100 Days of Cake (29 page)

Somehow I make it home. From the kitchen Mom calls out something, but I hurry up the stairs with an excuse about needing the bathroom.

So hard to catch my breath.

On my bed, panting.

Finally I take out my phone to call Elle, and remember Alex's other messages.

Message 2: “Molly, I canceled on my friend and I'm
coming back to the store. I'm sorry. Obviously you don't have to go out with me if you don't want to.”

Message 3: “Okay, back at FishTopia, but you're not here. It looks like you left in a hurry. Are you okay? Just give me a call when you can. I'm sorry.”

The last one is from hours later, Alex's tone completely different:

“When I couldn't get in touch with you, I got worried, so I called V and explained what had happened. And you know what she said, Molly? She said I shouldn't feel bad about anything because you're fucking your shrink—that she saw you guys making out at the fund-raiser. So I guess you won't be calling me back.”

Then I actually do need the bathroom, to throw up.

M
y old-fashioned alarm clock gongs, and I text JoJo to ask if she can cover for me at FishTopia. When she writes back that she can use the money, I tell her she can have all my remaining shifts. Then I go back to bed.

On her way to the salon, Mom knocks on my door and asks if I'm okay.

“I'm fine. I just . . . have really bad cramps.”

When she knocks eight hours later, I pretend to be asleep. She leaves a bottle of Midol on my dresser, along with a piece of cake.

At some point in between Mom's two knocks, Dr. B. leaves a voice message on my phone. “Molly, I just woke up. I don't remember everything that happened last night, but I remember enough to know I was an ass. I'm so sorry.
Please call me. And if you're looking for your backpack, you left it here.”

Deleting the message, I flip over onto my stomach and go back to sleep.

T
ext from Dr. B.:
Molly, please. Can you just let me know that you're okay? As your therapist, if I don't hear from you, I should probably call your mom.

I write back:
I'm fine; DON'T even think about calling my mother
.

Several times I start to text Alex a message, but I have no idea what to say.

When Mom knocks on the door, I tell her I still feel crappy, and she asks if I want her to make an appointment with her gynecologist. “You're almost eighteen,” she says. “It's probably time you started seeing someone anyway.”

What a weird idea. In a few weeks I'll magically be an adult. I wonder if Mom thinks I'm having sex with anyone, wonder if she knows about V and Chris. (Are they having sex? How can I not know that?) Wonder when Mom had
sex for the first time and if it was with Dad—maybe the night they met when Kurt Cobain died.

If it were weeks from now, and I were eighteen, would that have changed what happened between me and Dr. B.? Would I have known what I was doing by going over to his house? Would it have changed what happened between me and Alex? Would I finally have had the instruction manuals for these games I didn't realize I was playing?

“Maybe,” I tell Mom.

At some point I start reading
The Catcher in the Rye
. It's pretty good. The whole thing—according to SparkNotes—is a discussion with a therapist. I wonder if Holden Caulfield ever made out with his shrink or kneed him in the balls?

T
his is the last day of FishTopia. The last day to watch
Golden Girls
reruns with Alex on the antiquated TV. The last day for environmentally unsound clamshells of house special lo mein. The last day of all the brilliant fish swishing around in their tanks unaware of how small their lives are.

I spend it lying around in the sleigh bed and then lying around in the bonus room so Mom can't accuse me of not leaving my room.

My phone dings with two text messages. I assume—okay, hope—that they'll be from Alex, saying something about the end of our FishTopia era. They aren't. One is from Elle asking where I've been; the other is Dr. B. suggesting he put me in touch with another therapist.

At some point I hear Mom and V talking about me through the model-home walls.

Mom: “I don't know. Do you think I should call Glen Brooks?”

Veronica: “NO! I mean, I think she'd see that as a total invasion of her privacy.”

And even though I'm still mad at her for suggesting I kill myself and for telling Alex about Dr. Brooks and me, I do appreciate that she's not blabbing to Mom about what she saw at FishTopia.

I miss my sister.

I miss everyone.

I
'm still in bed when Elle comes charging through my door with two fully loaded chili dogs from Haute Dogs. It used to be our favorite place before she became an animal advocate and decided we couldn't eat there ever again.

“I got a call from your mom asking me to check on you while she was at work. I figured the situation called for drastic measures,” Elle offers as an explanation, and I feel bad for making my mom worry . . . again. The big blue bummer bringing her joy to the masses. “Just maybe don't mention the hot dogs to Mark; he's a pretty strict vegan.”

I almost ask who Mark is, but then I remember—Alex's keyboardist from the no-name band. Flood of guilt that I've been too busy wallowing in my own stuff to realize that something important is going on with my friend. I never even asked her how their coffee date went after the
fund-raiser, which now seems like a million years ago.

“So are you guys, like, an official thing?” I ask.

“I mean, it's been less than a week, but we've been out almost every night, and he usually texts me a couple of times during the day.”

Even though I really want to scrunch down under the covers and go back to sleep, I take a bite of chili dog; it is frighteningly good. “So tell me everything!”

And she does.

How Mark is totally progressive politically but still kind of old-school when it comes to romance. “He always holds open doors, and he insisted on paying for dinner at that really pricey raw-food place in Maxwell!”

How when she couldn't get a babysitter for Jimmy one night, Mark took them both out for non-dairy ice cream at the hippie cart.

How when they kissed—second date, with tongue—it was amazing. “I know it's too early for this Nicholas Sparks destiny crap, but I think I could really fall for him,” she gushes.

“That is so amazing.” I
am
really happy for her, but I can't help but think of how tingly and important it felt to kiss Dr. B. at the fund-raiser, and how awful it was when he tried to kiss me the next day.

“You have to get to know him too!” Elle is saying. “Tonight we're seeing a lecture by this guy who wrote a book on
sustainability in the entertainment industry; you should come with.”

Depression or no depression, that lecture sounds physically painful. “I don't think I'm quite ready for the outside world yet.”

“Oh God, Mol. I'm such a idiot.” Elle changes tone. “What's going on? Your mom was pretty worried.”

Where to even begin? With my botched seduction of my shrink? Alex telling me he was through with me and storming out? I go with the classic rom-com misdirection between Alex, Veronica, and me.

“So it turns out Alex and V weren't dating, like, at all.”

“I know! Mark told me. Did you get my message about it?”

“Yeah, about two hours too late.”

“Oh no! Did you sort things out? Are you together yet?”

“Um, nope, not so much.” I tell her all about Alex saying he was in love with me (“I knew it!”) and then storming out when I told him I couldn't go out with him. (“No!”)

“But I don't understand.” Elle looks legitimately confused. “I mean, it sounds like he was a total dick about it—no woman has to go out with anyone just because he wants her to—and I'm BFF law on your side no matter what, but didn't you want to go out with him? Like, isn't that the reason we were so mad at V when we thought she was dating him?”

“I guess. I just didn't want to ruin everything once he
realized I wasn't this amazing girl he thought I was.”

“Why would he think that, Mol?”

“That's exactly what happened with T.J. He thought I was the coolest thing since FSU mystery punch, and then he decided I wasn't really all that.”

“T. J. Cranston is a jerk-off who asked you out because he liked the way your ass looked in your team suit.” Elle is all huffy puffy now. “Alex is someone you've talked to almost every day for two years. I'm sure he's already figured out that you don't shit rainbows.”

I shrug again. When she says it like that, it does make me feel like a bottom-feeder.

“Mol, I know you hate it when I say this, but shouldn't your therapist be helping you with stuff like this?”

“Well, I might have been too busy trying to get into Dr. B.'s pants for that.”

“What?” Elle's eyes narrow, and even though I'm still reeling and disgusted by what happened with Dr. B., I'm hesitant to say anything about it to her, or to anyone, really. 'Cause saying it aloud means it actually happened, that I probably can't just go back to our next session and pretend it's all good with us. And I kind of want to.

“Molly? What happened?”

Even though I know it will change stuff, I tell her everything, like everything-everything, from how I started lying to Dr. B. so he'd like me, right on up to him drunk and
grabby. For once Elle doesn't interrupt, just listens, eyes growing wider with each new detail.

“You should call the police,” she says when I finish. “He committed, like, fifteen crimes.”

“But I was the one who kissed him the night before, and I was the one who insisted on going over there even after he told me he was hammered.”