“Why does every encounter with the one person I want to impress seem to involve humiliation?”
Live Forever
I go grocery shopping with Jenna at New Seasons
for coconut water and brown rice,
gluten-free this and paraben-free that,
and oodles and oodles of kale.
Jenna’s ten years younger than my dad
so she’s always buying food
that will make him “live forever.”
I think she considers a trip to New Seasons
to be one of our many attempts at bonding—
every single one of which has fallen flat.
When we go outside
some BMX guys are in the parking lot
in front of Great Clips.
One of them is doing some kind of wheelie
and another guy’s riding faster than most cars go,
and as he speeds by,
I see it’s Moe’s brother, Marc.
Do those guys go to your school? Jenna asks.
I say yes and she says, They seem like bad news.
The psychologist I went to when my mom died
would call that a “projection”:
when you say someone else is “bad news”
because you actually believe it about yourself.
All I know is that Marc is doing some kind of trick
where he rides up on one of those cement parking space thingies
and flies up into the air
and as he does, I pull out my camera and snap a photo.
Jenna doesn’t notice, so I pocket my camera
and glance back over at him
and that’s when I walk into the cart,
which smacks into another cart,
which hits another cart,
and then they all start rolling down the little hill
and the bikers have to pedal out of the way.
Marc spots me standing there,
so I give Lame Wave #2
and pray that aliens will immediately invade Earth
and export me elsewhere
so I don’t have to endure the humiliation
of my stepmother watching me
being watched by a boy
I am pretending not to see.
REDECORATION
At my mom’s insistence, we’ve been shopping all Saturday for a new rug for the living room. She has moved off salmon and taupe and is now gravitating toward teal and gold.
“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with redecorating,” I say. “Didn’t you just redo it a year ago?”
“It makes me happy,” she says, dropping $4,300 on a brand-new Persian that compliments her new color scheme.
It may make her happy, but it makes me kind of sick. Although who am I to talk? My shoplifting probably makes her just as ill.
Afterward my mom has an appetite. We go to Fratelli in the Pearl for lunch, and she’s in good spirits. She orders the market fish and a vodka tonic. As the waiter is delivering the drinks, I see Kayla and Taryn heading toward us, loaded down with shopping bags.
“Tabs? How are you?” Taryn says.
“Where have you been?” Kayla asks, hugging me hello.
“Just busy with homework,” I say. I haven’t spoken to them in three days. Ever since I confirmed to Sarah Crowder that Brady and I had “fizzled out.” I was avoiding their fervent texts and dodging them at the lockers.
“We saw you yesterday at MAC,” Taryn says slyly. “Who were those girls you were with?”
“Wasn’t she with you guys?” my mom asks, taking a sip of her drink. Balls. That’s who I’d told her I was with.
“No, she was with, like”—Taryn pauses, looking right at me—“people we don’t know.”
“New friends!” My mom claps, excited.
Kayla looks at me. “So, who are they? I think I’ve seen the one with the red hair around, right?”
This is a nightmare.
“Yeah. We met at an after-school class.” I shrug, trying to play it cool.
“You won’t call us back, so we went dress shopping for the Fling without you,” Taryn says, glaring at me.
“She got a Miu Miu,” adds Kayla. “It’s black. Mine’s a white Max Mara with a yellow sash. So seasonal, right?”
“Are you girls coming over to get ready again?” my mom asks. “We had so much fun last year.”
“It would have been more fun if I hadn’t gotten my period that night. I totally soaked through my panties, remember?” Kayla says to me, cringing.
“Yeah, that was not good,” I agree.
“I don’t know why you got white again.” Taryn shoots an eye-roll at Kayla.
“Ooh! We could get a limo!” my mom enthuses.
“Can we talk about this later?” I say to her.
“Are you going to the Fling with Brady?” Taryn stares info-gathering lasers into my face.
I don’t have an answer, so I just shrug. “I have no idea.”
“I’ll take another one of these,” my mom says to the passing waiter, holding up her empty glass.
“A limo sounds fun,” Kayla says.
Taryn looks less certain, so she changes the subject. “We gotta roll. We’re meeting my mom and dad at valet. We’ll call you,” she says to me, pulling Kayla away as she waves good-bye.
My mom looks at me after they leave. “Who are the new friends they were talking about?”
I take a deep breath. “From that shoplifting program.”
“Oh.” She raises an eyebrow, surprised.
“They’re nice.”
“Do they go to your school?”
“Yeah.”
“So maybe if we did the limo, they could come too.”
“That’s probably not the best idea.”
She nods. Then says, “Well, never mind. Your father thinks limos are ostentatious anyway. He’d hate me spending money on something like that.”
“What about a Persian rug?”
“That’s different,” she says, smoothing her hair. “It’s an investment. A limo is a frivolity.”
“Why are you so worried about pissing him off?” I retort. “Doesn’t he piss you off?”
My mom shrugs. The waiter arrives and sets down her fresh cocktail.
“Aren’t you upset he’s cheating on you?” I can’t help it. It just comes out.
She gives me a sharp stare. “That isn’t really your business, Tabitha.”
“Yes, it is my business,” I say loudly. “He’s my dad. I live there too.”
“Shh!” my mom whispers. But I don’t care if anyone hears—the waiter, or the old couple next to us, or even the slender redhead two tables over. I noticed her right when we walked in. But that wasn’t the first time I’d seen her. I saw her with my dad once, a year ago at a club called Aura, on Burnside. I snuck in with Brady and some of his friends. Brady had gotten me the worst fake ID in the world, and it was a miracle we didn’t get thrown out. Brady wanted to go crash the VIP section, so we did, and that’s when I saw my dad, sitting there with a girl twenty years younger than him. I was tipsy, so I pulled a waitress aside and asked her to send him over a drink. Brady came up and asked me what I was doing, but I didn’t tell him. Instead, I watched as the waitress took the drink over to my dad’s table. Right as she set it down, I saw his expression, and as the waitress turned around to point me out, I lost my nerve and ran—leaving to my imagination the look on my father’s face as he stared at a Shirley Temple in total confusion.
APRIL 26
Last night Alex and Janet came to pick me up. My aunt was working the night shift, so she couldn’t bitch about me going out with inappropriate friends. Noah was in front of his house when he saw me climbing into Alex’s beat-up Chevy all dressed up, rocking fishnet stockings. I glared at him and he stared back. When I shut the door, Alex goes, “Nice fishnets. I didn’t know you were into the tranny whore look.” I laughed it off, but it kind of hurt my feelings. I’m normally the one who mak
es fun of people, and I have to say I don’t like it when the tables are turned. Then she asked me who the lax bro across the street was, and I said I didn’t know. And she said lax bros are tools and I said he seems pretty nice, but then she kept talking more shit about “guys like that.” I didn’t want to ruin the night so I just let her and Janet laugh about it. I kept telling myself to keep calm and stay quiet, because Noah is none of their business.
The party was for some older guys Janet knew who graduated a few years ago and now basically just deal drugs. Alex has a crush on one of the guys, Gabe, and when we were standing out by the bonfire doing whiskey shots, Gabe’s friend said I was hot. I turned to Alex and was like, “Good news, apparently the tranny whore look is in. Maybe you should rethink your homeless lesbian wardrobe.” I have a feeling that was the liquid courage talking, so I kept drinking and before I knew it I couldn’t find her anymore, which meant she either left without me or went upstairs to have sex with Gabe. Neither of which were options I cared to think about too much.
So I walked out and some guy who seemed all amped up on happy pills offered to give me a ride home, but I try to avoid one-on-one time with future date rapists. I couldn’t call Marc. He’d freak out. So that left only one person nice enough and sober enough for me to drunk dial in the middle of the night.
SOS
HELP! COME GET ME!!!!
Nobody’s ever texted me at 3:00 AM before.
I stare at my phone,
all bleary, before seeing it’s Moe.
WHERE R U? I write.
She writes back: FELONY FLATS.
I lie there, pondering my escape,
and finally I get up and slide on my slippers
and sneak out of my room
using the light from my phone
as my own little lightsaber.
I slip down the hallway
and thank God I’ve got skills as a thief.
I crawl into the master bedroom
at the opposite end of the entryway
and ever so quietly
grab my dad’s keys off the dresser
and in slow motion
I crawl out,
freezing on my knees when there’s a creak,
but fortunately they keep sleeping
so I tiptoe downstairs,
out the front door,
down the driveway,
and get in the car
and go.
Drive
I feel like an action-hero car thief,
like I am Ryan Gosling in Drive
about to speed his way out of trouble.
I don’t have a driver’s license yet,
but my dad gave me driving lessons a few months ago,
before he knew I was a delinquent.
So I start the car and switch it into gear.
Once I make it down the driveway in reverse,
I realize I’ve never driven at night.
If I’m caught now
something surely terrible will happen to me.
I could go to prison.
That thought alone
should stop me from doing it,
but somehow danger
is an excellent motivator.
Shawn never talks about it in class,
but the truth is, danger makes you feel more alive
than regular living.
You can feel your lungs expanding and your heart pumping
and your corpuscles contracting.
I guess they probably say sex makes you feel alive too,
but since I’ve never had it,
this is as good as it gets for me.
Ember
When I get to Felony Flats,
I see Moe sitting on the curb
in front of a run-down house
with a bunch of old furniture on the lawn
and heavy metal blasting.
The only thing visible is the small flame of her cigarette.
She is an ember burning in the dark in fishnets.
When I get closer, I see a hole in the netting.
She crawls into the car.
You’re here, she says with a sigh,
and falls into my shoulder.
Thanks, El.
She has that boozy smell, the one my dad had for days
after my mom’s funeral,
before he woke up one day
and went back to work,
met a secretary in his public relations department,
married her,
and never looked back.
Moe puts her feet up on the dash
and I see the cut on her leg.
What happened to you?
She just shrugs
and I take the cigarette out of her hand
before it burns the seat.
I’m almost about to throw it out the window,
but instead I take a puff.
I hold it in for a second before I realize
I have no idea what I’m doing
and I cough and cough.
Moe starts laughing.
What?! I say. I’ve never smoked before!
Keep it that way, she says,
and grabs it out of my hand, throws it out the window,
and we drive on,
leaving it there to burn.
Lack of Personal Grooming
When we get to Moe’s,
Marc is waiting out front
and he’s pissed.
What the fuck, Moe?
You just swore, Moe giggles.
Sorry about this, I say to him,
nervously tucking my hair behind an ear.
Why don’t I have any lip gloss on?
Or mascara?
Why am I wearing pajamas with cartoon drawings
of pieces of cherry pie on them?
Why am I not wearing a bra,
but I am wearing a blob of Proactiv
on the zit on my forehead?
I furiously try to rub it off,
realizing I have absolutely no idea
what my breath smells like and
he looks at me and smiles.
Thanks for picking her up.
I smile back, as does my pimple,
which is so big it probably has a mouth of its own.
You two are precious, Moe slurs as she climbs out of the car.
I follow after her with one of her boots,
wishing I could bonk her over the head with it.
A Gentleman and a Lady
I love you, Elodie, Moe says
as Marc and I tuck her into bed.
It makes me want to hit her a little less hard.
We tiptoe down the hall, trying to be extra quiet
so the parrot won’t wake up.
Marc walks me out to the car and says, Nice pj’s.
I look down and see a huge spaghetti sauce stain
on one of my pieces of cherry pie.
Why does every encounter
with the one person I want to impress
seem to involve humiliation?
But then he leans forward to open the door
and puts me inside like I am precious cargo.
You’re cute at four in the morning, he says,
and I have no idea what to say back
other than You too
and I start to buckle my seat belt,
but he grabs my hand and holds it for a second
and I look up into his endless brown eyes
and then he steps back, letting me go.
I back out of the driveway,
my pimple and I only hitting one pothole as we go.
He’s still watching so I give an idiotic little salute
and keep driving
in my cherry-pie pajamas
with a stupid smile on my face
still feeling his hand in my hand
all the way home
and into my driveway
and into the house
and down the hall
and into
bed
where I lie
until the sun comes up
and the alarm goes off
and I’m still thinking
about the night before.
APRIL 28
I brought Elodie a bunch of chocolate to SA as a thank-you for saving my life. When Shawn asked what it was for, we both just smiled and said we were doing an Identification Exercise, which made her practically pee with excitement.
After class we went to Tabitha’s house, which was HUGE and glass, with views of the valley. There was no one home. It was kind of like a museum where you thought a security guard might rush over and grab you if you touched anything. Tabitha showed us a bunch of blogs she likes. Some were just people’s thoughts about music or movies they like or their Tumblrs and she showed us Rookie, the one made by the girl our age who’s all into finding cool old stuff in your mom’s closet that could be used for new fashion looks and whatnot.
As we were leaving, Elodie told us it was her birthday tomorrow, which is so weird because everyone loves to brag about their birthday, but leave it to Elodie to wait and say something when it’s too late to do anything about it. Her dad got her gift certificates to Nordstrom and she said she wants to take us shopping and we all had a good laugh over it. I have an idea of the perfect gift for her, but for now Tabitha and I did a funny pre-birthday dance set to the tune of Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Elodie was lying on the floor laughing so hard she farted, so I think it was a successful present.
When I got home I asked Aunt B if I could borrow some of her clothes and she called me a “smartass.” I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t joking, I was trying to become more fashionable, but she didn’t believe me. Proving once again that my reputation leaves something to be desired.
PIZZA DAY
Patrick Cushman looks kind of surprised when I sit down next to him at his lunch table. He’s sitting there eating a sandwich with a group of people from band.
“Happy pizza day,” I say.
A guy stops polishing his oboe. They all look at me in shock.
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