“Can you grab some tea with me?” I say. I remember Tess liking tea.
“No,” Tess says. “I’m working. And if there’s something you need . . . I’m probably not the right person.” She pauses and takes me in. All of me. The hair and the Sharpie shadows and probably the sadness, and she draws some kind of conclusion. “Are you okay?” she says.
“I’m great. I’m okay. I’m a little lost,” I say. It’s three different answers. I wish I knew the right one. Some of Tess’s coworkers inch closer to us, like they know she might need backup. I’m almost happy for her, all these people looking out for her. A little family.
It is pathetic that my heart tugs at the thought of that word. And that I’m jealous she might have it already, without me, in this form.
“What am I to you now?” I say. “Do you miss me? What, like, are we? To each other?” I am ten. I am eight. I am five and thirteen and so small. It hurts, to be this little and exposed.
Tess closes her eyes. She tilts her head up to the ceiling and takes deep breaths.
“Let’s pretend we don’t know each other,” she says. I am prepared for so many crappy things, but not that. “We don’t, really. I don’t know any of you. Not even your stupid fucking father.”
Tess was not a swearer when she lived with us, so the word hits hard.
Arizona is right. I don’t see everything. I am too hopeful. I am too into the stepmoms. I am silly and stupid and wrong about my own life. “I should go,” I say.
“You and your brat of a sister,” Tess says. It’s not even a full sentence. “You’re terrible people. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
It’s mean. The last few days have been so full of mean things I feel like I’m learning something true and awful about, like, the world. Humanity. A few days ago I was simply Montana. Now I am terrible and ugly and ridiculous and a bad sister and a brat. My mind can’t work fast enough to catch up with that idea of me.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Bernardo breaks in, a new side of him emerging too. His voice is a little too big for the studio, and everyone’s listening in now and all I want is to be on the street where you can say anything at all and no one notices. The other day some guy was talking on the phone about guns and knives and all his friends who have them. I want to be out there, with them, where I am pink-haired and fucked up but not in a way anyone notices.
Everyone here looks like someone my dad would like to marry or who he would have already married.
“I don’t know what question I’m asking,” I say. “But it’s weird to have you live in my house and then never see you again. All of you.”
I know even saying it like that, lining Tess up as part of a string of people instead of her own individual person, is sort of me being the worst. Even Bernardo cringes at the phrasing.
“I tried to make it seem like a family,” Tess says at last. She’s looking only at me, not at the people watching us. “But that’s not the same as it actually being one, in the end, you know?”
“Maybe we didn’t need you to make us a family,” I say. I don’t even believe it myself, but I can’t stand her acting like we’re not. I can’t let someone else confirm my biggest fear in a sweaty, too-pretty studio full of boring people who don’t eat pasta.
Besides, my father kisses my forehead some nights when he thinks I’m asleep, and that has to mean something.
Tess lets out a loud, singular, explosive laugh.
“I can feel bad for you. For all of you. Because you’re so terrible you don’t even know what you’re missing. So yeah. I was right. You’re the one who’s meant to be pitied.”
My heart’s pounding and Bernardo is fuming. “Don’t talk to her like that,” he says again.
“You came here,” she says, like the words came out of me, not him. I’m not sure if he’s making things worse or better, being here. “To what? Make yourself feel better? Make fun of me? Feel all superior for knowing it wouldn’t work out? You and your sister, both rooting for the worst possible thing to happen for me. Two teenagers actively rooting for my life to fall apart. Arizona said it under her breath a million times. Had a countdown of when he’d leave me. You’re bad people. You don’t care about anyone but yourselves. You don’t care about anything.”
Her face is twisted, and the other teachers come up to her, stroking her arm to calm her down like she’s a rabid dog, which I guess she sort of is.
I want to cover Bernardo’s ears. Because some of what Tess is saying is true, and some of who I am is a terrible person who roots for women’s lives to fall apart. And I’m not ready for Bernardo to know all the bad things about me.
I know that that is probably love too. Knowing what makes someone awful. But after seeing what my dad hates about me, I’m not sure I can handle seeing what Bernardo hates about me too.