Silence.
She studies the ground, traces a line in the dirt with the toeof her sandal. In the trees above us, doves coo. But Mom stays silent.
I grab her by the shoulders, shake her. “Tell me, God damn it, that it’s not true!” My voice squeals in my ears. “Mom, Jane just told me that youpaidLuke to take me out! Is it true?”
I want her to lie to me. She could; I would want to believe it. So badly. If she lied well enough, I could lie to myself, pretend that what just happened, didn’t. This is what we do; we’ve been doing this shit all my life. I could look past it, forget about it. Call Jane the liar.
But Mom’s still just standing there, eyes still glued to the ground. She can’t even look at me.
I shake her harder.
“Ow, Nellie you arehurtingme!” She throws my hands off her. She’s stronger than she looks.
“Tell me!” I yell, blind fury making my head throb.
“Okay, okay, yes! I bribed him! But I did it to make you happy!”
“Happy? Mom, Lukelikesme, or did like me. Before all this. Now, I’m sure, he’s mortified! He woulda been mine eventually.Whydo you always have to meddle?”
Mom takes a step back, shakes her head. Stares at the ground again.
When she looks up at me, she’s smirking.
“Why doIalways have to meddle?” She scoffs. “Are youkiddingme? Ever since you were little, I’ve had to get involved, keep your strange ass in line, cover up for all your gross, embarrassing, demented behavior.”
I’m shaking. This isn’t one of her cover-up jobs; this is her trying to control everything, controlme, and fucking it all up in the process.
I’ve been angry in my life, but never like this. I’m literally seeing red. Luke is the only boy I’ve ever truly loved, and we coulda been together, but she went and stuck her big ass in the middle of things, as always.She’sthe reason my whole pathetic life has always been such a horror show.
“You fucked this all up!” I shriek.
“Oh, please! First of all, he’s a lowlife, Nellie, beneath us! Not fit to shine our shoes. Get a hold of yourself! But when I saw how much you were hurting over him and how twisted up you were, and then that mess with Blair—”
What the fuck?
“You think I had something to do with that? You fucking psycho! You’re even more deranged than me!” I glare at her, go in for the kill. “But I guess, ya know, born trash, always trash—”
Her swift slap lands sharply and instantly stings. White-hot pain explodes across my cheek, my eyes brimming with tears at the shock of it.
“Nellie, I—” Mom’s eyes grow wide, and she looks like she’s horrified that she just struck me. She steps toward me, tries to reach out, but I smack her hand down.
“Luke and I have aconnection. He and I woulda been together if you hadn’t come in and screwed all this up.”
Her momentary look of sympathy vanishes; now it looks like she’s the one seeing red. “Give me abreak, Nellie! Thatboy told me he was seeing someone else and wasn’t interested in you. So I offered him five hundred dollars cash to take you out.”
The blood drains from my face; I feel hollow, sick.
Then I hear Mom’s hideous laugh, tiny but wicked. Self-satisfied. “And that wasn’t enough for him. So I offered him a check for five thousand dollars. Onlythenwould he touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
That’s all it takes. I slap her back, hard, across her snarky mouth.
“Ah!” She holds her hand to her face. “You ungrateful little bitch!”
The next thing I know, I’m all over her, tackling her to the ground, dirt dusting both of us in little clouds.
“Nellie, get off me! What do you think you’re doing?”
I pin her wrists to the ground, shake her.
