That’s the kind of car James drove. He’d gotten it from a guy who’d crashed into a guardrail and whose wife was making him sell it. James knocked out the worst of the dents and touched up the black paint and added a little horsepower.
He drove it to meet me for our first date.
I ease my gearshift into drive and pull out. I plan to swing by the library first to do my checking again, even though I did it only yesterday. Now more than ever, I must remain vigilant.
Only when I’m certain the barriers I’ve erected around me and Catherine aren’t in danger of being breached will I head home.
It almost feels like James is waiting for me there. In a way, I guess he is since I need to sink deeply into another memory of him and write more in my journal.
On the night of my first date with James, my father had to work late.
He said Timmy and I should stop for burgers on the way home from Poms practice, so we did. We spread out our books in the booth and Timmy chewed his pencil eraser as he worked his way through a page of pre-algebra equations. I was of no help since I’d already forgotten everything I’d learned on the subject. I drafted my English essay. The topic was foreshadowing in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Usually I dreaded school reading, but something about this slim play spoke to me: teenagers in love destroying their lives.
Trust me, I get the irony.
I expected my dad to be home by the time Timmy and I arrived. But he wasn’t.
My dad worked for my mother’s family business. It’s how they met. My grandparents owned a bunch of houses close to the local college, which they rented out at obscene rates to students who needed to live close to campus and had few other options. Timmy and I sometimes tagged along with my dad when he worked on the places, and I couldn’t believe the scam my mother’s family ran. They partitioned off rooms to rent what should have been a four-bedroom home as an eight- or nine-bedroom one. The spaces were barely big enough for twin beds and dressers, and the kitchens and bathrooms were a mess, with patched linoleum floors, cracks in the walls, and iffy appliances.
College kids and their parents put up with it because they knew the leases were temporary—those houses were just stepping-stones as they moved toward a better life—plus no one cared if they threw wild parties or let trash bags pile up in the living room. It wasn’t like they could do a ton of damage to the places, and if they did, my mother’s family simply kept their security deposit. I’m pretty sure they kept most of the deposits even when there wasn’t any new damage.
My mother—your grandmother—had a thick streak of evil running through her, as you’ve probably gleaned by now. She inherited it from her mother, who was a cold, prejudiced, greedy jerk. And that’s putting it mildly.
I heard my grandmother refer to my dad as a spic once. I didn’t understand what it meant, and I couldn’t find the word in the dictionary. From the way the word twisted her lipsticked mouth into an ugly shape, I knew it was an awful one.
Whenever I worry I’ve got half of my mother’s side in me, I remind myself I also have half of my dad’s.
A lot of the time when he worked late, he did it off the clock. Like when there was a serial rapist in the area and some of the college girls were getting scared, my father installed locks on each of their bedroom doors. He paid for those bolts himself, which I knew because I was with him at the hardware store when he bought them.
His name is Mateo. If you’d turned out to be a boy, that would have been your middle name.
The first night James and I planned to go out, my dad was helping some students deal with a plumbing crisis.
After we finished our burgers and homework and drove home, Timmy and I sat in the driveway for a few minutes, but we couldn’t put off going inside for long. Dusk was settling, and I only had thirty minutes before I had to meet James.
The house was dead quiet when I opened the kitchen door, which was unusual. My mother typically fell asleep on the living room couch in front of the TV.
I waited a minute, but couldn’t hear a thing, so I motioned for Timmy to get out of the car. We had our routine choreographed as intricately as any of those I’d practiced for Poms. Timmy closed the car door as quietly as possible. I stepped into the kitchen first and looked around quickly. (I’d learned to do that the hard way because my mom once threw her empty wine glass at me when I came in. Luckily, her aim was terrible.) Then I motioned for Timmy to join me.
I couldn’t see the living room from my vantage point. But I was pretty sure my mother was splayed out in her usual spot.
Most of the lights were off. I left them that way, even though the house was draped in shadows, as Timmy and I crept upstairs.
The upper level seemed completely still.
I didn’t let down my guard, though. I checked Timmy’s bedroom and waited until he slipped through his door and closed it behind him.
Across the hall, my parents’ bedroom door was ajar. The slice of the room I could see was dark and empty.
I breathed out and went into my room. My mother was probably passed out on the couch and would likely stay that way for the rest of the night.
I moved quickly, no longer worried about being so quiet. I grabbed clean cutoffs and a top and bra and underpants and carried them to the hall bathroom. I slipped out of my sneakers and pulled off my clothes, wrinkling my nose as I raised my arms and caught a whiff of old sweat from Poms practice.
I took the world’s fastest shower, then dried off and dressed in record time. I liked makeup—a lot—but I only had time to apply a few swipes of mascara and cherry-red lip gloss.
I thought I heard a noise, so I cracked open the bathroom door and listened hard for a minute. But nothing had changed. Timmy’s door was shut, my parents’ door was ajar. The house was quiet.
I had two minutes before I needed to leave.
This next part is so hard to write.…
I shut the door and reached for the blow-dryer and turned it on.
You know how you flip your head upside down and aim the dryer at your roots to get more body into your hair?
That’s what I was focused on: a little more body in my hair.
The roaring noise of the dryer filled my ears. For one hundred twenty seconds, I couldn’t hear anything else.
Then I turned the dryer off.
Kids cry in a lot of different ways. Whether they’re angry, sad, injured, or tired, it sounds different. I’d heard Timmy cry in all of those ways. I thought I knew all of the ways there were for a boy to cry.
But I didn’t.
I can’t remember how I got from the bathroom into Timmy’s room, but I swear my feet didn’t touch the ground. I was in one place, then another, without having consciously moved.
Timmy was flat on his back on his bed, with my mother pinning him down. Her knees were on his elbows, preventing him from moving, as she slapped his face. His nose was bleeding.
I went wild. I flung myself at her, yanking her off my brother and pushing her across the room.
She was bigger than me, but she was also drunk.
She recovered quickly. She grabbed me by my upper arms and slammed me into the wall, cursing me. Calling me a bitch and a whole lot worse.
I could hear Timmy begging her to stop. My sweet little brother, who came to my room when he woke from a bad dream because he knew I’d protect him, had a line of blood trickling from his nose.