She's the Worst

by Lauren Spieller

  “I know,” Mom says, “but for now things need to stay the way they are. Especially since April is, well . . . April.”

  April is April? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  “Yes, Harriet,” Mom says, her voice laced with frustration. “I know it’s hard to be the youngest. I’m younger than you, remember? But April is almost seventeen, and she still sometimes acts like—she’s just not as mature as Jenn was at her age, that’s all.”

  I jerk back from the door. I don’t want to hear any more. It’s bad enough suspecting that my parents don’t think I’m as smart or mature as my sister, but hearing it confirmed . . . how am I supposed to look them in the eye knowing that’s how they feel?

  The floor creaks as Mom walks down the hall and comes to a stop on the other side of the bathroom door. “It’s not that I want her to be like Jenn,” she says, her voice exasperated now. “That’s not fair. It’s just that, if she’s going to grow up and have a successful life, she’s going to need to do more than just hang out with her friends all the time. She’s got to do something.”

  That’s it—I’ve had enough. I trade my towel for the floral robe on the back of the door and step into the hall. Mom freezes at the sight of me.

  “You scared me,” she says, clutching her chest. “I didn’t know anyone was home.”

  I cross my arms but don’t answer.

  “Harriet?” she says into the phone, “I have to call you back. Yes. Okay. Bye.”

  She slips her phone into her back pocket and smiles. “How are you, sweetie?”

  “I’m fine. Immature and doomed to have a horrible future, apparently, but otherwise just fine.”

  Mom’s face goes pale.

  “What’s funny,” I continue, “is that you feel so certain about my future when you don’t even know what the hell is going on in my present.”

  “What do you mean? Are you in trouble?”

  “No!” I say, balling my hands into fists at my side. “I mean if you were paying attention, you’d know that I’m already taking care of my future! That’s why soccer—”

  “Soccer is not a future,” Mom interrupts. “Soccer is a hobby.”

  “Not if I get a scholarship.”

  Her face falls. “Sweetie, those are very difficult to get. You have to be very good—”

  My eyes fill with tears so fast I don’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late. Suddenly, I’m not just yelling at my mom. I’m yelling at Jenn, too. “I am good. I’m really good. Which you’d know if you ever paid any attention.” I swipe at the tears rolling down my cheeks, but they won’t stop coming. “It probably wouldn’t matter anyway, though, right? Nothing I do is ever going to be enough for you and Dad. ’Cause like you said—I’m not Jenn.”

  “April, that’s not what I meant—”

  I stride past her into my bedroom and slam the door behind me. Mom remains in the hall, and for a few seconds I think she’s going to say something.

  Instead, she walks away.

  CHAPTER 14

  JENN

  I squint across the street at the house, trying to catch a glimpse of April in her bedroom window. What is taking her so long?

  When she climbed out of the car twenty minutes ago, I was tempted to follow her inside and tell her I wanted to call the rest of the day off. I already told Katie and Shruthi I’d meet them for lunch, and besides, the last few hours are surely enough to fulfill the spirit of the pact. But then Mom came home, and going inside wasn’t an option. I’m lucky she was too busy talking on the phone to notice me loitering across the street. I can’t put off telling her and Dad about Stanford much longer, but I’m definitely not ready to do it right now, no matter how many times Grandma texts me.

  I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. What if Mom asks April where I am? Or worse, what if April rats me out and tells her I’m leaving tomorrow? She tried to put on a happy face when she was getting out of the car, but she’s clearly still upset that I don’t think she should be with Eric. Or maybe that I wasn’t excited about somebody from USC coming to watch her play. I’ll admit that I might not have taken that as seriously as I should have, though in my defense, she brought it up out of nowhere. Either way, neither of those things should be enough to make her tattle . . . right?

  I need a distraction. I pick up my phone and try Tom’s number again. It rings and rings, then goes to voicemail. I hang up, and check the time—it’s already 12:30. There’s no way he hasn’t seen my missed calls by now.

  I dial again.

  Hello, you have reached Thomas Albert—

  This time I wait out the end of the message. Tom hates checking his voicemail, but desperate times call for obnoxious measures.

  “Hi, Tom,” I say after the beep, “it’s me. I’ve been trying to reach you all day, but I guess you’re busy.” I clear my throat. “Um . . . I’m having a goodbye lunch with Shruthi and Katie at the Culver City In-N-Out at two. I know we’re having dinner tonight, but I hope you’ll come for a little while. That way you can say goodbye to them.” I hesitate, unsure how to conclude my message. I want to ask him if he’s screening my calls, but if he isn’t, I’ll look paranoid. So I settle for neutral. “Okay, see you later. Bye.”

  I hang up just as the front door opens and April comes flying down the sidewalk, her wet curls soaking into her shirt. Of course she kept me waiting here while she showered. Of course.

  “Switch seats!” she calls out as she nears the car.

  I reluctantly climb out and head for the other side, my mind still on Tom. If he’s ignoring me, I need to know why. We’re leaving for Stanford tomorrow, and we can’t be in a fight on the first day of our new lives together. If he doesn’t make it to In-N-Out, I’ll have to ask him outright when I see him at dinner tonight. Assuming we’re still having dinner.

  April honks the horn from inside the car. “Hurry up,” she calls through the window. “We don’t have all day.”

  • • •

  The concrete steps of the Culver City Stairs carve a path up the side of the grassy, sunburnt hill. I tilt my head back and squint, but the top is out of sight.

  “Ready to climb?” April asks as she gets out of the car to join me.

  There are a lot of people in this world who would give anything to spend an afternoon on a hillside in Southern California, but I am not one of them. “Absolutely not.”

  “Oh, come on!” she says. “The view from the top is gorgeous. You can see the Santa Monica Mountains.”

  “You can see those from the ground.”

  April puts her hands on her hips. “You’re moving away from Los Angeles for the next four years, right? This is your last chance to see this kind of view. It might also be a good opportunity to just slow down and . . . reflect . . . on things.”

  “Reflect on things?” I ask. “Who are you, Oprah?”

  April starts to walk back around to her side of the car.

  “Fine,” I say, pulling her back. “But we have to go slow.”

  She grabs a water bottle from the car, and we begin to climb. The steps are far apart and uneven, and my calves start to burn almost immediately. April makes it look easy, like she’s going up the stairs of our two-story duplex, but I struggle to keep up.

  “I saw Mom at home,” April says.

  My heart rate speeds up in my chest. I knew leaving April alone with Mom was a bad idea. “And?”

  “She was talking to Aunt Harriet about Dad.”

  “Oh,” I say, relieved.

  “Oh? That’s bad, Jenn. You know she only talks to Aunt Harriet when she’s upset.” She glances over her shoulder at me. “Something is going on with them.”

  “That’s what they do, April. They fight.” Which you’d know if you ever bothered to pay attention to anyone other than yourself.

  “Right,” she says. “But it’s getting worse. I’m kind of worried.”

  Guilt stirs inside me. I don’t want her to worry. I also know, deep down, that she’s right
. They’ve fought for years, but it’s gotten worse. It started out just silly squabbles from time to time, but now it’s a constant argument, from the moment they wake up till the moment they go to sleep. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t work well together or because they’re tired of being together all the time or if it’s something else, but it doesn’t take a therapist to know they’re headed for something really, really bad.

  But that’s not my problem. It can’t be. I decided a long time ago that once I left for Stanford, that was it. I was going to distance myself—not just from their constant battles, but from worrying about them too. It’s the only way to have my own life. It’s the only way to be happy.

  We keep climbing, the midday sun beating down on us. Sweat drips down my lower back, and my jeans start to stick to me. I pull my cardigan off and tie it around my waist, but it doesn’t help.

  “Can we stop for a second?” I ask, breathing hard. “I just need a little break.”

  April sighs.

  “I’m sorry we can’t all be superathletes,” I grumble as I massage my thigh. I look up the hill and my stomach sinks. The Stairs go on forever. “How many steps are there?”

  “Um, I don’t know?” she says, not meeting my eye.

  “April, tell me how many there are or I’m going back to the car.”

  “Okay, fine,” she says. “There are two hundred and eighty-two. But they go by really fast.”

  “Two hundred and eighty-two?”

  “It’s not that many,” April insists. “I climb them all the time.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to do this. I’m going back down.”

  April gapes at me. “Are you serious? We’ve already come so far!”

  “And we have even farther to go.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this. I came up with this whole day for you, picked all this stuff you’d like, and you’ve complained about every single place we’ve gone.”

  “What about this seems like something I’d like?” I demand. “You’re the one who does outdoorsy things, not me. If this were for me, we’d be—”

  “In a library?” April cuts in. “Sounds really fun.”

  I glare at her. “How would you know? It’s not like you ever spend any time there. You barely even read.”

  I regret the words before they’re all the way out of my mouth, but I know it’s too late to take them back. April looks like she’s about to reply, but someone clears their throat, and we both turn. Four steps below us, a guy in a tank top and shorts is staring at us, a look on his face that says he heard every word. “Excuse me,” he says. “Can I get by . . . ?”

  We both step to the side, and he climbs past us. As soon as he’s gone, April turns away from me and crosses her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “That was mean.”

  “Yeah,” April says, not turning around. “It was.”

  I climb the few steps to where she’s standing and gently put my hand on her shoulder. “We have more stops ahead of us, right?”

  She moves out from under my hand and turns around. “Right.”

  “And we’ve already wasted a bunch of time going to the impound and back home so you could change—”

  “Those stops were both your fault,” she says. “Not mine.”

  “Fine, fine,” I say, holding up my hands in surrender. “You’re right. But the fact remains that the day is already halfway over, and while you can run up these stairs in ten minutes, it’s going to take me forever to get to the top. I’ll probably have to stop . . . five times?”

  “At least,” she says. “You’re not in climbing shape.”

  “Hey!” I exclaim. “Rude, much?”

  “Sorry,” she says quickly. “I wasn’t talking about your weight. It’s just that this sort of thing is highly aerobic, which means—”

  I hold up a hand. “I know what ‘aerobic’ means. I took AP Bio, thank you.”

  “They teach that in PE, too, you know,” she says. “But yeah, at this rate we won’t get to the top any time soon, and I’m already kind of hungry.”

  I consider telling her about the change of lunch plans, but she’s looking at me like she wants to push me down the stairs, so I decide to wait. “Okay then,” I say. “Should we leave?”

  “Oh, we’re not giving up,” April says, starting back down the stairs. “We’re just going to find another way to the top.”

  CHAPTER 15

  APRIL

  What’s the point of climbing the steps if you can just drive up here?” Jenn asks as we pull into a parking spot at the top of the hill.

  I get out of the car, not bothering to answer her. I’m too busy thinking about what Jenn said on the stairs, about me barely reading. It was a low blow, but it was also total bullshit. Just because I don’t ace every single class doesn’t mean I don’t love books. I’ve listened to dozens of audiobooks in the last year, most of the time while I’m on my morning runs, and I’m the one who insisted Mom read Harry Potter to us when we were kids. But I can’t let Jenn’s judgmental crap get in the way of what I’m here to do. If anything it makes convincing her to stay in LA even more important, since the only way to prove to her that I’m not some dumb jock without a future is by getting that scholarship to USC. And the only way to do that is to keep her here in LA, working at the store.

  I start across the parking lot, leaving Jenn to hurry after me. Our visit to the Stairs isn’t technically inspired by a photo or a childhood memory like the rest of our stops, but I thought she’d like it anyway. It’s a classic LA thing to do, and it’s one of the places I’d miss if I were about to abandon my family. In retrospect, making her sweat her way up a hill wasn’t the best way to convince her not to leave, but the view she’s about to see from the top? Between the ocean to the west, downtown LA to the east, and the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance, it’s a showstopper. There’s no way it won’t make her rethink her plans.

  Jenn gets out of the car, and we walk across the parking lot to the overlook and gaze down at the city below us.

  Or we try to. Unfortunately, there’s so much smog hanging in the distance above downtown, the whole scene is kinda hazy. Definitely not the kind of view to inspire someone to put off going away to college for a year. Shit.

  “Wow,” Jenn says.

  “Yeah,” I mutter. “It’s kind of polluted.”

  “True. But it reminds me of the view from the roof of our house.”

  I look at her in surprise. “Really?”

  “Yeah! It’s similar to this, except, you know, not from quite so high up. We used to go up there all the time, remember?”

  I grin. “I’d pretend it was my bedroom, and you’d pretend—”

  “That I was Wonder Woman,” Jenn says, laughing. “So lame.”

  “More like so awesome,” I say, nudging her.

  She smiles. “Should we take a picture?”

  I reach for my phone, but she pulls hers out first. “This way I can keep it when I leave.”

  My smile falters, but Jenn leans toward me, and I hitch it back up just in time for the photo.

  As Jenn checks her text messages, I look at Culver City stretching before us and think back to when we first went up onto the roof. We’d only been living in the building for a few weeks when I realized our duplex even had roof access. Well, not official access, but if you climbed out the window, you stepped right onto the roof, and that was basically the same thing. At first I didn’t tell Jenn because I wanted it to be a secret, but then I realized secrets are only fun if you can share them with someone. Plus, it was boring up there by myself. So late one night we put on our pajamas, grabbed a Ouija board, and headed outside. We ended up falling asleep out there and sneaking back in when the sun came up. Miraculously, Mom and Dad never found out. After that, we did it at least once a month. I don’t actually know why we stopped.

  “Remember when we brought up sparkling cider and pretended it was champagne?” Jenn asks. “We thought we
were so fancy.”

  “We were fancy,” I say. “We were wearing the new dresses Mom had bought us for Aunt Sharon’s neighbor’s bat mitzvah.”

  “Mom was furious when she saw all the dirt on my butt.” Jenn shakes her head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been up on that roof. I bet it’s a mess now.”

  “It was a mess back then, too, and it didn’t matter.”

  “True.”

  I look at her out of the corner of my eye. “We could go up there again, you know. We could probably even get our hands on some real champagne. Or at least some cheap beer.”

  “Totally,” she says, but the smile quickly slips off her face. “I mean, if I come back for the holidays. I’m probably going to be pretty busy, and my new roommate already invited me to stay in town with her family for Thanksgiving, so . . .”

  Anger floods through me, so fast it catches me by surprise. Not visiting over Thanksgiving break? Is she really that done with our family?

  “Thanks for doing all this,” she says suddenly, gesturing around us. “I’m really glad I get to see this before I go.”

  I smile tightly. “Sure.”

  “To be honest,” she says, “I thought you were mad at me after our conversation in the car. I was actually worried.”

  “That I was upset?”

  “No, that you were going to tell Mom about Stanford when they came home earlier.”

  “You thought I’d tattle on you?”

  “It’s not like you’ve been particularly mature about this whole thing, April.”

  I hug my knees to my chest. First mom says I’m immature, now Jenn is doing it too. And yet neither of them knows a damn thing about me. It’s not fair.

  “Anyway,” she goes on, “I’m glad we did this. All of it. It’s been a really nice way to spend my last day before I leave. It’s helping me feel more ready to move on.” She sighs. “Mom and Dad are going to be pissed, but sometimes you’ve got to do what feels right, you know?”