“She just came up,” my dad stammers.
“Of course she came up!” I slam my untouched drink on the table, and it splashes onto my hand. “It’s been seven years and you still can’t stop fucking talking about her!”
“Deandra,” my dad says, but I’m too far gone to heed the warning in his voice.
I wipe the back of my hand on my jacket and say, “No, Dad, tell me. It wasn’t enough to have her pictures all over the walls, you had to rub her in my face by telling Joel about her too?”
“That isn’t fair—”
“You know what’s not fair?!” I shout, startling him. “You not letting me forget her! It’s not fair I had to teach myself how to put on makeup or how to shave my legs. It’s not fair that Rowan’s mom had to tell me how to use a goddamn tampon!” Tears burn my eyes, but I ignore them and shout at the top of my lungs, “She doesn’t deserve to have her pictures on our walls, Dad!”
He reaches out to touch me, hesitant like he’s afraid I’m going to burst into pieces. “Dee . . . calm down and just tell me what happened.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. The tears are coming. They’re acid in my eyes, sulfur in my nose. I walk past him and grab my keys off the breakfast bar.
“Where are you going?” he asks as he follows after me.
“AWAY!” I shout, and I slam the front door behind me.
In my car on the way to Rowan’s, I can barely see the road through the tears that have sprung free from somewhere deep inside me. They’re clouding my vision, and the sob that tears from my throat racks my whole body. In her driveway, I’m crying too badly to move, so when my car door opens, I don’t bother lifting my head from the steering wheel to see who it is. Slender arms wrap around me, and I shift to let them hold me.
“Shh,” Rowan whispers, hugging me tight. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
“I can’t fucking do this, Ro,” I cry, hating myself for being this person. This person who can’t take care of herself. I can’t believe I snapped on my dad, or that I was so cold to Joel, or that I cried about my mom after seven years of managing not to.
“What happened?” Rowan asks me, rubbing my back.
So much has happened, I don’t even know where to start. I just shake my head against her shoulder, and she holds me until I calm down enough to breathe.
“Let’s go inside,” she tells me, but since I’m not sure I’m done crying and I don’t want to wake her parents, I shake my head again. “Then let me take you to the hideout,” she says, and I let her help me out of the car.
We enter her garage and climb up into its attic, a tiny space we set up in seventh grade. It’s filled with oversized pillows, beanbag chairs, and old lamps we collected from yard sales. I turn on my favorite one and it flickers purple and green light all over the eggshell walls before I sit down in my zebra-print beanbag and drop my head to my hands.
Rowan sits on her blue beanbag across from me, rubbing my shoulders and my knees until I take a deep breath and say, “He told me he loves me.”
“Joel?” she asks, and I huff out a single humorless laugh. Even Rowan can’t believe he’d say it. He was supposed to be different.
“Yeah. Joel.”
“Then what?”
His broken face flashes into my mind, his words echoing in the fissures of my heart. Was this your fucking plan? To fucking crush me?
I sit up, wiping my eyes with the heels of my palms. “I told him to go home.”
Rowan frowns at me, and I stare down at the floor.
“Why?” she asks.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Dee,” she says, rubbing my shoulder, “you’re hurting right now.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“What about him?”
Another wave of tears stings my eyes, and I hurriedly wipe them away. “He’ll be fine too. This is for the best, Ro. We’re no good for each other. You said so yourself.”
“I said that months ago, Dee . . .”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“Are you sure?” she asks. I know she has a point, but it’s one I don’t want to think about.
“I yelled at my dad,” I say to avoid her question. More silent tears. I lift the bottom of my shirt to wipe them away. “He told Joel about my mom, and Joel used it to try to psychoanalyze me when we were fighting and . . . I don’t even know, Ro. I just . . . I was just so . . .” A sob bubbles out of my chest, and I bury my face in my arms.
Rowan drops to her knees beside me to drape her arm over my back, trying to rub my pain away.
“I threw it all in my dad’s face. I took it all out on him. He didn’t deserve that.” The sobs start coming hard and heavy, my entire body aching with the force of them, and I say, “He’s been through enough. He’s always been such a good dad.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Rowan says, and I know she’s right, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it makes me feel worse.