Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
I’ve officially done everything I can do this Saturday except the one thing I’m putting off.
I swept and mopped my floors, planted some tomatoes in my windowsill garden, gave myself a neon yellow pedicure, did my grocery shopping after clipping coupons, took some of my old work clothes to the Goodwill and went for a six mile run .
It’s now 11:04 am.
Running a hot bath, I pour lavender bubbles under the water, and tug the ponytail free from my hair. God it feels good to scratch my scalp after a run with a pony. I think it nearly rivals taking your bra off after a long day.
I’ll take my bath—an everything bath, complete with a hair mask, leg shaving and facial—and feel incredibly stress-free and amazing. And after the bath? That’s when I’ll do the thing . The dreaded, evil, awful, nerve-wracking, stress-inducing, blood-pressure raising thing .
I stay in that water until my boobs look like prunes and I’m desert-level dehydrated. After combing through my hair and applying oil to the ends then giving myself a rosewater facial, I am officially out of distractions. Getting dressed in gray sweatpants that I’ve owned since my own freshman year of high school, I opt for one of my new Bluebell Bruisers t-shirts, flop down on the couch and make the call.
“Riley!” My dad answers the phone, shouting my name as a greeting. My cheeks burn with the instinctual smile that comes when hearing my dad’s soothing voice. But muscle memory is stronger than anything because I tamp that smile down, and it sadly burns out while he calls for my mom to join us on the line.
“Ry! Is that you? It’s been two weeks! Oh my, how nice to hear your voice!” My mom gushes, and though I should hear a mom missing and loving her daughter, all I hear is the complaint–that I didn’t call for two weeks. My lips twitch, and I can’t fight the urge. I’m too weak right now.
“That tally goes both ways, Mom,” I say, trying my very hardest to at least clap back with some control.
As always, she fails to acknowledge the very valid point I’ve drawn, and instead asks about cheerleading.
I would talk anyone’s head off about cheerleading. Seriously. Put a five year old in front of me for ten minutes and she’s walking away knowing what a basket toss is. I’ll call bingo for the seniors and at the end, they’ll be talking about cupies and flyers.
Talking to my parents about cheerleading, however, is like throwing sand into the wind. They aren’t even trying to hold onto anything I’m saying–it’s just meant to distract me from the gaslighting.
I’m both not distracted and irritated, but remind myself that I have to push past this. I have to move forward. They aren’t going to change, so I have to work through that and move on if I want them in my life. Plain and simple.
That means having a normal conversation and ending the call.
“Cheerleading is going very well, thanks,” I tell my parents, directly answering my mom’s questions as I draw my knees to my chest in the corner of my second-hand little couch. I pull my faded college alumni blanket over my feet, and twirl a damp piece of hair around my finger, trying as hard as I can to feel relaxed. I’ve learned relaxation is a lot like attraction—you can’t force it. If I do all the things that make me feel good, then goodness will come.
It has to.
I even flick on Netflix and start a no-volume stream of Gilmore Girls in the background. Still, irritation gallops through me like a thoroughbred around the racecourse as my mom and dad hammer me with questions. It’s quite literally verbal assault.
“Do you like it there more than Willowdale?”
“How’re the classrooms up there? I heard that Bluebell is smaller than Willowdale. Gotta have smaller classrooms then, right?”
“Does the cheer program receive funding with the football program like in Willowdale? ”
“Are you teaching health or is coaching all they could set you up with for now?”
I try to calmly answer each question, and think I’m doing pretty good five minutes into the call when my father randomly drags the massive elephant back into the room.
“Have you spoken with Michael recently?” he pokes, his tone secure and unwavering, no second thought as to whether the question is appropriate or not. He just asks it, the same as he asks if I made sure to roll the garbage cans out or whatever the hell.
“I have not,” I reply, staring at the quiet screen, watching Rory undoubtedly unleash an off-the-cuff witty stream of logical ramble onto her mother. Their problems are fun, TV problems, not real, self-worth stealing issues that make her question whether or not her mother even loves her or not.
I want TV problems with TV solutions.
“He expressed he may reach out, that’s why I asked,” my dad says, and while I’m not surprised that my dad is on speaking terms with my ex-boyfriend, I hate it, and I feel like it’s well within my right to let him know.
“You’re on speaking terms with Michael?” I question, waiting for him to verify.
But Mom steps in, because any time the going gets tough, my mother steam rolls everyone to have control of the mic. Control everything, really.
“Riley,” she says, using my name like a weapon as she scolds me. “The Rhodes have been our friends for years and years. You and Michael grew up together. Of course we’re on speaking terms with him.” There’s a pause, and I could mouth the words that come next, that’s how well I know my parents, and how sure of them I am. “We see him around the country club all the time. What are we supposed to do? Ignore them entirely? ”
“Yes,” I deadpan. “Yes, you are supposed to keep your head high and pretend you don’t even see them, because that is how the blameless party behaves. You don’t go and befriend him and his family.”
They sail right over my accusations of guilt, one of our biggest sources of contention. “We didn’t go and befriend them, Riley. We’ve been friends with them for years. That’s what I’m saying–can’t you just take Michael’s phone call and work together to get to the bottom of things?”
Heat swims through my vision, making it temporarily blur around the edges. Sweat dampens the back of my neck and beneath my armpits, too. Work together , to anyone on the outside of this moment looking in, sounds so harmless. But to me, in my situation, asking or merely proposing that I should “work together” with Michael is the equivalent of asking me to say I made it up, asking me to say I lied so that we can all move on.
Except I didn’t lie because I don’t lie.
I never have.
I grew up as an honest girl, and that trait was something my parents proudly boasted to all of their friends. My dad joked that I couldn’t be a lawyer, or a successful salesman because of my honesty.
And yet these days, you’d think I spent my childhood weaving intricate webs of lies because I’m absolutely being treated as a liar.
“There is nothing for me to get to the bottom of, Mom,” I reply, my nostrils flaring as heated tears fill my eyes. Rory and Lorelei blur on the screen, and heat swims up the back of my neck. I kick my legs, sending my blanket to the hardwood floor. Stay calm, Riley , I tell myself, slipping off the couch to pad across the room to stand in front of the large mirror next to my front door. I got it at the farmers market that first time that Leah took me, and I love it. But right now I’m not looking to appreciate the ornate metal frame. I need to look at myself. I need to see my reflection to stay strong.
In front of the mirror, I take a long look before closing my eyes, replacing the image of myself in the mirror with the image of myself that night.
I reach up, touching beneath my left eye, a memory of the pain he caused fluttering beneath my skin. I refuse to let my lip quiver. “Am I important to you? Hmm? Do I matter to you, Dad?” I ask my father, the line already flooded with irritated sighs.
“Don’t get yourself all worked up–” my father starts, but I cut him off.
“Do I matter to you? Do I? Because I don’t feel like I matter. I don’t feel like you care about me at all. I feel like all you care about is that I pretend I’m okay.”
“Of course we care if you’re okay,” my mother says, her tone a fusion of irritation and condescension, like I’m the one who has put them in this awful situation, and she wants to punish me for it.
All I did was fall in love with the boy I grew up with, and loved him with my whole heart. When he broke me and my heart, I went to the one place you’re supposed to go. To my parents.
That night was the first time I saw them for the flawed humans they are. I didn’t see them as my parents. They were merely two people with completely fucked up priorities. Priorities that have driven a massive wedge between us, and I’m not sure there’s any way to undo it.
“I came to Bluebell to be okay. And I want to have you guys in my life, but you can’t keep acting like nothing happened. You can’t keep expecting me to cozy up with the Rhodes. And, more than that, it’s hurtful and gross that you guys cozy up to them. That you guys still talk to Michael feels like you're stabbing me in the back.”
I move away from the mirror, nausea rearing its head as the heated, potent truths filter through the phone. I need them to respect me, and more than that, respect what I went through.
But the line is quiet a moment before my dad finally speaks. “I got you a money tree for a housewarming gift. We’d love to come see you. Have lunch up there in Bluebell, too, maybe.”
I roll my lips together. “Maybe in a few weeks.” I look around to my tidy home, decorated and spotless. I won’t lie and say the place is a mess. They aren’t worth the sin. “I need some space right now,” I tell them, realizing that it’s true. Based on this phone call, they haven’t budged, but the thing is, I also refuse to budge. Until then, we’re at an impasse.
My mom asks to be sent practice videos of my squad, and my dad asks a few questions about the hot water heater in my garage, and the timing belt in my car which was giving me trouble right before I moved. After small talk is wrapped up, we end the call.
With my legs pulled to my chest and my hair dried in frizzy waves, I turn up the volume on Gilmore Girls and let banter drown out my tears.
Today is a new kind of hell.
I’m nursing bags under my eyes after the conversation with my parents caused a total mini meltdown, I got my period this morning so it feels like my uterus has a knife out and is murdering the rest of my organs, my hair refuses to lay flat but equally will not hold a curl, I feel a pimple coming in right beneath my eyebrow and it hurts like a bitch, and now? The kids decided to come to class early, meaning my time alone before first period is absolutely nonexistent.
FML, as they say.
Jo Jo, Alexa, and Jasmine take their favorite desk up front, with Alexa and Jasmine huddling together around a cell phone. Jo Jo curls into herself, resting her head against her arms, glaring at me.
Like really glaring.
So much so that I actually look down to see if I missed a button but no, because today I’m wearing Bluebell Cheer warmups–a navy blue tracksuit with butter yellow piping, the Bruiser logo embroidered on my chest. After discovering there are no possible coffee drips, chunks of donut (my breakfast) or bra showing, I look back up to her, catching the end of a pointed glare. My chest goes concave as she closes her eyes, curling into her arms as she waits for class to start.
It's not a fluke.
Jo Jo Turner is mad at me, and she’s giving me that look on purpose.
And I realize during the first period, with my eyes drifting over to her approximately once every few minutes, that I’m disturbed by Jo Jo being upset with me. It never feels good when a student doesn’t like me, or if they get upset at a grade, but it’s never felt so personal.
When the bell rings, I catch her, saying, “Hey, Jo Jo, just a second.”
She stands in her warmups, facing the blue painted metal door, her long dark hair in a curled, bouncy ponytail. “What?”
I swallow around the knot in my throat, upset that she doesn’t even want to look at me .
I press on. “What’s… going on?”
When she turns, red rims her eyes, and a watery dark streak trails down her cheek. She’s been crying. Did I make Jo Jo cry? No. I couldn’t have.
Right?
“Jo Jo,” I start, bridging the gap between us with a couple of steps. “What’s the matter, are you–”
Teenage girls are like cheetahs with how fast their emotions change. I remember those days. Jo Jo’s eyes narrow, and at her sides, her hands ball into fists. “Everything was fine until you convinced me to come up to JV! Now the freshman girls hate me, my non-cheer friends hate me and it’s all your fault!” she screams, and when I say screams, I mean it.
“Jo–” she won’t even let me get a word in edgewise, and whatever is going on with her and her friends is clearly getting blamed on me and the bump up to JV.
“You can handle JV,” I tell her, because it’s true. Not only can she handle it but she can thrive on the older squad if she puts in the time, and stops letting these girls get under her skin.
“They don’t want me there, and the freshman girls all hate me for getting asked. They hate me, Miss Riley!” she shouts again, swiping at the tears that fall.
“Jo Jo, they don’t hate you, they’re jealous. There’s an adjustment period, but it will get better,” I tell her, because it will. High schoolers get over things pretty quickly. She just has to hang in there.
The door opens, and Leah’s head appears. She smiles at Jo Jo, then says, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just here to speak with Miss Rivers but if she’s helping you, I can come back.”
Jo Jo’s eyes cut to mine as she replies to Leah. “That’s okay, Ms. Mitchell, Miss Rivers isn’t helping me at all. Not one bit.” With that, she chucks her backpack onto her shoulder and pushes past Leah, into the hall.
Leah steps inside cautiously, today’s bright mauve suit and flashy rose gold necklace only a temporary distraction.
I fight the wobble in my bottom lip, and when Leah softly places her hands on top of my shoulders, I lose the fight and erupt into tears.
“Ahh, Ry,” she soothes, pulling me into a hug that reminds me so much of my mom’s hugs that my tears amplify. Leah strokes her hand down my hair, and quietly says, “Teenager hormones are evil, aren’t they?”
I nod, and pull back, reaching for a tissue off of my desk. I blow my nose as Leah inspects her suit jacket, making sure none of my tears left a mark.
“I had a bad call with my parents last night,” I admit, because being defeated by a freshman cheerleader in my third year of teaching is too embarrassing to be believed, even if Leah is my friend before she’s the principal. “And then Jo Jo was just… so angry with me.”
Leah sifts through the mints on my desk, finding a wintergreen. She untwists the plastic wrap, tossing it into the garbage before leaning back, dropping the mint into her mouth. “They’re all moody. Don’t worry about it.” She levels a stare my way, her lips twitching as she says, "Besides, it's the parents that hate you, not the students, remember?”
I laugh, and get to work fixing my makeup using the compact I keep stashed in my cheer bag. As I talk, so does Leah. “You know how I said not to respond to those angry parent emails, by the way? Well, I think I’ve come to a solution on how we handle them.”
“We?” I ask, swiping Everlast Mascara on my lower lashes.
Her smile reminds me of a villain with a plan. “Part of your untimely response to emails was the fact that you were conferring with the school principal.”
“Ahh, and what did we decide on?” I ask, blotting at the pink spots on my cheeks with the foam pad dipped in powder.
Leah’s face grows serious, determination carved into her expression. “A newspaper article, but of course.”
The rest of the day is a little bit better thanks to Leah.