“What are you doing home?” I asked her.
She moved the base of her wineglass in small, slow circles across the surface of the table, swirling her drink. I could see the liquid leaving little trails along the sides of the glass—“legs,” my dad would say.
“Just waiting for you and your father to get back,” she said, like this was normal. “We need to talk to you.”
I sat down at the table but my insides ignited with worry. So I got up, put a kettle on, and then headed back to my room to change out of my uniform. I texted my dad.
Get home asap. Mom is here and she’s being super weird.
For the first time probably ever, he didn’t text me back right away.
The kettle screamed just as Daddy walked in—a harbinger of what felt like disaster. He was home too early too.
I nearly spilled the hot water as I poured myself a cup of tea, and I asked, “Did someone die?” as I joined them at the kitchen table. Daddy shook his head and untied his bow tie.
My voice cracked. “Is one of you dying?”
“No, honey. No one’s dying,” Mom said.
Daddy slipped his glasses from his face, but a second later he put them back on, and I braced myself to hear some new and awful truth.
“We’re…separating,” Daddy said, and Mom nodded, looking up. She continued where he left off.
“Nothing beyond that has been decided yet. We’ll see what happens after we spend some time apart.”
She released the death grip she had on the stem of her wineglass and reach her hand toward mine. But I moved quickly away.
“Why?” I said, turning to one parent and then the other. Daddy’s chin trembled and he looked at Mom like he was apologizing to her with just his eyes. People who didn’t want to be married anymore weren’t supposed to still communicate like people who were in love. But that was when I realized I hadn’t seen them in the same room together for nearly a month.
“I found an apartment—” Daddy started without answering my question.
“Already?” I cried.
Daddy reached out a hand to me, but I shrank away from him too. “It’ll be available early next month, so that’s when I’ll be moving out. But until then, Baby Girl, nothing much will change.”
“That’s not exactly true, Cliff,” Mom said. She was so calm. It made me feel worse.
“Right,” Daddy said. “Your mother’s right. I’m also going to be leaving Chisholm. I won’t be returning to work there after the holiday break.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. And then I said it again. “I…I just don’t understand.”
Mom cleared her throat in a way that sounded like she was trying to swallow. When I looked at her, I nearly shattered.
“Sometimes feelings just change, Cleo. Sometimes people…outgrow each other.”
Defiantly, I shook my head. “No, that’s not a thing. If you love someone you’re supposed to love them forever.”
Mom said, “Sadly, honey, love isn’t always enough.”
In his Librarian Voice, Daddy said, “One day you’ll understand, honey. You’re still so young.”
I almost knocked my chair over, I stood up so fast. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to dismiss my feelings based on my age. I’m not a two-year-old who’s bumped her head. I’m sixteen and”—my voice cracked as tears spilled over onto my cheeks—“my family is falling apart.” A second later I added, “Everything is.”
My dad encircled his big hand around my wrist like he wanted to hold me in place. But I wrenched out of it easily, because he’s always touched me like he’s afraid I’ll break.
I moved away from the table and back down the hall to my room. I slammed my door. I put on Billie Holiday and I blasted it, letting her sultry, soulful voice fill me up. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering where Daddy would go, how far away it would be, and how often I’d get to see him now that everything was changing. For the millionth time since I’d lost her, I desperately wished Gigi were still alive.
I took out my phone, and despite my earlier hesitations, I texted Layla.
Can you talk?
I waited and waited. I texted her again.
Layla, text me back.
An hour went by without an answer. And then, when I heard a knock on my door, I told whoever it was to go away. I curled into myself and I sobbed like someone had just punched me in the stomach, because that’s what it felt like. I was losing everything and everyone all at once. I texted Layla one more time.
Lay. I need you.
I hated how desperate the text sounded, but nothing else had worked. When she finally texted back, it was after midnight. I was half-asleep in the dark, and the glow from my phone only roused me because it was inches away from my swollen eyes. I sat up, read it, and then threw my phone across the room. It hit one of my snow globes and I heard something shatter.
I told you. I need some space.
WE’RE GOOD
I woke up early the morning after my parents told me about the separation, and I left before anyone else did. The screen of my phone was cracked from when I threw it the night before, and my floor was wet and covered in broken glass. I’d hit my Peter Pan snow globe when I’d pitched my phone across my room, the one Gigi had gotten me for my eighth birthday. Neverland was in pieces below my shelves.
I caught the train into the city, needing the quiet buzz of early-morning Manhattan, and got off at the stop closest to school. I liked watching the city wake itself up. Delivery trucks unloaded everything from kegs to dozens of cases of Snapple, and no one was honking their horn yet. Trash trucks beeped and clicked and crashed as they lifted and emptied the contents of dumpsters into their stained compactors. And the only pedestrians were construction workers, baristas, bakery owners, and people with giant suitcases on their way to the airport or just arriving in the city.
Etta James crooned in my ears as I sat on a cold bench to people-watch. I looked up and noticed that wreaths had been hung on lampposts and that the trees that lined the sidewalk were strung with tiny white lights. I changed my music to Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” and instantly my mood brightened the tiniest bit. For the first time ever, I wanted to skip school. It was unfathomable, the idea of going into that building and not speaking to my dad or Layla. Being alone with my thoughts and Nat’s voice in this decked-out version of the city was a much better alternative.
Just as I was about to take out my wallet to see if I had enough money to buy myself a cup of tea, Jase surfaced from the subway station right beside me.