“We’re still best friends. I don’t want that to change,” she says, in the exact moment that everything is changing. I can’t stop thinking of her skinny friends and their bemused expressions. The way they said my name, like it meant something. They knew. Of course they knew.
It seems stupid to want to be the most important person in someone’s life. But other people have that. So I don’t see why I can’t want it too.
“What if this made us all super happy?” Karissa says “Like, just, what if?” She has her crooked smile and her hair in her eyes and the same energy as my father, caught in between naive positivity and crazy-making denial.
“This is my family,” I whisper back, but the word hurts to say.
For a moment it is only me and her. We aren’t blinking or moving or speaking. “We both deserve everything. Remember?” she says.
“But this is mine,” I say. “And you said you wanted me. Not my father.” My hands go to my throat, the universal sign for choking. I’m not actually in need of a Heimlich or anything, but I need them to know I can’t breathe, something’s stuck in my throat, I might pass out.
“Can we get the cab, please?” Arizona says, shifting the moment into something else, something looser and more okay. “I swear to God someone forgot to pick up after their dog, and I cannot do this in the presence of puppy crap, okay?”
She makes me laugh. A totally involuntary laugh, a really small one, but it’s there and it feels good so I appreciate it, and take a mental note that it may go on my gratitude list tomorrow morning. So, so much about Arizona has changed, but at the end of the day she is completely not going to stand for anything as undignified as a dog-shit-flavored conversation about the newest of Dad’s soon-to-be-failed relationships.
With a twenty-three-year-old.
With my friend.
I give it, like, a month. And if it’s one of his monthlong girlfriends, there’s no need for Arizona and me to be involved.
Because, come on.
They all get in the cab. I stand there like I’m getting in last, but then don’t.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Get in,” Dad says. He’s not kidding. He wants me to squeeze in the back with Arizona and Karissa and sign off on this mess of a situation.
Not this time.
“You can have anyone else,” I whisper, getting close to his face in the window. “You don’t even know her. She doesn’t even matter to you. In two years you won’t remember her favorite color or what she wanted to be when she grew up. But she matters to me.” I think maybe he’ll hear the truth in that.
“Montana. Don’t be a teenager about it,” Dad says. It’s a thing he says that used to make me laugh, but not today. I’m going to be Montana about it. I’m going to stay here and smoke cigarettes and Google the names of my stepmothers and some of the ex-girlfriends I remember and call Natasha, the stepmother I’ve semi-adopted as still mine, and try to warm the chill in my chest from seeing Karissa on my father’s arm.
“You can’t make me sign off on this,” I say. The cabdriver starts the meter, and I know my dad won’t let it run too long.
“Totally,” Karissa says. “You need some time. Eat some ice cream. Chill. We can talk after dinner. Your dad and I understand.” She reaches to the front seat and puts a hand on Dad’s shoulder. My body convulses.
“What if I don’t want to talk to you later?” I say. I curl my toes and stand my ground as best as I can.
“We’ll bring you back some pasta. You will eat it,” Dad says. He rolls up the window and stares ahead. Arizona watches me from the backseat, and I know I’m supposed to do this with her, but I can’t. She started it, the making-our-own-choices thing. She changed everything. So she can’t expect me to do everything with her anymore. She made the first crack in our impenetrable united front.
I call Natasha.
“You need to come over?” she says. “Our couch is your couch. You know that.”
“I hate my father,” I say.
“We’ll adopt you,” she says. I still can’t believe she is the same person she was when they got married seven years ago. It doesn’t seem possible. She changed so much after my father and she split up.
“Can’t you marry him again?” I say. “Wouldn’t that be easiest?” I want the family in my head, the one that doesn’t make me feel alternately claustrophobic and untethered. The completely nonexistent one.
“Come over, sweetheart. Help me make dinner. We can talk about your dad being the worst,” Natasha says. That doesn’t sound right either. I don’t want to hate on my father with his ex-wife. It is impossible to decipher what the fuck I want, to be honest.
“That’s okay. Thanks. I’ll come over this week for sure. It’s okay. I’m okay.” I don’t sound believable, but Natasha believes me.
When I hang up, I decide that what I really need, what will really help, is seeing Bernardo after I have it out with Karissa. I tell him to come by later.
That feels good and all, but I miss the other day and Karissa’s party and the way the world was opening up, because now it is closing back in.
eight