Chapter 85 Nellie
Nellie
My tires squeal as I peel out of the parking lot and screech onto the highway, punching the gas as hard as I can.
The top is down, and the wind has knocked the cherry off my cigarette, but I’m too consumed with hunting down Mom to care if it’s burning a giant hole in the leather seats.
I flick it out the window, my breathing too shallow to smoke anyway.
I’m so angry, I’m seeing double and nearly hit a deer because I came up on it so fast.
Fucking Mom! If Jane’s telling the truth, God help her.
I’m horrified, so fucking humiliated. I’ve never felt more ashamed.
Not just that Mom most likely paid Luke to take me on a freaking pity date, but that Jane knows about it. That Luke would tell her what a grotesque freak I am. And all that after I got in her face, insisting he likes me better. I’m a disgusting joke.
Tears burn my eyes; my throat feels like it’s closing, so now I can barely breathe.
Why the fuck did Mom have to stick her nose into this?
Why can’t she stay the hell out of my life?
I know in my heart of hearts that Luke and I are meant to be, that he really likes me.
He must; I can feel it. Sure, it woulda taken me some time to pry him away from Jane, but I remember his lips on mine, know the way we are together, can hear him saying that he loves how we can just be together and not even feel like we have to talk.
He woulda come around to me eventually, I know it, and now Mom has gone and royally screwed all that up.
Because now it will always be awkward between us.
And I’ll continue to be the laughingstock of Longview. The ugly town loser.
I turn down the blacktop that leads to the Boat House, wind tangling my hair, my rage exploding.
I see Mom’s Jag in the parking lot and jerk my car into the spot next to hers, so close that I almost smash it. God knows I want to.
I’m pounding down the walkway when I see her sitting alone at a table littered with empty drinks, half-eaten plates.
Jackson must be in the bathroom.
Good.
The rest of the place is empty.
I storm over to her.
“Nellie! What a surprise!”
I can’t even look at her, I’m so mad. “Where’s Jackson?”
“He took off. So it’s just me. Have a seat—”
I stay standing, looking down on her. “No, Mother. I will not be having a seat. We need to talk. In private. Now!”
“But there’s no one here. Sit down!”
The way she thinks she can order me around…
“There are waiters here. You come with me. Right now!” I growl.
She doesn’t budge, just sits there, pats her hair, takes out her mirror, and reapplies her lipstick, looking coy.
“Get up before I make the biggest scene of my life!” I nearly shout.
“What’s gotten into you? Is it Luke? What’s going on?” As she stands, I yank her by the wrist, tug her along. “Nellie, what in the hell is the matter?”
I march her off the deck, up the walkway, and into the woods that separate the Boat House from the swimming hole.
We need to have this fight in private.
I drop her arm, let her flail for a second. “Mother. I’m going to ask you this once, and if you know what’s good for you, you better tell me the truth.”
But I can already see it in her eyes—she knows what’s coming for her. I see her expression changing, shifting, as if she’s angry at how I’m threatening her but already trying to cover her ass.
“Did you hire Luke to take me out on that date?”
Silence.
She studies the ground, traces a line in the dirt with the toe of her sandal. In the trees above us, doves coo. But Mom stays silent.
I grab her by the shoulders, shake her. “Tell me, God damn it, that it’s not true!” My voice squeals in my ears. “Mom, Jane just told me that you paid Luke to take me out! Is it true?”
I want her to lie to me. She could; I would want to believe it. So badly. If she lied well enough, I could lie to myself, pretend that what just happened, didn’t. This is what we do; we’ve been doing this shit all my life. I could look past it, forget about it. Call Jane the liar.
But Mom’s still just standing there, eyes still glued to the ground. She can’t even look at me.
I shake her harder.
“Ow, Nellie you are hurting me!” She throws my hands off her. She’s stronger than she looks.
“Tell me!” I yell, blind fury making my head throb.
“Okay, okay, yes! I bribed him! But I did it to make you happy!”
“Happy? Mom, Luke likes me, or did like me. Before all this. Now, I’m sure, he’s mortified! He woulda been mine eventually. Why do you always have to meddle?”
Mom takes a step back, shakes her head. Stares at the ground again.
When she looks up at me, she’s smirking.
“Why do I always have to meddle?” She scoffs. “Are you kidding me? Ever since you were little, I’ve had to get involved, keep your strange ass in line, cover up for all your gross, embarrassing, demented behavior.”
I’m shaking. This isn’t one of her cover-up jobs; this is her trying to control everything, control me, and fucking it all up in the process.
I’ve been angry in my life, but never like this. I’m literally seeing red. Luke is the only boy I’ve ever truly loved, and we coulda been together, but she went and stuck her big ass in the middle of things, as always. She’s the reason my whole pathetic life has always been such a horror show.
“You fucked this all up!” I shriek.
“Oh, please! First of all, he’s a lowlife, Nellie, beneath us! Not fit to shine our shoes. Get a hold of yourself! But when I saw how much you were hurting over him and how twisted up you were, and then that mess with Blair—”
What the fuck?
“You think I had something to do with that? You fucking psycho! You’re even more deranged than me!” I glare at her, go in for the kill. “But I guess, ya know, born trash, always trash—”
Her swift slap lands sharply and instantly stings. White-hot pain explodes across my cheek, my eyes brimming with tears at the shock of it.
“Nellie, I—” Mom’s eyes grow wide, and she looks like she’s horrified that she just struck me. She steps toward me, tries to reach out, but I smack her hand down.
“Luke and I have a connection. He and I woulda been together if you hadn’t come in and screwed all this up.”
Her momentary look of sympathy vanishes; now it looks like she’s the one seeing red. “Give me a break, Nellie! That boy told me he was seeing someone else and wasn’t interested in you. So I offered him five hundred dollars cash to take you out.”
The blood drains from my face; I feel hollow, sick.
Then I hear Mom’s hideous laugh, tiny but wicked. Self-satisfied. “And that wasn’t enough for him. So I offered him a check for five thousand dollars. Only then would he touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
That’s all it takes. I slap her back, hard, across her snarky mouth.
“Ah!” She holds her hand to her face. “You ungrateful little bitch!”
The next thing I know, I’m all over her, tackling her to the ground, dirt dusting both of us in little clouds.
“Nellie, get off me! What do you think you’re doing?”
I pin her wrists to the ground, shake her.
I feel like a mountain of shame has been dumped on me.
How can I ever face Luke again? Or anyone?
Mom’s ruined it. Forever. Am I really so disgusting that she had to pay him to go out with me?
And what the hell does Luke really even think about me?
How could he go through with her crazy-ass plan?
I’m so angry; I despise them both so much.
Ugh. There I was, like a reject, taunting Jane about how Luke really likes me, so full of myself, so sure, and now I’m just a giant loser.
My mother and Luke have turned me into a joke.
I’ll always be a joke. Always have been, always will be.
Just wait until the others hear; oh, they’re gonna love this one.
I’m about to release her wrists, get the hell out of here, when Mom adds, “He feels sorry for you, Nellie. Pities you. You didn’t really believe he liked you, did you? Have some dignity, damn it! Now stop this foolishness and get the fuck off me.” She squirms, but that only makes me grip tighter.
“Nellie! Now!” She kicks, but I sit on her legs.
“Do you have any idea what kind of mud pit I had to climb out of to build this life for us? For you? You’ve had your whole life handed to you on a platter, like an indulged, spoiled brat.
You don’t even realize what all I’ve given you.
You ungrateful, clueless little twat, you don’t even know the half of what I’ve done to help buffer your nothing little life. ”
That wicked smirk bleeds across her face again.
She says the next part under her breath but loud enough that I can hear it: “Nobody ever had to pay someone to go on a date with me.” I look at Mom, beneath me—perfect Mom, gorgeous Mom, never-had-to-worry-about-boys Mom, vicious-as-a-snake Mom—and I snap.
I’m not even thinking anymore when it happens.
My hands wrap around her throat, squeezing. Shaking.
I feel like she and Luke just pulled down my panties in front of the whole town.
I keep squeezing. Her legs kick and flail, but I sit on them harder.
The memory comes flooding back of her laughing, drunk, asking Dad, Are we sure she’s even ours?
How assaulted I felt, how small and alone.
How I cried myself to sleep until I could hardly breathe while they fucked and giggled in the other room. I squeeze even harder.
Her eyes fill with fear. “Nellie, stop—” but she can’t finish her sentence because she’s choking now. It feels so good to hurt her, so good to unleash my pain onto someone else.
It’s only after she stops coughing that I realize I’ve taken it way too far.