“Mom, no. This is agoodthing. This is me saving myself. I don’t want to be JosieFightsOn forever. I want to just be…me.Grown up, on my own. I’m done with the pity party. I have to start living for myself. I can’t keep living…” My voice trails off. I can’t say it. I can’t tell her I can’t keep living forher. For whatever weird thrill she gets from the endless drama of my medical mess.
Even if this is exactly how I feel. But I learned a long time ago, you can’t tell people exactly how you feel. That’s the quickest way to lose everything.
Mom shoots a look at Alan, who’s chewing like a chipmunk. He nods at her like I’m some bratty teen who needs her phone confiscated.
“Josie, you can’t do this,” Mom says, blinking hard as the tears start their usual slide down her cheeks, mascara running while she keeps wiping at it, making it worse. It’s all so over-the-top and absurdly dramatic, like her old live streams when she’d bawl for donations. I bet it’s muscle memory by now. An uncharitable thought, and yet I wish she wasn’t so quick with the waterworks. It’s not like I’m moving to Australia. Just out of their sad guesthouse.
“Nope,” grunts Alan for emphasis. “Can’t. Not now.”
“What is going on here?” I ask, glancing between them. They’ve clearly had a whole conversation I’m not in on.
Alan nods again, and grunts, “Tell.”
“We knew money was coming in, so we already spent it,” she says, her voice flat.
“The GoFundMe money? Are you kidding?” My mind races. Is Mom sick? Does Buster need surgery? Some kind of emergency I don’t know about? But Alan just wipes his mouth with his arm, smearing chili over his skin, while Mom looks at me, defiant.
“No, of course I’m not kidding. Why would we give the money back?” she says. Her knuckles are white against the table. “Weearnedit.”
“Earned it?” I repeat, stunned.
“You can get off that high horse anytime, missy. We used the money. Same as always,” Mom says. Her tears dry up as fast as they came.
“Except this isn’t the same as always. I’m not sick. I do not need money from strangers.” I take a breath, glaring at my stepdad. “What did you buy, Alan?”
He looks slightly sheepish.
“Boat,” he says.
“Bryan convinced us to buy that old pontoon boat of his,” says Mom. “He said he had unexpected expenses after you canceled your wedding, and I felt bad for him. Plus, we love to fish, honey.”
“Oh my God.” I feel sick. Bryan? They used the money to buy a boat fromBryan? “And you didn’t think I should know? Or that it would matter to me?”
Alan lifts his chin stubbornly. Grunts.
“After everything we’ve sacrificed for you, don’t you think we deserve something fun for just the two of us? Alan’s naming the boatShip Faced.” Mom smiles at me. “Isn’t that funny? I already bought the stencil. You can come on board anytime.”
“I don’t care how you feel about Bryan or your boat,” I say, my voice shaking with rage. “If we had to keep it, that money should have gone toward paying for my diabetes meds.”
“And since you’re buying your own meds now, with your fancy new job, then you shouldn’t tell us how to spend our money,” Alan says, suddenly fluent in full sentences. I’d clap if I wasn’t so furious.
“The GoFundMe fund is notyourmoney, Alan!”
These two have controlled my life for way too long, and they’ve been absolute crap at it. I didn’t have a choice before, but now I do. Alan’s clueless about finances—actually, Alan’s cluelessabouteverything. And he’s always loved Bryan. They’d get drunk on the porch, and then he’d tell me I was lucky to have a guy like Bryan since I was sochallenging.
I’ve never liked a single thing Alan has liked—other than my mom, and I’m not even sure about her right now. His fart hits like clockwork. What ifAlanis the Devil card? His gas alone opens a portal to Hell.
I stand up from my chair so fast, it falls backward with a clatter.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I say, and I leave the house and am in my car before they can say another word.
For the first time ever, I’m rooting for JosieFightsOn to die. That’s the only way for me, the real Josie, to live.
—
An hour later, I find Nonna in the common room of Golden Leaves. She’s in a circle of silver-headed seniors in wheelchairs, all of them hanging on every word of their favorite rock star, Judge Judy, who is laying down the law from the television screen.
“Josie, my butterfly!” Nonna’s eyes crinkle in recognition. The nurses have told me she mixes up the names of nearly all the staff and residents and can spend days not knowing quite where she is, but she never gets my name wrong.
