Scarface: I mean maybe he hasn’t hooked up with her though
WillianShipper2000: yea, who’s to say? ppl wait to have sex for all kinds of reasons
xLoupxGaroux: Willian, babygirl, we know your deal. But what most teenagers do at afterprom isn’t getting a hamburger with your dad after the Purity Ball.
Willian goes to one of those schools where “sex ed” is when the health teacher passes an unwrapped Peppermint Pattie around the classroom, finally grosses out a student by asking him to eat it, and compares it to a girl who won’t wait until marriage.
xNorthStarx: I’ve been sending my friends Ordinaria chapters and one of them was pretty indignant about the emotional cheating.
xLoupxGaroux: “Emotional cheating??” God, that is such a hetero conceit I want to vom.
xNorthStarx: Anyway, my friends want more! And they’re not even Lycanthrope fans.
Werehead66: I just want Gideon to be HONEST with both of them. No more of this ambiguity. You know?? The longer he drags this out, the easier he is to dislike. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you know?
Scarface: What a weird idiom though because what else can you do with cake? But I get what you mean. Believe me.
Werehead66: John St. Clair only waited two seasons to hook William and Gillian up. Enough with the will-they-or-won’t-they, I want a true love scene.
xLoupxGaroux: OK, fine. If I have to live vicariously through the shipping of a straight couple, I’ll do it. Just consummate one of them already.
WillianShipper2000: maybe he’ll realize ashbot is the ONE (and also prettier but I know i know it doesn’t matter because #feminism)
Werehead66: No way! #Sideon-shipper for life!
xNorthStarx: IDK, guys, I’m kind of still #Gidbot.
WillianShipper2000: hell yeeeeeaaaa
xLoupxGaroux: I’m gonna need more chapters
DavidaTheDeadly: Same.
xNorthStarx: SAME.
Chapter 17
USUALLY I’D RATHER BE BURIED ALIVE AS THE SACRIFICIAL virgin in an Aztec tomb than wake up for school on Monday. This morning, though, I wake up feeling almost happy to head to homeroom with damp hair at seven forty-five A.M. sharp, like I’ve just emerged from Dawn’s Pinterest board of inspirational quotes.
Gideon and I were up late, texting back and forth about Lycanthrope High graphic novels. He’s supposed to lend me the last couple of Sam Kieth installments, which were sold out at the comic book store. I ended up picking up some other stuff of his. (Side note: His other stuff is the shit too.) As I’m toasting an English muffin in the kitchen, Dawn trudges out of her bedroom, picking leftover crusty mascara off her lashes. She walks by me to get a plate; her pores smell like a whiskey distillery.
“Shut up and sit down, young lady,” she croaks. “I’ll finish breakfast.”
After a rough night out, she always feels guilty and goes all Attack of the Mom on me. (See: the only time she ever says things like “young lady.”) “Already done.” I toss a piping hot muffin onto my plate. I butter it as she hollows out hers with a fork. Her carb-calories fear makes her turn everything into a bread bowl.
“Don’t forget, we’re having dinner with Brian tonight.”
I slump forward onto the table. “Nooooo.”
“I know it’ll be hellish for you,” she says faux-sympathetically, “but at least you have Friday to look forward to.”
“Friday? What’s Friday?”
“Your dad’s book party.”
I brighten instantly—an already awesome week has improved exponentially. I was so wrapped up in the Gideon drama that I’d totally forgotten that his launch was this week.
“We discussed it, and he said you should spend the weekend with them in Brooklyn and come back Sunday night.”
“Okay!”
I carry my plate over to the sink, musing, “I didn’t even know you still talked.”
“Well, we do.”
“What could you possibly have to say to each other?”
“We were married for twelve years, Scar.” I wait. She shrugs. “And he sometimes calls me when he’s not sure how to take care of the baby.”
“The blind leading the blind, huh?”
She jokingly glares at me, then says, “I don’t know. I think I did okay.”
“Give me time! Soon I can be charged as an adult.”
She checks her iPhone. “It’s eight ten. Go get an education.”
I’m shoving books in my locker hastily before the bell rings when Avery rushes up to me, uncharacteristically late. I suddenly understand where the phrase “a spring in her step” comes from. She’s practically Riverdancing.
“Hiii,” she chirps.
“Who put meth in your Cheerios?”
“Not funny, meth is a serious problem, Mike and I almost did it last night,” she says in one breath.
“Whoa. What? Really?”
She nods about fifty times.
“How was it?”
She beams and raises her eyebrows a few times, like a small overachieving Groucho Marx.
“Almost, though? Okay, like, what base, exactly?”
“Well, I did some research on this—”