Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here (14 page)

USUALLY I’D RATHER BE BURIED ALIVE AS THE SACRIFICIAL
virgin in an Aztec tomb than wake up for school on Monday. This morning, though, I wake up feeling almost happy to head to homeroom with damp hair at seven forty-five
A.M.
sharp, like I’ve just emerged from Dawn’s Pinterest board of inspirational quotes.

Gideon and I were up late, texting back and forth about
Lycanthrope High
graphic novels. He’s supposed to lend me the last couple of Sam Kieth installments, which were sold out at the comic book store. I ended up picking up some other stuff of his. (Side note: His other stuff is the shit too.)

As I’m toasting an English muffin in the kitchen, Dawn trudges out of her bedroom, picking leftover crusty mascara off her lashes. She walks by me to get a plate; her pores smell like a whiskey distillery.

“Shut up and sit down, young lady,” she croaks. “I’ll finish breakfast.”

After a rough night out, she always feels guilty and goes all Attack of the Mom on me. (See: the only time she ever says things like “young lady.”)

“Already done.” I toss a piping hot muffin onto my plate. I butter it as she hollows out hers with a fork. Her carb-calories fear makes her turn everything into a bread bowl.

“Don’t forget, we’re having dinner with Brian tonight.”

I slump forward onto the table. “Nooooo.”

“I know it’ll be hellish for you,” she says faux-sympathetically, “but at least you have Friday to look forward to.”

“Friday? What’s Friday?”

“Your dad’s book party.”

I brighten instantly—an already awesome week has improved exponentially. I was so wrapped up in the Gideon drama that I’d totally forgotten that his launch was this week.

“We discussed it, and he said you should spend the weekend with them in Brooklyn and come back Sunday night.”

“Okay!”

I carry my plate over to the sink, musing, “I didn’t even know you still talked.”

“Well, we do.”

“What could you possibly have to say to each other?”

“We
were
married for twelve years, Scar.” I wait. She shrugs. “And he sometimes calls me when he’s not sure how to take care of the baby.”

“The blind leading the blind, huh?”

She jokingly glares at me, then says, “I don’t know. I think I did okay.”

“Give me time! Soon I can be charged as an adult.”

She checks her iPhone. “It’s eight ten. Go get an education.”

I’m shoving books in my locker hastily before the bell rings when Avery rushes up to me, uncharacteristically late. I suddenly understand where the phrase “a spring in her step” comes from. She’s practically Riverdancing.

“Hiii,” she chirps.

“Who put meth in your Cheerios?”

“Not funny, meth is a serious problem, Mike and I almost did it last night,” she says in one breath.

“Whoa. What? Really?”

She nods about fifty times.

“How was it?”

She beams and raises her eyebrows a few times, like a small overachieving Groucho Marx.

“
Almost
, though
?
Okay, like, what base, exactly?”

“Well, I did some research on this—”

“God, of course you did; go on.”

“And there’s actually not a standardized definition of bases. It’s actually a really inefficient nonunified language of sexual activity. Like, some people think first base is holding hands, and some people think first-base is kissing, and some people think it’s
tongue
kissing—”

“See also: the chase, cut to.”

“I mean, he, like, you know.”

She makes a brisk series of hand gestures that culminate in one large TMI. (I’m sparing you.)

“Okay. I see. Wow. Visuals. Got it.”

“It was good, though. I was really scared at first. But he was really nice. I think he’s done it before!” she says gleefully, then looks a little bit annoyed, then looks gleeful again.

“Probably not, like, five minutes before,” I reassure her. “So, like . . . how do you feel?”

“I think . . . different, sort of. Not in any specific way. Just overall,” she sighs, then she gives me this look. It’s new and I don’t like it. Sort of,
Two roads diverged in a wood, mine is normal, but I hope you can be happy for me even though you are Miss Havisham.

“Anyway, what’s going on with me is,” I say, like she just asked me, “Gideon and I were talking last night about comics.”

“Cool.”

I can tell that she thinks I’m still playing in the minor leagues. Which I guess I am, but I’m still pretty psyched about it. To be honest, thinking about the mechanics of actually hooking up with somebody, even Gideon, makes me next-level anxious.

“So . . . what else?”

“What else? He’s gonna lend me some comics.”

She nods and waits like there’s more. I shrug.

“And then he’s going to make passionate love to me on Mr. Radford’s desk. What do you want?”

“I just think you should do something.”

“I am doing things!”

“Not really. You’re, like, being receptive to the things
he’s
doing. I think
Lycanthrope High
brainwashed you.”

I laugh in disbelief. “What?”

“One, like . . . cryptic, brooding look, or ambiguous sentence, and you’re set for, like, six months. You’re like a squirrel, and tiny little signals are the nut, and you go store it away forever.”

“As opposed to . . .?”

“Eating the nut!” she yells just a little too loud.

“I didn’t want to have to go here, but I really don’t need to play Six Degrees of Gideon’s Bacon with your sister.” I slam my locker shut for emphasis. She holds her hands up in surrender.

“Dude. Scar, I swear, I don’t know what’s even happening with them.”

“Really? ’Cause you take more than enough notes in health, so I think you do.”

“The thing is, you just”—she stops, then rolls her eyes—“you always just assume the worst.”

“Well, usually I’m right. So.”

I start off down the hall, then turn around and yell: “Mazel on becoming a woman, sort of!”

I see her stop, freeze in embarrassment, and then continue walking like she didn’t hear me.

I can’t concentrate on classes, which is pretty standard for me, but for a different and more butterfly-stomach-inducing reason than usual. AP English is only every other day, so the first time I’ll see Gideon this afternoon is in the cafeteria.

He’s sitting with Ashley, Natalia, and a bunch of the large
guys who usually buzz around their hive, including Jason Tous and the other ones who wrecked Ruth’s garden. After I put my tray down at the Girl Genius table, I walk over there and tap him on the shoulder. He half turns.

“Hey! Did you bring the comics for me?”

Ashley glances up at me, smiles, and puts her hand on Gideon’s arm.

“Hey, Divider!” she chirps.

“What comics?” asks Gideon.

“Like . . . you know, from when we were talking last night?”

“Oh. Yeah, I forgot, I guess.”

“I like your shirt!” She absently rubs Gideon’s arm. “I had one like that last year. I gave it to Goodwill.”

Jason Tous, meanwhile, seems to be bypassing the passive-aggressive remarks and going straight to the glare.

“You narc on anybody lately?” Jason asks me.

I feel the blood drain out of my face. “No,” I say stupidly.

“Really?” asks Dylan. “You seem like you like it. The same way you like running around acting like a big butch lesbian.”

I look at Gideon. He says nothing—just stares down at his Tater Tots like they’re an ancient rune to decode.

“You’re right, Dylan. I’m a big butch lesbian narc. Gosh, it feels great to stop living a lie. You should try it,” I say, then turn to Jason. “Don’t you see how he looks at you?”

“What the—nah, dude,” Jason sputters.

“Homophobics are often self-hating. You’d probably be a lot happier if you stopped terrorizing old ladies and just went full
Modern Family
,” I say. “Enjoy the tots.”

I turn and start walking away, humiliated that I thought Gideon would follow through on anything he said to me when we were alone, outside of school, in the safe bubble of late-night texts. I hate myself even more when I glance back on the off chance that he’s trailing behind me. No dice.

Avery is sympathetic to my situation when I return to the Girl Genius table and explain it. However, her version of counsel is trying to distract me by reading fun facts from the “baseball metaphors for sex” Wikipedia page, and it makes me want to take a Silkwood shower.

So I bail on lunch and try to go write in the library, but the arc of the Ordinaria is all off now, and I don’t get anything done—just a few false starts, somewhere between what I’d written before and the last chapter I’d written, that end up in the trash file on my laptop. Which is annoying, because I could use the group’s support now more than ever.

Dinner with Dawn’s latest Match.com rando is worse than I thought it would be. Rather than at the very least removing one aspect of the awkward intimacy of this meal, he’s bringing over the fixings and, for the first time basically ever, we’re
making
dinner. At home.

Dawn darts around anxiously, throwing out old bills and cleaning invoices scattered around the counter, checking her hair.

“Scar, get off the computer.”

I reluctantly close my laptop.

“Go put on something nice, please.”

She means something that isn’t Dad’s. I tug at his oversized Rolling Stones tee, tenting comfortably on me. “This isn’t nice?”

“Now.”

Brian’s car crunches into the driveway. As soon as I watch him getting out of the car from the window, I begin the official evaluation. It always starts here. If it didn’t, I would never have caught that one dude who told Dawn he had no kids surreptitiously hiding a pink-and-black car seat in his trunk.

I fold my arms as I do some initial scrutinizing from afar. Dawn’s darting around the kitchen making some unnecessary last-minute tweaks, like moving the salt shaker a quarter of an inch to the right.

“What is that, a Fiat?”

Dawn barely hears me, too busy glancing in the full-length mirror and smoothing down her dark blue pencil skirt. I told her to pick something for me to wear to save us the trouble of creating a discarded-clothing snowstorm in my room, so she picked a dress my grandma handmade for her when she was my age, and now I look like a Mexican place mat.