10
Past, Las Vegas, Nevada, Age 10
In the summer, a guy named Mike starts to hang around Brandi’s place. He’s younger than Brandi. Good-looking in an unkempt way. String-bean thin with a lightly muscled body that he likes to show off with tight, heavy metal-band t-shirts. During the day, Mike works on cars. At night, he works security at the club where Brandi works.
Brandi is the happiest I have ever seen. She walks around singing and shaking her full hips from side to side. Surprisingly, her singing voice is beautiful, high and clear. I tease Shelly that she’s going to get a new dad. The comment gets me elbowed in the gut.
My mom doesn’t like Mike at all. She interrogates me about him almost every night. How long was he at Brandi’s apartment? Was he ever there alone with me and Shelly? Did he talk to me? Touch me?
She’s overreacting. Mike seems pretty harmless. He listens to music and messes around with his car’s engine down in the parking lot. He spends more time with that car than he does with Brandi. One thing I don’t like about Mike is the sour stench of cigarettes on him, but I’m used to that. Even though Mom doesn’t smoke, she still reeks of it every night when she gets home from work. Sometimes a sickly sweet smell rolls off Mike. Shelly says it’s from something he smokes called pot. Over time, Brandi smells more like that, too.
It turns out I was right. Brandi and Mike elope on a Wednesday night the following spring. In the evening, they show up at my apartment and surprise everyone with the news. Brandi shoves her new gold ring in our faces, grinning. Words slurring, she describes the ceremony.
A red-faced Shelly storms out, interrupting Brandi. We all listen to her feet pound down the concrete steps that separate our apartments. She slams the front door downstairs so hard the noise sets off a car alarm in the parking lot. Mom tells me to go down and check on her.
As I enter her apartment and walk down the narrow hallway toward her room, Shelly’s harsh sobs are so loud I hear them through the thin walls. Without knocking, I walk in. She’s under the covers, a pillow thrown over her head. I lay down next to her on the pink ruffled bedspread. It’s become more bedraggled since the first time I saw it. Broken threads and stains mar its surface. I touch the red splotch next to my arm where Shelly and I spilled nail polish when we were six. Brandi had been screaming mad at us. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
Silently, I wrap my arm around Shelly’s heaving shoulders. She doesn’t like to be talked out of her pain. Over the years, I’ve learned that trying to use words as comfort at these times turns into an argument. It’s like she believes sympathy is an attack on her sadness. Like it’s a way of saying she has overreacted. No. Better to let her cry it out.
Eventually, she stills. “I hate him, and I hate her,” she whispers angrily. “She’s so freaking selfish. All my mom thinks about is what she wants. She should ask me what I want. Like ask me before she goes off to marry Mike. It affects me too, so shouldn’t I get a say in it? But no, whatever makes her happy. I’m an afterthought. She never wanted me in the first place.”
Shelly has talked about this fear of being unwanted by her mom before. It all started because of our stupid classmate, Dominic, who lives down the hall. Last year, he told Shelly on the playground that he overheard Brandi say Shelly was a mistake, that she accidentally got knocked up and wished she hadn’t had her.
Who knew if it was the truth? Shelly had taken it to heart, though.
At least Dominic wouldn’t tell that to anyone else. I made sure of it. I had punched him so hard in the face it chipped his front tooth. The other kids stood in a circle around us, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight,” until the principal pulled us apart. As I was being escorted into the front office, I had overheard another student say, “She’s crazy.” Grinning madly, I was happy, satisfied that no one would mess with Shelly or me again.
My mother had been furious, but I couldn’t feel bad about it. This was how my neighborhood worked. If you didn’t stand up for yourself, you were asking to be a victim. Once that happened, it was over. All the bullies and predators came out to play with you. I had seen it before, kids’ lives ruined because they didn’t fight for themselves. It wouldn’t be like that for us. I would fight for myself and for Shelly, too.
I rub Shelly’s shoulder through the blanket. “Just because your mom’s married doesn’t mean she’ll forget you. Maybe things will be even better. She’ll have more money because Mike can pay for stuff. I bet you’ll get a ton of Christmas presents next year.” A twinge of jealousy at that thought. I got two Christmas gifts this year, a book, which I loved, and some new underwear, which I didn’t.
Shelly peeks out from under the pillow. Her cheeks are blotchy from crying. “Mom doesn’t love me. She just wants Mike.”
“I don’t think that’s true. He always has dirty fingernails. Yours are clean and pretty.” I fish under the covers until I find her warm hand. Pulling it out, I look at the chipped pink fingernail polish I had painted on Shelly a few days before. Back when Brandi was still single. At least, we’ve gotten better about not spilling it.
“Just remember—you are smarter, prettier, kinder, and funnier than Mike is.” I tick off my fingers, one for each attribute.
She takes in a shuddering breath. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
Her cheeks drying now, she sits up. “My mom doesn’t see me that way. I don’t even think my mom sees me sometimes. She’d rather watch TV or be with Mike.”
“Well, then she’s nuts, because I’d rather be with you than anyone else.” I hug my best friend close. “Don’t worry, Shelly. Everything will be okay.”
Turns out, things aren’t okay. Shelly is moving. Now that Brandi and Mike are married, they want to live closer to Mike’s day job. Shelly and I are distraught. We beg Brandi to change her mind but make no headway. I think back to how Shelly called her mom selfish and have to agree.
“You’ll still see each other at school, girls. You get to be together there practically every day.” Brandi haphazardly throws Shelly’s clothing into a crumpled cardboard box. “You can sit together at lunch,” she says absently as she frowns at a pair of jeans where Shelly’s worn holes in both knees.
“But Mom,” whines Shelly, “it’s not the same. We hardly have any time to be together at school. The teachers get mad at us when we talk in the hallways, and lunch is only 20 minutes long.”
I want to jump in and agree with Shelly but hold back. Brandi isn’t my mom, so I’m never sure how much to be involved in these family conversations.
“Besides, what about the weekends? We usually spend all of Saturday and Sunday together. Now we’ll live too far away from each other to walk. We won’t see each other.” Shelly makes the weekend sound like a century of time.
“You can figure out the bus schedule. Maybe there’s a bus that goes from here to there,” counters Brandi.
This is a losing battle.
I have to give it to Shelly for determination, though. She won’t drop it, arguing, “You said last month that we’re too young to go on the bus ourselves. You said we couldn’t take it down to the aquarium, remember?”
Exasperated, Brandi throws the torn jeans on the floor and stands up. Her voice is tight with anger as she yells at Shelly, “Find a bus or don’t. I don’t care, but we are moving. Stop fighting with me about it.”
Brandi rages out of the room, leaving us to finish packing.