Mom sits back down. “Since you look nervous, I’m guessing you’ve chosen to go early.”
I nod, grateful she saved me from saying the words. “I know … I don’t expect you to be happy or anything. But I feel like it’s the best thing, for everybody.”
Dad sighs. Mom takes a moment before replying. “I understand why you’ve made this decision,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “And I want you to know that I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad decision. For you.” She stacks her pie plate on her larger one, placing her folded napkin on top of the pile. “But don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s best for everyone.”
I watch her get up and walk to the sink, unable to find words until she turns the water on. “I just … I thought it would let everyone move on faster.”
She shuts the water off. “I wasn’t ready to move on even before Andrew died,” she says. Her tone is more teacher than parent, like she’s practiced this lecture. “I don’t want to move on. I want things to stay as normal as possible. But I know—” Her composure slips a tiny bit. “I know that isn’t going to happen, regardless. So I will support you in this, because I’ll just have to deal with it next fall if I don’t deal with it now.”
I didn’t think that a few months made that much difference, but now I can see what Mom’s really facing. She would have had Andrew here for a whole year more, easing her transition from mother of two to empty nester. But now all the Band-Aids are getting ripped off at once. While I’m in a new place, she’ll still be ghosting through this haunted house, mourning all of us and what she thought we’d be, and the future she and Dad had planned.
I push my chair back and launch myself into her arms. She staggers but holds me there, like I’m half my size and half my age, and Dad comes over to pat us both disconsolately while I tell her over and over I’m sorry.
She doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay, and I’m glad. We’ve told enough lies already.
RAYCHEL
Asha wasn’t kidding about dragging me out of the house. She shows up at five thirty on Saturday, way before I was supposed to meet her, and basically stages a kidnapping. Mom is her accomplice, now that she’s talked to Eddie and forgiven me. We had a big awkward discussion about how we all need to respect one another enough to tell the truth if we’re going to share a house.
Then they asked if it was okay with me for Eddie to really be in our house. He’s moving in.
“You could stay up here,” Asha says when I tell her. She hands me a beer I don’t want. “It’s sort of lonely with no roommate and no Spencer…” She trails off.
“Maybe next year,” I lie, giving her the requisite sympathy smile. It’s nice to be giving instead of receiving one for a change. “I’m surprisingly okay with it.”
“Eddie always was a nice guy,” she says. “Remember that time we left school late after choir, and he turned all of the parking lot lights back on for us even though he’d just shut them down?”
“He’s a good cook too.” My beer bottle is sweating on my behalf. I pick at the label.
“You know…” she says, raising an eyebrow, and points at my drink. “That’s supposed to mean you’re sexually frustrated.”
I snort. “Well, I have found sex to be very frustrating.” I can’t even begin to contemplate when I’ll want to have a new relationship. I suspect my body will be ready before my mind, but they’re going to have to work out some kind of deal. Right now they both still want Andrew. I expected to miss him, but I didn’t know I’d still want him in all the ways I ever did. Maybe I could dull the pain against someone else’s body, but I don’t think it would work. The differences would just make it sharper.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Asha says, pointing at me with her bottle. “You just need to get laid.”
“You’re one to talk.” I snap my bottle cap at her, then lie back on her bed and cover my eyes with one arm. It’s not like she’s jumped back on the playing field either. “That’s absolutely the last thing I need.”
She lies down next to me. There are new posters on her ceiling. I should decorate mine, with as much as I stare at it. She points to the long-haired lead singer of some indie band. “Don’t you think a good make-out session with someone like that would be—”
“Awful?” I say. “Traumatizing? Emotionally stunting? Yes. Yes, I do.”
She sits up. I can tell she’s staring at me. “You are way grumpier than normal, which is kind of impressive.” I roll my eyes. “What’s your deal?”
When I told her about Andrew weeks ago, I left out the stuff about Carson. But like Mom and Eddie suggested, I’m trying to eliminate as many secrets from my life as possible. So I try to gather strength from the picture of a cat in a tree with HANG IN THERE! scrawled above it. Or use it to stall, anyway. “What the hell is that poster?”
“It’s ironic,” she says. “Now spill.”
I sigh. “Remember when you were bugging me about Carson Tipton?”
She pauses. “I’m scared to say yes.” Haltingly, I tell her what happened, and when I get done, she shakes her head. “Jesus, Raychel, you take the cake for Shittiest Senior Year Ever.”
“I should get a trophy.”
“Or a tiara.”
“I’d rather have an actual cake.”
“I would help you eat that cake.”
“You’re a true friend.”
“I do what I can.” She stands up and returns from her desk with a handful of mail. “You know, there’s clubs and stuff on campus you could come to.”
She hands me a flyer. “Rape clubs?” I say, trying to be funny. It’s not, but she’s nice enough to ignore me. “Where’d you get that?”
“They’re in our mailboxes all the time.”
SURVIVOR SUPPORT GROUP, MEETING WEEKLY AT DENTON HALL. NO MEANS NO IS NOT ENOUGH! YES MEANS YES—NO CONSENT, NO CONTACT! I stare at the words, remembering what Mrs. R. said. What Andrew said. Asha’s not worried that saying yes to him will have messed me up forever. She’s worried that I said no to someone who didn’t listen. “Why don’t they teach us this shit in school?” I ask. Carson is right—there was a misunderstanding, but it wasn’t little. He still thinks he’s the mistreated nice guy and has no idea what he did wrong. And he’ll probably never know. “Why don’t they teach the boys this in school?”
Asha pretends to be shocked. “You can’t talk about sex in school! It makes those horny teens want to … ‘do it,’” she says, pretending to whisper.
I hold the flyer out. “Do you have more of these?”
“There’s a bunch in the lobby, why?”
My face flushes a little, and I’m annoyed at myself for being embarrassed. “I thought maybe I’d hang some up at school.” I can’t make the boys understand shit, but maybe I can give some girls a fighting chance.
“I like that idea.” The rest of Asha’s beer goes down in one gulp, and then she grins. “But I also have a better one.”
MATT