Chapter 11
Britt
Britt got her period for the first time a week after turning twelve. She knew it was coming because girls at school were always talking about it. Becky had gotten her period a few months earlier. Rainbow had made her a crown of daisies and her favorite sugar cookies in the shape of hearts. It was a joyous event at their house, celebrated as a crossing into sacred womanhood. At her own house, Britt crawled under the blanket on her bed, tucked her knees to her chest, and cried.
It was gross, this blood coming from her body, announcing so violently that she was no longer a girl. She had a stash of pads that Becky had given her. She didn’t want to tell her mother that she was now a woman because she knew her mother would never commemorate it the way Rainbow had. Her mother would just sigh and say something like “Welcome to the worst years of your life.”
When there was a knock at her bedroom door, Britt panicked that it was her mom, that she had seen the pad wrapping in the bathroom trash.
“Yeah?” she called from under the covers.
“Just wondering if you still wanted to go shooting today.”
It was Steve. It was Saturday. They always went shooting on Saturdays.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
Whenever she had a buildup of feelings, shooting seemed to help. It was like pushing a reset button on her psyche. She got out of bed and put on a pair of baggy jeans, looking at her backside in the mirror to make sure the puffy pad wasn’t visible. Then she opened the door to Steve’s smiling face, and off they went.
After they’d each fired a round with the Steyr AUG, Britt was already feeling better. She’d started to load a new magazine when Steve put a hand on her wrist. She looked up at him, scared she was doing something wrong, though she’d loaded magazines dozens of times by then.
“Kiddo, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said.
She knew, from just his tone, what he was going to say.
Steve had never proposed to Britt’s mom. He had bought the ring. But the all-important question was never popped. Britt waited and waited, hesitant to ask Steve outright what was taking so long. The thing was, she didn’t need to ask. She’d overheard enough arguments through the walls to know that her mother was backsliding. She’d stopped taking her medication, saying it made her feel like a zombie and she was tired of feeling like a zombie. At first, Steve tried to coax her, doling out the pills like usual at the dinner table. But after she made a scene a few times with Britt sitting right there, he took his attempts to persuade behind the closed door of their bedroom. When those attempts failed, he gave up, said, “I can’t force you.”
Predictably, her mother’s wild mood swings returned. They seemed worse than ever, but maybe it was just that Britt now had a peaceful reprieve to compare them to. The contrast was stark. She started drinking more again, and Steve suggested AA, said he would go alongwith her. He made a show of going to Al-Anon for himself. When he kept going, saying the meetings helped him, Britt knew the end was near. The people in those meetings had people like Britt’s mother pegged. They would make Steve see the light, and when he did, he would leave.
They sat at a wooden picnic table directly behind the shooting range lanes, Steve on one side, Britt across from him. He placed his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together, and let out a long exhale.
“I think this might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.
Britt was already shaking her head, denying what was coming. Her eyes were already filling with tears.
“You’re leaving us,” Britt said.
She couldn’t bear for him to be the one to say it. She had to break her own news, to feel some sense of control over the situation.
“I’m not leaving you, Britt,” he said.
Britt felt hopeful for a second before his shoulders visibly slumped. His eyes were cast down, staring at his hands.
“Losing a relationship with you is like an unwanted side effect of this,” he said. “I would never want to leave you.”
“But you are,” she said.
“Things with your mother ... they’ve just become untenable,” he said.
She imagined he had rehearsed this line, searched for the exact right word.Untenable.
“So it’s over, then? She knows?”
“I’m telling her tonight. I wanted to talk to you first,” he said.
Before the shitstormwas what he meant.
“I’ve really tried,” he said.
