Changing clothes is my mother’s requirement. She says it’s so I don’t wear out my uniforms so fast, but I suspect it’s really because she’s noticed how much Randall prefers the plaid skirts. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that’s the whole reason he insisted I switch schools.
In response, my mother has been forcing me to wear more and more modest clothing. First, it was no tank tops, then no shorts. Last week she screamed at me over a scoop-neck t-shirt. I’ll be wearing turtlenecks in July by the time she’s satisfied.
I loathe the way everyone fixates on my clothing—the teachers at school, my classmates, Randall, and my mother. The taller I grow and the more my tits come in, the worse it gets.
I don’t get it. It’s not like I have some massive rack like Ella Fitz, who started growing them even before we left elementary school. Still, every sign of puberty seems to inflame my mother. She was furious when I got my period last year, and refused to buy me tampons, even though we have swim class as part of PE, and even though every other girl uses them. Mandy Patterson was delighted to tell the whole class the moment she spotted a pad in my bag.
I pull on my baggiest hoodie and jeans, so my mother won’t pitch a fit when she gets back from wherever she’s gone.
When I return to the living room, Randall has turned up the volume on the television. Either he turned it down so he could catch me sneaking in the door, or he’s blaring it now to irritate me.
I take my book bag to the dining room table, which is in his sight range. I hate how he watches me.
I angle my chair away from him, spreading out my textbooks and notes. Windsor Academy makes us do a lot more homework than I’m used to. The other kids have been there since Kindergarten. I’ve been struggling so bad that my mother hauled me to the doctor for some stupid medication that’s supposed to help me focus.
It doesn’t help. Actually, it makes me jittery and my hands shake. Worse, it amplifies the problems I already had with lights being too bright and noises being too loud. Even normal sounds from the other students—snapping gum or a pencil tapping against a desk—sound like popcorn exploding inside my ears. It makes me jolt and twitch. Marcus Green calls me “Spaz,” and some of the other kids are picking it up too.
Randall’s blaring baseball game is driving me nuts. Every crack of the ball, every abrupt roar of the crowd, sets my teeth on edge. Even though I’m not supposed to wear headphones around him, I sneak one of the buds out of my pocket and slip it into my right ear, under my hair.
That helps a little.
I labor away on my chemistry assignment. We’re supposed to draw a diagram of photosynthesis, something I’m actually enjoying. I spend much longer than necessary sketching out the details of the plant cell, filling in the sun, the leaves, and the chloroplast with colored pencils.
Randall hauls himself out of the recliner to get another beer from the fridge. He comes back with two.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask him nervously.
“With Leslie,” he grunts, sinking back down in the chair.
That’s not good. Randall detests Leslie. Every time my mother goes over to Leslie’s house, she comes home tipsy, making raunchy jokes. Last time she ran her car into the corner of our garage.
Leslie is my mother’s oldest friend. They used to work together at The French Maid. My mother told Randall she was a cocktail waitress, but from the pictures in Leslie’s old Facebook albums, I’m pretty sure they were both strippers. This was before I was born.
The longer my mother stays at Leslie’s house, the angrier Randall will become. While I’m trapped here with him.
Once I switch over to math homework, baseball gets even harder to ignore. Knowing it’s a risk, I slip in my other earbud, turning my music up loud to drown out the game.
I’m just starting to grasp the properties of parallelism when my earbuds are wrenched out of my ears.
I leap out of my chair, almost tripping over my feet trying to get away from Randall. He’s holding my headphones by their cord, his eyes so bloodshot and his face so congested that I realize in an instant that he’s quietly been growing drunk while I was working over here, deaf and oblivious.
“I’m trying to talk to you,” he snarls.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, holding up my hands in front of me, helplessly, desperately.
Randall’s fists ball at his sides. I have no idea how inebriated he is, or how angry. He doesn’t drink as much as my mother, but when he does, it can get just as ugly.
Luckily, he’s not yet swaying on his feet.
“You know the rules,” he snarls.
He takes my iPod and locks it in the living room cabinet.
I want to cry.
Who knows how long he’ll keep it in there. I’ll have no music, none at all, until he deigns to give it back to me.
I don’t bother to beg—I already know that doesn’t work.
And now Randall’s out of his chair. Now he’s focused on me.
“Your mother’s obviously not coming home for dinner,” he grunts. “You’re going to have to make it.”
I don’t know how to cook. No one cooks with regularity in this house. Sometimes my mother does it, grudgingly. More often Randall orders in, or we scrounge leftovers out of the fridge.
After rummaging frantically into the cabinets and the fridge, I decide on spaghetti.
Before I’ve even filled the pot with water, Randall is already barking criticism at me from the kitchen doorway.
“That’s not enough water.”
“Why isn’t it boiling yet?”
“No salt? Perfect—assuming you want your spaghetti bland as plaster.”
“Don’t break the noodles, are you fucking stupid?”
He doesn’t tell me what I should be doing. How am I supposed to make the noodles fit into the pot when they’re too long and apparently can’t be broken? Desperately, I poke them with a spoon, trying to get them to sink beneath the bubbling water.
The noodles bend and I’m able to close the lid of the pot. Moments later, it boils over, dousing the stove top in foaming pasta water.
“You fucking idiot!” Randall roars.