Chapter 9
Allegra
I’m relieved Mav is already out for the night when I close the door to our shared bedroom.
I know Levi and Derek’s conversation wasn’t meant for my ears. But coming home from a long day washing sheets, cleaning bedrooms, adding personal touches, and making sandwiches to welcome four kids to their new home left me drained.
Overhearing what Derek and Levi think of me guts me.
A’s here because she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with her life and knew I wouldn’t turn her away.
How callous has Levi become? How could he think that of me? When we were younger, I worshipped him, and he looked out for me. Always. Now, I don’t recognize my brother and the realization that he changed his phone number and didn’t bother telling me cuts. Does he care about me at all?
Allegra’s a fucking baby. She’s the last girl I’d be interested in since I like my women experienced.
Fine, I’m not experienced. Or the same age as Derek. But seven years isn’t that big of an age gap and I’m not exactly a virgin.
My limbs vibrate with a silent fury. Missing my roommates and best friends and needing to clear my mind, I pull up our group chat.
Me: Levi sucks.
Nova: I’d still do him.
Me: EW.
Ivy: NOVA! He’s her brother.
Nova: And a rock god with tortured eyes…
Kenny: What’d he do now?
Me: Nothing! That’s the problem. He has done nothing to spend time with me or reconnect. He thinks I’m here because I have no other options.
Nova: Gross. Guessing he doesn’t know that you could have gone abroad this summer?
Ivy: PARIS!
Kenny: Or interned in LA?
Ivy: Are you sure you don’t want to re-enroll for fall? Just as a backup…
Me: I love the work I’m doing here. Even though things with Levi are strained, I’m happy I came to Boston.
Kenny: Good! Focus on that… Focus on your future.
Nova: And Reign???????
Ivy: PLEASE give us something good.
Me: He likes his women “experienced.”
Nova: (six vomit face emojis)
Kenny: What’s that even mean?
Me: That I’m clearly lacking…
Kenny: Not true.
Me: (three shrugging emojis)
Nova: You need to go out!
Ivy: Agreed. You need a girls’ night…
Nova: And not with Cynthia.
Ivy: Right. New friends.
Me: Are they going to just fall in my lap?
Nova: Gotta put yourself out there, babe.
Ivy: You’re good at connecting with people!
Nova: CONNECT WITH GOOD MEN!
Me: I’m calling my parents tonight.
Nova: Does that have to be tonight?
Ivy: Can’t you make a friend first?
Kenny: Good luck, A! Message if you need us.
Me: Always.
Nova: (four leaf clover emoji)
Me: (red heart emoji)
Knowing that Levi and Derek are heading out soon, and wanting to avoid them, I throw myself in a hot shower and let the steam soothe my body.
Allow the tension in my neck to seep away and let my shoulders relax.
When I’m finished, I tug on a pair of pajama bottoms I stole from the cellist who took my virginity freshman year and an oversized T-shirt from Ivy’s softball team.
I comb out my hair, letting it air dry, as I wander down the quiet hallways.
The house is silent, save for my breathing. I let out a deep exhale and tuck my hair behind my ears. Then I retreat to my bedroom and make the phone call I’ve been putting off for over a week.
“Hello?” Mom answers on the first ring.
“Hi, Mom,” I say.
“Allegra!” I hear the surprise, the tentative smile, in her tone.
“How are you?”
“Good. Fine. How are you? How are your roommates? How’s LA in the summer?”
My lips curl of their own accord. As much as I don’t understand my parents, I know they love me. It’s just that their version of me and who I really am are two different people that no longer align. “You know how I took a leave of absence…?”
Mom sighs. “Allegra, I know we talked about that, but did you really? You’re so close to finishing your degree. And after making us all worry by running away to California, can’t you stay and finish what you went there to do?”
I run a hand through my hair, try to organize my thoughts. I can do this; I can tell Mom the truth. “Well, I’m taking some time,” I forge ahead. “I’m in Boston.”
“Boston!” she gasps. “When did you arrive? Who are you staying with? Is it Cynthia? Or one of the girls from school. Isn’t Mckenna Byrne from Boston?” She references Kenny whose parents live close by.
“Mom,” I say quietly, my tone an admission of guilt. A soft confession.
Silence fills the line for several heartbeats. I pull in a deep breath and focus on keeping my breathing even. Controlled. Calm.
Disappointing my family and hurting the people I love isn’t in my nature.
I used to be a full-out people pleaser and spent years resisting the flicker of rebellion that flares to life whenever I’m at a crossroads.
I push back only when I feel it’s necessary.
Attending college instead of choosing to marry.
Insisting on UCLA over the local university.
But I don’t relish it. Not like Levi.
My fingertips tingle and my stomach clenches, painful. Nausea gathers at the base of my throat and a throb begins in my temples. I roll my lips together to keep my words trapped.
I hate hurting my parents. I despise disappointing my community, the town that loved, supported, and raised me. Coming up short, constantly, cuts. Invisible remorse oozes from my pores but I will not apologize for my choices. I won’t second-guess my decision to be here.
“Don’t let him corrupt you, Allegra.” Her voice is sharp. “I know you love your brother—”
“So do you,” I remind her. I bite down on my tongue. Why do I always defend him? Why do I rush to Levi’s rescue when he thinks so little of me?
She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with her life and knew I wouldn’t turn her away.
“He’s lost, Allegra,” Mom hisses, anger rounding out her words. “He’s not the boy I raised. Not by a long shot.”
I gather saliva in my mouth, work a swallow down my sandpaper throat. Forge ahead. “I’m staying at the brownstone.”
“No!”
“For the summer.”
“Come home, Allegra. I’ll talk to your father. He’ll allow you to stay here,” Mom pleads.
I roll my lips together. Dad hasn’t spoken to me in over a year. To him, his children have made decisions he can’t accept. As such, he’s stopped recognizing Levi and me altogether. But not Mom. At her core, she loves us too much to let us go entirely.
“I’m working with kids in the foster system,” I offer, knowing that any social justice initiative will soothe some of her fears for my soul.
“Wh—you are?”
“Yes.” I smile, running my hand over the top of my head. Encouraged by her interest, I tell Mom about Dre, about the group home, about Vivi and Maybelle’s House.
“That’s good work, Allegra,” Mom comments.
“It really is, Mom. I, I’m figuring things out. I’m discovering my calling. My purpose.”
“I understand,” she admits quietly. “But Allegra, you’re to be a wife. A mother. To have a family and—”
“I’m not ready,” I interject, not adding that I may never be ready.
The life my parents envisioned for me is never one I wanted.
I never connected with the boys from Church, who took up their fathers’ work when they laid it down, who stepped into lives that have already been determined for them without question.
If I question everything, how can I live my life with a man who accepts all? What kind of love would we share? What kind of family would we foster?
My stomach hallows out at the thought. No, I’m not meant to live in my small town.
You’re too big for this.
Derek has grown into Reign. And he’s wrong about a lot. But on my seventeenth birthday, he told me the truth.
You’re going to outgrow this life, Allegra.
On that topic, he was right.
“Maybe we could have lunch one day? You could come to the city and meet me. Even see Levi, if you want…” I extend the olive branch. Hope surges through my body and I try to tamp it down. Breathe. Controlled and calm.
Mom is quiet for a long time, her accelerated breathing filling the line.
“May? Who’s on the phone?” Dad’s voice reverberates in the background.
“Good-bye, Allegra,” Mom whispers. “May God be with you.”
She disconnects the call and my face, my body, my heart collapses.
She won’t meet me. She won’t cross my father or the rules he laid out for her. When he cut us off, he expected Mom to follow suit.
I let out a shaky breath and place down my phone.
I miss my mom. I miss our family.
Don’t burn your bridge home to Mom and Dad’s for me, A. I’m not worth it.
Maybe Levi is right, but I’m not here only for him. I’m here for me too. And I am worth it.
Still, hurt rushes forward, drowning my momentary hope. The disappointments of the day, the loneliness I’ve been staving off, rises. I sit down and let it crest over me, pull me under.
I sob, with shaking shoulders and trembling hands. But it’s silent. Contained. My anguished cries don’t pierce the still air.
Instead, the hurt flows out in big, fat, tears.
The pain lessens with twisted intestines and a rapidly galloping heart.
My desperation rushes from my body, first, in gut-wrenching swells that overwhelm me.
Then, in a stream of whispers I mouth to myself.
Words of despair coupled with the prayers of my upbringing, the comfortable foundation I can never erase because it keeps me tethered to the parents I love, to the community I remember, to the life I outgrew but don’t want to discount.
Finally, my hurt and shame, my disappointment and heartache, dissipates. My tears cease, my skin dries. My face feels too tight, my eyes puffy and scratchy. But I pull in a lungful of air and exhale loudly, expelling the tension from my shoulders and neck.
My head throbs so I make my way to the kitchen.
Take an ibuprofen and drink a glass of water.
I grab a book of poetry I love, a gift from Kenny, and curl into a corner of the couch in the living room.
I turn on the electric fireplace to enjoy the dancing of flames.
They hypnotize me, transporting me to a night so long ago, I should have forgotten it by now.
But the night Derek Reiner kissed me, my world opened up. For the first time, new possibilities, the ones that only existed on the edges of my reality, in half-formed shadows, seemed feasible. Believable.
When he pressed his mouth to mine, he gave me more than hope. He gave me the confidence to believe in myself enough to try. To dip my toe into the endless options that life has to offer and then, lose myself in the current as it swept me away.
To find my purpose. To move across the country. To study topics I’d never been exposed to. To make the friendships of my heart and explore my feelings with a cellist whose music rivaled any Church performance.
She’s the last girl I’d be interested in since I like my women experienced.
He has no idea who I’ve become. No one, not even me, fully grasps the potential I’m capable of.
Shaking my head, I lose myself in the well-worn pages of verse I adore. I read until exhaustion weighs down my eyelids. Snuggling deeper under the blanket, the flames kicking up shadows on the wall, I close my eyes, and allow myself to rest.