Something rises up in my chest, and I think of the invisible wall between me and Lucky. And how Lucky said there’s one between me and Mom, too. Maybe I have more control over it than I thought.
After all, communication doesn’t run one way.
“You want to know the truth?” I ask her in a low voice, feeling the need to divulge bubble up inside me, dark and angry and wanting to be free. “The absolute shocking truth?”
“Babe,” she says in a tight voice, “my naked body is out on the door of my mother’s bookshop for all of Beauty to see. Nothing you can say to me will shock me right now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay …” I warn her one last time.
She puts her glasses back on angrily. “Just say it, Josie.”
“Fine! I don’t want to move to Florida with you. I’ve been planning to go live with Henry in Los Angeles when I graduate.”
Mom stills. Then she inhales sharply through her nostrils. Like I’ve slugged her in the gut.
“Look,” I tell her, “I think it’s clear that something is broken between us, because you don’t talk to me about anything. The last few years have been hard, and I can’t handle moving around the country with you anymore. I don’t even know if you’ll end up in Florida at this point, and I need stability. On top of that, it’s not fair that you kept me away from an entire side of my family. That’s so selfish, Mom. He’s an award-winning photographer. I could be learning things from him. I could have grandparents who aren’t running around Nepal. I could have a normal life in Los Angeles! And … and …”
I try to plow on with my angry tirade, but everything Mom just told me flashes through my head along with the poster on the shop’s door. It’s muddling things, and I’m getting rattled.
“Andnow…” I continue, though not as surefooted. “Now it almost sounds like you’re accusing him of things, and I don’t know what to believe, but it’s confusing, because I haven’t heard his side of the story, and … it’s not fair. It’s not fair that you’ve kept me from him all these years.”
“I haven’t kept you from Henry Zabka,” she says, biting out every word as if she’s barely able to control the anger in her voice. “You want to be a part of his family? It’s bigger than you think. Yourso-called father has three kids in three states. I wasn’t the first teenage girl to model for Henry Zabka, okay? He was a creep, Josie.”
“What?” I say, blinking away shock.
“He may be a genius, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a goddamn loser. He preyed on me—I didn’t know it until years later that there were others, okay? That’s why he lost his teaching job. Because he was an asshole who had a thing for college students. So he doesn’t want you because he never wanted to be a father.”
“That can’t be true,” I say, tears slipping down my cheeks.
“That’s what I thought too, back then. He didn’t want his name on your birth certificate. He said he’d make my life a living hell if I tried to get child support out of him—because he had nude photos of me, and what kind of mother does that?
“Josie,” she says, eyes glossy with unshed tears. “What do you think your grandmother and I were fighting about when we left Beauty five years ago?”
“I—I …” My breath comes faster. Thinking about that terrible night is the last thing I want to do, but it comes back to me now, unbidden. Waking up in the middle of their argument. Grandma shouting. Mom crying … Red and blue lights flashing outside the window on the street below.
Mom told me to pack as fast as I could. Only my favorite clothes and the stuff I’d need for a week. A short trip, until we figured things out. That’s what she told me. She said not to listen to what I heard—that none of it was true.
She told me to hurry.
Not to bother to get to dressed.
Grandma was having a breakdown.
No one was getting arrested.
Everything was going to be okay.
We’d call Lucky from the road.
We were coming back when things cooled off.
A week.
Two weeks.
