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Authors: Jessica Warman

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BOOK: Breathless
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We plant Holly, her daughter, on the carpet in front of
The Little Mermaid
while we talk and go through a stack of old
Cosmopolitan
magazines, ripping out the perfume samples so we can tape them up around her bathroom mirror later on. I feel embarrassed just thinking about what my friends from Woodsdale would say if they could see me. I don’t think there’s an actual book in this whole apartment.

I sink back into the sofa, imagining what kinds of microorganisms are leaping onto my body while Candy gives me the update on Hillsburg’s happenings.

“You know Kelly Lang—she’s pregnant with her second kid. And Keith Mitchell is supposed to be the dad, even though she married my cousin Tim right after high school. You know Tim? He graduated from the Triangle Tech in Grotto Falls last year?” She digs through her purse for a pack of cigarettes, which she opens and holds toward my face. The smell of marijuana wafts between us. “See that? I got this dope from Tim a few months ago, right?” She lights up a Kool. Her fingernails are all different lengths, ridged and jagged and covered in dull, chipped polish. I look at her and can’t understand for a
second
what she’s thinking—I can’t believe she’s smoking around her child. I would
never
tell any of my friends at Woodsdale that the Ghost still smokes in our house. It’s just so . . . second-class.

Even the air in her apartment feels dirty. I don’t want to get high around her daughter; the idea makes me feel sick to my stomach. So I’m relieved when Candy says, “We can smoke up after Holly goes down for her nap.”

Even so, there’s just no way. “I can’t smoke anymore,” I lie. “They give us random drug tests at school.”

“No kidding? God, that sucks. Katie, we all told you you shoulda failed that admissions test. Even my
mom
told you so.”

The silence in the room would be more than awkward if Candy and I hadn’t known each other for so long. But it stretches on, all the way to the end of
The Little Mermaid.
I can’t stop noticing all the patches of filth in her apartment: the kitchen sink overflowing with dirty dishes; the toilet in dire need of a good scrubbing; even the television screen is covered in sticky fingerprints so noticeable that they almost make it hard to see what’s happening on the TV.

Remembering my mom’s note from this morning, I ask, “Hey, can I use your phone?”

My mother’s voice sounds far away, distracted, like she always is when she’s painting. “Candy and I are going to do some Christmas shopping today. What do you want for Christmas, Mom?”

“Do you want to make cookies with me when I get home tonight?” she asks. She doesn’t remember that I wasn’t supposed to take the car.

“What time?”

“Around eight.”

Christmas cookies with my mom? What’s next, mother-daughter basket weaving classes?

But her voice is so hopeful, so genuine and distant, that I feel terrible disappointing her. “Whatever. Sure, that sounds great.”

When I get back to the living room, I notice it’s already dark outside. I wish I hadn’t even come here—the whole day is wasted. I never realized what trash Candy was until I got to Woodsdale. I can’t imagine Lindsey or Estella, or even Mazzie, ever meeting her, and what they might think of me if they did.

Smoking a cigarette, she says, “Someday I’ll be sitting in my high-rise office, drinking champagne with my feet up while my assistant does all my work for me.”

All I want to do is leave. But I don’t want to go home, either. I just want to go back to school.

“What do you want to do?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I’m thinking about becoming one of them, uh, radiologers?”

“You mean a radiologist?”

“Uh-huh.” She doesn’t even have a high school education. “One of them people who takes X-rays at hospitals.”

“Oh. You mean an X-ray technician?”

She shakes her head. “No, I mean a radiologer—radiologist—whatever you called it. You know how much money they make?”

I shake my head. “How much?”

“They make, like, thirty grand! Can you imagine making that much money? I’m telling you, once I get back to school, it’s all gonna happen for me, Katie.”

Sure it is,
I think.
You’re really on your way.

At ten o’clock that night, I let the car idle in the driveway. Before I go anywhere, I sit with my eyes closed for a few moments, taking deep breaths, trying to brace myself for whatever’s waiting for me inside. It’s always a crapshoot with my mom. There’s a chance she doesn’t even remember the plans we made. And then, of course, there’s Will. Who knows what kind of mood he’s in? He might be furious that I went to see Candy instead of spending time with him, or he might have slept all day.

Our house is always too dark at night because my parents refuse to use overhead lights. The Ghost tells me it reminds him of how poor he was as a kid, growing up in railroad housing with bare lightbulbs glaring overhead. In the evenings, my parents rely on candles and table lamps. It makes the whole place feel kind of haunted.

My mother stands before the blender in the kitchen, holding a margarita glass in one hand, a half-empty bottle of tequila in the other. I think it’s the good stuff—at least, it’s the same kind that Lindsey’s parents buy. She’s probably drunk. The rest of the house is dark, almost silent except for light, faraway sounds of the cat pattering around the foyer.

“Hey, Mom. I’m so sorry I’m late.”

I’m used to seeing her drunk, but I can’t help but picture her waiting for me in the kitchen, measuring and sorting the ingredients for cookies, then getting all sad as the evening dragged on and I didn’t show, eventually tapping the bar for company and getting started on the cookies by herself.

I feel dizzy. It occurs to me that I haven’t eaten all day.

I look around the kitchen. “Oh—did you start baking cookies already?” I pretend to be surprised, as though our plans were for, like, 9:55 p.m.

My mother sniffles a little bit, shaking her head, staring at me. “Fuck you,” she mouths, without making any sound.

Under normal circumstances, my parents do not swear. The rare times when I’ve heard them say “fuck” have been burned into my brain forever. And my own mother—my
mommy,
for godsakes—does not say “fuck you” to her daughter. The words feel like a punch in the stomach. Worse than that, even, because I know I deserve it.

I take a step backward. “What did you say, Mom?”

But she only stares at the floor. And then she says out loud, without looking up, “Go to bed, Katie.” She turns her back to me and resumes folding flour into the dough, sipping her margarita.

I look around, awestruck. The kitchen is all marble countertops and track lighting and sleek appliances. When I was younger, before my parents had any money, it was dark and dingy. Half the time, the stove didn’t even work. Still, my mom and Will and I would spend entire afternoons in here, pureeing fruit to make homemade sugar-free fruit leather in the dehydrator. Or else we’d bake loaves of wheat bread, turning it into a little science experiment as we watched the yeast bubble to life in water.

But that was when we first moved to Hillsburg, before people had a chance to get to know us, to decide they hated us. Will and I had to go to school and listen to everyone call us rich kids all the time. For a while, it was okay—but then the teachers started doing it, too.

Will was smart—he
is
smart. He used to get good grades, so good that he skipped the fourth grade, and they were thinking about letting him skip fifth, too. One day, in eighth grade, he got caught playing with a Game Boy during class. Back then nobody else had them yet, at least not in Hillsburg. The teacher took it away and let everyone else in the class play with it. “Since you’re so rich, your parents can just buy you a new one,” he said.

But that wasn’t all. For a few months after that, from the beginning of the year until Christmas break, the teacher put Will’s desk in the corner of the room, facing a wall, away from everyone else. When my parents found out—at their parent-teacher conference, just before the holidays—the Ghost went apeshit. I can still remember him on the phone with the superintendent. That was one time I heard him swear a lot.

I don’t fit in my bed anymore. When I sprawl out on my back my arms and legs hang off the sides. It’s hot in here. I get up and strip down to my underpants, hear voices downstairs, winding through the rooms and up the stairwell. The Ghost must be home. He and my mother speak in low voices to each other. I picture them in the kitchen, him hunched over and her on tiptoes to kiss. He probably won’t even come upstairs to say hello to me. They’ll stay down there all night and drink wine together. I don’t know why they even bothered having kids, if they’re so obsessed with each other.

The shelves in my bedroom are filled with all the books I’ve ever read and rows of swimming trophies and ribbons and medals. Nothing has been touched since I left for school. Above my little bed is an oil painting my mother did of me as an infant, sleeping on my back. I know she loves the way it hangs above me while
I
sleep in real life: Katie sleeping above Katie sleeping. Sometimes when I’m home, I wake up to find her standing in my doorway, looking at us. I wonder if she does the same thing when I’m not here. Probably not—there used to be a similar painting of Will above his bed, but it disappeared the first time he left.

As I’m lying in bed, the phone rings. It’s past eleven; most likely it’s some kind of psychiatric emergency for the Ghost.

A few seconds after it stops ringing, my dad taps lightly at my door, holding out the phone. “It’s for you,” he says.

“Am I calling too late?” Drew’s voice is almost a whisper. My stomach does a somersault.

“How did you get my number?”

“I stopped by your dorm earlier today, since you mentioned you might be staying for Christmas. Mrs. Martin gave it to me.”

I don’t want to risk anyone in the house overhearing my conversation, so I throw on my terry-cloth robe and go outside to the backyard. I stand in ankle-deep snow, wearing only my sneakers, while we talk.

“I was going to see if you wanted to come to Christmas Eve mass with me if you were still on campus,” he says.

The whole God situation with Drew makes me more than a little uncomfortable. He’s just so
genuine
about the whole thing. I’ve been to church with him a couple of times, and it’s starting to irritate me that Drew—who seems to have had an easy life with lots of friends and love and
nothing
to make him question whether or not there’s a God—is so devout. Will always says that agnosticism is the only true religion, and most of the time I think he’s right. After everything I’ve seen from this town and the people in it, after how they treated Will and our family, and what happened to Will because of them, I can’t imagine feeling anything
but
doubt about something as big as God. It’s a great idea, and I hope it’s all true . . . but that’s the best I can do for now.

“Mazzie told me she’d come with me,” he says.

“Mazzie?” I feel a rush of warmth that goes all the way to the tips of my toes. “You’re taking
her
?”

Drew pauses. I can tell he’s really contemplating what to say next. “We’re just going as acquaintances, you know. She offered to come, and I couldn’t say no. It wouldn’t be—you know—Christian of me.”

Mazzie is a Buddhist, and she thinks Drew is about the most annoying person on earth. She’s going with him as a joke; I’m certain I’ll be subjected to the highlights of her experience as soon as I get back to campus.

But that’s not really why I’m surprised. Mazzie hadn’t told me she was staying on campus for winter break. Now that I think about it, she might have gone out of her way not to mention it. I feel like crying for her. I want to call her, but she’d only hang up on me for waking her.

“Katie? You still there?”

“Yes.” I pull my robe more tightly around my body. The air in the yard is damp and so cold that I can feel my core going numb.

“I wanted to call you because . . . I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Drew says. “I miss seeing you every day. I miss you a lot.”

My cheeks burn as I beam. “I miss you, too.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Soon,” I say, and I know it’s true as the word leaves my mouth. “As soon as I can.”

Will is waiting for me in his doorway. “Come in,” he whispers, his tone urgent. He shuts the door behind him. “We need to talk.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen him awake all day, and I’m horrified all over again by the way he looks.

I sit on his bed as Will paces in a tight circle in front of me, smoking, his breath quick. “What were you doing on the phone?” he asks. He reminds me of a caged animal. His steps get faster and closer together. “Were you talking about me?”

“Will, no. I was talking to a friend from school—”

“Telling them what a loser I am? Telling them you can’t wait to get back to school so you never have to come home again and see your crazy loser of a brother?”

“No!” Downstairs, our parents are still awake, I can hear their voices lilting up the stairs. With every circle, my brother inches a little closer to me.

His voice gets louder. “I am your
elder.
” He points a bony finger in my face, the nail chewed down past the skin so that I’m staring at a bloody stub. “You respect me!” He’s almost shouting now. “What gives you the right to talk about me with your spoiled rich friends? You do not speak about me without my
permission,
do you understand? You think you’re better than me because you go to some fancy prep school for rich kids now? You probably tell them all about me, don’t you? You tell them you wish I’d died. You stood there and didn’t do anything, just like everyone else. Everyone was laughing, saying that loser Will would have been better off if he’d died, right? And you laughed too, didn’t you?”

Where are our parents?
“Will—no, I would never laugh at you. Will, I love you, please calm down, okay? Come here, just sit down and talk to me—look! Look at my leg.” I pull my robe apart and show him the deep gouge in my shin. “I was in such a hurry to reach you that I fell on the cinderblocks and cut myself, and I didn’t even care. I wanted to go with you, but they wouldn’t let me.”

BOOK: Breathless
13.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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