SIX
Three days until prom
R enner is late. Shocker.
We made special arrangements to pick up the decor at 6:00 a.m. for prom decorating. It’s now 6:05.
It’s cool. No one else’s time is important or anything. Not that I really want to leave the house.
I’m sprawled on the couch lopsidedly, awaiting his arrival. Frankly, I’m still unwell. When I close my eyes, I’m tormented by the memory of Clay Diaz’s face when he saw my tampon. He was disgusted (and somehow still incredibly handsome). Disgusted is probably too generous—more generous than the portions at IHOP.
It’s not quite as mortifying as when a gust of wind blew my skirt up in sixth grade, revealing my period panties and superabsorbent pad to the entire class—but it’s nearly as bad.
Kassie and Nori tried to convince me periods aren’t embarrassing, that it’s natural, yada yada. Logically, I agree. But spilling a pharmacy’s worth of feminine products in front of the entire student body (including your crush) is flat-out humiliating, no matter how you slice it.
To make matters worse, the whole debacle caused me to bomb my scholarship interview. And by bomb , I mean I rambled incoherently about the double standard for women versus men. For the record, Cynthia, the foundation chairwoman, had merely asked me to outline my biggest academic accomplishments.
Renner is to blame, obviously. If he hadn’t blocked me and subsequently ripped my bag pocket like an ape, this never would have happened.
Nori is adamant that I slide into Clay’s DMs for damage control. It’s weirder NOT to acknowledge the tampon explosion. Kassie agrees and says it gives me an excuse to strike up a conversation instead of my first choice: disappear into obscurity.
After much back-and-forth in our girls’ chat, I fired off a casual peer-reviewed Instagram DM this morning.
Me: Hey Clay. Sorry about what happened in the hallway yesterday. Hope you weren’t too traumatized.
And then it began. The staring contest with my phone. It’s like watching boiling water under the delusion that my eye lasers will speed up the process.
I’ve grown weary of the lack of response, and send an SOS in the group chat, which only heightens my anxiety. Whenever my phone buzzes with Calm down texts, I’m overcome with false hope that it’s Clay.
I’ve restarted my phone twice now, paranoid that it’s not receiving correspondence of any sort. I can only conclude that Clay thinks I’m a freak. (He’d be correct.)
My phone vibrates and my heart kicks into double time.
My Fair Leader: sry, gimme 5 .
I grumble like a curmudgeon. Since ninth grade, Renner has made an annoying habit of stealing my phone and changing his contact name. Since the student council election, he’s gotten cockier with the names.
Sexy President
Commander & Chief
Your Worst Nightmare
The Right Honorable JTR
J. T.
In my opinion, Twit or Satan would be more fitting. I promptly switch his name back to the latter, with the purple devil emoji.
Footsteps in the hall jolt me out of my trance. Mom’s up.
“Rachael is draining me today,” she announces through a yawn. Rachael is a fictional psychopath who has a habit of poisoning her husbands. It’s part of Mom’s “process” to speak about her characters as if they’re real people.
“Sorry to hear. Maybe Rachael should see a therapist,” I croak.
“Oh, she’d love the attention, the narcissist.” Mom’s rooting around in her purse, juggling her phone, sunglasses, wallet, and keys in a way that triggers my anxiety. She finally tosses a pack of Band-Aids toward me. “Grabbed these last night at work. For your blisters.”
“Thanks,” I say, grateful.
She plunks onto the couch beside me, pulling my battered feet onto her lap to inspect. “Orthopedic shoes, my ass. Why don’t you just wear flats?”
“Kassie says flats are basic.”
Mom rolls her eyes. “Of course she does. Anyways, how was school? Don’t you have your big scholarship interview today?”
“That was yesterday.”
“How’d it go?”
My future just dove headfirst down the drain. Clay Diaz also thinks I’m a freak. I’m going to be dateless at prom. My best friend is moving far, far away in a matter of months. Life as I know it is changing. It’s cool. It’s fine. No big deal. Of course, I’m too drained to say all this out loud, so I settle for a grumpy, “I don’t have the strength to talk about it.”
“Well, I’m here when you’re ready,” she says, though the dark circles under her blue eyes tell me she doesn’t have the bandwidth for emotional labor.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Weren’t you supposed to celebrate the interview and end of exams with Kassie? She wasn’t over last night.” She pulls my legs on her lap, settling next to me on the couch.
“She was with Ollie. Where else?” I mumble.
I can read her look. She’s about to launch into the same speech she’s given me since ninth grade—about how I need to be honest with Kassie that it hurts my feelings when she ditches me. “You know that baby photo of you in those crocheted overalls?”
I crinkle my forehead, unsure what this has to do with Kassie. “The ones that make me look like I have a saggy butt?”
“Georgia made those as a gift for my baby shower,” she says, giving me an affectionate nudge in the ribs.
“Who’s Georgia?”
“Exactly. Georgia was my best friend. All through school. We were attached at the hip, like you and Kassie. Grandma used to say she was her second daughter because she basically lived at my house.”
“How come I’ve never heard of her?” Mom has a small circle of girlfriends she gets wine-drunk with at monthly book club, and none of them are named Georgia.
“Because we’re not friends anymore,” she says simply.
“What happened?” I frown, running down the list of grisly potential best friend betrayals.
She drums her fingers over my legs, eyes misty. “We grew apart. After college, she went backpacking around the world. I moved to Maplewood, married your dad, had you. We talked on the phone every single day for a while. Then it was once a week, once a month, and then we started dodging each other’s calls ... only calling back because we felt obligated to, you know?”
“Obligated? But wasn’t she your best friend?”
“She was. There was no bad blood. No fight. No real reason why we stopped talking. I guess we just ended up living two completely different lives that no longer intersected.” Mom lets out a soft chuckle. “Actually, we’re not even friends on Facebook anymore.”
“No one uses Facebook anymore, Mom.” I eye her warily, shaking my head. I know where she’s going with this. “And that won’t happen to me and Kassie.” We’re supposed to be maid of honor at each other’s weddings and godmothers to our future children.
Mom sighs and gives me a weak smile. “I’m not saying you and Kassie won’t be best friends in twenty years. But friendships can change. Sometimes people drift apart. That’s just life. It doesn’t make it any less painful, though.”
I swat her words away like pesky houseflies. I don’t mean to be a brat, but Mom is out to lunch. I can’t imagine a reality where Kassie isn’t blowing up my phone, asking how hot she looks on a scale of her grandma to Kylie Jenner in certain outfits, or whether she’s wearing too much bronzer. And then there’re the serious texts when she vents about how much she wishes her parents would just divorce already, because they’re both checked out.
Mom can tell I’m over the conversation and starts scrolling on her cracked iPhone. “Want to order pizza for dinner tonight?”
“We ordered pizza last week,” I remind her.
It’s been just Mom and me for years now. We aren’t a family who breaks bread at the table every night, rehashing our days. We usually eat on the couch. Ever since Dad left, Mom thinks sitting at our six-person dining table, just the two of us, is “depressing.” She’s probably right. I have vivid memories of sitting at the table with Dad. At the beginning of each meal, he’d ask what I learned in school that day. Mouth full, I’d jump at the opportunity to show off all my newfound knowledge, reciting facts from every subject. Bonus if I had a good grade to report. Dinner was when Dad and I bonded most, probably because he’d spend most of his evenings working. Sitting at the dining table across from his empty seat just feels ... wrong, like a stark reminder of what I no longer have.
Mom props her bare feet on the table. “What about Subway? Oh, before I forget—I got a voice mail last night.”
“A voice mail? From who?”
“Your dad.”
My stomach plummets. “Oh.” That’s strange. Dad never calls just to talk. He prefers to text intermittently, only asking about school, as though my grades are the only thing he cares about. We only have formal phone calls on Christmas and my birthday, which happen to fall within a month of each other.
“He left a rambling voice mail. Asked me to ask you to give him a call, if you want.” Mom has that forced neutral tone she uses when she doesn’t want to persuade me either way.
“If I want?” I repeat, hesitant.
“I know he’s not Dad of the Year, but I think you should give him a call.” There’s something odd about her tone. A weird, nervous lilt, like there’s something more going on.
“Why should I?” I don’t bother to mask my saltiness.
Dad left for the city when I was nine. Mom fell into a depression for months afterward. Camp with Kassie that summer was my solace—a place I could decorate myself into oblivion with stickers and temporary tattoos, fill up on candy and white freeze pops, and forget about how much I missed Dad and the way things used to be.
For the longest time, his calls were the highlight of my week. I couldn’t wait to tell him about my latest test grade, or the elementary school speech I rocked, just like our dinner table conversations. He would get all warm and affectionate when I told him good news.
By middle school, things had changed. He started climbing the corporate ladder and married a woman named Shaina, who he’s currently in the process of divorcing. She was pleasant in a Stepford kind of way and owned multiple frilly aprons in different colors for every occasion. She also abided by the hashtag #happinessishomemade, which is the clear opposite of Mom, whose idea of homemade is a dry Betty Crocker box cake. She smiled a lot, but she already had three kids of her own, so she wasn’t particularly interested in me. After they married, my calls with Dad became distant and less frequent. They mostly consisted of me rambling while he put me on speakerphone and tapped away on his laptop. No matter how good my grades were, his responses were clipped, delayed, and often completely unrelated.
Things went downhill in ninth grade. I called to tell him I’d been elected freshman student council rep and he didn’t even remember that I was running in the first place. That was the moment I gave up seeking his approval. The moment I stopped visiting him in the city. What was the point? He was never coming back anyways, no matter how much I accomplished.
Mom fiddles with a loose thread on my sweater, reminding me that I need to ask her to sew my ripped backpack. “Well, he’s still seeing that new woman. Maybe he wants you to meet her.”
I crinkle my nose. “Which one? The assistant?” Since announcing his divorce from Shaina, he’s had a couple girlfriends, all of whom are in their twenties.
“Nope. She doesn’t work for your dad. She’s a publicist. Her name is Alexandra. I creeped her on social media and she’s totally out of his league,” Mom adds, scrolling through her phone for a photo. She turns it toward me.
Dad definitely has a type: young. Alexandra is no exception. She’s tanned, sun-kissed, and posing in a black one-piece on the balcony of what appears to be a tropical resort. Her sharp cheekbones and slender build remind me of one of those dark-haired Victoria’s Secret models.
“Good for him, I guess,” I mutter. Though I still have no interest in meeting her, regardless of how nice a person she probably is, especially if he’ll be on to someone new next month.
“You need to make more of an effort with him too, you know. Maybe go visit this summer. You could have a hot-girl summer in the city.”
I shoot her a poisonous look as I type an SOS text to Kassie about Dad and his new girlfriend. “Mom, don’t say hot-girl summer .”
“I’m just sayin’. You don’t want to end up with daddy issues like me, or Rachael.”
Too late, Mom, I think, just as a whirl of red pulls into the driveway. It’s Renner. Finally.