“No.” I pulled the covers up to my shoulders.
“What?”
“I said no. I’m not going!” I stared up at my mother as defiantly as I could, but I could feel my chin trembling.
She marched over to the bed and ripped the sheets right off of me. She grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the bed and toward the door, and I twisted away from her.
“You can’t make me go,” I sobbed. “You can’t tell me anything. You don’t have the right.”
My tears did not move my mother. They only made her angrier. She said, “You’re acting like a spoiled brat. Can’t you look beyond your own grief and think about someone else? It’s not all about you. We all lost Beck. Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t helping anything.”
Her words stung me so badly I wanted to hurt her back a million times worse. So I said the thing I knew would hurt her most. I said, “I wish Susannah was my mother and not you.”
How many times had I thought it, wished for it secretly? When I was little, Susannah was the one I ran to, not her. I used to wonder what it would be like, to have a mom like Susannah who loved me for me and wasn’t disappointed in all the ways that I didn’t measure up.
I was breathing hard as I waited for my mother to respond. To cry, to scream at me.
She didn’t do either of those things. Instead she said, “How unfortunate for you.”
Even when I tried my hardest, I couldn’t get the reaction I wanted from my mother. She was impenetrable.
I said, “Susannah will never forgive you for this, you know. For losing her house. For letting down her boys.”
My mother’s hand reached out and struck my cheek so hard I rocked back. I didn’t see it coming. I clutched my face and right away I cried, but part of me was satisfied. I finally got what I wanted. Proof that she could feel something.
Her face was white. She had never hit me before. Never ever, not in my whole life.
I waited for her to say she was sorry. To say she didn’t mean to hurt me, she didn’t mean the things she’d said. If she said those things, then I would say them too. Because I was sorry. I didn’t mean the things I said.
When she didn’t speak, I backed away from her and then around her, holding my face. Then I ran out of the room, stumbling over my feet.
Jeremiah was standing in the hallway, looking at me with his mouth open. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me, like he didn’t know who this person was, this girl who screamed at her mother and said terrible things. “Wait,” he said, reaching out to stop me.
I pushed past him and moved down the stairs.
In the living room, Conrad was picking up beer bottles and tossing them into a blue recycling bag. He didn’t look at me. I knew he’d heard everything too.
I ran out the back door and then I almost tripped going down the stairs that headed down to the beach. I sank to the ground and sat in the sand, holding my burning cheek in the palm of my hand. And then I threw up.
I heard Jeremiah come up behind me. I knew it was him right away, because Conrad would know not to follow me.
“I just want to be alone,” I said, wiping my mouth. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see my face.
“Belly,” he started. He sat down next to me and kicked sand over my throw up.
When he didn’t say anything more, I looked at him. “What?”
He bit his upper lip. Then he reached out and touched my cheek. His fingers felt warm. He looked so sad. He said, “You should just go with your mom.”
Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that. I’d come all this way and I’d gotten in so much trouble, just so I could help him and Conrad, and now he wanted me to leave? Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes and I wiped them away with the back of my hands. “Why?”
“Because Laurel’s really upset. Everything’s gone tocrap, and it’s my fault. I never should have asked you to come. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Pretty soon we’ll all have to.”
“And that’s it?”
