Chapter 42 Malena
Malena
The edges of my vision blurred. Everything moved in slow motion. Frame by frame.
I knew exactly what had happened, in hindsight. After my mom reluctantly agreed to drop the topic of my visit home this weekend, I hung up and silenced my real phone like I always did when I was going to leave it at the condo. But I didn’t make it inside.
I saw Conrad and got sidetracked. I was sloppy. The burner was in my purse but nothing was being forwarded because I never dropped off the real phone. My mom could see my actual location.
Fuck.
I yanked my arm away from my mom, following the few steps back Conrad had taken. “Conrad.”
I watched as he picked up my phones, turning them over in his hands. Understanding slowly poured into his face.
The scene in front of me snapped back to full speed.
His wide eyes bore into me, practically begging for an explanation that wasn’t the obvious one in front of him. “My dad had three. Work. Mistresses. Hastings.”
The contents of my stomach thrashed. “It’s not like that…”
Every single lie had fused together, and the web was nothing more than a singular, tangled string that’d wrapped around itself and then me. I was caught in it all.
He looked past me to my mom. “Then what’s it like, Mal?”
A black town car pulled up a moment later. Behind me came my mother’s fervent demands through gritted teeth, but I stayed put.
“I know it looks…” I sputtered. There was a way to logic out of this. A perfectly good excuse, a loophole, somewhere. I had to find it.
“Hey… it’s okay.” His voice lowered, calm and caring and so much more than I deserved. “Mal, just tell me what’s going on.”
“That’s my mom, and I can’t explain all of this now, but you have to go.” I needed to contain the damage. “And so do I.”
His face crinkled. “Mal…”
“This was a mistake,” I finally choked out. How the hell had I let it get this far? How was I going to walk it all back?
Fuck.
“What was a mistake?” His eyes turned stormy as he tried to take my hand, but I pulled it back.
My mind whirled with everything I was going to have to explain. The mess I had to answer for. “This, us, all of it. I took it too far, and for that, I’m sorry, but you have to go.”
“Mal—”
“Please.” My voice cracked. The cords in my throat stretched and ached, and tears welled behind my eyes. “Just go.”
This time it stuck, and the confusion in his eyes mingled with pain. His voice was just above a whisper. “Will you be okay?”
Guilt stabbed me between the ribs. I was breaking his heart, and he was still making sure mine was intact.
“Of course. She’s my mom.” My voice trembled as I peeled off his coat and handed it to him. “Please, go.”
His jaw flexed and he nodded.
Without another word, he walked away.
Breathing around the spike in my chest instead of attempting to pull it out, I faced my mom.
Tears sheened over my eyes and distorted my vision, but a final yank on my arm shook me from the fog. It was followed by a long twisting pinch. White-hot pain shot down my arm.
“Let’s go.” Her cold fingers strained even harder.
I ducked my head and followed, taking one last look behind me, but he was already in the car he’d called.
The two-hour drive to Western Massachusetts was silent. My mom was never silent.
Every time I did anything she didn’t like, she made sure I knew it.
When I had one of the bigger slices of cake at Pinky Auntie’s birthday, when I wore a tank top to a summer barbeque, anytime I was a little too honest with my opinions.
Tracking me down and catching me on the street, at midnight, with a guy. Kissing said guy. And she said nothing.
She saved it all up for the second we got into the house.
“She was in Paris! When? What else is she doing, Vijay?” My mom shook my phone—the burner—while she paced back and forth on our living room rug.
She’d gone through my wallet, found the tiny slit I cut into it to hide the credit and debit cards attached to my secret bank accounts and was waving them around frantically.
“Other than kissing strangers on the street like a—”
“Nikila,” my dad cut in.
Sitting on the living room couch, I rubbed my arm where she’d pinched it. It had become a deep red color, and the skin was raised.
“What is she doing in private with that boy? A secret phone. A secret bank account. A secret life.” She whipped around. “Are you on drugs?”
I bit back the urge to ask her how exactly she thought I managed a perfect GPA, a twenty-credit course load, and a drug addiction. “No, Mom.”
“She’s coming home every weekend.” My mom continued to pace. “Next year she’ll commute. Nobody needs to know about any of this.”
“It’s not that big of a deal. We were taking a walk,” I stated, surprised to hear my voice come out calm.
It was a kiss. With a guy I was dating. But that was only a small part of why she was angry.
What really got to her, I knew, was the realization that she hadn’t been in control this whole time.
And if I’d evaded her once, I could do it again.
“I wasn’t doing blow off the hood of a car. ”
I probably shouldn’t have said that.
My mom froze, then blinked three disbelieving blinks. “If we caught you doing that, we wouldn’t have a daughter anymore.”
“Nikila,” my dad warned again, this time leveling me with a stern look. “Don’t make this worse.”
“What if someone else saw you?” my mom added, her list of grievances growing by the minute.
My patience snapped.
“I’m twenty-one,” I huffed. My parents could claim they had my best intentions at heart, and I was sure on some level they believed that, but it was hard to see in moments like this. “They would think I was doing exactly what a regular twenty-one-year-old does.”
My mom’s frame tensed. She shot a vicious look at my dad. “It’s those friends. I knew they were the problem, making her think it’s okay to act like…”
“Like I’m my own person? Someone capable of making my own decisions?” I cut her off before she said something I couldn’t unhear. I was sick of having to defend the only two people who seemed to actually care about me. I took a breath. “I’m doing great in school, what does it matter who—”
“You lied to us,” she seethed.
“I have to lie.” I got a little louder, losing sight of the line I knew never to cross. “So, what? I can go to college, get a degree, go to medical school, but I can’t be trusted to make my own decisions?”
The image of the heartbreak painted all over Conrad’s face propelled me forward. I needed to put the pain somewhere. I stood and took a menacing step toward her.
“Or is it that I can only be smart when it benefits you?” My voice cracked around the question. “When you can show me off like some trophy? That way you can remain in control of my life.”
“After all of that, you want to argue instead of apologize?” Her eyes narrowed. “After everything we’ve sacrificed for you, this is how you choose to act?”
My mouth hung open. Did she think I liked living like this?
Something in my brain finally snapped.
If she wanted the truth, she could have it.
“What about everything I’ve sacrificed for you?” The words pulled so thin they became translucent. “Do you ever think about that? No, of course not. Well, newsflash, Mom: I go out. I love a party. I love writing more than anything else, and I have sex. Lots, actually, and I like to think I’m—”
A slap landed in a hot flash across my face and I stumbled back.
Pain radiated down my jawline and I brought my hand up to cover the searing sting along my cheek. My head rang for a few seconds.
“Nikila, that’s enough.” My dad stood between us, but the damage was done.
“She doesn’t even care,” Mom seethed through gritted teeth. “You don’t think about your future. What people will say about you, about this family…”
The rest got lost in the static that filled my ears. I held my cheek, still in disbelief. It had been awhile since she’d slapped me like that. I blinked a few times to clear the spots in my vision, making way for some clarity.
I wondered if their sacrifices were ever for me. Or if it was like saving up for a nice car and then protecting it from dings so you wouldn’t damage its resale value.
I was a commodity.
The realization became smoke, and I choked on it.
“I have to get back to school,” I whispered, my entire body shaking.
The room was silent.
“Malena,” my dad started, voice low. “Stay, and we’ll talk about this. Mom didn’t mean—”
“I have to get back to school,” I repeated.
I didn’t care how it happened, but I was returning to Winchester tonight. I picked up my keys and my wallet and made my way to the door.
The first signs of dawn were already blanketing our street when I stepped into the Radiant’s lobby and took the elevator up to the condo, where a humid cloud of chili and broth welcomed me.
I took a rideshare to the train station, then waited an hour for the next train to New Harbor. Took another rideshare to the condo. My dad offered to drive me, but I didn’t want to talk to him. As far as I was concerned, they were in on it together—he didn’t slap me, but he may as well have.
Cora’s giant pink polka dot blanket was carefully placed along the back of the couch as I slipped off my lace-up sneakers.
On the TV, Gossip Girl was paused at the scene where Blair and Serena wandered through Paris together, dressed in haute couture and swinging shopping bags in their hands.
On the coffee table were two of the three matching ice cream mugs that Sabrina, Cora, and I bought at a local street festival last fall.
Each was filled to the brim with spicy ramen noodle soup. My heart bobbed in my chest.
“Your mom called me demanding that I tell you to pick up her calls,” Cora admitted, her voice trickling down the hallway. She appeared a second later with an unsteady smile. “I figured whatever happened must have been bad.”
It was four in the morning, but here she was, my version of wagons circling. She took one look at my puffy red eyes, tear-stained cheeks, and runny nose and she threw her arms around me.
“Whatever it is”—she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me back so she could look me in the eyes—“remember, Serena van der Woodsen killed a guy.”
I coughed on a laugh. The warm scent of my favorite snack pushed the gears in my brain back into movement.
“It all finally caught up to me.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“Yeah?” My throat dipped and I pushed back the emotion that threatened to break out in another loud, uncontrollable sob.
“We’re young, we have plenty of mistakes left to make. Probably good your parents start getting used to it.”
With how angry they were, I knew how the next few months would go.
Every time I made a stand for my own independence, it all happened in order.
This time was admittedly worse, but it would follow the same cycle: melodramatic meltdown, my mom justifying her actions, guilt over how I’d reacted. Then, I’d knuckle under.
We sat on the couch, wrapped in the blanket and holding searing hot ice cream mugs filled to the brim with soup, and watched toxic besties bicker onscreen.
One way or another, this was bound to happen. What I wanted and what I was expected to want were going to bump up against each other because there weren’t many people who were concerned with the former.
“I love you, Cora,” I whispered over the steam from my mug, leaning my head on her shoulder.
She tilted her cheek onto my head. “I love you too, Mal.”