Waiting (20 page)

Not Taylor! who comes toward the front door.

Gosh, I hope
he didn’t hear me.

Did he?

How loud was my voice?

Why did I
say I was sleeping with Taylor
and
Jesse?

Why did I say it in front of people?

My heart pounds in my throat.

Does my mother care?

Did it bother her?

It must have affected her a little, or she wouldn’t have run like that.

Except,

except she could have run just because she hates me

so

much.

I had no
idea.

Like she had no idea.

How could we know?

But
they
were fighting with him, not me.

He’d gotten someone pregnant. I hadn’t.

He had depression. They knew.

It wasn’t about me.

But that’s what it’s become.

I have to
do a lot of deep breathing before I can step outside.

I stand in the dining room, look toward the foyer, wonder if I can make it to my book bag and then out the door and then to school and then back home again before cracking wide open.

“She doesn’t get the control,” I say to the light over the table. “Or the power. She doesn’t run me anymore. I get to choose.” But the words don’t free me. In fact, I wonder if I’ll even be able to stop crying.

So I stand
there. Try to breathe. Try to stop weeping.

Try not to be horrified. And when the knock comes, I let out a yelp of surprise. I can’t go to the door, can’t say anything; I wait, trembling, hoping for a miracle.

The front door opens a bit and Jesse sticks his head inside, and there we are, looking at each other, and I had forgotten they were coming to get me. That Taylor traded shifts. Like I’m a job. I feel that way again now.

Jesse doesn’t say anything like, “Are you ready to go?” or, “We’re gonna be late.” He just walks inside, closing the door behind him, and it’s so dark in here, and watery like the ocean too. No, those are my tears, and that’s why I have the upside-down-in-the-salt-water feel.

I’m rooted between the foyer and the dining room, maybe sprouting leaves now. My books are steps away, and Jesse is so tall coming across the room like that. “Sex with two guys?” he says, and he has this funny look on his face, like he’s not sure if he should laugh or not, or maybe he’s disgusted with me, because I sure am. Then he has his arms around me.

We stand there, his arms tight, and I haven’t moved still and I can’t move until Mom is back inside, screaming.

She never says
a word to me, even in her fury. Just hollers at Jesse, a kid she’s never spoken to before.

“Get the hell out of here. And take this piece of trash with you.”

“You make me sick with your promiscuity.”

“I’ll call the police if you don’t leave.”

Like that, I’m free. I can move.

That thing Jesus says about how the truth shall set you free? Guess what? It’s Mom’s lies that make me free, make me move, grab my books, leave the room. Jesse’s saying something (to me? to my mom?), then taking my hand, pulling me along.

I bump into a chair, bump into the doorknob. Jesse keeps walking, running his mouth, his words coming out fast and loud. I glance at his face, see that’s he’s mad—and remember Zach.

It was before
Zacheus went to bed.

Taylor had been over, trying to see me, and I wouldn’t have any of it because it felt like bad things were getting ready to happen. Our house was like a pot of boiling water overflowing.

“Come on, London,” Taylor said. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t,” I had said. “Things are going on with Zach and Rachel. I kinda need to help out.” I stood on the porch, blocking the front door. It was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were so thick you could almost hear them buzzing as a group. Inside the house Zach was swearing, Mom was hollering, and there was the rumble of my daddy trying to smooth things over.

My arms were folded, and I wondered if Taylor could hear them? How could he not? All that was going on inside. “It’s not a good time for me right now.”

Taylor hardly let those words come out of my mouth.

“What about me, London?” He’d said that right in my face. Too close. I felt his breath on my skin. “What about us?”

There was a crashing noise—I can’t remember what
broke now—but I looked at Taylor and said, “Are you kidding me? Can’t you hear what’s going on?
This
is what I have to do.” Then I went inside.

Later I figured out Heather had been asking Taylor to do things. I mean, I saw them together at school the very next day. And Zach told me he’d beat the crap out of his friend if I needed him to. He wouldn’t have said that, I realized later, if things weren’t so bad between him and Rachel.

But that night, when I walked in the house, I saw it had become a war zone. Mom had broken several household items, and Daddy was trying to calm her.

Zach was livid. At this point he thought he’d marry Rachel. That they’d take their baby and do the
Teen Mom
thing. It never occurred to him that Rachel would let her parents convince her of an abortion.

The deal is, Zach didn’t get mad often.

He got sad.

But that day.

That day, as Taylor drove away from the house, Mom called Rachel a whore. And that was it.

“She’s a whore. A slut. A Jezebel,” Mom said.

“Mom.” That was me. Those words coming out of her
mouth, and about wonderful Rachel—I would have laughed if I hadn’t seen Zach’s face change. It was all so bizarre. Daddy must have seen the change too, because he stepped in between my brother and mother.

“Zachy,” I yelled.

But my brother seemed to hear nothing but the name-calling. He knocked our dad aside. Knocked him to the floor. And he was on Mom in a moment. Had her by the shoulders. Pushed her to the wall. Said, “I have had enough of you, Mom. You’ve done enough. Shut the hell up. Don’t you ever say anything like that again.”

“You’re hurting me, Zacheus Lee Castle. Remove your hands from my person right now.”

I hurried from Daddy’s side, moving across the room.

Tried to get to my brother. Daddy stood too.

“I’m done talking to you,” Zach said. “I’ll not speak another word to you the rest of my life.”

Mom laughed, but I saw the look on her face. The gauntlet had been thrown down. “You won’t talk to me?” she said, and laughed again.

I reached out for Zach, touched his arm. He looked at
me, and his eyes filled with tears, his face splotchy from anger. “You tell her, London,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Tell her I’m done.”

I was caught there in the middle. Daddy stood behind me.

“Tell her.”

“He said, Mom . . . ,” I said, faltering, not wanting to say anything at all, but Mom was too fast. “Don’t
either
of you speak to me,” she said.

And Zacheus didn’t. Not even one more time. Not the rest of his life.

“Okay, wow,” Jesse
says. He still has my hand. “Wow.”

He pulls me to the van. Lauren looks out the window—what’s she doing here?—and she isn’t happy. Then she must see my face, because she opens the door and so does Lili and they jump out and run to meet us. All three of them stand around me.

Tears keep running down my face, and I feel like perhaps something has broken. Nothing as clichéd as my heart.

That broke months ago, anyway. I think maybe my eyes have a malfunction or something.

What’s weird is that the weather has changed overnight.

It’s warm this morning.

“What is it?” Lili says, and her arms are around me, and Lauren is petting Jesse, who says, “I’ve never seen anything like that in real life.”

“What?”

“Her mom. Her mom is messed up.”

Messed up? My mother? Of course. Of course she is.

“I can take my brother’s car,” I say. I have the keys in my bag. I dig around for them. “I want to be alone.” I try to say the words, but nothing comes out but
alone
.

“Oh, London,” Lili says, and she hugs me close. “Come with us.”

“Get the hell out of here!” The last word screams up, high, higher, and I’m sure that if I were to look in the cloudless sky, I’d see the last sounds of my mother there, proving she hates me.

We all turn and there she is. On the porch. Looking so beautiful but so . . . so angry. My mother. “Take her away.

Get off my property.”

My eyes are still broken and I can’t quite walk, but I head toward Zach’s car, and Jesse throws the keys to Lauren.

“Drive the van,” he says. And she doesn’t even argue.

I follow the
van for a bit, fall behind in school traffic, almost hit a pedestrian, and pull over so I can cry. I rest my head on the steering wheel.

“You okay, London?” Jesse says after a couple of minutes of listening to me sob.

No. No, I’m not okay. I’m hurt. Embarrassed. And alone in
a family that should be holding each other up, not pushing
each other aside.
I can’t say any of this, though.