“It was an emotional day,” she says. I want to ask what, exactly, I did to make her so furious. But I don’t want to bring it up when she seems . . . not mad.
“I know. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you into that situation.” I rub at the dull headache that lives above my eyebrow. “That wasn’t fair of me. It’s not your problem, and—”
She places her fingertips over my mouth, halting my clunky apology. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Will you come over to my house and make me dinner? My mom’s driving down to San Francisco for a gallery opening.”
And just in case I was going to say no, she drops her hand and kisses me. I pull her in, hands behind her neck. This girl witnessed my mom having a meltdown. And me having a meltdown because I have no idea what I’m doing. And she still comes back.
“Ew!” Leah shrieks from across the lawn. “Vivi! That’s my brother.”
I look down at Vivi. Wipe a smudge of blue from her jaw. “Wow, lucky you. Covered in sidewalk chalk, getting heckled by a five-year-old.”
She smiles, like she’s in on a really good secret and says quietly, “I like it.”
The damnedest thing is, she does.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vivi
“You told me you were taking my car to San Jose to go shopping, Vivian!” I thought my mom would be gone by the time I got back from Jonah’s. But there she was, all dolled up for the gallery event, walking out to the car as I zoomed back from Jonah’s on the Vespa. She marched me inside, face as crimson as her skirt.
“I was! For a Vespa! I told you I wanted one!” The very nice Vespa salesmen loaded it into my mom’s car, and I drove it back to Verona Cove, and I had a neighbor help me get it out of the car, and now it’s mine! Powder blue and quintessentially me—my mother cannot ruin this. “Why are you freaking out? I bought a helmet!”
It’s a totally sensible purchase. I already have my motorcycle license because the guy I was dating when I turned sixteen had a bike. And it’s a GT—fast enough for the highway! Now I won’t have to borrow her car all the time.
“This was thousands of dollars, Vivian.” I hate that she keeps saying my full name like it’s a swearword. “From a credit card you stole from my wallet!”
“It’s my card! And money Grandma left me! It’s not stealing when it’s mine!”
Her voice becomes hushed, scary. “I confiscated that card from you because you couldn’t act responsibly with it. It was understood that purchases go through me first.”
I am incandescent with rage, lighting up the kitchen with the redness of my face. “Stop treating me like a child! Do you even hear yourself? I’ll be eighteen next year!”
Her eyes narrow, but I can still see her pupils trying to pierce into me. “You’re not taking your pills, are you?”
“YES! I! AM!” I am taking them. Well, one of them. The other, I’m taking, too! To the cliff every day so I can watch them fall to their deaths.
“Let me see your purse.”
“What? No! Why?” But then I realize: I have nothing to hide. “Fine. Here.”
She extracts both prescription bottles and dumps the pills out on the table. She counts them and finds—I’m sure—the exact amount there’d be if I were swallowing them all daily.
I see her shoulders sag, in defeat or relief I’m not sure.
“You can’t blame me for being worried. This is how it started last time. Next thing I know, you’ll be getting another tattoo without permission!”
My eyes blur over with angry, hurt, everything-all-at-once tears. She knows I hate the stupid watercolor lotus inked on my side, that I’m getting it removed, that I recoil from it. “Don’t talk to me about last time! I’m having a wonderful summer, and I’m better, and you’re ruining it by not trusting me.”
She has no idea. She was there, but she has no idea how scary it got—like my brain, my body, my whole life was on fast-forward and I couldn’t push stop or even pause. How low it got after, living with what had happened. And then how numb. How much I missed feeling music in my bones.
I remember so much of it, and I would surrender my best vintage sewing patterns to forget. My mom doesn’t know the worst of it because I’ve never told her, because saying it out loud would be reliving it, because I know she’d never look at me the same way again.
“I think I’ll cancel tonight,” she says quietly, but she’s bluffing—she has to be. The gallery is showing one of her paintings.
“Well, do whatever you want, but I won’t even be here,” I say, as controlled and prim as I can muster. “I’m going over to Jonah’s. He’s making me dinner.”
Okay, he’s coming over here so we can be alone, but eh—details, schmetails.