“Enough. This is my house. You are my children. I make the decisions.” She slams the front door closed, locks it and goes upstairs. The house is quiet again.
I turn to Peter, who is looking at me like I’m a stranger. I guess we’ve both had moments tonight when we didn’t recognize each other.
“Jesus, Rose, when did you start throwing shit?” He goes into the kitchen and comes back with a dustpan.
“I’ll do that,” I say, embarrassment slowly filtering into my veins, taming the rage.
“Uh, no. No, you won’t. You just sit there and calm the fuck down.” I drop back onto the couch. He cleans in silence for a full minute before he says, “Mom told me you were pissed off at the world, but I didn’t realize you were acting like a two-year-old.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you’d come home for Thanksgiving, you would have seen it for yourself.”
Peter sweeps up the last of the mess and turns to face me. “Get over it, Rose. I’m here now.”
“And I’m supposed to be grateful for that?”
“Grateful? No. But you could be happy about it— I’m happy to finally see you.”
I have no idea what to say to this. I’m not “happy” to see him or “happy” that he’s home, except for the fact that I’ve been looking forward to telling him off for abandoning us at Thanksgiving.
“I miss listening to you whine on Saturdays about the social injustices of high school,” he says as if he graduated years ago and couldn’t possibly remember what it’s like now that he’s in college. “Oh, yeah, and thanks for answering my email,” he says sarcastically.
“You’re an asshole, Peter,” is how I choose to respond.
I have never, in my entire life, spoken to my brother this way. And it shows on his face.
“I’m a what?” he asks, sounding way more hurt and shocked than mad. I hate to admit that his stunned expression takes some of the wind out of my sails. I’m such a sucker.
“You heard me,” I say with a lot less confidence than I had a few seconds ago.
“I just saved your ass—you realize that, don’t you?”
“How did you save my ass? I’m grounded!”
“No, you’re not. She just felt like she had to say that, but she knows you did the right thing.”
“That’s not what it sounded like to me,” I say.
“All right, Rose, just tell me what the fuck is wrong with you. Let’s get this out of the way so we can do this holiday shit and I can go back to school.”
He puts the dustpan on the floor and sits in a chair across from me.
“Are you really going to act like you don’t know what’s wrong?”
“Thanksgiving, right?”
I just stare at him. As I look, I see that his anger is undercut by something that lurks just beneath the surface, something that might be embarrassment or shame. I feel relieved to see it there.
“I didn’t want to be here, Rose.”
“Yeah, I know. Well, you should have anyway. Dad would have wanted you to.”
“What Dad wants doesn’t matter anymore,” Peter says. “He’s dead, remember?”
I want to pick up the dustpan at his feet and dump the dirty M&Ms and glass shards over his head. “Why do you say things like that?”
“Because it’s true—he’s not here anymore, so what he thinks or wants doesn’t matter. It’s just a fact of reality. I’m not trying to be—”
“You’re mad at him.” I didn’t know that I knew this until it came out of my mouth, but suddenly, there it is as if I’d known it all along. It seems so obvious now.
“I’m not mad at him.”
“You talk about him like he just…like he did something just to piss you off.”
“Well, he did take a job in fucking Iraq in the middle of a war, Rose.”
“Yeah, and you kept applying to the most expensive colleges in the country even after he lost his job. So whose fault is it that he felt like he had to go there?”
As soon as the question comes out, I regret it. I regret it more than I’ve ever regretted anything in my life, because I don’t mean it. I really don’t.
So why did I say that? Just to hurt him? When did I start doing things like that?
“Sorry. I’m sorry, Peter, I didn’t…that’s not…”
He stares into the dustpan at his feet, then he reaches down and picks it up, holding it out to me, the shattered glass making the candy glitter in the light.
“M&M?” he offers.
I look at the shards and give half a second’s thought to taking one. Eating glass would solve a lot of problems for me right now. It would help me to feel less bad about what I just did to Peter, and it would probably land me in the hospital and keep me from having to go back to school on Monday. I reach out to take one, half joking, but he pulls the dustpan away.
“You know I only applied to all those schools because he wanted me to. After he lost his job, he just kept saying they’d figure it out, that he didn’t want me to graduate with loans.”
“I know. I remember.”
“But thanks for the guilt trip, though,” Peter says as he stands up and carries the dustpan into the kitchen. When he comes back, he sits on the couch next to me, facing the sad Christmas tree, which is still tied up in twine. I have no idea when Mom bought it or how long it’s been there.
“Look, you did the right thing, if you really thought Stephanie could die.”
“Tell that to the crazy woman upstairs,” I say.
“Mom’s a total mess, huh.”
“At least we know she’s still human,” I answer. “That freak-out was the first time she hasn’t seemed like a robot since Dad died.”
“Can you blame her?”
“Kinda. She’s a shrink. Don’t shrinks know how to deal with this stuff?”
“I guess it’s different when it’s your own family,” he says. “Amanda’s dad’s a shrink and he’s a fucking nut job.”
“Who’s Amanda?” I ask without thinking.
“My girlfriend,” he says, surprised. “Mom didn’t tell you her name?”
I shake my head. Peter takes a moment to consider this, and I sort of enjoy watching him realize that he is not a regular topic of conversation in the house. Of course, the reality is, there would have to be regular conversation for there to be regular topics of conversation.
“Amanda’s cool, Rosie. You’ll like her.”
I know that Peter stood up for me tonight and tried to get me out of trouble, but I’m still not ready to forgive him. And I don’t care how “cool” this girl is. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t exist until she shows up here and explains what could possibly have been so important that she had to take my brother away from his family on our first Thanksgiving without Dad. If she offers me a satisfactory explanation—and only if—I’ll consider liking her.
“So what really happened tonight?” Peter asks, as if sensing that the subject should be changed and quickly.
Just a few months ago, I would have told Peter about Jamie without thinking twice. But everything is different now. Peter doesn’t automatically get to know things about me. Besides, I finally have a piece of Jamie that’s just mine—not Peter’s, not Mom’s—and I don’t feel like sharing it. Not with anyone.
“It happened just like I said. Oh, except the EMT who came to take care of Stephanie was Bobby Passeo. He still feels bad about your hand, by the way.”
Peter lets out a laug
h—it’s more of a chuckle, really—that I’ve never heard before. It sounds like he’s purposely laughing in a new, different way. “Bobby Passeo is an EMT? I thought for sure he’d be drinking tallboys in the school parking lot until he was fifty.”
“Well, he’s now a contributing member of society, taking care of vomiting students at high school dances.”
“Go figure.” Peter yawns. “I thought he’d joined the army or something.”
I try to picture Bobby Passeo in an army uniform. Instead, the twenty-one-year-old sergeant I found online—the one with the memorial website—comes into my head.
“Have you ever searched online for Dad?” The question slips out of my mouth as if it had been waiting for a chance to escape. In my peripheral vision, I see Peter’s head turn quickly.
“What did you find?” he asks in a low voice, as if I’m about to reveal that I learned on Google that our father had a second family somewhere, or that he was a Russian spy on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
“Nothing, really, just…did you ever think about the other people who died with him?”
“At first, when the names were released. But not since then, not really.”
“Well, Dad’s name shows up on these websites—I guess they’re called memorial websites. Family members and friends of the people who died build these sites and they post, um, pictures, and emails and things like that. And these people listed the names of everyone who died in the explosion, so if you Google Dad, these other people’s sites come up.”
I’m so nervous telling Peter about this that I can’t look at him—I have no idea why. I can feel that he’s still staring at me, but I keep my eyes glued to the top of the bare Christmas tree, where our ancient, moth-eaten, “family-heirloom” angel ornament should be sitting.
“Are you going to build a site for Dad?” he asks.
It’s weird to me that he thinks I might do something like that on my own—and then I realize it’s weird that it didn’t occur to me to do it on my own. Was I waiting for someone’s permission? I hate when I’m a coward about things.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I might.”
“Well, if you do, don’t put my name or face on it.” He stands up. “I’m going to sleep. You coming upstairs?”
“In a minute,” I answer, trying to keep my voice as normal as possible even though I’m floored by Peter’s response, by the anger behind his words. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, given what I just figured out, but I am anyway.
“You’re not going to break anything else, are you?”
“Like what? Christmas ornaments?” I say sarcastically, looking at the bare tree. “She didn’t even bother to decorate that thing.”
“I just brought that tree home tonight, Rosie,” he says. “Mom shouldn’t have to do everything by herself. Stop being a fucking brat.”
I want to tell him that I’m not the only one acting like a brat, but in the spirit of Christmas I just say, grudgingly, “It smells nice.”
“Maybe we can all decorate it tomorrow.”
I don’t have any intention of doing anything with my mom tomorrow. My plan, as it stands now, is to spend the rest of the weekend in my room, protesting being grounded for the first time in my life and plotting my strategy for getting through the remaining two days of school before Christmas break without having both my legs broken as retribution for being a buzz-kill.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he says, sounding annoyingly parental.
“Don’t you have to go text your girlfriend or something?” I ask.
“You’re welcome, Rosie—glad I could help you out tonight,” Peter replies as he goes upstairs.
When I can no longer hear Peter moving around in his old room, I curl up in the corner of the couch, looking out the living room window at the colored lights glowing on the huge Christmas tree in the Parsons’ house across the street. I can’t stand the thought of going up to my room, so I sit. I wonder why Jamie didn’t show up at the hotel, and why Regina looked at me that way when I was standing on the balcony. I wonder whether my mother will come to her senses tomorrow and realize that I did exactly what she would have wanted me to do tonight when I called 911. And I wonder just how awful Christmas day is going to be without my dad, and whether he’s in heaven or the cosmos or whatever, trying to figure out why no one in his family has bothered to build him a memorial website.
The Parsons’ Christmas lights fade as the sky turns pink. The color calms me and my eyes close. Finally.
coerce (verb): to convince using threats
(see also: another specialty of Regina’s)
13
THE VOLLEYBALL IS hurtling straight at my face, but I am powerless to do anything about it. My hands go up too high and wide, and the ball passes right through my arms and hits me on the forehead for what feels like the fifteenth time.
Mr. Cella’s shrill whistle blows.
“Don’t make me tell you again, people. Stop trying to hit your classmate! It’s not her fault you were all too dumb to know when to quit.”
I appreciate Mr. Cella’s attempt to defend me, but really, the only person who truly didn’t know when to quit on Saturday night was Stephanie, who ended up with nothing more than a hangover on Sunday and is now standing on the other side of the net on Monday morning, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, least of all me. She knows that out of everyone who was at the Amore Motel that night, I’m the one who had to pay the most for her mistake, and I’ll probably continue to pay for it for a long time to come.
I already feel like everyone in school has taken a shot at me, and it’s only second period.
Two days left before Christmas break. Two days. I don’t know if I can make it.
Why couldn’t it have been a health-class Monday? We could have been listening to Ms. Maso tell us about the dangers of drinking, and she’d be singing my praises for being responsible and telling people that they should be thanking me instead of cursing me in the halls. Instead, it’s a gym Monday. I never in a million years thought I’d rather be in health than gym. I used to love gym.
Volleyball provides my classmates with the perfect opportunity to repay me for getting them all in trouble. The great irony is that Stephanie got off easy—her mother still feels too guilty about the divorce to do anything drastic. My mother, however, has grounded me for two weeks without phone or email privileges, and put me on “probation” indefinitely. This is her way of expressing that she’s proud of me for calling 911 but mad at me for being at the hotel in the first place. She claims I’m grounded more for lying than for staying at a party with alcohol.
The bottom line is, I probably won’t be invited to any parties in the near future, so being grounded doesn’t really matter anyway. I’ll just spend Christmas break in my room, studying for the PSATs.
Mr. Cella’s whistle shrieks again. “All right, let’s go, let’s go!”
I see Richie handing Matt the ball on the other side of the net. Richie gives him a few instructions that I am sure have something to do with velocity and some specific area of my body. Matt nods seriously, as if he’d been given an extremely important mission, and winds up to serve. And then, miraculously, a voice floats across the gym.
“Rose Zarelli to the main office, please. Rose Zarelli, main office, please.”
A chorus of “Oooooooh” erupts, along with raucous laughter.
“You better get down there in case somebody needs you to call an ambulance,” yell
s Matt from across the net. He high-fives Richie. I don’t know when Matt and Richie became friends, but I do know that it’s not a good sign. Matt doesn’t need encouragement to be any more of a jock-hole than he already is.
Robert angrily tells everyone to shut up. Only a few people listen. He looks at me and nods, as if to give me some sort of reassurance that everything is going to be okay, but quite frankly, I know that nothing is going to be okay. Robert got lucky—his stepparents didn’t care about his being at the hotel. As long as the Lexus was fine, they were fine. At least that’s what he said in one of the million emails he sent me over the weekend that I didn’t answer.
“All right, all right, enough harassment, okay? Rose, go get changed.” As I pass Mr. Cella, trying to ignore the jeers, he says quietly, “Stay in the office until the end of the period.”
When a teacher feels so sorry for you that he tells you to skip the rest of his class, you know you’re in serious trouble. I run to the girls’ locker room, relieved that at least I’ll get to change by myself for once.
And then, the unthinkable happens.
I bump smack into Regina. Literally. My shoulder hits her chest as I’m turning the corner in the locker room. The only thing that’s missing from the scene is a screeching horror-movie soundtrack.
She looks as surprised to see me as I am to see her, and she stuffs something in her bag quickly. She seems almost nervous for a second, and I realize that it’s weird that she’s here right now—she doesn’t have gym this period. I start to go around her, and that’s when she strikes with killer speed, grabbing my arm hard enough to leave bruises.
“I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing, but I better not ever catch you anywhere near my boyfriend again. I don’t even want you looking at him, you got that?”
“You have a boyfriend?” I ask, trying to be all cool and nonchalant, like she isn’t digging her super-red talons into the flesh of my arm.
Confessions of an Angry Girl Page 13
