_*_ 76 _*_
“Why didn’t your mom call the police?” I asked, trying to keep up with Finn.
“There’s no way to prove it was Chelsea,” he said, grimfaced.
“Actually, there is.” I broke into an awkward half jog. “They have this new thing called ‘fingerprints.’ Since she was arrested before, they’ll be on file someplace.”
“Please don’t be a bitch,” he said. “Not right now.”
He opened the glass door of the red entrance of the mall and walked in without waiting to see if I was still with him. While we were at school, someone had broken into his mom’s condo and stolen her emergency credit card (chiseled out of its hiding place in a block of frozen ice at the back of the freezer) and a pound of sliced ham. Obviously, it was Chelsea and it should have been the end of the trip to Boston and his parents’ misguided plans for Thanksgiving, but his mother was still acting like everything was fine.
Finn plowed ahead into the crowd of pre-pre-Black Friday shoppers. (His mom said he had to buy a new dress shirt because he had outgrown his old ones. His family always dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner. Utter insanity.) He didn’t realize I wasn’t with him until he was ten stores in. He turned in a full circle, looking for me.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. Approximately two billion people were inside, all hollering so they could be heard over the irritating holiday (buy-our-stuff) music. I fought my way through the swarm until I reached him, standing next to one of those fake mini-booths that sell bad cell phone plans.
“It’s too crowded,” I said. “Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“We’re leaving at six in the morning,” he pointed out. “It won’t take long.”
I followed him into a small, crowded store that was so dark no one could read the price tags. He picked out a half-dozen shirts and we squeezed our way back to the dressing rooms. He went in and closed the door behind him. I called Dad, just to check on him, to tell him I was running late, and I’d be home soon. Also, I needed to hear how he sounded.
He didn’t answer the phone.
I counted to sixty and called again. Still no answer.
“Does it fit?” I asked.
“Not the first one.”
Five minutes of silence later, I knocked again. “Any luck?”
“Not really.”
“Why is this taking so long?”
“What’s your problem?”
Where should I start?
“Just hurry up.”
Someone turned up the store’s music so loud it made the floor shake. A new crowd of people pushed their way into the dressing room area, even though there was nowhere for them to stand. It suddenly felt like I was standing in front of the stage at a huge concert and sixty thousand people decided to make the place into a mosh pit. I swallowed hard and looked up, above their heads, looking for air and trying not to panic. I called Dad again. The phone rang.
I pounded on the dressing-room door. “Seriously, Finn, it’s just a shirt. I need to get home.”
He flung a heap of white shirts over the dressing room door. “Can you put those back?”
I tensed as a couple of college-aged guys squeezed past me, waiting to feel their hands on parts of me they weren’t allowed to touch. They kept their hands to themselves, which was good because I could feel it, the gray closing in on me like a toxic fog, filling my lungs with poison.
“Miss Blue?” Finn asked. “You still there?”
“None of them fit?”
“They itched.”
“They’re cotton.” The phone at my house kept ringing. “Stop being such a baby.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
No answer. No answer. No answer.
The music got even louder. I was sweating. Out of breath, too, because there was not enough air and too many people.
No answer.
I pushed my way toward the front of the store, ignoring the complaints and curses people threw my way, until I finally broke free into the mall.
Finn found me a few minutes later, clenching the railing. “Where’s your bag?” I asked.
“There’s another store by the food court.”
I licked my lips. Hordes marched past us, shrieking
like crows into their phones, carrying small fortunes in big shopping bags, their faces distorted in the reflection of the hanging silver-and-gold decorations.
“Take me home,” I said.
“I have to get a shirt,” he said slowly and loudly, as if I was deaf.
“Come back and get it after you drop me off.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” He leaned in to kiss me.
“Don’t.” I stepped away from him. “I’m not playing. I hate it here, I want to go home.”
“Is something wrong? Is it your dad?”
“He’s not answering the phone.”
“He never answers the phone. Just give me fifteen minutes.”
No answer. No answer.
“No, we have to leave right now.”
“Since when did you become a drama queen?”
My legs moved.
I bumped, shoved, slipped into tiny cracks in the crowd, needing to get Out! Out! Out! as soon as possible. I couldn’t stop the pictures in my head, explosions like a flash-bang grenade was going off behind my eyes: carnage in the street, bodies on the floor of a pizza shop, a movie theater, the county fair. I walked as fast as the crowd would let me, eyes scanning for exits, hair tingling on the back of my neck as if someone, somewhere was pushing the button that would detonate an explosion. Lining me up in his sights and pulling the trigger.
Say the alphabet. Count in Spanish. Picture a mountain, the top of a mountain, the top of a mountain in the summer. Keep breathing.
None of my father’s old tricks worked anymore.
Finn caught up with me just before I slipped out the door. He grabbed my arm, spun me around. “What’s going on?”
The me of me curled into a dark corner in the back of my skull and some Hayley-bitch version I’d never seen before came out roaring. “Leave me alone!”
“Why? Tell me, please.”
“Forget it,” the bitch said, using my mouth, balling my hands into granite fists. “Forget everything. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and this is all a waste of time.”
“But—” Finn started.
The bitch wanted to fight, wanted to scream. She wanted someone else to get in the middle and give her an excuse to kick, to punch, and hurt. She looked at the zombie shoppers who had stopped to watch the sideshow, stared at them, daring them to say anything.
“I’ll take you home,” Finn said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Or Monday, whenever you want.”
The look in his eyes went right through the me of me, piercing my heart, but the bitch was in control.
“We’re done,” she said in my voice, sounding stronger than I felt, bluffing her way through the end of this game. “I don’t want to be with you. I’ll take the bus home.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“Clever boy,” the Hayley-bitch said. “Just leave me alone.”
_*_ 77 _*_
The bitch in me was mostly quiet by the time I woke up Thanksgiving morning. I could still feel her lurking in the back of my skull, reminding me how thin the ice was. I turned on the parade and turned up the volume. The first three giant balloons were cartoon characters I’d never seen before.
I hadn’t called or texted Finn. Of course, he hadn’t called or texted me, either. I didn’t know if he was home or in Boston or on the turnpike or maybe he was still asleep.
Bitch Voice: better off without him, he doesn’t understand, you can’t trust him.
I knocked on Dad’s door. “It’s Thanksgiving. We’re going to Gracie’s for dinner, remember?”
“Four o’clock,” he said.
“Don’t drink,” I reminded him. “You promised.”
I found Gramma’s recipe box, pulled the card marked Mason Apple Pie, and watched a bunch of videos to learn how to make a pie crust. I took the butter out of the fridge so it could soften. Set out the flour, salt and ice water, bowl and forks. Peeled the apples. Sat on the couch and watched the Hatboro-Horsham Marching Hatters perform in front of the grandstand. Wondered what possessed a school to call itself the Hatters. Looked up why my apple slices were turning brown. Ate half of the apple slices.
The parade ended. Football began.
I ate the rest of the apple slices and pulled some more cards from Gramma’s recipe box. Anna Chatfield’s Key Lime. Esther’s Pumpkin w/Walnut Crust. Peg Holcomb’s Perfect Pumpkin. Edith Janack’s Apple Crisp. Ethel Mason’s Mincemeat. And a small surprise: Rebecca’s Lemon Cake.
My fingers hovered above the keys of my phone, wanting to talk to Finn. Did his shirt itch? Was his whole family sitting around the table, everyone dressed to kill? Was there any way to explain to him why I’d been so mean?
No. I barely understood it myself. I just knew that I wanted to push him away from me more than I wanted to hold him close.
Dad stayed in his room all day, not even coming out to watch football. My pie was came out burnt on the edges and a little watery in the middle, but I thought that for a first try, it wasn’t too bad.
Gracie texted just before four o’clock:
plans changed can u com at 6? I wrote back:
sure
An hour and a half later, she texted: thxgving canceled
ttyt
I carried the pie to her house. Cardboard turkeys and black Pilgrim hats were taped to the first-floor windows of Gracie’s house. (Did they really wear hats like that? If you were on the brink of starvation, would you really care about your hat?) Tall, narrow windows flanked the front door, covered by bunched-up lace curtains that made it impossible to see inside.
I rang the doorbell, but nobody answered.
Gracie called at ten and gave me the blow-by-blow description of the battle between her parents that had caused the cancellation of the dinner. Instead of being hysterical, she spent the night finishing her applications to four universities in California.
Just before midnight, I texted Finn to say happy Thanksgiving. He didn’t answer.