Bitter End (30 page)

Zack let out a bark of laughter—just one “ha”—but kept playing the game. Bethany, however, set her controller in her lap and
took off her glasses.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said. She didn’t look at me. Zack kept playing, the “ha” his only contribution to the conversation.

“No,” I said. “Listen. I know you guys don’t like him, but he promises he’s going to try to get along and… I think he might
propose to me.”

“Oh. My. God,” Bethany said, picking her controller up out of her lap and tossing it to the side. Zack pressed the pause button
this time and stared at me as Bethany stood up and paced to the rusted refrigerator at the far end of the basement. “You can’t
be serious.”

I hopped off the washer. “Yeah, actually, I am. We’ll be eighteen. Why couldn’t we get married out there?”

She opened the fridge and pulled out an orange soda, popped the top, and took a sip. “Well, for starters, he abuses you, Alex.”
I flinched, blinking. It was the first time she’d ever said so plainly what I’d been denying even to myself.

“He hasn’t done anything in a long time,” I said, which was true. “And it’ll be different if we’re married, because then he
won’t have to deal with the pressure of his parents and school and everything. He’s going to counseling because he wants to
make it better. For us. For our future.”

Zack laughed again—this time like “ha-ha”—but there was no laughter in his face whatsoever. “You’re an idiot,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“He’s right,” Bethany said. “I’d kind of given up on the trip anyway, since you stopped showing any interest. But if
you’re bringing Cole along, I’m out. I won’t have anything to do with that guy.”

“Ditto,” Zack said.

I could feel fury filling me from the toes up. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I shouted. “You’d love to shove me right out
of your little friendship, just like you’ve been trying to do ever since I met Cole. Maybe you should go together, just the
two of you. Better yet, maybe you should take Funny Tina with you. I hear she’s a freaking riot!”

“You’d think you’d be more appreciative,” Bethany said, waving her soda can in my direction.

“I should be more appreciative?” This time I was the one who laughed, a hoarse chuckle.

“Yeah,” she said. “Zack almost got arrested trying to protect you from that asshole. He almost got suspended for defending
you in the locker room. And he got his mouth smashed up. All for you, Alex.”

“Ah,” I said. “So you’re jealous. Because he didn’t do it for you.”

She walked back to where she’d been sitting and set her soda down. “No. Actually, I’ve been too busy being hurt that my best
friend’s been treating me like shit to even care about much of anything else.”

“Oh, well, I’m sorry if I haven’t properly revered you, Your Highness. I’m so sorry that I have a boyfriend and you don’t
because you’ve never had the guts to even talk to the guy you like, much less try to get with him. Or maybe you won’t talk
to Randy Weston because you’re really in
love with Zack. God, Zack, why don’t you just go ahead and do her already, so she can lighten up a little bit?”

Both of them shot angry, shocked looks at me. Zack’s face had gone as gray as the concrete floor. Bethany’s whole body was
red. I’d even shocked myself. I stood there, panting, unsure of what to do next.

I had just sounded… like Cole.

Oh my God. I was turning into him.

“Go home, Alex,” Zack said. He pressed the pause button, and the racing noises started up again.

Bethany wiped her glasses with her shirttail and put them back on, then picked up her controller and started playing, too.

Suddenly it was as if my legs couldn’t move. As if I’d forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other and make myself
go forward. I stood there, my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath, trying to figure out what just had happened.

“I said bye-bye,” Zack said again. No yelling. No cussing. No emotion whatsoever. It was as if he were talking to a stranger.
Or a dog.

“Fine,” I said, trying to sound tough. Trying to save as much face as I could. Trying not to sound like I instantly regretted
what I’d just said. I stomped to the stairs. “But if you guys don’t accept Cole, you don’t accept me. You’re out of my life.”

“Your choice,” Bethany said. Then she muttered some
thing I couldn’t make out under her breath, and Zack mumbled a response.

I crept up the stairs, only to find Zack’s mom standing in the entryway waiting for me. She looked grim. Sort of like a fairy
godmother who’d screwed up and sent someone to a gas chamber instead of to the prince’s ball.

“Oh, honey,” she said, reaching to stroke my hair. “Oh, honey, I’m sure they—did you fight?—things will smooth—Zack and that
boy just don’t—oh, sweetie, I wish there was something I could do to help.”

And suddenly there was something so motherly about her that I wanted nothing more to do with her.
This is all your fault
, I raged inside.
If you hadn’t made it look so good all these years, maybe I wouldn’t have ever missed her.
Maybe I’d be hard like Celia and Shannin, and I’d never have gotten into this mess. I ducked from her touch.

“There isn’t,” I said, and escaped through the twilight-dim cold air, through the yards, back home to my room, where I could
pretend everything made sense.

When I was a little kid, I leafed through the photos of Mom and Dad constantly. After I’d rescued them from the garbage, I’d
hidden them in a shoe box under my bed, and every time I felt sad or lonely I’d get them out and stare at them until I had
every grainy little millimeter of them memorized.

I would tell stories about them. Talk to Mom in them. Tell her she looked beautiful. Imagine what the next frame would look
like if the photographer had snapped another and then another and then another photo of them, making them come alive, like
in the movies.

I had my favorites—the one of their silhouettes sitting cross-legged under a tree, their knees touching; the one of Mom’s
arms being pulled in opposite directions by her friends, her smile so bright; the ones where you could see it in Dad’s face.
His love for her. It was all-consuming.

I used to kneel next to my bed and line them up in what
I imagined their order to be. The one of them on the concrete steps, Dad in a cheesy Hawaiian shirt. All the way to the one
of the amusement park ride, Mom looking so miserable, like she was going to throw up.

Trying to find the perfect order. Holding the one wedding photo (why just one?) in my hand and trying to find exactly the
spot where it belonged. Like if maybe I could get the order right, more photos would suddenly appear in the box: photos of
things that never got to happen because she was gone. Things that would forever happen without her. Christmases and birthdays
and marriages and births. Or maybe, God, I don’t know… just something. Something that would say this life was important, too.
Not just whatever life lived for Mom in Colorado, but this one. The one she had right here.

With me.

My
life.

What I wouldn’t have given for one photo of Mom holding me or standing with me or playing with me and looking happy about
it.

After the fight with Bethany and Zack, I locked my bedroom door and knelt beside my bed. I rummaged behind books and old pencil
boxes from elementary school until my hands landed on the familiar cardboard of the shoe box. I pulled it out and sat on the
bed with it in my lap.

It’d been so long. Would their faces look the same to me now as they did then? Or would I open the box only to discover that
Mom never looked happy? That she only ever
looked like she was trapped on a ride and wanted, more than anything, to just get off.

Slowly, I pulled the lid off the box. My breath caught. There they were. Just as I remembered them. Look. Mom’s smiling. Look.
They were holding hands. Look. They had a happy life, and it wasn’t until Shannin, Celia, and I started showing up in the
frames that she got that distant look in her eyes. It wasn’t until we landed in the photos that she started dreaming of Colorado.

I pulled out a photo with shaking hands. I remembered this one, of course. Mom was standing on the side of a road, a fanny
pack strapped around her waist. She was grinning goofily and holding a flower so that it looked like it was growing out of
the top of her head. I recalled all of those details about this photo. But what I’d never noticed before was what was in the
background. Blue-black, hazy, monstrous. A mountain.

I leaned over the picture, my eyes straining to find some sort of clue. Where was this taken? Where, Mom? Where were you headed?
You and your spiritual healer friend?

I would never know. Now, thanks to Bethany and Zack or thanks to Cole or, hell, I don’t know, thanks to me, probably, I would
never find out.

I dug around in the box, pulling out photos at random and staring at them and then dropping them back in, only to dive in
for the next.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until Celia barged into my room.

I jumped, scurrying to hide the box from her. Even after all these years, I still wanted this life inside the photo box to
be all mine. Celia and Shannin didn’t deserve it. I pushed the box next to my hip, and it slipped down the crack between the
bed and the wall. I could hear the scraping of the cardboard against the wall as it fell, and the papery swishing sounds of
the photos falling out and landing on the floor.

“What do you want?” I said, wiping my face with my shirt.

“Zack told me what happened at his house,” she said.

“Goody for you. Get out,” I said, thinking,
He
certainly wasted no time getting the news out. Maybe he should take out a billboard.

“You’re not going to Colorado now,” she said. “At least not with them.”

“Nope,” I said, pulling a magazine off my nightstand and opening it, trying to look nonchalant about it. A folded-up piece
of paper fell to the floor. I bent over and picked it up, holding it in my palm. “You can leave now.”

“Um, forget something?” she said, standing on the throw rug in the middle of my room with her hands on her hips.

“Nope,” I said again. “Bye.”

“Yep,” she countered, bobbing her head. “The cake. You forgot Dad’s cake.”

I brought my hand to my forehead. The cake. Of course. The party was tomorrow, and I’d totally forgotten the cake.

“The grandmas went to pick it up,” she continued, her voice dripping with snottiness. “And it turns out you hadn’t even bothered
to order it.”

“Oh, man.” I sighed. “I forgot. I’m so sorry.” I felt guilt rise. Now if Dad’s birthday party was screwed up, that would be
all my fault, too. It was like I couldn’t do anything right. I’d let down my sisters, my friends, my dad, everyone.

But Celia had seen her one-up opportunity, and she wasn’t about to let it go. “How? How is it even possible that you forgot?
You’ve had months to do it, and I reminded you, like, a billion times. God, Alex, I can’t even believe you.”

“I said I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll order it today. I’ll have them put a rush on it or something. It’s not the end of the world,
Celia.”

“The grandmas already ordered it. Shannin’s super-pissed, just so you know.”

I rolled my eyes, shutting the magazine with a slap. “Of course she is. Because everyone in the world is mad at me right now.
I don’t care, okay? I’ve got my own problems. Why don’t you go get Shannin and Zack and Bethany and everyone else in the world
and have an ‘I Hate Alex’ party, okay? Just… leave.”

I hopped off the bed and picked up my Bread Bowl uniform pants off the floor. I headed to the dresser to get a shirt, fuming.

Celia was quiet while I dug for a shirt and clean underwear. Then, just as I turned to go into the bathroom to get
ready for work, she said, “Are you really going to marry him, Alex?”

I turned. “Zack told you?”

She nodded. She was still standing in her pissed-off pose, but her eyes were big and moist. Even though she was in high school
now, she suddenly looked like a little kid. “He told me some other stuff about Cole, too. Is it true? He hurts you?”

A million images and thoughts and memories crossed through my head all at once, nearly knocking me down under the weight of
them.

Finally, I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I answered. Probably the most honest thing I’d said in a long, long
time.

“Well, you have to do something,” she said softly, then turned and left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor, then unfolded the piece of paper that had fallen off my nightstand when I picked
up the magazine.

I cannot swallow your squared eyes

Sightless of my shrinking heart

My caving chest

Shoulders to the polished floor…

My poem. How did it get on my nightstand? I didn’t remember putting it there. I read it, even though I had it
memorized by now, my chest feeling heavy and full, remembering the day that Cole sang it for me that first time on the curb
at The Bread Bowl. A sob escaped me. I wanted that moment back so badly.

I lifted my eyes to the top of the paper, sniffling. I’d still never titled it.

I turned and rummaged through the vanity drawer, pulling out an old eyeliner pencil. Leaning over the bathroom counter, I
scrawled “Bitter End” across the top. Cole was right—that title was perfect.

Then I wadded up the poem and threw it in the trash.

Straightening up, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I stared at my eyes long and hard—looking for that lost, empty look
I’d seen in Mom’s eyes in the photos. Was it there, in my eyes, already?

The one good thing to happen to me all day was that Dave had already been at The Bread Bowl and gone home again. Georgia was
in the lightest mood I’d seen her in since he’d started hanging around, and Jerry seemed happy, turning up the kitchen radio
and singing along when there weren’t any customers in the dining room.