I stare at him, stunned. What the hell happened to the fourteen-year-old kid who gave me a precious sea glass, the equivalent of a rare diamond?
“Oh, sweetheart, we’ll be over when I say we’re over.”
She’s a work of art
And as such
There’s nothing more devastating
Than watching her break
“We can grab Starbucks on the way back home.”
That’s his peace offering after eating me out against a filthy auto-shop sign with his girlfriend not even one hundred feet away.
Penn offers the olive branch in his taciturn tone the morning after Lenny’s while I’m sitting at the kitchen island with my family, sipping coffee and messing on my phone. Since I haven’t slept a wink, analyzing the entire timeline of our relationship, I decide to play along. This is what I’ve come up with so far:
Him having a girlfriend was speculation until yesterday, not a fact. When I asked, he dodged, and I never asked again. While it is true that my research should have been more thorough, he went home with Blythe so openly, I didn’t think about it too much.
Yesterday, I was disoriented and shocked, which is why I let what happened, happen. But it won’t happen anymore. I can’t have an affair with the guy who lives under my roof and hates me for screwing up his possibly dead sister’s life.
He may have taken all my important firsts so far, but he is not going to take the big V-card.
Penn grabs his varsity jacket and motions for Bailey to move it. They’re going to the library together. They’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’m jealous of Bails. I’m jealous of Penn. But most of all, I’m jealous of the fact they are capable of forming a real relationship.
All eyes dart from newspapers and iPads and shiny chrome magazines to us.
“No thanks, I’m going to Blythe’s.”
Her name makes both of us pause. Penn nods curtly, clearing his throat. Dad is looking back and forth between us, reading between the lines.
“Penn, don’t pork Daria’s friends,” he drawls.
Melody gasps. “Jaime!”
“What? I’m not the one doing it!”
“Yes, sir.” Penn plucks a donut from the open white box in the center of the table and takes a bite. “Happy not to touch anyone Daria is affiliated with. Her personality might be contagious.”
I roll my eyes, knowing I am being watched, and that Dad—the only person on my team in this house—will flip his shit if he finds out Penn touched me.
“Hate you, bro.” I smile sweetly.
“Indifferent to you, sis,” Penn says midbite, ruffling my hair as he ambles out the door with Bails. It makes my heart flutter in my chest like a butterfly, but at the same time, I’m also sick to my stomach. Penn really is like a brother to Bailey.
A brother who also had his fingers and tongue in her older sister’s privates.
I spend the day stalking Adriana on social media. She is gorgeous, and her baby daughter, Harper, is adorable. Harper is fair-skinned with green eyes, just like Penn. There are a ton of pictures of Addy and Harper together, and two of them with Penn. He always looks at them like they’re the apple of his eye.
Apples. He hasn’t given me apples in a while. Does that mean he thinks he’s already conquered me?
At night, another crisis ensues. Mel doesn’t come to check on me for the first time since I was born. She doesn’t tuck me in bed, kiss my forehead, and tell me she loves me. Probably because she doesn’t.
Maybe she’s given up on me after the ice-cream parlor stunt. Perhaps, she wants me to pack my stuff and move to college. I’m her glowing, shiny failure. Blackhearted and empty.
I tell myself that I don’t care, but inside, my guts rip to shreds and bleed all over my stomach.
I take my little black book to my mother’s in-house ballet studio. She turned a part of our basement into a well-lit workroom when we first moved here, and since then, she’s spent a considerable amount of time here, mostly with Bailey. I can still hear the echo of their laughter crawling up the basement stairs every summer evening while I was holed up in my room, climbing the walls.
Mel never invited me here, so now I come here on my own, inviting myself.
The night I found out Via ran away, I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the studio wearing full ballet gear. I ran my gaze along my leotard-clad body, knowing I was too clumsy, too curvy, too Daria to be a ballerina. Melody found her joy in other girls. Girls more athletic, and disciplined, and regal. Girls like Via. I got jealous, and I started acting up. Instead of pulling me in and telling me that I was irreplaceable, Mel let me go.
So I drifted like a balloon in the sky, waiting for someone to anchor me back down, but no one ever did. It’s been years since she stuck her nose in my life and figured out what was going on. Me and Principal Prichard are doing things we shouldn’t be doing. I have a journal where I confess all the horrible things I do to people. My friends are backstabbers who hate me, and I haven’t laughed in my family’s presence in over four years.
Four years.
Four unnoticed years.
A tear escapes my eye, rolling down my cheek. The door opens, and Penn walks in. He is quiet, somber. He is always quiet and somber. And present. I can feel his presence like blood flowing in my body. Vital and warm and full of my DNA. The problem with Penn is that he has a girlfriend, but he feels like mine when he’s around, and that’s dangerous.
“How did you know I was here?” I wipe the tear before he can see it.
He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought it was a wine cellar and was counting on some booze.”
I roll my eyes, sniffing.
He plops down on the floor. Yanking me by the hem of my shirt, he motions for me to sit beside him, then he knocks his knee against mine. “Talk.”
“With the enemy? No thank you.”
I drink him in. The curl of his dark blond hair falling across his forehead. His sulking scowl. The love bites across his neck that I didn’t do. I imagine Adriana nibbling and kissing and biting him, then stand, unable to calm myself down. I jog toward the door.
He gallops behind me, tugging me back to him.
“Talk, Daria. Fucking talk.”
“Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”
His lips curl in revulsion. I think I really pissed him off this time around.
He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his.
“No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”
He pulls back from me, digs in the back pocket of his low-hanging skinny jeans, and takes out a single house key with a blue plastic string tied around it. He throws it into my hands. I catch it.
My eyes widen. How did he…?
“Stole it from your pompoms.” He looks away, walking to the other side of the room, pacing like a tiger in a cage. This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.