“Sure. Anything specific?”
They both shrugged, and then Colleen said, “No, whatever looks good. If there’s a healthy thing or two in there, grab some, but I doubt there will be.”
She was right. There were Doritos and candy bars, but nothing you could exactly call “healthy.”
Tamara looked at the soda machine and got an idea. She picked out three separate sodas, all ones she would drink, one of which was diet, which she suspected Bitty would want. But really who knew anymore; clearly, the woman was weird.
She walked back through the door and announced, “I have an idea.” They waited for her to go on. “Have you guys ever played Never Have I Ever?”
Colleen and Bitty exchanged a look. Tamara couldn’t tell if it was because they were more familiar with it than she could realize, or if they had never played it and were feeling old and out of touch.
“Well, you hold up your hands and say something you’ve never done, and anyone who has done it puts down a finger. It’s fun. It’s—well, it’s usually a drinking game, but I brought sodas.”
A few minutes later, they had laid down a sheet on the floor from the closet and set up a little junk food picnic, and had poured sodas—Bitty indeed opted for the Coke Zero—into the small, plastic-wrapped foam cups by the sink.
Tamara put on a Spotify radio station that would play stuff that maybe Bitty and Colleen wouldn’t know, but which probably wouldn’t bother them. Ed Sheeran, Of Monsters and Men, etc.
“So, for example,” Tamara said, popping a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto into her mouth. “I could say, ‘Never have I ever caught a big gross bug with my bare hands.’”
Getting the game, Bitty smiled and put a finger down. “Okay, so now it’s my turn?”
“Yes.”
“Hm. Okay. Never have I ever … Hm. This is hard.”
“You can use your turn defensively. Like if you know something Colleen might have done.”
“That puts you at quite the advantage,” Colleen said with narrowed eyes.
Tamara laughed, trying not to sound too eager. Like a kid who hears an adult swear but doesn’t want to react too much.
“Never have I ever thrown up in my own hair,” said Bitty, pointing the question at Colleen.
Colleen put a tongue in her cheek and put a finger down.
So did Tamara.
“Okay,” Bitty went on. “Never have I ever … been to Disneyland. Or World.”
None of them put their fingers down. How sad was that?
“My turn,” said Tamara. “Never have I ever had a nickname.”
Nope, that was sadder.
Bitty put down a finger.
“What’s your actual name again?” asked Tamara.
“Wilhelmina.”
“Wilhelmina?” Tamara asked, not comfortable enough to laugh, but wishing she could. It was so … so serious. So stern. So old-lady-ish. So … well … actually, maybe it fit her perfectly, come to think of it.
“Yes?”
“How did you get Bitty from that?”
Colleen supplied the answer. “Because in college—and still, she was itty-bitty. Just like she is now.”
Tamara frowned slightly. “Huh. Do you know what ‘bitty’ means now? Like to people my age, I guess?”
Bitty looked woeful, and Colleen looked prepared to do damage control.
“It’s not bad! It’s not bad. It’s just kind of a way to refer to hot girls. Like. ‘I hooked up with this totally hot bitty last night.’” She found herself using the voice she used when she imitated Vince.
“See, now, that’s not bad at all,” said Colleen, looking relieved. Heaven knew what she’d been afraid Tamara was going to say.
“I’ve heard worse.” Bitty sighed and shook her head. For a moment she looked like she was going to say something else about it, but instead she said, “My turn. Never have I ever smoked pot.”
Tamara eyed Colleen, who was eyeing her. “Honesty is the best policy, Colleen,” she said, intentionally leaving off the “Aunt.”
Seeming reluctant, Colleen lowered a finger, but then said, “Okay, yes I did, but I hated it, did I not?” She pointed at Bitty for backup.
“You did. You thought you were having a heart attack.”
Colleen laughed. “Yes, I ended up crawling into bed with Bitty and crying about— What was it?”
“The extinction of the dinosaurs.”
Tamara cracked up. Then, reluctantly, Colleen did too. Even Bitty started to laugh.
“And maybe you don’t have to wonder why I never tried it, then,” said Bitty.
No one seemed to notice Tamara had put down a finger, but she was also pretty sure they knew and just weren’t saying anything.
“Okay, fine,” said Colleen, a challenge in her eye. “Never have I ever been caught climbing up into the rafters of a closed-down coffee shop to dump a gallon of milk on anyone.”
Tamara tried to make sense of the image, and then looked to Bitty, whose already tight cheekbones sharpened as she recognized the memory and put a finger down.
“You did that?” Tamara asked.
“Yup!” Colleen tipped backwards in laughter.
Bitty finally laughed too, and then said, “It was once.”
“I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that needs to happen more than once, Bit.”
Tamara smiled along, not feeling like she knew enough details to laugh. “Why did you do it? Who did you do it to?”
“So … okay, I had this boyfriend Blake. And we got into a … well, kind of a prank war. We were … gosh, I guess juniors in college?”
“Yep. End of our first junior-year semester. I remember because it was December and freezing.”
“Well, he deserved it.” It was the loosest sentence Bitty had spoken, Tamara noticed. “Anyway. He started it, for one thing. By sneaking into my apartment and taking all my spoons and forks.”
Tamara laughed. “That’s so random.”
“When I say that, I mean he also took anything that could be used as a spoon or fork. He did that because I was, you know, pretending to be upset with him over something tiny, and that was his way of getting me to go get food with him.”
“Aw, that’s cute, though!”
Bitty looked wistful for a moment. “Yes, it was.” She smiled, but it looked like it was more to herself than to the conversation. “But then I hid his car key in a loaf of—” She started laughing again. “—a loaf of sopping wet bread.”
“That was his fault too,” Colleen chimed in. “He shouldn’t have said to us that he thinks soggy bread is the grossest thing in the world. He just shouldn’t have!”
Tam laughed, but didn’t want to say anything. She wanted them to keep going.
“So then his last prank before the milk was that he put a lock on my closet. Like, came in and used tools to install a lock.”
Colleen trilled with a laugh. “Oh my God, I forgot about that! You came to—” She dissolved into laughter Bitty was now sharing. “This girl arrives to Astronomy in Blake’s jeans and a tank top.”
“Because he was a genius and knew I always slept in my underwear and a tank top. So he left me my least favorite of his pants, and that was it.”
Tamara laughed at the image. “I can’t picture that at all.”
“No, she was a skirt and dresses girl. Everyone noticed.”
They caught their breath, and Bitty concluded, “Yes, so, he got doused in milk!”
“All of yours have to do with food, I feel like,” Tamara noted.
“Well, when you never eat it—” She rolled her eyes and took a sip from a plastic cup.
After another couple of stories, Bitty became the first one out, surprisingly, and Tamara said she was going to go make a call. But really it was because Bitty and Colleen were, like, rebonding or something, and she thought she should probably give them a few minutes without the kid in the room.
Tamara ambled down the motel steps and sat down on a parking block. She opened her
cigarette case and took one out. She already knew she’d probably smoke two back-to-back.
She let her legs splay out, staring at the ground. A spider crawled by, and as sometimes happened, a nursery rhyme popped into her head:
Little Miss Screwup sat on a curb
Smoking her jacks and pot
Along came a spider, who wouldn’t even sit beside her,
and crawled to a different fucking parking spot.
She gave a small laugh at how lame her thoughts sometimes were. When she was a kid, she had often made up her own nursery rhymes, or changed the ones everyone knew. Over time, her frame of reference had changed, but the habit stuck.
Sometimes the rhymes were really fucked up. The play on Jack and Jill on the day of her mom’s funeral was almost unrepeatable, it was so dark. And that one had been pretty messed up to begin with.
She checked her phone as she inhaled, already about 75 percent through the cigarette.
No texts.
This wasn’t wholly unusual or anything. She didn’t have any friends she talked to outside of the basement or school or whatever. It was mostly a walkie-talkie for her father to call nine hundred times and make her come home from wherever she was.
But, lamely, she had kinda hoped to hear from Conor. Jenna’s brother. The guy she had talked to for two-point-five seconds, who had called her a jailbird and obviously wouldn’t think of her again. It was dumb to think otherwise, and she knew it. She had known that much when she gave him her number to begin with.
Maybe, though … Maybe she should just text him anyway?
No, that was stupid. Or was it?
See, these were the times a girl needed a best friend to talk to, she thought to herself. A friend that would say, Oh just go for it, what do you have to lose? Just do it! Click send! And a friend who, if he didn’t answer, would be there to rationalize with you when he took too long, or who would say, You know what, he’s not even that cute anyway, if he never did.
“Ow, shit,” she muttered as the cigarette between her fingers got down to the filter, and to her skin. She stomped it out and lit another, summoning the guts to send a text.
Hey Conor! It’s Tamara Bradley. We talked at the part—
No. Way too enthusiastic.
It’s Tamara. Did you finish season four yet?
No. Weird.
Whats up Conor? It’s Tamara. Just wanted to see if you’ve finished—
That sounded like the transcript to a voice mail.
Hey, it’s Tamara! (the jailbird) Have you seen the epic season 4 finale yet?
That was pretty good, she decided. She tagged on another question mark, to show her enthusiasm for the show, and then let her thumb hesitate over the send button. With a grit of her teeth and a very deep breath, she pressed send.
Immediate regret. She was super weird. She was being crazy. A clingy weird little freakshow who— Ding, ding!
A text.
Conor: This show. Is fucking crazy.
She dragged on the cigarette and let it sit between her lips as she answered.
Right?? That whole episode I was like dying. Did you start 5 yet? Her foot was tapping quickly as she saw that he was typing.
His answer was immediate again. No, I don’t have it. I’m thinking about buying it but I’m flat broke haha. Do you have it?
Her heart skipped. Yeah I do actually. I mayyyy or may not have watched every episode more than once. Or twice. Haha. Sent. Oh no. Stupid stupid stupid. The “haha” was too much. Too self-conscious. Now he thought she was a total spaz and he was going to want to scrape her off quickly.
Apparently not. Hah awesome. Wellll any chance you wanna be a doll and lemme borrow it?
Yay! Of course, yeah. i have it at my dads, but i’m actually on a road trip right now.
This seemed to impress him. No way? For real? With who? Where you goin?
I’m with my aunt, she’s buying stuff for her store. she does something with furniture and like little yard sale things. She wondered, fleetingly, if it had been too uncool to mention her aunt. Like she was a little baby who had to be babysat. Which, actually, was pretty much what was going on.
Fortunately, Conor didn’t make fun of her for that. Thats awesome. When you gonna be back?
Liiike a week and a half. I’ve been on the road for fowr days now.
Shit. four* i’m not illiterate. Haha
Dammit with the “haha” again. No one laughed that much! No one!
Four days huh? Soo you haven’t tried the new pho place that opened THREE days ago right next to school?
Was he leading up to asking her out? Omg i forgot that was happening. What’s it called? Pho Sho or something, right?
She could almost hear his voice in his answer. Haha yeah. I haven’t had it yet either. What do you say in exchange for letting me watch your season 5, i’ll hold off on getting it (which is a huge sacrifice btw) and we can pho together when you get back?
Tamara’s inner monologue was suddenly a steady stream of ohmygodohmygodohmygod. She hesitated, her fingers over the letters, trying to think of just the right response, but her text dinged again with another message from him before she could.
Unless that’s weird. in which case you can go pho yourself.
Relief. Okay this time, it was okay to laugh. Hahah no no that sounds awesome. Yeah i’ll let you know when I’m back in town.
Schweet. Hey do me a favor. Text me pictures of the five most awesome things you see while you’re gone.
She immediately thought of the truck driver, but he’d said “awesome” not “horrible,” so even if she’d thought to take a picture—ew!—she wouldn’t have sent it to him. Still, he presented an interesting challenge. What would she send pictures of? She couldn’t wait to hit the road with new eyes. Will do. You text me the five most boring things that happen while you’re at home.
Ha! Perfect.
Her stomach was in knots, and she had the dorkiest grin on her face. She didn’t even realize she hadn’t had any more of her cigarette. She stomped it out and headed back inside, feeling like maybe, just maybe when she went home, things might be different. Maybe she could try to be a normal girl. One who didn’t live underground with no natural light or clean air, and instead just electric, fuzzy TV light and pot-filled oxygen.
Maybe she could fix herself before it was actually too late.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Colleen
“So how’s it going, then, are you finding a good amount of workable things?” Kevin asked.
“Sure, yeah,” said Colleen, her phone between her ear and shoulder as she mixed the two packets of stevia into Bitty’s Black Eye, which had been her request from Starbucks when Colleen said she was going there. She wasn’t even sure what was in the Black Eye, only that it smelled like an ashtray and looked like regular coffee. For herself, she had gotten a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. A friend’s daughter had worked at Starbucks, and informed her that the Venti, whole-fat White Mocha latte she was prone to ordering had almost a thousand calories—if not more—once she added the peppermint. Colleen’s response had not been, You’re not supposed to tell us these things, you bitchy barista, but she had really wanted to say it. She’d picked out a Chocolate Chip Crème Frappuccino for Tamara. She had wanted caffeine, and Colleen said yes, but ultimately went with no caffeine. For God’s sake, Colleen didn’t have her first cup of coffee till she was twenty-five, so she didn’t need to be slugging stimulants down a kid’s throat. But Tamara could use the calories.
“That doesn’t sound like a very enthusiastic answer. Are you not finding as much as you hoped?”
“No, I am.” In truth, she’d been distracted and found less than she probably would on an average day of garage sales in Frederick. Which was not nearly so much as she had hoped. The justification for leaving the shop for this long was to find unique items for low prices that she could repurpose and sell at a large profit, thereby writing off her travel costs and any losses incurred while the
shop kept limited hours under Lydia’s eye.
So far, there was no real justification for the trip as far as Kevin would be concerned, but it wasn’t over yet. She still had her main goal ahead of her. Florida. Palm trees and blue skies, the happiest destination for so many people, but Colleen sort of felt like she was headed for a firing squad.
She just prayed Kevin would never find out what she was doing.
“Good, then, I’m glad it doesn’t feel like a waste.” He took a breath, and she knew he was concluding the trip was a failure and he was also concluding why. “How’s the juvenile delinquent?”
“Actually, she’s been surprisingly easy,” Colleen said, careful not to sound too enthusiastic, lest she should become the regular go-to replacement mom, but at the same time, wanting to share the good news. “I really thought she’d be more of a handful, but it hasn’t been too bad.”
This was actually an understatement. Tamara so far had been well behaved and even fun at times. A little mopey every once in a while, but ever since their game of Never Have I Ever, she seemed to have perked up a little. Colleen was finding she enjoyed her company, and was even grateful for the buffer Tamara provided in the awkward relationship with Bitty.
“Well, good. I’m sorry again I can’t be there with you.”
No, no. He would hate it. And she would be tense the whole time, knowing he was hating it. She was really glad he wasn’t here. “Oh it’s fine. How’s Jay been? Are you guys having fun?”
“It’s been a blast, actually,” he said, then with fractionally less enthusiasm added, “We both keep saying we wish you were here.”
Colleen was 99 percent sure this wasn’t true. But it was the kind of thing that didn’t have to be true to be nice.
“Aw. I’d say I do too, but I’d probably get bored with all the boys talking sports the whole time.” She gave a laugh. “I’m such a girl.”
“I think you’d be surprised by how many women are here. You know Sam Riley? The kid that busted his ankle in soccer last season?”
She tried not to let on that she’d immediately tensed. “Yeah, he was in Jay’s fourth-grade class, I think.” She remembered his single mom quite clearly. His very hot, flirtatious single mom. “Did Kelly go?” Her forced casualness sounded comical to her own ear, but she didn’t let on.
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