Chapter 66
I'm barely past the front door when Dinah drags me inside by my shoulders and shakes me like a dusty mop.
“You worthless, gaping ass wound! Do you know what you've done? Why?”
“Because I'm tired of manipulating people for money. This isn't the world I want to live in.”
She slaps me across both sides of the face so hard that little needles stab my cheeks, then she shakes my shoulders.
“You care about the world? You have scruples now? You're all dressed up in your little graduation suit and you've got your cap on and your balls have dropped and you're ready to go bless the world with your wisdom?”
“Let me go,” I say, slumping my neck into my shoulders and rubbing the sting out of my cheeks.
“I can't keep up with the emails and phone calls I'm getting demanding refunds, calling me a scammer and a fraud! All because of another one of your fucking stunts!”
Her plastic face is so frozen that there's no expression except the anger in her eyes and the popping veins in her neck.
“I'm fucked! You want me to go back to the old folks' home? Ten dollars an hour! Stuck in Fucksville with you for the rest of my life!”
“I don't care anymore,” I say.
“Of course you don't! You don't care about anybody but yourself, you worthless monster. Pack your shit and get out of my house now!”
“It's not even your house. It's Grandma's!”
She pounds her fist into the wall, rattling all the Christmas objects on their shelves.
“I didn't ask for any of this! Once upon a time I had a nice, respectable life and a career and a husband, and it's all gone, and I'm stuck babysitting you!
You're like herpes. You just won't go away.
You are the most hateful, negative, rotten brat I have ever met in my life.
I wish your mom had fallen down the stairs when she was pregnant with you.
You didn't even deserve the dignity of a Planned Parenthood appointment. I should have sold you to a sweatshop when I had the chance!”
I can't do this anymore. She never had any right to talk down to my parents. She has no right to talk to me like this. I'm an adult now. My parents didn't stand up to her, but I will. I lift my head and shoulders and look her square in the eyes.
“Why didn't you? Why didn't you just give me up for adoption if you hate me so much? I'm sorry my parents fucking died and then Grandma, until there was nobody left but you. Maybe it was all a government conspiracy to make you miserable! Have you gone down that rabbit hole, Inspector Dinah?”
She pushes me backward, her stiff finger poking me in the sternum along the way.
“Don't you dare mock me because I choose to use my life to do good for the world while you waste your life on your stupid pranks and your gay shit and pissing your pants every time you hear a sprinkle drop from the sky.”
“Good for the world!” I laugh through my tears. “You hijacked my parents' funeral and made it all about you and your fantasy cloud seeding bullshit, you maniac!”
“It's not bullshit! It's…” she says hesitantly. “It's as real as the stupid scar on your face that you're always using for pity points!”
Whatever I was about to say next, I forget.
I'm used to people making fun of the way I look.
She's never gone there before. She's trapped, backed into the darkest corner she's ever put herself in, and these are the fangs she decides to bare.
She snorts at me, holding her ground. I push back, poking her in the gut until she's backed into a shelf holding her snow globes and porcelain Santas.
“No, it's your screwed-up way of coping with your sad, shitty life.
You can't handle that my parents died because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, so you tell everybody the tornado was geoengineered.
You invent every half-baked boogeyman story you can to explain what's wrong with the world because you're too afraid to look inside yourself and face up to the fact that you're going to be alone for the rest of your life.” I get so close to her face that our noses are practically touching.
“I can't hide the scar on my face, but all the makeup and Botox in the world can't hide the scar in your soul.”
It's dead silent except for the sound of the A/C turning on. Dinah's breaths are slow and aggressive. The blacks of her pupils drown out her green irises. Behind her quivering lips, her teeth grind into each other.
“You want to hit me? I fucking dare you,” she says. “Hit me. Hit me. Hit me.”
She gives me little shoves right in the chest, pushing me toward the wall, and keeps shoving me harder and harder until every atom of rage inside me has split and created a chain reaction of atomic explosions in my brain. The world turns bleached white for one prolonged moment, and I see nothing.
When my sight restores itself, I see Dinah holding her hand over her left eye, her other eye wide open, her mouth dropped like a broken elevator.
My right knuckle throbs and aches.
Our eyes meet. I'm as stunned as she is. A chill runs through me and my stomach tightens. The second my feet start to move, Dinah already has a snow globe in her hand, her face the bloodlust of a rabid coyote. I'm running so fast that the globe misses me and shatters against the wall.
I'm halfway down the hall toward my room, keeping ten feet ahead of her.
She's taller than me and more athletic, and I can't lead for long.
Another snow globe smashes into my bedroom door, showering me with glittery water and flying glass.
I slam the door behind me and twist the lock right as she's bearing down on me.
Dinah's knuckles are pounding against the door rapidly like one of those virus-stricken zombies from the movies.
A mix of rapid-fire curses and shrill howls erupt from behind the door, which starts to break in from her kicks.
I've watched these movies countless times, and the only option for survival in this moment is to jump straight out of the window and run for my life.
As I'm halfway out, the door busts open, and there's Dinah, in full rage-demon mode, barreling toward me at warp speed, her arms swinging powerfully.
I fall out of the window and into a bush, which tears off my graduation gown.
I push myself up and dash across the neighbor's lawn until I reach the road.
She sticks her head out the window and lets out a primal scream that hits my back like a shockwave, scaring hordes of birds out of the trees that flank me as I disappear down the road.
I run as far as Bueno Bueno Bueno, where I hide in the back room and spend the night, building a resting space on a bench with aprons left by ex-employees.
I doomscroll through everybody's graduation pictures and their updates about their college plans and bright futures. I tap my fingers before I switch to the Peace Corps website. My thumb circles over the “Apply Here” button. I mean, I'm homeless now. There's nowhere but up from here. I click.