I sink onto the bed. Back in April, before she said anything about a girls’ trip to the city, I’m the one who asked her to go with me to New York. I begged her, never even considered taking Luca with me. Maybe deep down, I knew this would happen. I knew we’d never make it. Hell, I think I counted on it, too scared to actually make the decision to leave her. Too scared to risk reading not good enough in a rejection letter printed on college letterhead. It was self-sabotage at its finest.
The realization settles over me like one of those April snows we sometimes get. Surprising and expected all at once. Ice-cold when you’re ready for warmth. My fingers dig into my eyes, pressing so hard until I see fireworks of color. I let myself fall back onto the mattress. My phone buzzes loudly from inside my bag. Could be Mom. Could be Luca or Eva. Could be Jay-freaking-Lanier for all I know. Whoever it is, I’ve got nothing left for them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“GRACIE, LET’S GET MOVING.”
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
“Baby. Get up, now.”
The room comes into focus. It’s still dark out, the lobster lamp on the bedside table coating the faded room in a salmon glow. The cheap alarm clock flickers 4:13 a.m.
I sit up on the bed and push my hair out of my eyes. Mom whirs around the room, throwing the toothpaste into her toiletry bag and grabbing bras down from where they’re hanging on the shower curtain rod.
“Mom? Why are you home so early?”
“I’m fine. Just get moving.”
I swing my legs off the bed, still clad in my jeans from yesterday. Ugh, I feel like death. Probably look like death too. Mom doesn’t look like she’s got both feet in the land of the living either. She’s dressed in what I can only assume are her going-out clothes from last night—?a pair of black skinny jeans and a sparkly red tank top that’s now sporting a tear at the hem. Her arm is in a navy-blue brace, and she keeps muttering “fucking arm” under her breath.
“What happened with the cops?” I ask, digging my phone out of my bag. Eleven missed calls. All from Luca.
Except one.
I stare at her name, but then Mom’s voice cuts off my thoughts.
“Nothing. I mean, I have a court date for the ticket or whatever, but it’s not for weeks. I’ll come back for it.”
Ticket or whatever. Translation: DUI. Not like it’s her first.
“Gracie, we’ve got to go.” She brushes her hair out of her face, her usually messy ponytail messier than ever. “Get my suitcase out from under the bed, will you?”
I watch her for a few seconds. Usually, I’d say okay. Usually, I’d say yes. But this time, she’s asking me to leave the only town I’ve ever known. She’s asking me to leave Luca and Emmy. She’s asking me to finish high school in some strange new city, only to rope myself to retail jobs or waitressing for the rest of my life so she can steal my tips out of my Wizard of Oz jewelry box.
This time her whims are riding on the tails of a car accident that totaled our car and hurt my girlfriend, and her every movement right now has this tone of panic to it that’s setting me on edge. Or more on edge. I’m already hanging off a cliff here.
“Gracie!” Mom snaps. “Suitcase. Now. We’re catching the six a.m. bus.”
“Why are we in such a hurry?” I ask as I reach under the bed and grab her suitcase handle. It slides reluctantly over the carpet, and I wonder what Mom’s stuffed in there to give the appearance of a clean room. Her soldering iron, maybe. That thing’s heavy as hell.
“I’m just ready to get out of here,” she says. “And I have an old friend in Portland I want to look up.”
“An old friend.”
“Yes, Gracie, Jesus Christ. I do have friends outside of this hick town.”
If she does, it’s news to me. The only friends she could possibly have that don’t live in Cape Katie are skeezes she hooked up with at Ruby’s.
“What about our stuff at Pete’s?” I ask.
“He’ll mail it to us! Now, for god’s sake, enough questions and open that up for me.”
To buy myself some time and try to figure out what the hell to do, I slowly unzip her suitcase. I flip the top open and suck in a breath when I see it’s not full of her soldering iron or jewelry materials or old magazines.
It’s full of bottles. Five of them. All Grey Goose vodka. Some of them blueberry flavored, some of them lemon, but all of them empty.
Is Maggie okay?
After you graduate . . .
“Oh, shit,” Mom whispers.
I glance up to see her frozen in front of me.
“I forgot those were in there.”
“You forgot . . .” But my voice trails off, shock replacing coherent thought. Standing up, I back away from the suitcase. All the liquor she drained in what had to have been the past couple of days, because she definitely didn’t flee Pete’s with a bag full of empty bottles. My back collides with the wall, but my eyes stay on those bottles. They almost look pretty, the geese flying free over the soft colors on the label.
“We’ll just leave them on the bed,” Mom says. She kneels down and starts emptying the suitcase onto the mattress, one-armed and one bottle at a time. They clink together roughly, so hard I’m amazed they don’t shatter. “Housekeeping will take care of it.”
For some reason, all I can think about are those bubbles Eva and I blew aboard Emmaline, the two of us viewing the world through tiny slivers of color. It was beautiful.
But it wasn’t real.
Each bubble eventually burst.
Each firework fizzled out.
Each lens got stripped away, and each girl saw the world like it was, all nakedness and reality and live action.
Where love gets all mixed up with duty and scared and lonely and no way out.
But escape comes in more than one form, I guess, because I help my mother pack. A voice whispers in the back of my mind, asking me what I want. What I need. What I should do. I don’t know any of the answers. So I keep loading up my mother’s suitcase with her things, good things like toothbrushes and clean underwear. If I don’t, who will? If I leave her now—?if I leave her ever—?how many more bottles will pile up in the next hotel room?
An hour later I get on a bus with my mother.
Portland is huge and beautiful. Cobblestone sidewalks under my feet, Portland Harbor shimmering under the afternoon sun just behind the red and blue buildings and steepled churches. If it weren’t for this knot of dread in my stomach, it would feel exciting, but it’s hard to get pumped up about anything when you’re not sure where you’ll be sleeping that night. When you can’t get your mind off a pile of empty bottles abandoned on an unmade hotel bed.
We wander the downtown area for a while, hauling our suitcases behind us, their wheels bumping into tourists and over cobblestones. Mom’s eyes peel through the streets. For what, I’m not quite sure. A watering hole, most likely. I follow her, numb and obedient like a puppy that’s been kicked in the side one too many times, relieved to still have something.