It’s so hard not to agree with him. I don’t have to end this tonight. Freddie will hold on tight enough for the both of us. At least for now. But soon he’ll leave. He’ll leave like everyone else, and I’ll be here. Forever Peter Pan.
I take my hand back and wipe away my tears. I wish he could see the landscape of our lives from my point of view. “I don’t regret it,” I tell him. “Not a single moment. But there’s nothing about us that’s made to last.”
His expression is dark and unreadable. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to give in to the idea that your life is supposed to turn out a certain way.” He threads his fingers through my hair, but they get stuck in the tangles. “I get a say in this, too. And I’m not letting you go soeasily.” He pulls me gently toward him.
I kiss him lightly on the lips and reach for the handle of the car door. “I need to go.”
Maybe Freddie doesn’t understand today, but I’m doing us both a favor in the long run. “Good night,” I tell him.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Inside, Hattie is sitting on the couch, telling Dad all about the shower, and I can tell that Mom showing up drunk is barely even a memory for her. That small thing gives me great satisfaction.
“There she is!” says Dad. He stands and gives me a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’m so lucky you two have each other.”
Hattie watches me carefully. I shake my head discreetly at her to let her know I don’t want to talk about it right now.
She pats the ground in front of her, and I sit down with my legs crossed. She pulls the hairbrush from her purse and gently loosens each one of my tangles. I close my eyes and listen as she rehashes the whole day for Dad.
Outside rain begins to splatter against the tin roof and the wind rattles the windows, but here in this little trailer of ours with my sister and my dad, I’m okay. We’re going to be okay.
The next morning, I call in sick for my paper route.Partly because I feel awful and partly because my bike is still at Freddie’s house. But it’s nice to finally have a day off from work, so missing one paper route is something I’m willing to pull a double for later in the week. Later that afternoon, Freddie drops my bike off and I force Hattie to answer the door while I hide inside.
I watch him through the blinds as he talks to Hattie. He makes a move to come inside, but Hattie says something and shakes her head. The bags under his eyes tell me he slept about as much as I did last night. Just twenty-four hours ago he held me in his arms in Agnes’s bathroom, and now this. I could run out there and make all of this go away, but it would only be a temporary fix.
After he’s gone, Hattie asks, “What’s the deal with you two?”
“We—it didn’t work out. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
She could say she told me so or that there will be others, but instead she only says, “Hey, let me touch up your hair today, okay?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “That’d be good.”
On Monday, Ruth is waiting for me at the bike racks. “Hattie told us,” she says almost immediately.
I am simultaneously annoyed by how big of a gossip my sister is and grateful that she already broke the news so I don’t have to.
I nod. “There’s not much to talk about.”
Ruthie shrugs. “I don’t even like talking.”
And then I hug her. She hugs me back. Ruth is at least six or seven inches shorter than me, but she always feels bigger than me somehow. In this moment it’s easy to feel protected and safe, like I might actually survive the rest of the school year. In this moment I’m so grateful for her and how little effort is required for us to be friends.
The next night, Tommy cuts me loose a few hours early because work is so slow. At home I find Hattie sitting in my bed with piles of makeup in between her legs as she uses the mirror of an empty compact of foundation to apply a bright, wet-looking hot-pink lipstick.
I drop my backpack on the floor, and she’s startled by the clunk. “Where are you going?”
“Oh!” she says. “You’re here. Good! I need your help!”
“Okay,” I say wearily, and let my body sink down onto the one corner of the bed not covered in makeup.
“I need to take, like, a really good profile picture.”
“For what?”
“Don’t laugh,” she says. “I got a one-month free trial on OtherFishInTheSea.com.”
I feel my brow wrinkle in confusion. “What is that?”
