like a Lifetime movie. Bars on the windows?”
“Yeah, it was kind of wild. We couldn’t touch doors, walked in straight lines, had supervision in the bathrooms. A lot.”
“Whoa. That’s actually so intense. I would have failed everything and been there forever.” Kayla shakes her head in disbelief.
“You probably wouldn’t even get sent there,” I say, more sharply than I intended to.
Kayla pauses, taking in the full breadth of the statement. “You’re right. I’m sorry you did, though.”
I feel bad for snapping and want to show Kayla I can let her in, and that I want to. “But there were some okay things too, given the circumstances. We watched movies and stuff. Some of the staff weren’t that bad either. It’s kinda hard to explain.” I shrug.
“Well, I’m here if you ever wanna try. Your very own therapist,” Kayla says with a wide grin.
“Well, thank you, Dr. K.” I chuckle and stand up.
“Of course, patient J,” she says, getting up too. “Even though I was your patient first.”
We’re laughing when her phone rings again. She groans, but this time she accepts the call.
It’s her, my mom, she mouths.
I nod and head out.
“Thanks, sis,” she calls after me as I close the door.