by Shea Berkley
It’s just a picture, Cat, I tell myself. But it doesn’t help.
Splashed across my seatmate’s tabloid is a beautiful, smiling face and yet another jilted lover with the headline, Caterina Angeli Does It Again.
“Another one bites the dust.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. The owner of the tabloid takes a break from her engrossed reading to sneer at me, but then a hint of recognition dawns on her face. She quickly turns to compare the picture of my mother on her cover to the downgraded, non-airbrushed, soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old version next to her.
I want to sink into my seat and look away, pretend I have no clue why she’s staring, but I can’t. So I force myself to meet her gaze head-on with a confident smile. Casually, I turn back to my book, open it to the dog-eared page, and pretend to read. I feel the woman’s eyes on me—watching, waiting for me to do something scandalous—and fight the urge to fluff my coffee-colored hair or gnaw off a nail.
Soon enough she’ll stop looking at me, expecting to see my mother. She’ll grow bored, go back to her gossipmonger ways, and forget all about me.
They always do.
