How My Summer Went Up in Flames
Read How My Summer Went Up in Flames Online
Authors: Jennifer Salvato Doktorski
About Jennifer Salvato Doktorski
For my parents, Grace and George Salvato.
Thank you for a lifetime of love, support, and family adventures.
I love you.
I wasn’t always the kind of girl who wakes up
on the first day of summer vacation to find herself on the receiving end of a temporary restraining order. But things got ugly when Joey, my ex, came to an end-of-the-school-year party on Friday night with his new girlfriend—the bleach-blond freshman ho bag he’d been cheating on me with. Until I saw them together, I didn’t know he and his indiscretion had become an actual item. It felt like someone had knocked all the air out of my lungs with a blunt object. What can I say? First I lost my heart. Then I lost my mind.
I stare out the screen door and watch as the patrol car drives away, my face burning with embarrassment. What if Mrs. Friedman is watching from across the street? She
doesn’t miss a thing, ever. What a crappy start to a Monday morning.
“This cannot be happening,” I say.
“Rosie, you blew up your boyfriend’s car. What did you expect?” says Matty, our next-door neighbor.
“For the last time, I did not blow up Joey’s car. It caught fire!”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hello, there was no explosion. I was just burning all the stuff he gave me in his driveway.” Why doesn’t anyone understand this? I’ve spent all weekend trying to explain it. “The box wasn’t even near Joey’s car. He was standing right there. I don’t know how it happened.”
“Lighter fluid and stuffed animals. Bad combination,” Matty says.
“Shut up, Matty! I need to think.”
“The thinking ship sailed when you lit that match.”
“It was a lighter and—what are you doing in my house, anyway?” It’s like he doesn’t even pretend to go home anymore. When Matty was six, my mother offered to let him come over after school so his mom didn’t have to pay for child care. Apparently Matty thought that meant forever.
Matty extricates himself from the couch and walks
toward the front door, where I’ve been rendered immobile by this latest turn of events. “Take it easy, all right? I’m not the problem, your bad temper is.”
“I don’t have a bad temper.” I look down at my purple toenails, away from Matty’s beady blue-eyed stare. “I’m passionate.”
“Call it whatever makes you feel better. I’ve grown immune to your acerbic wit and biting sarcasm, but lately it’s like you’re . . . I don’t know, hostile?”
Hostile? Where does he get hostile? Okay. Maybe I’m high-strung. I’ll give him that. But at our house, we yell when we’re happy, we yell when we’re upset, we yell when we want someone to pass the remote. It’s what we Catalanos do.
I look down at the paper in my hand. “I guess Joey must’ve called the cops.”
“Ya think?”
I feel like I’ve just done a belly flop on dry land. My parents are going to freak. They already grounded me, indefinitely, after Joey’s mom called Saturday morning to scream about the postparty car fire caused by yours truly. And now there’s a restraining order. At this point, my parents will lock me in a tower until I graduate from high school next
June. For a brief second I wonder if I can keep the whole thing a secret. Yeah, right, like that’ll ever work. I couldn’t even burn a box of memories without the police getting involved. I don’t know what’s happening with me lately.
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” I say.
Matty grabs the three-page document from me. “Right. This is for the other Rosalita Ariana Catalano Joey dated, who also blew up his car.”
I cross my arms and scowl as Matty scans the page. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
“You’re to stay away from Joey’s house, his job. There’s to be no written, personal, or electronic communication with the complaining witness by you or anyone you know.” He pauses. “It actually says you are prohibited from returning to the scene of the violence.”
“I’ve got to talk to him,” I repeat.
“Have you been listening?” Matty waves the papers in my face. “Restraining order.”
“But if I can just explain—”
“Save it for your court date in two weeks.”
“What?” Court date? I snatch the papers from him and start flipping through the pages, but my eyes won’t settle on any words. Fruity Pebbles rise in my throat and I start
to sweat. I suddenly want to throw something at the TV screen.
The View
is on—leave it to Matty. Now I have the urge to throw something at the whiny one’s head. Maybe I do have anger issues.
I hand the TRO back to Matty. “I can’t find it.”
“Right here,” he says, pointing to the correct page. “You’ve been ordered to appear before Superior Court Judge Tomlinson in Essex County, New Jersey, to address the allegations of, let’s see, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, harassment, and stalking. Stalking?”
I cover my eyes with both hands. I think I’m either going to vomit or cry. At the moment, I can’t decide which would make me feel better. I part my fingers to look at Matty. “It was only a few e-mails and texts.”
“A few?”
“And maybe I showed up at ShopRite once or twice when he was getting off work.”
“Good way to keep busy after a breakup. Hoping incarceration would fill those empty hours?” Matty says.
He looks as pained as I feel, which is why I need food. I walk into the kitchen and begin opening cabinets in search of the perfect snack to calm me down. Let’s see. Temporary restraining order . . . I bypass the pretzels and
head straight for the Double Stuf Oreos. I tear open the new package, which rouses Pony, our ninety-pound Lab mix, who’d been sleeping under the kitchen’s central-air duct. I smile when he turns his head quizzically as if to say, “Did I hear food?”
“Some watchdog,” I say in the baby-talk voice I use when speaking to my pooch and for which Eddie, my brother, always makes fun of me. “Where were you ten minutes ago when the police were at the door? Cookies are a different story, huh?”
Pony saunters over to the counter and nudges my elbow with his big wet nose until I relent. Sugary foods are bad for dogs, but I can’t resist his pleading eyes. “Only one, big guy,” I say. He gently takes the Oreo and swallows it in a single gulp. Matty comes into the kitchen just as I’m about to pour myself some milk.
“I think I know how to handle this,” he says.
Matty is always trying to handle things. Most of the time, it makes me sad that he thinks he has to. I blame his absent father, not that Matty and I ever talk about him. Still, I know one of the reasons Matty likes hanging out at our house so much is that he gets to be a kid here. At sixteen, Matty is a year younger than me, the same age as
my brother, and at least a foot taller than us both. When I was in middle school, Eddie and I finally stopped arguing about who Matty “belonged” to. He’s our Matty. I love him like a second brother, and unfortunately, sometimes I fight with him like he’s one too.
Lately, most of our spats are my fault. I know I’ve been impossible to be around since just after Memorial Day weekend. That’s when I went away with my family and Joey cheated on me with the freshman slut. To his credit, he told me. He begged me to forgive him. He said all they did was kiss. That it was a huge mistake, a onetime thing, blah, blah, blah. As much as I wanted to believe him, I was hurt, angry, and completely shocked. I couldn’t get over it and consequently, my entire relationship imploded. Since then, if I didn’t know me, I’d think I was a bitch too. And that’s why at this moment especially, it’s best if Matty leaves. I don’t want to cause an argument.
“I’m gonna call my girls,” I say. “Wait until they hear this.” My best friend, Lilliana, and the rest of our group will understand. I wasn’t stalking Joey—right? I honestly don’t know what I thought I was doing. Looking for evidence that Joey’s fling was a one-night stand? Hoping to find him moping around town wearing an
I
ROSIE
T-shirt? Whatever it
was, I certainly didn’t think it was illegal. If only it hadn’t culminated in an accidental car fire.
I swallow my last bite of Oreo and start dialing. Matty takes my phone from me.
“I think you need to get out of town for a while,” he says.
I grab my phone back. “I think you need to get out of my house for a while.”
“I’m serious. I’m leaving for Arizona on Saturday with Spencer and Logan. You should come.”
Okay. Here’s where my curiosity trumps my need for him to go home. “Who are Spencer and Logan?”
I know some of Matty’s friends, but not all. Matty goes to public school, the same school as my ex and his new chicken-head girlfriend. Oh, and my brother, Eddie, of course. My parents thought it was best for me to attend an all-girls Catholic high school because it’s every teenage girl’s dream to dress like a Scottish bagpipe player. All because I got busted at an eighth-grade graduation party playing seven minutes in heaven with Armand DelVecchio, who, by the way, kisses like a seal. It wasn’t even worth it.
“Spencer Davidson. We’re in robotics club together.”
“No surprise there.”
“Logan’s his older brother. He got accepted to ASU.”
“Okaay, so why’s he leaving now?”
“He has to be there for this special summer session. Logan wants his car in Tempe, so he figured he’d make a road trip out of it. Me and Spence are flying home.”
Has Matty told me all this before? Did the information get lost in my I-just-broke-up-with-my-boyfriend haze? I’m feeling a bit guilty.
“So, why did Spencer ask you to go?”
“He’s afraid to fly.”
Of course he is. So now I’m picturing the scene: me, trapped in a car with three nerds. Doubtful. “And I should go because—”