“Oh, darling, when I dream of Japan, I am always on my own. But don’t fret—maybe I can visit you in Jackson Hole! Over Christmas, that would be the best! That’s the one thing about Verona Cove that I can’t quite imagine, Christmas without a little dusting of snow. OH! We should have Christmas in July! Wouldn’t that be a gas, let’s do that right now! There’s got to be a holiday shop year-round, right?”
She turns to me, the painting all but forgotten. The costume, the darling, the be a gas lingo. It’s like watching old movies has caused her to develop a new facet of her personality.
“It’s August first,” I say.
“Is it?” She turns to me. “Well, I’ll be damned. Summer slipping through our fingertips, quelle tragique . . . alas. Next thing you know it’ll be back to school, and . . .”
Vivi takes a deep inhale. I take my moment to get a few words in. “I yelled at Bekah and Isaac.”
“I’m still thinking I might convince my mom to let me finish senior year here, which would be so fabulous, really . . .” She’s prattling on. I slide my palm around one of her arms. The touch makes her meet my eyes.
“Viv. Did you hear me? I screamed at my little brother and sister.”
I can barely see her blue eyes, blinking beneath the overpowering eye makeup. “Welllll . . . did they deserve it? Because sometimes you have to scream to be heard and sometimes you have to open your lungs and let the words fly because they’re inside you and have to get out, know what I mean? And—”
“No,” I say, defeated. I release her arm from my grasp. “No, they didn’t deserve it. They’re little kids! But I’m so tired of them fighting. I called them assholes.”
“Hey!” Vivi says. “Do you think the hardware store is still open?”
“What?”
“The hardware store. I have some stuff I need for projects, and I just want it now so I can keep working, and . . .”
She’s had a bad week. I get that. I’m relieved to see her up and about, but why the hell isn’t she hearing me? Maybe she needs it spelled out for her.
“Viv. I screwed up. Bad. I don’t know what to do.”
She tilts her head back, staring up at the ceiling. “My ceiling is driving me mad, being half-painted, so I should do that tonight, but I hate, hate, I mightily loathe doing the edges.”
All right, that’s it. I’m pissed. The one time I need to unleash, and she can’t even pretend to pay attention. “You know what, Viv? Fuck it. I don’t even know why I came here.”
“Such language, Jonah Daniels,” she says, though she seems unfazed. “You ain’t the only sucker with problems, honey child.”
“You’re acting crazy, all right? Are you drunk?”
“HEY.” She whirls on me, eyes blazing. Her fingers are snapping at her sides, over and over. Is she stoned? No. Too hyper. “I’m in the midst of a stroke of creative genius, and you cannot go flinging despicable words at me. I’m not drunk except on art and music and life.”
She’s lost me. I’m spooked, to be honest. I thought I was coming loose at the seams, but apparently Vivi is too. If she can’t turn off her Vivi-ness for a few minutes to help me when I really need it, then I’m done. “Forget it, Viv. I’m glad you’re having a great night. I am having a shitty night, but who cares about me, right?”
“UGH, Jonah, stop treating me like I am the antagonist in the play of self-pity that you are writing. I am not your bad guy, and I am not your princess. I am me, and I am my own. You cannot REDUCE me! So just STOP. KILLING. MY. CREATIVE. ENERGY.” The snap of her fingers, frantic now. “You can’t kill it! I’m having a breakthrough!”
Here’s what I learned from the past five minutes: you can’t out-crazy Vivi Alexander. On the grouchy to blissful spectrum, she spends zero time in the middle. She wallops me with the change in her moods like a one-two punch. Thrilled! Pissed! And right now, with her glare burning into my skin, she hates me. The feeling is mutual, and I slam the door behind me.
I’m at Felix’s house minutes later, buzzed on adrenaline. It was just instinct, coming here, and I have no plan. I have only the aftershocks of a meltdown.
The moment I turn to go, I hear Ellie’s voice. “Jonah?”
She’s standing at the side of the house holding a garden hose, half-lit by the setting sun. I want to take off running.
“I’m almost done,” she calls. “Wait one sec, okay?”
So I stay standing on the sidewalk like the jackass that I am. I watch Ellie spray the red dahlias and the gloriosa daisies with water. My mom used to garden. Watering the plants was one of my chores, too. Our yard is bare this year.
Ellie shuts off the water and coils the hose back up. There are a lot of reasons why I like Ellie—why I’ve always liked Ellie, even when it wasn’t cool to be friends with girls. She’s so nice that she could probably feed a deer out of the palm of her hand like one of the princesses in Leah’s movies. But, in junior high, I saw her punch Patrick Lowenstein in the stomach after he called her older brother a *. It wasn’t because she was sticking up for Diego. I know that because she yelled, “GIRL PARTS DO NOT MEAN THE SAME THING AS ‘WIMPY’!” right before her fist doubled Patrick over. I thought that was so damn cool.
“Hey,” she says, walking toward me. “I thought that was you. Do you want to come in? My mom could probably heat up din—”