by Cass Kim
Holly swallowed guiltily, her smile slipping at the edges. She’d railed and fought with her mom for days before her mom made that call. She’d gotten carried away and called her mom a few names she regretted. Then she’d harped at her about how bad it felt to not be trusted by her own parents, snarking on it every chance she got. Even though she knew she’d kind of earned it.
“Alright, Kid, what’s wrong? Might as well just spit it out, because you know I’m going to get it out of you one way or another.” Her aunt pulled up a stool, dragging her own cup of caffeine closer to her.
Holly propped her elbows up on the counter, swiping at her tired eyelids, careful not to smudge the hastily applied mascara. “I just…” She sighed heavily and started again. “I don’t know.”
“I think you probably do know. It just might not be easy to put into words. Is it that Joanie friend of yours? I know girls can be pretty mean to each other in high school.”
“No. I mean, I guess things are a little weird with her. She has this boyfriend, and I used to like him, but she kissed him first and now all she ever wants to do is hang out with him. But, it’s like… it’s dumb. She wants us all to hang out together a lot. But then I’m just like over there by myself while they make out.”
Her aunt’s eyebrows rose, “They make out in front of you?”
Holly nodded miserably. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Have you told them that it bugs you?”
“How would I even explain that?”
Her aunt snorted, “I’d try something like, ‘hey, that’s for private time for a reason.’”
Holly raked a hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in the snarls at the ends. “I don’t know. I think Joanie’d just get all huffy. It’s like, if I don’t see her with him, I’ll just never see her. We’d be like pen pals, except with texts.” They sat in silence for a moment, both blowing gently into their mugs.
“Do you think that feeling this way might have something to do with what’s going on with you and your Mom?” Her aunt’s voice was gentle, probing.
Holly slouched, unable to look her in the eye. Of course they’d talked about the fights.
“It’s stupid, Aunty Mir. Sometimes I just say things I don’t even mean. I feel like I don’t know how to be me. I mean, that’s not really it either. I don’t know.” She sunk lower into herself.
Miranda waited patiently, sipping from her mug. Her eyes were clear of judgement when Holly risked a peek at them.
Taking a big gulp of her own coffee, Holly thought for a minute on how to explain herself better. Her loneliness this past year. The weight of her parent’s expectations. The pressure to make enormous choices when she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to go to college at all, let alone what she wanted to spend her adult years doing. It’s not like working at their chosen careers seemed to delight her parents Monday through Friday. Oh, God, and how every time she gained like half a pound Joanie seemed to notice and point it out. That girl was perpetually on a diet and she didn’t even have hips.
Holly took a deep shuddering breath, surprised to find herself swallowing back tears. She just felt so much safer here, away from her everyday life.
“I feel like my chest is heavy every day.” She started slowly, “Like I’m never going to be much of anything. I think maybe I’m not supposed to be happy. Or maybe I don’t deserve to be. Because I’m mean.” She snuffled hard, feeling the dampness of tears on her cheeks. “I say some really mean shit to my Mom sometimes. It’s like I can’t even stop it. Even when I say it, I know I don’t mean it. But I say it because… because I just have to win. I can’t win at anything right now. And she’s always right. Everything’s always my fault. But that’s not fair to me either.” She swiped at her face. “So, I get mean, because at least that shuts her up for a minute.”
“Alright.” Aunt Miranda nodded slowly, seeming to consider her answer. “Well, not to put too fine a point on this but: you are a teenager.” She gestured with her mug, “Now, I’m not saying that’s an excuse to be mean to people. I’m guessing you owe your Mom a long talk and a very sincere apology. But,” she slouched a little to reach eye level with Holly, “It’s not easy being a teenager.”
Holly sniffed back mucus, wiping anxiously at her cheeks. “What would you know about it? You’re, like, the nicest human anyone’s ever met.”
One thin, light eyebrow lifted in response, “I take it your Mom never told you about the time I cut her hair off while she slept?”
The thought of cheerful, fun, Aunty Mir chopping away at her feisty and tough older sister’s hair startled Holly out of her tears. She would never have put money on Aunty Mir in any kind of fight against her mom. Especially not a devious, mean spirited fight.
“What happened? Why’d you do it?”
“She deserved it. And she deserved not being able to put her hair up in that updo she wanted to for prom that year too.” Miranda’s smile was smug, guiltless. “You see, she’d told the whole cafeteria that day at lunch that I’d started my period. I was mortified. And she’d dropped a handful of tampons right on my lunch tray. In front of Jessica Milne.”
“Who’s Jessica Milne?” Holly was pretty sure she’d die of embarrassment if that happened to her. It was dumb, every girl has a period, it’s not like some secret. But all of them acted like it was such a gross thing.
“She,” Aunt Mir tucked a stray hair back up into her bun, “was the first girl I ever told your Mom I had a crush on.”
“What? You told Mom in high school? I thought you never came out ‘til like, way later.”
“Your Mom could be pretty mean, too, Kid. But she was always my sister first. She knew, but she never said anything to our parents, or to anyone else at the school.”
Holly nodded. Yeah, tough but loyal sounded a lot like her mom. “So, what happened? Did that Jessica girl get all weird? Did you guys ever date after that?”
“Nah. She didn’t get too weird until I told her how I felt. Let’s just say I was barking up the wrong tree.”
“What about Mom?” Holly’s voice was low, intense. “How’d you get her to forgive you?” She didn’t want to leave for college with things like they were.
“That, kid, is a story for tonight when we’re all hopped up on sugar and have seen one too many bad horror films.” Her aunt tipped the cup up and polished off her coffee. “Right now, we’re going to take your mind off this mood by teaching you how to make killer frittatas.”
Chapter Three
Holly woke just as the downstairs door closed with a thunk. She stretched, loathe to leave the warmth of the covers on Aunty Mir’s guest bed. She knew those tiled floors would freeze her feet. Her stomach hurt from laughing so much. Yawning hard enough to crack her jaw, Holly sighed and threw back the covers. She had three texts from Joanie, which she ignored. Not today. Today she was going to just be Holly. Not Holly-Joanie’s-sidekick. And not Holly-who-partied-all-the-time. It was nice to wake up on a weekend and be hangover-free. Just a tiny sugar rush headache from so many gummy worms. She started to flip through her social media accounts, scrolling aimlessly through selfies and party photos before stopping. Deliberately, she set her phone down.
“Not today,” she whispered to herself with a small smile. Feeling weightless for the first time in a long time, Holly danced down the hallway and into the bathroom.
Once she’d completed her morning routine, she found a pair of woolly socks Aunty Mir had left her at the top of the stairs, with a note stuck to them. Sitting on the top stair, she plucked the note off and shoved her feet into the plush socks. The note was written in a hurried scrawl:
Hey Kid,
Sorry I have to work all day today. Put these socks on! A good pair of socks are like a hug for the feet. I get the feeling you’ve been a little standoffish for hugs lately. Now that you’re mine for the week, we’re going to get you fixed right up. I know my sweet little Holl-bug is still in there. I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I ha
ve an idea. Pancake batter in the fridge – do NOT cook it on high heat.
Holly rolled her eyes. She’d done that one time. One time! The resulting burnt crust on the outside and raw batter on the inside had been inedible.
Come to the restaurant for a late lunch and I’ll make you something special. I need a taste tester for a few dishes, so come hungry! The address is on the fridge. XOXOXO
Yawning widely and stretching briefly again, Holly tucked the note into the front pocket of her hoodie and made her way into the kitchen. Aunt Miranda’s restaurant must be doing really well for her to hire a housekeeper. Plus, she had that enormous TV in the living room now with the surround sound setup. It had made the horror movies so much better than when they’d watched them from laptops when Holly was twelve and they had a standing horror movie date every Friday. Only then they’d watched them during the daylight hours. It was weird how some days it felt like so long ago. Last night, those easier childhood days had seemed like just yesterday.
Holly grabbed the remote and flipped the TV on for some background noise while she cooked the pancakes. Her aunt must have been watching the news before work and Holly left it there. She was too hungry to bother channel surfing. Plopping the pan on the stove, she lit the burner beneath it, pulling the bowl of pancake mix from the fridge. The smell of coffee drifted over from the French press sitting on the kitchen bar, still warm to the touch.
“Aunty Mir, you are the freaking best,” Holly murmured to herself as she splashed milk into a mug and slowly drizzled the coffee into it, letting it mix itself as she poured. Maybe she’d see if she could just get a job at the restaurant and work there for a year or two while she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. Then she’d have Aunt Miranda on her side against her parent’s arguments for the importance of college.
Once her pancakes were done and buttered, she carried the plate and fork over to the couch. There she settled in, balancing the plate on crossed legs. Crap. She’d left the remote over on the kitchen counter. With a shrug, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to watch a little news anyhow. She was too perfectly positioned to mess it up just for the remote.
It was one of those international news stations. The anchor reporting was a woman with a blunt chin length bob and burgundy lipstick. The coverage was something about the stock market. Alright, that was pretty boring. Holly dug into the pancakes, savoring the hint of nutmeg. Delicious as always. Just as she was finishing up, the station flipped to one of those live coverage shots, with a male anchor standing in the streets of Paris, the Eiffel Tower in the background. The streets were covered in debris. Yellow caution tape was strung around holding onlookers back. Another terrorist attack? Holly felt sure she would have seen something about that on social media, with people sending thoughts and prayers from far away.
She was getting up to grab the remote when the station flashed to a few other cities in rapid succession. One of them was New York. The banner at the bottom of the screen changed from the blue scrolling words to a solid red with a large white letter sentence reading, “New Drug Hits Streets Across the World.” Huh. Holly watched a moment as the screen changed to a list of cities where authorities had put down or detained the wild drug users for the safety of others. The death toll was over three hundred worldwide. There were at least fifteen cities on the list, half of which Holly wasn’t even sure which country they were in. A couple she recognized from the United States and Canada. Chicago wasn’t one, though.
With a shrug, Holly walked over and put her dishes in the sink, grabbing the remote and flipping channels for a while. She watched reality TV for a few hours, flipping between some show about rich housewives and her favorite MTV show where reality stars did physical challenges to try to win money. Once she got bored, she spent some time carefully flat ironing and then curling her hair. As lunch time rolled around, she ambled back upstairs to shower and do her makeup before heading out to the restaurant.
After she’d dried off she checked her phone. Four more messages from Joanie. Still no. One photo message from her mom with her parents posed in front of a giant cruise ship. Holly knew once they’d pulled out to sea they’d be unreachable for a few days. Her dad refused to pay the exorbitant wifi fees on principle. Thinking of her conversation last night, she typed a quick reply.
Love you guys. Have fun.
The instant she set her phone down, it vibrated. Sliding her thumb across she read the message from her aunt.
Hey kid. Lunch rush is dying down, so head over whenever you’re ready!
Perfect timing. Holly rushed through her makeup, forgoing the contouring and foundation she usually wore. Just a little shadow and mascara to make her eyes pop, and some tinted lip balm since she hated the feeling of dry lips. She shook her hair out of the bun she’d put it in for the shower as she trotted down the stairs. The take home menu for the restaurant was stuck to the fridge. She yanked it down, admiring the crisp elegant script that read “Mir’s Eatery” and whistled as she read the prices. You’d be hard pressed to find a meal that cost more than fifteen dollars at even the nicest place back home. That must be the cost of living in a city. Well, that’d be okay. Bigger bill, bigger tips, right? That wouldn’t be bad, if she did wait tables there.
Flipping the menu over, she typed the address into her phone. She could walk a mile there, or walk a quarter mile to the subway, take the subway, then walk a half mile from the station on the other side of the restaurant. She might as well just walk the whole way. It’d probably take less time anyhow.
She slapped the menu back on the fridge and pulled her hat down low. Then, because it wasn’t winter anymore, and her hair looked good, she pulled it back off. She wrapped the plaid scarf she’d gotten for Christmas around in a loose loop, draping it carefully against the navy blue sweater she wore. It was the middle of the day and sunny, so she skipped her coat. Coats just did not have the same stylish effect. She stuffed her feet into grey calf high boots, and headed out the door, turning the spare key and dropping that, along with her hat, into her shoulder bag.
She stared at the phone screen for a moment, to get her bearings. It was so annoying how it said to go “West” instead of left or right. How was she supposed to know which way was West? She wasn’t a compass. She knew from experience that if she walked the wrong way she’d soon see that, and she could always backtrack.
Which is exactly what she did. She walked briskly along, ducking her chin into the scarf and reaching up to adjust it to cover her ears. The wind was howling between buildings, the chill of it making her ears ache. Hunching against the cold, Holly tried to distract herself by looking around. A lot of people were roaming the streets, bustling and hustling. A couple of guys were on one of the corners with guitar cases open, playing acoustic music and singing a folksy song. She tugged her sweater down to try to keep the wind from sneaking into the gap between it and her jeans as she passed them.
Balling her free hand to shield her fingers from the biting wind a few steps later, she returned to people watching. A little blond was being dragged along with her mother’s brisk pace. Holly grinned at the girl as she passed, admiring the unicorn hat tied firmly in place over her curls. The girl smiled back, staring over her shoulder at Holly while her mom kept her moving with a firm grasp on her hand. There was a hot dog stand with seven or eight people in line, huffing into their cupped fingers to warm them up between scrolling on their phones. The salty, warm smell of the food clung to the air around the stand.
It was exciting, but also overstimulating to have so many people around all the time. Didn’t people ever want to just stay in and escape the crowds? Probably some were doing just that. With a population of over three million, the city was never quiet. She switched the phone between her hands, to give her other fingers a chance to hide from the frosty spring wind.
She stared up at the skyscrapers and peeked into the windows of the small cute business storefronts as she wandered past, eyes half on her phone. A milling crowd of people
staring into an electronics store, watching CNN of all things, caused her to stumble toward the busy street. Holly dodged back from the whizzing cars, casting a dirty look behind her. Ugh. It was just the stupid news.
After a few minutes of walking she wished she’d just worn her stupid coat. Shivering, Holly debated going back to get it, but she was almost halfway there already. Vowing to be more practical next time, Holly snuggled her face deeper into her scarf. At least she had her hat and a pair of thin little dollar store gloves tucked in her shoulder bag. With a sigh, she clicked the lock screen on her phone and tucked it in the front pocket of the bag. Time to give up on her nice hair and get that hat over her throbbing ears. Holly stood still, digging around for a few minutes, scooting gum and lip balms around, shoving magazines to the side. Her cloth wallet seemed to find its way into her searching hand every time she thought she’d gripped her hat. Some guy on a bike whizzed past her, making her yelp and skitter sideways. She hadn’t realized how close she was to the street.
Grumbling, she set her bag on a clean spot on the sidewalk to get a better look. It was much easier to lean down and dig around when her eyes could actually see inside. Snagging her hat, she shoved it over her auburn hair and snatched up her gloves. Holly straightened up, unfolding the gloves with the bag between her feet. That wind really bit right into exposed skin. Half numb, her fingers were clumsy, and it was a struggle to pull the thin cotton gloves on. The task was made harder when a kid in an oversized coat jostled into her, knocking her a few steps sideways. She opened her mouth to berate him for being so rude when he started running away. With her purse. That had her wallet. And her cellphone.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” she shouted, dropping her gloves and taking off after him. Her soft soled boots skidded across the concrete as she sprinted, heart racing. She dodged around families and almost trampled a small dog out for a walk, her eyes glued to the back of his army green jacket. He dodged up and down the sidewalk, flying through crosswalks without even pausing. She was not going to lose him. He took another turn, now less than half a block ahead of her. Holly whipped around the corner after him, heedless of the thinning crowds, completely unaware of how many blocks she’d followed him. Her legs were eating up the pavement, closing the distance.