Mom: “You hate my family!”
Dad: “I don’t hate your family. How dare you accuse me of that? I just don’t know why in our twenty-six years of marriage we’ve never been allowed to live farther than a five-mile radius from them. Except for a few god-”—I covered my ears for the rest of the word that rhymed with slam—“months in Fiji.”
Mom (now shrieking): “I WILL NOT MOVE TO CONNECTICUT!”
(The f-word that isn’t fudge also appeared in that shriek, but my ears redacted it.)
Just then my phone dinged with a text message from Dash. I’m so sorry about the sweater! Are you ok?
I certainly was not okay. Connecticut?!?! How was that distant place a conceivable option? I knew headmasters usually lived on the grounds at boarding schools, but the school that hired Dad had said it was fine if he lived in the city and commuted, even if it was a two-hour commute each way. He could work on the train. (Or so Grandpa and I had been told soon after my parents returned from Fiji. Perhaps it hadn’t been a whole truth, but a convenient fib to get us through the early days of Grandpa’s recovery.)
I’d heard my parents fight before, obviously. But their “fights” were more like typical old-people bickering, and they usually shushed it if Langston or I was in hearing range. But this fight? It was loud, it was epic, and it was scary.
The fight would never have happened if it hadn’t been for the other night. Dash’s parents must have infected mine with their dysfunction and callous disregard for each other. One could also say it was my fault for having invited both of Dash’s parents, but that was actually their fault. I invited his mom, who declined, so I thought it was safe to invite his dad instead, as a gesture of goodwill that this stupid season is supposed to be all about. It was Dash’s mom’s fault for saying she couldn’t come and then coming anyway, and Dash’s fault for bringing her, and Dash’s dad’s fault for even agreeing to come just to make a point that he could be all supportive dad–like for once in his relationship with Dash. It was Dash’s fault for running into his dad on the street while he was with his mom but still continuing on to the tree-lighting party. Dash had to have known no good would come of it. Those people together are toxic. No wonder Dash is so snarly.
But now it was me who felt snarly. “BE QUIET!” I shouted. I hurled my phone against the wall I shared with Mom and Dad. Stupid text messages about sweaters. Stupid fights.
That stupid sweater, charred and ruined. Not even the stupid cat would sleep on it. That sweater was such a symbol of everything wrong between me and Dash. Trying too hard plus good intentions does not necessarily equal happy fairy-tale endings.
Fairy tales aren’t even real. They’re stupid, like everything else. Fudge. STRESS!
After the thud of my phone against the wall, my parents’ voices lowered, but their arguing continued. I could hear it in occasional loud intonations of “Your fault!” and “Just how many people exist in this marriage, anyway?”
I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I didn’t want to stay at home and listen to this upsetting nonsense any longer. Connecticut?!? What could that place have to recommend it besides New Haven pizza?
My bedroom door opened. “Can I come in?” Langston whispered.
“Can you knock first?” I said, irritated. My brother loses his mind if I don’t knock before going into his room in case his boyfriend is there and they want to be private, but he never knocks first at my bedroom door, since it’s always safe to assume nothing too private is happening in there. That’s its own kind of annoying assumption, because the assumption is right. My family can barely tolerate me having a boyfriend, and that’s only because he’s broody but bookishly non-threatening, and we don’t see each other that much, and he’s never allowed in my room with the door closed, and I still have a curfew.