by Dani Irons
“How would you even know how much she lost anyway?”
Chloe says, “It’s...just...like, a skill or something.”
“Well, maybe you should use your great skill at a carnival instead of with my daughter.”
Chloe nods. I doubt she meant to be rude or anything; I have a feeling she speaks before thinking a lot. Seeing her hurt expression makes me want to stick up for her. “Cora,” I begin, “I doubt she meant...”
Cora’s eyes widen and I stop talking, realizing what I’ve just done.
“Cora?” She whispers.
“I—” I’m about to say I’m sorry, when she puts a hand up.
“No. Really. It’s fine. I know you’re working out some things.” She takes a deep breath. Blinks away the tears. I wonder if I have her same quick anger. I feel like an idiot.
The room has grown tense, the pressure solid feeling like a squeeze to my ribs, and I’m not sure how to shake it off. So I change the subject. “Who all came to see me in the hospital?” I ignore my previous No Breakfast rule and dive right in. Maybe my eating will cheer up Cora.
“We all did,” Cora answers, “Every day.”
“We, as in...”
“Me, your dad, Chloe, Wyatt.”
“No one else?” I shove spoonfuls of Orange Dreamsicle yogurt into my mouth. Sweet and tangy and delightful.
Chloe shakes her head. “Well, Pete. The bouncer from Pink Dollars? He came by that first day. I guess he got fired. Because of you—I mean, because of what happened—they finally figured out that all kinds of underage kids were getting in. But Mia and Ava left for Europe so they couldn’t come to see you. They send their love and told me to call them when I knew more about your condition. So, I should probably call them, huh?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know. Who are they?”
“Oh, right!” she laughs. “I keep forgetting you don’t know anyone. How funny.”
I shake my head to show her just how unfunny it all is.
“Yeah, you’re right. Not funny.” She stares at me a moment, like I’m going to bite her head off. When I don’t, she continues. “Mia and Ava are your other friends. They were there at the club, but weren’t with us outside. It was just me, you and...”
“Pete,” I say, piecing together what she’s just told me. If my memory doesn’t improve soon, I’ll track him down. Ask him if I really did drift into the street in search of Wyatt. “Does he have blond hair?”
Chloe laughs. “No. He’s bald. But if he did have hair, I’m guessing it would be black. Or gray. Why? Do you remember something?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so. Just a dream about a blond guy. Do you know if I know a blond guy? That I may or may not have kissed?”
Both Cora and Chloe’s heads shake vigorously.
“Are you guys...sure?” They totally don’t look very sure.
They nod their heads in tandem.
I sigh. “So why didn’t Mia and Ava come outside with us?”
“We kind of...I don’t know...it’s not exactly like we ditched them. They were being a little bitchy. Sorry, Cora.”
Cora doesn’t look fazed by the cuss word. She’s standing there, arms crossed, brown hair twisted into a knot. A Greek statue in a pink-and-white tracksuit.
Chloe continues, “They said some nasty things about you and you tried to ignore them, but you seemed a little upset.”
“What did they say?” I lean forward.
“Um.” Chloe looks to Cora. “Just that you drank a lot and stuff. They didn’t know we could hear them. They said it all behind your back.”
I nod. Ouch. Okay, so first thing on the New Olivia list is to extricate my pretend friends. To yank them out of my life like rotten teeth. It’d be easy. They’re in Europe. So I won’t call them or return their phone calls. Easy enough. I also need to figure out what reason these so-called friends of mine would be talking so badly behind my back. “Did I do something to make them so ticked off at me?”
Chloe opens her mouth to answer, when Natalie walks in. Her face sags. “What’s the matter, Bug?” I ask her, a tease in my voice. “Looks like you had a rough night.”
She nods but says nothing. That’d teach her to watch over me creepily in the middle of the night. I think this, but I also know she was only concerned and trying to help me out. I decide I like her.
“Okay, missy,” Cora says, steering Natalie away from me and back toward the door. “I get it. You don’t want to help us today. Well, too bad. Everyone needs to do their part.”
Natalie’s shoulders slump even further—as if remembering her execution is scheduled within the hour.
“Now, go get dressed and I’ll meet you in the living room.” Natalie does as she’s told without protest, clearly too tired to argue. “Need anything else?” Cora asks politely, one hand on the door.
I need to go to the bathroom but I don’t want her in there with me. She might try to control that too. “No, thanks,” I say. When she’s out of the room, I offer Chloe an apologetic smile. “Mind accompanying me to the bathroom? I mean, I might not need too much help, but in case.”
Chloe beams. “Just like old times,” she says.
“You used to help me to the bathroom?”
“Well,” she says, heaving me up by my good arm. “We went to...the occasional party.”
* * *
The bathroom trip goes like this: I stumble down the hall while Chloe goes on and on about this guy she’s seeing. I pull down my pants one-handed and sit. I pee while Chloe goes on and on about what classes she’s going to take next year for her Psychology major. I wipe and my ribs scream while Chloe talks about work and how she spent an hour folding shirts with this shirt-folding mechanism and how some girl in a skimpy outfit ransacked the entire display. “She didn’t buy a thing,” Chloe says. I pull up my pants and begin washing one-handed while Chloe whines about not being able to afford a trip to Europe like Mia and Ava.
I have a thought. “Maybe I was supposed to go with them,” I say. “I mean, if I had everything packed up, maybe I was getting ready to go to Europe.” It would suck if Old Liv had to miss that.
“No...” Chloe says slowly, as if remembering she was talking to someone a lot slower than she is. “You couldn’t afford it either.”
“Oh, really?”
She nods. “That’s why Natalie has to help out today. Christakos Creatives is tanking, I guess. That’s what you said a couple of weeks ago, anyway. It was part of the reason you and your parents had a falling out.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “There was a falling out?”
Chloe slaps her hands over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she says through her fingers. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I know your mom wouldn’t want me to.”
I pull her hands away from her face with a damp hand. “Please,” I say. “I deserve to know. How bad was it?”
Chloe straightens her face, hesitates. “Well, they told you they could no longer pay for school and you got really pissed and didn’t talk to them for months.”
I shut off the water and towel my hands dry. My brow furrows.
“I did that?” I say, my insides feeling like they’re beginning to rot. “Why would I do that??
She sighs. “Well...” she stares at the large golden clock that’s hung up on the wall. “They’ve always babied you, you know? Given you everything you wanted and when you didn’t get this, you—”
“So you’re saying I’m spoiled.”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice small. “Kind of.” I know she’s holding back so she doesn’t tick me off or hurt my feelings. This should be my next mission, fixing things with my family. I put my hands on Chloe’s shoulders and say, “Point me toward the living room.”
Chapter Twelve
Seventh Grade
It was Wyatt’s twelfth birthday and my family and I were invited to the beach to celebrate. Not too many people showed up, and that was okay. I didn’t want to see anyone else I knew. His parents, grandparents, me, my family and of course Steven Marcon, who’d recently begun insisting we call him Steve-O, sat in fold-up chairs under a tent in the hot sand. Well, I wasn’t sitting among them. I was sitting out of the tent on the sand, trying to get some sun.
My parents had bought Wyatt a skateboard. I’d tried to talk them out of it—he didn’t skateboard—but we couldn’t think of anything else to get him.
“He’ll learn and he’ll love it,” my dad had said in Wal-Mart and I shrugged.
Wyatt’s face paled as he unwrapped it but his smile never faltered. My mom turned and smiled at me like, see, he likes it! But I could read his eyes. He was scared of the damn thing. Scared.
I wanted to laugh at him, as arty stuff like film and sketchbooks surrounded him. He had his new fancy camera strapped around his neck and he was engrossed in all the buttons and screen options. Nothing about Wyatt shouted athletic.
After strawberry cake and vanilla ice cream, everyone rushed into the water. Mom and Dad splashed each other, Steve-O buried himself in the sand and gave himself boobs and a mermaid tale, and I continued to sit on the sand. Wyatt took pictures of everyone. When he pointed the camera at me, I stuck out my tongue.
“You’re so mean to me,” he said, coming over. “Why can’t I just get a picture of you?”
“Why do you want a picture of me?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the sun to see him.
“Uh, because you’re my friend?”
I laughed. “I’m not your friend. A friend wouldn’t tease you about the way you smell or embarrass you in front of all of third grade or avoid you at school dances.” The way I treated Wyatt in front of other people was never talked about, just accepted between us, and I had no problem telling him how it was.
“We’ve been hanging out for years now. Don’t you think you should maybe...um, start acting like a friend?”
I stared at him, wondering why I would want to be friends with Tartar Sauce. Then an idea struck me. “Okay,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me doubtfully. “Where to?”
“Just up to the sidewalk. Ditch the camera and bring the skateboard.”
* * *
“Stop being such a pussy,” I said to Wyatt a few minutes later. “It’s just a piece of wood. It’s not going to hurt you.”
“It has wheels,” he said, analyzing it suspiciously.
I laughed. “The wheels won’t hurt you either. Listen. Are you really going to be this person all your life?”
“What person?” he asked, his brown eyes searching mine earnestly.
“This passive, doormat, victim person.” I jumped on the board and pushed off then, literally doing circles around him.
“You think I’m playing the victim?” His eyes tried to follow me as I talked, but I was tired of him looking at me. Got me confused and made me feel weird. Like I should be nicer to him or something.
“I definitely don’t think you’re playing at it. Remember Jackson Parrish? How he was such a jerk to you?” I stopped finally, pulling my hair to the side and braiding it. It was windy and my hair kept attacking my face as I skated. “You just let him bully you.”
“Bully me?” he scoffed. “I wasn’t bullied. And I definitely wasn’t a victim.”
My eyebrows jumped. “Oh?” I asked with a little laugh. “Then what was all that?”
“That was Jackson being an asshole and me ignoring him.” He kicked the board out from under my foot and stood on it. He wobbled.
I tried to see Wyatt as someone who just ignored the jerks instead of as a victim. I could kind of see it, I guess, if you considered the fact that he was also growing into a much different body. I sort of noticed. No way would I ever admit that to anyone else. It wasn’t that I was attracted to him or anything, but he was just, you know, maturing. And I just noticed it was all.
Steve-O ran up to us then, interrupting me watching Wyatt fumble with the board. But then Wyatt pushed off with his foot and traveled a few feet. I smiled, feeling good at what I’d taught.
Then I turned and trotted back to my parents.
Chapter Thirteen
Now
There is no living room. Just a fort made of telephone books, plastic bags and Christakos Creatives flyers. Cora is on one chair, Dion on another and Natalie is perched on one side of the long pink couch. She’s dressed in black and pink again, this time in reverse—pink shirt and black pants. Her pale hair is in a knot on top of her head. She’s sipping at a soda and staring at the stack of flyers like they’re garter snakes—not dangerous, but not something she wants to handle.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Cora asks, coming over to me. Before she can grab me by the elbow again, I slip over to Natalie’s couch and sit.
“I can relax here,” I tell her. “Plus, you said everyone needs to do their part.”
She is seething. Smoke practically pours from her ears. But Dion is the one who speaks. “She looks like she’s doing fine, hon. Leave her. I’m sure she’ll get either tired or bored after a few minutes. I am already and I’ve only been doing this for an hour.” He chuckles and something deep inside me glows. Old Liv loved her father’s laugh.
“So what are we doing?” I ask before Cora can change her mind.
Natalie says, “We put a Christakos Creatives flyer into a telephone book, the book into a bag and stack it by the front door. When they’re all finished, we’re going to pack them up in the back of Dad’s truck and deliver them to the neighborhood.”
I nod slowly but don’t get it. “Why?”
Natalie shrugs and looks over to her dad. To my dad.
“For advertisement,” Dion says. “We could use a few more customers.”
Casting my glance around the room, I try to understand. It’s a bit of an outdated way to dispense information. Couldn’t they set up a website or pay for some online advertisement or something? Do people even use phonebooks anymore? “So these telephone books go to the neighbors?”
“Yeah,” Dion says, stuffing one of them and bagging it. “We were only allowed to take enough phone books for one neighborhood. Plus, they’re paying us an entire hundred bucks.” He winks at me. “Just trying to get the word out, kitten,” he adds. Today, the pet name sounds less like he’s being patronizing and more like it’s out of habit.
I pick up a flyer and stuff it into a nearby book with my one good hand. If they advertised online instead, their reach would be much longer than just our immediate neighborhood.
Cora opens her mouth—to protest again, I’m sure—so I turn to Natalie. Her face beams. “You know I don’t like your hair up like that,” I say.
Natalie’s jaw tries to touch her collarbone. “You remember this hairstyle?”
It takes me a minute to realize what I’ve said. I’m so excited and surprised that I can’t see straight. I push my brain to give me more.
The room goes silent. Chloe, who’s been standing silently in the entryway this entire time, steps closer. “Holy Christ!” she says, earning a gasp from Cora. Apparently, curse words are okay but using Christ as one of them is not. “What else do you remember?”
I stare at Natalie, trying to uncover more of the memory. “I don’t know. There’s just this dull feeling. Like when you first wake in the middle of a dream. You remember some of it, but the more you try to focus on all the details, the faster it fades away.”
The hope in the room flattens like a week-old balloon. After staring at Natalie a few more minutes without any result, I shrug and continue my work, trying to stuff the book into a bag but it doesn’t work. I need two good hands. Chloe mov
es closer to me. “You stuff ’em, I’ll bag ‘em.”
For the next few hours, I try to keep my mind on the work. Maybe if I don’t think about all the things I’ve forgotten, they’ll come back to me. Like the pot will start boiling if I stop staring at it.
My ribs throb from all the sitting and leaning over, standing, sitting, breathing, but I want to make sure I’m doing my part, to begin to make it up to them for possibly overreacting to them not being able to help me out with school. I want to ask them if that’s all it was, an overreaction, and to tell them I’m sorry I didn’t speak to them for months, but I’m nervous about it for some reason.
I don’t say anything about the rib pain. Cora will either make me stop helping or give me more meds or both. I don’t feel like being high and in bed right now.
Cora, Dion and Natalie all retreat to the kitchen to make some lunch. I’m told to stay where I am but instead I get up to go to the bathroom at the same moment Chloe says she forgot something in her car. So I go alone, which isn’t much different from the first time I went, except I don’t have to listen to stories about people I don’t know. Going without the help of painkillers is a much different experience, though. When Cora corners me in the hallway and notices I’m flushed and sweaty, she hands me some water and pills. I don’t refuse. Pathetically, I even let her lead me back to bed.
Chloe comes in a moment later, sits in that weird brown chair next to my bed, a nervous expression on her face.
“Actually, sweetie,” Cora says, standing between us, like she’s defending me from something evil, “Olivia might need her rest. Maybe you could come back later?” She makes a sweeping motion with her hand as if she could shoo Chloe out that way.
“Oh, yeah,” Chloe says, but doesn’t stand. “I have to be at work anyway. I still have loads of hours to make up to my mom. But I wanted to show Liv something really quick. And then I’ll go. Okay?”
Cora hesitates, but nods and leaves the room.
