So she put me on the couch, facing the wall, with her sitting behind me. It had felt weird, at first, but once I got used to it, I found out she was right. It was a lot easier to just say what I thought if I wasn’t checking for someone else’s reaction before continuing.
When I admitted as much she told me I should try it in real life sometime.
Now Dr. Gabriella asks, “If Gretchen isn’t your friend why was she at your birthday party?”
I look at my hands, pick at a hangnail there. “I don’t know . . . can you have friends you don’t actually like sometimes?”
“Yes,” she says. “Friendship is complicated. So Gretchen said something that upset Tress?”
“Yeah.” I reach up, scratch my itching scalp. “She said she stole my tamp—”
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop you.” Behind me, Dr. Gabriella gets up, her high heels clicking across the wooden floor of her office. She calls my mom in from the waiting room, and I sit up, worried.
What did I do? Did I say something wrong?
“April,” Dr. Gabriella says. “Did you know that Felicity has lice?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have her in my house again, that’s all I’m saying,” Jill Astor says as she makes a face, primly pinching two fingers together as she slides a nit off a strand of Gretchen’s hair.
We’re having a post-birthday-party party.
Mom had driven home from my appointment with red cheeks, her voice cracking as she yelled at Dad over the phone. “Dr. Gabriella has to fumigate her couch. And I have to call all the other moms. I have to tell them their children got lice at my daughter’s birthday party.”
She ordered in food and invited the girls and their moms for what she called a “nit-picking” party. The other moms brought bottles of wine with them, making a joke out of it. Brynn, Gretchen, Maddie, and I had lined up as our moms poured stinky stuff on our heads, told us to keep ourselves busy on our phones, and started drinking.
They’re blaming Tress. And they’re not being quiet about it.
“First she runs off, scaring everyone half to death,” Jill goes on. “And now this!” She waves one gloved hand at the four of us, heads bowed, wet hair hanging in curtains over our faces as we lean forward around the card table Mom had set up.
“Where is Tress?” Brynn’s mom, Angela, asks. On my head, I feel my mom’s hands stiffen.
“You didn’t really expect April to invite her here, did you?” Jill asks, refilling her wineglass.
“How else is the poor girl supposed to get clean?” Angela says, keeping her eyes on the back of Brynn’s head. “Do you really think that old man is going to look after her?”
“Well, he obviously doesn’t,” Jill says. “Gretchen’s head was just crawling—”
“Felicity isn’t too bad,” my mom pipes up.
“Neither is Maddie,” adds Kira Anho, who had been quiet until now and has hardly taken a drink. Mom had to push her to take a glass at all, saying that she wasn’t our principal yet.
“Brynn hardly has any,” her mom says.
“Well, Black kids don’t really get lice, though, do they?” Jill says, quaffing the rest of her wine.
“Jill!” my mom says. “Maybe you should lay off the wine.”
Everyone laughs, like they’re supposed to. Everyone except Brynn and Angela. Brynn is next to me, her arm pressed against mine. It’s stiff, all the muscles tightened up, waiting for the moment to pass, or wanting to strike out, slap the laughter out of the air. I don’t know which.
“What?” Gretchen’s mom says. “That’s what I heard. I mean, maybe it’s different since she’s mixed race—”
“Did you hear that the dollar store is closing?” Mrs. Anho pipes up, shutting down Gretchen’s mom.
“No, that’s too bad,” my mom says, happy for the subject change. “I mean, we don’t shop there, of course, but it will be a loss for a lot of families.”
I can’t see Brynn’s face, our hair hanging between us. I can’t see Angela, either, but I can feel a wall of tension behind me, her quiet rage something that my friend has inherited, something she puts on like a coat for a cold day at recess. Except I guess in Amontillado it’s always a cold day at recess for Brynn and Angela. My thumbs fly across my phone as I text her.
I don’t think Tress had lice.
I think it was Gretchen.
Next to me, her phone vibrates. Seconds later, a bubble appears on my screen.
Yep.
And her mom’s a bitch.
I stifle a giggle, not wanting anyone to know we’re texting, or that Brynn just called Jill Astor a bitch. I look down at my phone, at the texts I sent.
I don’t think Tress had lice.
I think it was Gretchen.
I know it’s true. Gretchen had been itching the night of my party, not Tress. Mom had burned all the bedding, the little red mess from Maddie’s melting Popsicle going up in flames along with Gretchen’s lice, still clinging to my pillow—the one she’d used.
I think about Dr. Gabriella, and how she’d turned my back to her, how looking at a painting of trees instead of her face had made it easier to tell the truth. I think about her telling me to try that in real life sometime.
I don’t have a painting of trees, but I do have my hair falling around me in a curtain right now, blocking off everyone else so I can’t see them. There’s a script right in front of me, the words written out so that all I have to do is read them. Say them aloud.
My mom tilts my head a different direction and I minimize my texts.
I don’t say the words. I’m learning.
Girls who live in a trailer with their grandfather at an animal zoo have lice.
Girls who have private therapists do not.
Hours later my scalp is pink and tingling, and Mom is putting fresh sheets on my bed. They’re brand-new, with the little lines from being folded in the package still pressed firmly into them, even when she snaps them in the air above my mattress. A year ago I would’ve been under them, yelping as Mom tucked in the corners, made fake cries about the weird lump in the center, and tried to push it back down while I giggled, pressing back.
Now I’m squashed into a corner of the room, holding tight to a brand-new stuffed animal that had taken the place of all my burned ones, and trying to put together the perfect sentence to call my mom a liar.
“Mom . . . I think Gretchen was the one with lice. And I think you know it, too.”
She doesn’t stop moving, only gives the pillow she’s sliding into its new case an unnecessarily hard thumping. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You all ended up with it.”
“It matters when you’re blaming Tress,” I say.
“I’m not blaming Tress,” Mom says tightly, stretching out over the bed to smooth the corners. “Jill Astor is.”
“But you didn’t tell her she was wrong!” I yell, my fingers digging deep into the teddy bear. “You didn’t tell her it was Gretchen! And you didn’t defend Tress!”
A little voice in my head adds something much worse: Neither did you.
“Honey . . . ,” Mom sighs, resting her head on my pillow. She looks at me, my back flattened into the corner, a death grip on my teddy bear.