by Dani Irons
Cora’s face burns red the next time my gaze lands on her. Her eyes are wild and fierce. “Olivia, give me a fucking break. You won’t be calling to grovel. I’m asking you to call him about business.”
I cross my arms in front of me and shake my head. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.
She stands, fists at her side. “You have nothing to say?”
I think and then offer, “Call him yourself.”
Cora sucks on her teeth and stares at me. When she finally speaks, her voice is like acid. “Did you father tell you about the fraud that caused our business to go down the toilet?”
“Cora, don’t.” Dion says, pulling on her shoulder, trying to get her out of the room.
But I nod, so Cora continues. “It was you. All of it. You stole ten thousand dollars from the business safe and got credit cards in our names. All in all, with school and the theft, you’ve amassed over a hundred thousand dollars of debt for us to clean up. You, Olivia!”
“What?” I say with a gasp. “That was me?” I look to Dion for confirmation, but he gives away nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I ask him.
“He was trying to protect you, we were all trying to protect you. But no matter what we all do, you’re still the same, selfish person.”
“Cora!” Dion tries again, but it’s hopeless. She’s past the point of being able to calm down.
“You weren’t a good person, you only cared about yourself After your accident, we decided to take advantage of the clean slate.”
“You were trying to fix me,” I say now with a hard swallow. “By lying to me. How much did you lie to me about? To what extent?” My voice turns harsh.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Cora says with even more heat behind her voice. “You’re still you. You will always be you. Stealing things, being selfish. You have to find somewhere else to stay for the summer. You can’t stay here. We’re not giving you another penny. We’re not giving you another crumb of food. You’re done. I’m done. We’re all fucking done!”
I’m too shocked to argue. I’ve just witnessed the most controlling mom on the planet let me go. I open my mouth again, but nothing but a pathetic squeak comes out. I look to Dion, who has a similar stunned expression on his face. It seems he’s also unable to speak.
“By morning,” she continues, pointing a finger at me. “That’s as long as I’ll give you, and you better be out by then. I don’t even want to see you for breakfast. You’re lucky I’m letting you stay for dinner so you better eat up. It may be the last meal you’ll have in a while.” She crosses the room to the stairs and heads up noisily. I watch her and spot Natalie in the shadows of hallway watching the scene unfold.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Junior Year at UCLA, March
A Week Later
“Mom,” I said through the phone, “my school bills have somehow gotten rerouted to my PO Box instead of going to you guys.”
Silence on the other end.
I continued, “And it looks like you’re three months behind on paying them. What’s going on?”
Finally my mother spoke. “Did you get credit cards in our names, Olivia? Mine and your father’s?”
I wait a beat, but then say, “What? No,” trying to sound completely shocked. “Not me. Why? What happened?”
“And there was money in the business safe. Did you take it?”
“No, Mom. I swear.” My heartbeat seems to stop and then speed up a second later. If she’d only found out about the credit cards, I could stick to my story of not knowing anything about them—it really could be anyone. But the safe? I don’t think there’s any way she’ll believe it wasn’t me.
She sighs. “Besides me and your dad, you are the only one with the combination to that safe. It had our social security cards and ten thousand dollars in there. It had to be you.”
“It wasn’t, Mom. Maybe Natalie—”
“Don’t you dare try to blame your sister. She doesn’t know how to get into the safe and wouldn’t have any idea how to get credit cards. I need the money back, Olivia. This debt will ruin us.”
“I don’t have the money.” It’s true, I don’t have it anymore. I think about hanging up on her, but I don’t.
Mom’s voice grows tight. “You change your major every single semester. You don’t make it to your morning classes half the time. Believe me, I’ve called your professors, and they say your attendance is atrocious. I can only assume that’s due to too much partying.”
“I don’t party during the week, Mom,” I lied, only because she wouldn’t understand that ladies drink free at Blue Coins every Tuesday and Wednesday. I was in college at one of the biggest party schools in the country—I did my research—what did she expect?
“We’re done paying for your indecision and your lack of commitment,” she said, sounding like she was reading from a pamphlet or something. I pictured one called, How To Tell Your Moocher Daughter That You Can No Longer Support Her Bad Decisions. “And on top of all that...even though you say it’s not you. It has to be. You stole from us.”
“Maybe you let someone else in there once, to get something for you,” I try.
“You were the only other person we trusted,” she says. “And now I will never trust you again. Get a job. Pay the credit cards off somehow, earn the ten thousand back. Until then, I don’t want to hear from you.”
“But you’ll still pay for the trip to Europe, right?” I ask, ignoring her last words. She can’t possibly mean them. “I was hoping you’d get Chloe a ticket too, and Mia and Ava already have their—”
“I don’t think you understand,” Mom said, sighing through the sentence. “We are done giving you any money at all. No more what you call allowance—which you are too old for anyway—no more tuition payments, no more money for clothes.”
For some reason, the clothes thing was what broke my patience. “You won’t even clothe your own daughter?” I hissed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Again, Olivia, you are twenty years old. Plus, you have enough clothes to outfit your entire hall for a month. You won’t be in want of apparel for your entire life if you never buy anything else.”
“You understand that if you take this money away from me, I won’t have gas money to come home. I won’t see you ever again.” The last part sounded overly dramatic, but I couldn’t go back.
A long, silent pause replied on the other end. When Mom finally spoke, her voice was tight. “I really hope you finally understand the seriousness of the situation when I say this: do not call us, write us, visit us, unless you have all the money to fix this. And the best apology you can come up with.”
Then the phone went dead. My chest grew tight and tears spilled over on my cheeks. I’d spent most of the money I took on clothes or nights out at the bar. Dinners with my friends and expensive bags and shoes. The money went fast, actually, but I couldn’t be seen out with Wal-Mart shirts and jeans. A girl in L.A. needs to look like she’s from L.A.
Chloe and I still weren’t speaking, but I needed her. There was so much to say. She still didn’t know that I’d had an abortion—no one did. And now I needed to bitch about my mom. Only she would understand. But if I went over there, telling her I needed to vent, she probably would shut the door in my face. I knew I’d have to apologize first and then work up to the other stuff.
So despite it nearly being dark out and the stack of homework I had to do, I tugged on my slippers, grabbed my room key, and headed down the hall to Chloe’s dorm room.
Her roommate’s music—old country, which Chloe hated but was willing to put up with because she was just that nice sort of person—permeated through the wood door. I knocked once, but the music was too loud. I knocked harder and her roommate answered. She was from Laos, she’d told me before, and she had these huge dark eyes and wavy black hair t
hat I envied. I mean, I had dark hair and eyes too, but this girl used no unnatural products on her body and still she rocked it.
“Is Chloe here?” I asked, my voice uncharacteristically timid.
The girl pursed her lips, as if mulling over the idea and then raised her eyebrows. “You sure you wanna go there?” she asked.
Hesitantly, I nodded.
“Okay...your funeral,” she said, then twisted her head back into the room. “Chlo...”
Chlo? Not even I called her that. Jealousy that someone could possibly be closer to my best friend now than I was gripped at my heart.
Chloe was donned in her jammies already: a white, silky set from Victoria’s Secret that I’d helped her pick out. She’d wanted to get the dark red or black, but I knew with her skin tone and hair color she’d look like an angel herself in white, and I was right. She stared at me expectantly, but offered no words.
“I’m sorry,” I said with a shrug and I meant it. I should have known better than to put anything—anyone—before my Chloe. She was the only one who was ever really there for me.
She still said nothing, only stared me down until I couldn’t look at her anymore. So, slowly, I turned and slunk back to my room.
Several minutes later, after I tried to comfort myself with a Teen Mom marathon—which actually put me into a worse mood—and veggie chips, someone knocked on my door. I opened it, expecting it to be James for an unscheduled booty call, but instead it was Chloe—holding two mugs of what looked to be hot tea. “Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t stay mad at you,” she said, letting herself into the room.
That night, she let me cry into her shoulder about James and my mom. I didn’t tell her about the baby, though, or what I’d done to my parents. I didn’t want to admit to my best friend just how shitty of a person I truly was.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Now
I don’t come out for dinner. That’ll show Cora who’s the boss over who. Or whom. Whatever, doesn’t matter at the moment.
Dion comes to the door a few times, knocks, tries to persuade me to come out with more tales of Cora’s woe and the stress she’s under and yadda yadda yadda. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. They lied to me and don’t deserve an iota of my respect right now.
Later, the phone rings and I wonder if it’s Chloe or Wyatt and a part of me wants one of them to come and rescue me, to stomp in and yell at my parents for treating me this way and take me to their house. But I doubt I would go with them because of the fact they lied to me too. Right now, I have a roof over my head, hot showers and three meals a day. Kind of like prison.
That thought feels familiar—a prison, yeah. That is how it feels sometimes.
I don’t move from my position on my bed—sitting upright, good arm wrapped around my knees—until darkness has shrouded me for what feels like hours and the house has been quiet for three hundred and eighty-seven breaths. When I finally move, my back and neck ache so much it makes me gasp. I stand and stretch, relishing the pain. I deserve it.
I pack, throwing anything sensible into a duffel bag that I find in my closet. After the clothes, I can’t think of anything else I need to bring except my toothbrush.
I sit with my back against my room door, no idea what my next move should be. Where am I going to go? I have no money, but I do have a nearly full tank of gas. I could drive somewhere, but where would I stay when I got there? Maybe I could be homeless and beg for cash. I could wait until the car runs out of gas and make a sign that says, “NEED GAS” and have strangers fill me up as I drive from town to town and live out of my car.
I doubt I’ve done anything like that before. Not that I would know if I have, but something tells me Old Liv would never stoop to asking strangers for cash. Nor do I think she would have liked being on her own that much. She kind of sounds like a person who would be scared of too much silence. She liked being out with friends, with loud music, and even surrounded herself with fake friends like Mia and Ava so she wouldn’t have to deal with being alone. James might be one of her noisy addictions.
When a knock sounds on my door, I don’t open it—there’s no one I want to see or hear from. As quietly as I can, I climb back up to my bed and cover myself with my comforter.
The door opens seconds later while I’m trying to control my breathing.
“I know you’re awake,” Natalie whispers behind me. “I heard you banging around in your closet a few minutes ago.”
I roll over. “What do you want?” I whisper back.
She’s holding something, and in the dim closet light that I left on to pack by, I can see it’s a wad of cash. Two small bundles, each secured by a thick blue rubber band. Christakos Creatives’ petty cash. The sight of it makes me sit up in bed. “Where did you get that?” I ask reflexively, even though I already know. “When did you get it?”
“A few minutes ago. Here,” she walks over and tries to hand it to me.
I shake my head. “I can’t. You should go put that back before I get blamed for it.”
“You won’t. I’ll tell them I took it.” Her expression is serious.
“Yeah, well, if I take it, I’ll be the one in trouble.”
She shrugs. “You won’t be in the house. I’ll be the one getting in trouble. Not you. You’ll be long gone by then...right? That was your plan? To be far away in the morning?”
“It wasn’t exactly a plan, more like a forced decision.”
“Mom only asked you to move out. She didn’t mean to leave forever. This isn’t the first time she’s kicked you out.”
“It isn’t?” I ask.
“No. She does it all the time. She loves you, but whenever you get into a fight, she kicks you out. Usually it’s for a few days or so and then you’re back on the phone together. But this last time before your accident was the longest.”
“The fight about money?”
“I don’t really know. No one told me anything. But you didn’t talk to any of us for months.”
The sadness in her words squeezes at my heart. “Not even you?” She shakes her head. I know she was in on this lie, but I can’t be as mad at her as I should be at everyone else. She’s only eight. “Tell me why you lied about me going to the proms with Wyatt.”
Her eyes widen. “How did you know about that?”
“I saw pictures. Why is everyone lying to me? And how much are you lying about?”
She eyes her bare feet for so long that I’m about to repeat my question. But then she says, “All of it.”
A cold feeling washes over me. “All of what?”
“Wyatt is a family friend,” she says. “You never really liked him.”
My mouth makes silent movements, unable to decide which word to speak first. Finally, I decide. “You mean...I never dated Wyatt? Like ever?” I remember what Steve-O said at the bar and cringe. Everyone knew the truth but me.
Natalie shakes her head. “No. We had this huge conversation about how when you woke up you could have a second chance, make some better decisions.”
I’m surprised by Natalie’s words. They’re too grown up for her so I think she just repeated what Cora said that night.
“So then I thought,” she continues, “if you hung out with Wyatt, you’d learn to be a better person.”
“Because he likes doing charity,” I say flatly, suddenly more angry that I have ever been in my entire life. “And Wyatt decided to go along with this so he could fix me?”
Natalie opened her mouth to say something else, but I talked over her. “I can’t believe all of you would do something like that.”
“James hurt you and—”
“I don’t care!” I shriek, forgetting about my sleeping parents. I wouldn’t mind raging at them as well. “It’s my life! If I wanted to be beaten every day of that l
ife, I should be able to do just that. I woke up vulnerable and alone and needed people to trust and everyone lied to me. You, our parents, Wyatt...and even Chloe?”
She nods. “I’m sorry. I thought I was doing a good thing.”
“I’m not a fucking charity case,” I say, watching her flinch at the curse. I take a deep breath. “Please just leave. Or all of my anger is going to come down on you.” I close my eyes and turn away from her.
I hear a thud on the floor and the door closes as I pick up my phone. There’s only one person I can think of to call, but just thinking about him scares me.
Three rings and then a, “Hey, babe.”
A chill shoots through me at his pet name, both electric and sickening at the same time. It’s amazing what the body can have a physical reaction to. “Um. Hi? James?”
“Yeah. It’s me.” He clears his throat like the conversation has already gotten too heavy for him. Something deep inside me relaxes as he speaks. “Are you even allowed to be on the phone with me? Your mom was pretty crazy the other night. What would she do to you if she knew you were on the phone with me right now?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say, and wonder if I should elaborate. But I don’t and it goes silent between us.
A beat later, James says, “I heard you had some kind of accident and that you don’t really remember stuff.”
“That’s right.” I say, hoping he will lead this conversation. I don’t really know where I want it to go, but I’m hoping for more answers and possibly even a place to stay.
“So you don’t remember me?” I can hear the smile in his voice.
