“Fine, I’ll meet you there.”
He shoots me a thumbs-up and heads off toward the kitchen, but Eva lingers.
“I’m going to go check and see if there’s anything in the back I can use to spice up your eggs,” she says as she tucks her notepad into her apron.
“Hold the seaweed, please.”
“Your wish is my command.” She grins and I watch her walk back toward the kitchen.
“Why don’t you want to go to the bonfire?” Mom asks, interrupting my observations.
“I don’t not want to go.”
“Sure sounded like it.”
“I just got back. I’m tired.” It sounds like a sorry excuse before I even finish the sentence. Truth is, I love the bonfire the baseball team from our high school puts on every summer. Those guys are statistics-obsessed, smelly-sock-wearing weirdos, in my opinion, but they know how to throw a damn party. Problem is, our entire school is always in attendance, and I’d really rather avoid the brouhaha that will ensue when everyone finds out I’m freaking living with Jay.
But whatever.
I’m sure no one will care all that much. I’m sure Jay will be too busy with his friends to pay me any attention. I’m sure Mom will be fine handling the unpacking while I’m gone.
I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure. Maybe if I say it enough, it’ll all just happen, like Dorothy clicking her heels together and—?whoosh!—?home again, home again, jiggety-jog.
“I think you should go, baby,” Mom says, fiddling with something on her phone. “You deserve some fun. Plus, Pete and I are driving over to Portland.”
“What?” Portland is about an hour away, and she already used a ton of gas picking me up from the bus station yesterday. “Why?”
“There’s this fancy-schmancy art supply store there that I’ve been meaning to check out for a long time. Now I finally have a reason.”
“What reason is that?” I know for a fact she doesn’t have any orders on her Etsy shop. I have the password, and I check it every day to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.
“Eva,” she says.
I blink at her. “Eva.”
She nods, still tapping away at her phone. “I’m so heartbroken for her, and I can tell she’s feeling . . . well, a little lost. I have some ideas of a few things I can make for her, just little things to make her feel more at home. Supported.”
“Emmy supports her plenty. Emmy’s a grief counselor, Mom.”
She waves a hand and sips her coffee. “That shrink mumbo jumbo doesn’t help, trust me.” She sighs, her gaze going soft. “She’s so lovely, isn’t she? An only child, missing father, too young to deal with losing the most important person in her life.”
Her voice has this dreamlike quality to it, and I stare at her as she grabs a napkin from the funky copper holder, her eyes blurry from actual tears over a girl who might as well be a total stranger. Something in my chest closes up, squeezes, and breaks open again. I’m an only child. I have a missing father. I’m too young to deal with half the crap I handle every day. At least I think I am. And I’m . . . well, lovely has never been a description attributed to me, but I’m not a damn ogre or anything.
Not that I really expect my mother to notice any of these things.
Last year she got me two dozen purple roses for my birthday. They’re my favorite flower. They’re my favorite flower because they’ve always been her favorite flower, and I used to love that we shared that. The morning of August second, she crept into my room before the sun came up. While I slept, she took a few individual flowers and crushed up the petals, spreading them around my floor, covering the dingy carpet with beautiful color. Then she divided the bouquet into several smaller ones, tucking them into vintage bottles and vases and putting them all around my room. On my nightstand. On my desk. On my dresser. On my windowsill. She set a plateful of my favorite pumpkin-apple muffins next to my bed.
When I woke, it should’ve been perfect. It would’ve been perfect if my birthday was actually August second.
It’s not.
It’s August twenty-second.
I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. It’s the thought that counts and all that. I knew the roses were expensive, and she had to special-order them. I knew she probably baked those muffins—?the only food in the world she’s actually good at making—?after I had gone to bed the night before. We went about the day, her jabbering on about my birth and even talking about my father a little bit, how he cried when he first held me and how he sneaked a cheeseburger for her past the hospital nurses.
It took until almost dinnertime—?and a few curt words to a bewildered Luca about him forgetting my birthday—?for her to realize she’d totally messed up the date.
And now, here she is, ready to spend money we don’t have and sing “Kumbaya” for a girl she’s only just laid eyes on in real life.
Suddenly, that big world shrinks to the size of pinprick and I’m too small inside of it.
Too small for my mother.
Too small for my town.
Too small for this summer, for the next year weighing on me like a fur coat in the heat of July.
Too small even for Luca and his concerned shoulder squeeze when I don’t lift my eyes to meet his as he sets my food down in front of me.
Nothing fits and no amount of inside jokes or new friends or lighthouse trips will change that.
“See you tonight?” Luca asks.
I nod without looking up, picking at my eggs. Mom slurps her coffee. She slurps all her drinks. Loud, wet, annoying gulps that are the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to my ears.
As Luca walks away, I glance up, half hoping Mom is leveling me a worried look. She’s not. She’s buried in her phone, slurp-slurping away.
Chapter Ten
BY THE TIME I GET TO THE BONFIRE, THE SUN IS LONG gone and half the partygoers are already sloshed. I find the beer keg a few feet from the fire, a bunch of dudes hovering around it. Some guy whose name I’m pretty sure is Chad with arms the size of my thighs starts to show me how to work the keg, but I grab my own red cup and fill it before he can get an oh-so-masculine word out. I turn away, but one of them—?Victor Dinnon? Vince Dannon? Something with a V and a D—?snags my wrist.
“Hey, where you going, Glasser?” he asks. “I’ve got my phone with me, so we can, you know”—?he pumps his hips and makes these guttural noises I hope some poor girl never, ever has to hear in real life—?“text.” His buddies break into laughter. I yank my arm from his, spilling half my beer in the process.
“Tempting, but I’m not really into bestiality.”