“Sounds great,” I say, and make a show of taking a bite.
She just looks at me, eyes wide.
And waits.
You know those moments when you realize you’re going to spectacularly disappoint someone who’s trying really hard? Welcome to my life.
It tastes like a heart attack on a fork—undercooked butter with a side of more butter, and burned butter on top for kicks. I try to move my mouth into something happy or at the very least not disgusted, but I’m a crappy actor, and Mom’s whole face sags in defeat.
“No good?” she asks.
“It’s great.” We both know that is a huge lie. I mean, she did taste it, after all.
“Should we even bother saving it for Elle and Jimmy?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll love it.”
“Well, I’m really excited about carrot cake tomorrow. Maybe a little bit of spice is what we need.” She is sort of talking to herself as she spins around to start cleaning.
Sure, there is a part of me that wants to scream, “Explain it to me again how I am the crazy one in therapy?” But I don’t, because she’s my mom and she’s only trying to help. And honestly, there’s a part of me that wants so, so much—maybe more than she does—for her to be right about this. All those self-help books and empowering websites worked for her—they helped her get serious about the hair salon and find a dweeby boyfriend with a good job, and live in a house that outwardly reflects her inner success—so maybe this could work for me too? Maybe there is some combination of sugar, eggs, and flour that can make me care about school dances and four-hundred-meter relay times and college applications. If there is, I will gladly eat piece after piece every day for the rest of my short type-2-diabetic life.
DAY 14
Good Morning Carrot Cake
Elle wants ice cream, but it can’t be just any old Mister Softee truck; don’t be ridiculous. No, it has to be locally sourced ice cream with no GMOs. She’d prefer vegan, but that’s not a deal breaker. (Also, we don’t have that in Coral Cove.)
For as long as I’ve known Elle, which has pretty much been forever, she’s always been into various causes. I’m really hoping this environmental crusade ends soon, so she’ll use her car when it’s another million-degree day like today.
We bike past the original downtown with its Baskin-Robbins (“An eco nightmare!”), and then by a Dairy Queen (“Warren Buffett doesn’t need any more of our money!”) to this crunchy little food stand in the park, where all the employees always reek of pot and nothing ever looks remotely clean. It’s hot enough that none of this matters. There’s a line wrapped halfway around the baseball diamond. Elle and I lock our bikes and get into the end of the queue.
“Okay.” Elle looks sort of pained, but it might just be the heat. “I don’t want to upset you, but I saw Gina from English at the library yesterday.”
“That doesn’t upset me.”
“Obviously I wasn’t finished.” Elle threads a still-perfect curl behind her ear. “Anyway, they stayed at Chris’s party a little longer than we did, and she said that Meredith Hoffman was all over this guy from Maxwell. It had to be your Alex.”
Meredith Hoffman? She isn’t artsy or into music or anything other than the latest issue of Us Weekly. What would Alex possibly do with her?
“He’s not ‘my Alex.’ ” I try to sound nonchalant. “And Meredith’s okay.”
“Dude, Meredith’s life ambition is to become a Hooters girl.”
“At least she has an ambition. I can’t even bring myself to shower most days,” I say. Elle doesn’t laugh.
“Stop beating yourself up like tha—” Elle stops midsentence.
A few feet from the line a little girl—maybe eight or nine—is licking a cone of free-trade chocolate ice cream, and drops a clump of dirty napkins on the ground. The man with her, who hasn’t stopped yakking away on a cell phone the whole time we’ve been here, looks directly at them and walks away. The girl bounces after him.
Uh-oh.
Before I can stop her, Elle scoops up the offensive napkins and pounces on the girl and her dad.
“Excuse me, sir,” she says, thrusting the paper into his face, “but I noticed you left these.”
Cell Phone Dad doesn’t respond. His daughter, utterly confused, reaches out to take the napkins from Elle, but her father swats the girl’s hands down. The girl looks to him, even more baffled than before. I can almost hear Elle boiling over internally.
“I guess it’s safe to assume that you meant to drop these and just leave them there,” Elle continues, with this growing mania in her wide-set eyes. “So while you and your daughter are out enjoying this lovely day, you’re carelessly poisoning the earth so her children and their children won’t ever have that opportunity and will have to live in a dome.”
Cell Phone Dad gives Elle a dismissive once-over and then turns away. “Just some bat-shit hippie,” he mumbles into his phone.
“Yeah, a hippie who is trying to keep the world beautiful for your grandchildren!” Elle fires back.
By this point everyone in line or at the picnic tables is staring at us; even the stoned employees have snapped into focus and are sizing up the situation.
I’d like to hop onto Old Montee and ride away before someone calls the 5-O on Elle for disturbing the peace, but we’ve been best friends since the third day of kindergarten, when she shared her crayons with me after Jeffrey Meyers murderously broke mine in half. She’s a good person like that.
“Let’s just go.” I grab her arm and pull her away. “We have to save room for Mom’s latest misadventure in baking.”
“Yeah, the ice cream’s not certified organic, anyway.”
Unlocking our bikes, we make the most graceful exit we can under the circumstances.
We’re riding up to the model home, when my sister bops out the giant front door in this flowy sarong-type skirt and a string bikini top. She looks like a Victoria’s Secret model, which would be cool . . . if she were a Victoria’s Secret model and not my fifteen-year-old sister.
“Are you the bait for To Catch a Predator?” Elle asks by way of a greeting.
V offers the withering glance to end all withering glances. “Actually, I’m going to a pool party at Chris Partridge’s—you know, the president of your class,” V says. “If you weren’t so busy harassing people to save the dolphins, maybe he would have invited you again.”
For a moment Elle looks upset; I wonder if Alex will be there with Meredith Hoffman.
“Well, don’t wait until you’re twenty-five to get your first PAP smear. Remember, HPV kills,” Elle snaps. I’m not sure if she means this as an insult or as legitimate advice.
“What-ever!” V says as a Mini Cooper full of the Jaclyn’s Attic girls pulls into our driveway.
And then V turns to me, as if she just remembered that I’m there, that I’m her actual sister and the one who should probably be giving her a hard time about her kiddie-porn ensemble. Her tone is kind of sad and serious. “You don’t want to go, do you, Mol? Chris said it’s totally cool to bring whoever.”
Unadulterated relief floods her face when I shake my head, and she climbs into the backseat.
Watching the car disappear around the corner, I feel that pull of sadness. Veronica used to follow Elle and me around everywhere and do everything I did; she was practically my minion. Now she’s the one inviting me places. The irony is not lost.
Inside, the house smells sweet again.
Sure enough, Mom has every piece of kitchen equipment on the center island and is holding a plate with a giant piece of unnaturally orange cake with cream cheese icing.
“Hi, Mrs. Byrne,” Elle says, and takes the plate right out of my mom’s hands.
Mom’s Baker’s Journey challenge might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to Elle. Since I’m too bummed and Veronica is too weight-conscious to make any real headway on each baked blunder, Mom just boxes up the leftovers for Elle and her brother. With all
the butter and eggs, nothing about the cakes is remotely vegan. And none of the ingredients are locally sourced or organic or anything good for the planet, but when I pointed this out to Elle, she said that she’s a “consumption environmentalist” and that it isn’t hurting the world to eat the cakes, because the damage was already done. You gotta give her points for creativity.
Between forkfuls, she gushes to my mom, “Ohmygod, this is your best work to date.”
“Glad you like it, hon.” Mom smiles. “What about you, Molly? You like this one?”
I tell her it’s really nice, even though it’s cloyingly sugary and I can’t force myself to take more than a few bites. Mom sighs and says she’s got “high hopes” for tomorrow’s cake.
“Hot date tonight, Mrs. Byrne?” Elle asks, and I notice that Mom is wearing a flowing yellow maxi dress and has her hair tied in a knot on her head.
“You seeing Thom?” I ask. About two years ago Mom started dating this divorced divorce attorney with an office in the same building as her salon. He’s actually one of FishTopia’s few regular clients, so, you know, not the world’s hippest guy. But other than his horrible blond hairpiece (we’re talking so bad that it’s probably not good for business for Mom to be seen with him in public), he’s pretty nice, and he is always taking V and me on these cheesy activities—bowling, an aviation show—to try to get to know us better.
Mom says that she’s just meeting one of her clients-turned-girlfriends for a quick coffee. Her eyes flutter to the right, and I get the sense that she wants to say something else, but doesn’t.
“I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or so,” she says, pauses, then adds, “unless you girls want me to stay.” Because clearly ADF me can’t be trusted to be alone.
“Mom, we’re fine.”
When Mom leaves, Elle suggests we move into “the sa-lon,” stretching out the word so it sounds ridiculous. It’s not really a salon but a bonus room (another upgrade) that the model-home stager had set up like an old-timey parlor, with heavy velvet curtains and French-empire-inspired furniture. It always looks as though some lesser royal might be dropping by for tea. At the old house, we spent most of our time on this splintery wooden swing in the backyard. The salon chairs are way more comfortable, but it’s still kind of weird.
My house has always been kind of a second home to Elle and her little brother. Until they got divorced, her parents were constantly screaming at each other. Now they’re still constantly screaming at each other from across state lines. While not having a dad sucks, it’s probably still better than having Mr. Lovell. And even when she’s not ranting at or about her ex-husband, Elle’s mom is hardly ever around in any real way either. Because our old house was kind of Elle’s place too, she might be even more weirded out by the model home than V and I are.
“So seriously, what was up with V’s hoochie mama getup?” Elle asks. “Was she going cock shopping?”
Elle has never kissed anyone, and that bothers her a whole lot more than she lets on.
“It was kind of like a nip slip waiting to happen.”
“Not to be a sexist troll—obviously a woman has the right to wear whatever she wants.” Elle remembers she is an outspoken opponent of rape culture.
I shrug and wonder if maybe V was going “cock shopping.” Wonder if she’s sleeping with any of the guys at the party. As the big sis, I always figured I’d lose my virginity first (in my head it was always with some Zac Efron/Channing Tatum hybrid in a hotel in Venice or one of those other romantic places from the movies), and then I used to imagine telling V about it when we were cuddled under the blankets on Mom’s bed, watching old sitcom reruns like we used to do in the old house.
Before T.J. decided I wasn’t who he thought I’d be and broke up with me, we got to about second base. (At least I think it was second base; everyone I talk to uses a different scale. Like, some people think that first base is kissing, but someone else says that’s more like the on-deck circle. And no one seems to know if third base is a handy j or a blow job.) There was over-the-bra groping, but no crucial pieces of clothing were removed. By the time we’d started doing that, I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone anymore. I didn’t tell V or even Elle. If V is sleeping with someone, she probably wouldn’t tell me either.
“It’s obviously her prerogative”—Elle is still talking— “but it was like your sister was ready for a Girls Gone Wild audition.”
“I thought she looked kind of pretty,” I say, which is the truth.
“If that’s your thing.” She looks serious. “Do you think Chris really didn’t invite us back because of what I said about natural pool cleaners?”
“Naw, he probably just figured V or Alex would let us know.”
She nods, but we both know it’s not true.
“Are you worried Alex might be there with Meredith Hoffman?” she asks.
I remember Dr. B. saying the whole dating debacle was Alex’s issue, not mine, and I brighten a little. “I don’t know. Dr. Brooks thinks Alex sounds kind of immature anyway,” I say.
“Oh, he does, does he?”
“Yeah, and he gave me a ride home yesterday. Isn’t that sweet?”
Elle practically chokes on her cake.
“Mol, that is so not appropriate.” She says this in the same voice she used to chew out Cell Phone Dad at the ice cream stand—as if this is something that everyone should know and it’s an insult to the planet that I don’t.
“It was hot out, and he was being nice.” All at once I’m angry with Elle. She was one of the people hounding me about “getting help” when everything started to fall apart, and now she’s inexplicably annoyed that my shrink is a nice guy. “What’s the big deal?”
“It crosses a line.”
“What line? The common courtesy line?”
“It’s just not kosher.”
“How do you know? Because you always know how everything is ‘supposed’ to be?”
“Well I know you’re not supposed to cruise around town with your shrink.”
“V is right; it’s no wonder you never get invited to parties.”
I regret it the minute I say it. Elle’s whole face collapses, and she looks like she used to in gym class when no one would pick her for their softball team because she was really skinny and small and had the hand-eye coordination of a drunk penguin with an old-fashioned medicine ball. My heart breaks, and I realize how much of a jerk I am.
Without saying another word, she gets up, walks back to the kitchen, puts her plate and fork in the sink, and reaches for her hemp-weave eco-friendly bag.
I grab her arm. “Look, I didn’t mean that.”
“That was a really shitty thing to say.”
“I know. It’s just . . . I really like Dr. Brooks, and I’m doing a lot better than I was, right?”
Elle shrugs. “I guess.”
“And maybe he doesn’t do everything like some Dr. McHottie you saw on Grey’s Anatomy, but he’s honestly kind of great. So can we maybe lay off him for a bit?”
She pauses and then sighs. “Sure,” she says.
But it still feels weird. And even though it’s not even nine o’clock yet, I want to go upstairs to my model-home bedroom (with its upgraded window seat and stylish blinds) and fall into bed.
DAY 17
Red Velvet Cake
The high school swim team practices in the mornings before classes, which means getting up at five thirty a.m.—a bushel of laughs, I know. But freshman year, Coach Hartley and I were really obsessed with getting my split times down, so I didn’t even mind. Just to make sure I never slept late, I had Mom get me one of those old-school alarm clocks with the two bells on top. Back then I was so pumped to please Coach that I’d usually spring out of bed a few minutes before it went off anyway.
It’s crazy that that was only three years ago. In the time before the model home, V and I would sometimes get into bed with Mom and have these marathon sessions watching sitcom reruns like Who’s the Boss
? and Family Ties. One of our shows was Roseanne, and we all did this double take one season when they recast the oldest daughter. The new girl was blond like the first one, and they were about the same age, but other than that, the second Becky was nothing like the original. I’m pretty much the second Becky of my old life—an entirely different person.
Last night I set the alarm clock for ten fifteen so I could make it to my appointment with Dr. Brooks at eleven. It’s been going off for about ten minutes, and even though I’ve been lying awake in bed for hours, I can’t bring myself to reach across the nightstand and turn it off. So I let it gong and gong, the little bells on top going crazy.
Maybe it was the fight with Elle or the whole thing with Alex or the trauma of seeing T.J. again, but it’s one of those days when the world feels like this expansive ocean and I’ll drown if I get off the life raft of my bed. The kind of day where I weigh ten thousand pounds and lifting my head would require one of those cranes at construction sites.
Outside my room, Veronica is screaming at me, probably about the alarm clock; I bury my head under the covers.
The door bursts open with so much force that the knob (a brass upgrade) smashes against the wall, and V charges in, all shiny hair, platform sandals, and righteous anger.
“Seriously, you couldn’t just reach over and turn this off?” she says as she smacks the alarm clock’s off button. “Pathetic.”
Then she’s gone, the door rattling the frame when she slams it shut.
Of course she’s right; I am pathetic. But it’s not like I want to be this way—the heaviest 120-pound girl in the entire state of Florida.
A minute or an hour passes, and my phone rings. It’s in the pocket of the shorts I wore yesterday, which are slung over the back of my desk chair, which is miles and miles and miles away from the safety of the bed.
Probably Dr. B. calling to ask where the hell I am.
100 Days of Cake Page 4
