Riot

“I look like crap,” I mutter with my forehead resting on the cool glass of my passenger-side window, every single hair follicle reminding me of how much I had to drink last night.

“You’re wearing alien-sized sunglasses,” Rowan counters. “No one can even see you.”

I turn my head to give her a look, but it’s lost behind sunglasses that are just as big as she said they are.

“Are you glaring at me right now?” she asks.

“Something like that.” I lay my head back against the glass with delicate precision, careful not to wake the troll hammering at my brain.

This morning, after dry-heaving in a hot shower and finishing washing up in a cold one, I got dressed and faced my dad in the kitchen. He slid a coffee and a stack of home-made pancakes in my direction as I took a seat at the breakfast bar.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

The truth was, I felt too shitty to even look at his pancakes. I slid them to the side and glued my cheek to the cold granite countertop. “Bad.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened with Joel?” my dad asked, and my heart pinched at the mention of his name.

“Not really.”

My dad rested his big hands on the counter and said, “Okay . . . but you know you can, right? I’m here to listen if you need me to . . .”

I closed my eyes for a long moment before I began to sit up. My head protested, but I managed to get my elbows on the bar and the rest of me into an upright position. “Dad, about yesterday . . . I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean anything I said.”

He frowned at me. “Sweetheart . . . we both know that’s not true, and I think it’s time we talk about it.”

I didn’t want to talk about it, but my dad lured me into a conversation, and every confession I made felt like a weight lifted from my soul. I told him about how much I hated my mom, about how much I needed a mom because, even though he had been the best dad a girl could ask for, there are some roles a dad just can’t fill. I told him about the night I heard him crying after she left, and his eyes filled with fresh tears as he apologized for me having overheard. I told him that I hated her for what she did to him, that I hated that he never moved on or dated anyone else.

And my dad told me things too, things I didn’t want to know but that he said I should understand.

“Your mom got pregnant with you when we were nineteen, Dee,” he said as I finally began picking at my pancakes. It was easier than looking him in the eye. “We hadn’t even been dating that long.” He sighed and raked his hand through his dusty blond hair, like he was trying to work up the courage to tell me something he didn’t want to admit even to himself. “She never loved me,” he said, quietly, “not really . . . I thought I could love her enough for both of us, but . . .” He shook his head at some unseen memory he was reliving. “Anyway, when I found out she was pregnant, I immediately got all these ideas in my head about a marriage and a house and a family. And your mom went along with it because—even though you don’t think she did—she loved you. She did her best . . . it just wasn’t enough.”

I sat in my chair, my headache forgotten while I listened intently to every word my dad was sharing. I clung to each new piece of information, saying nothing because I didn’t want to risk him shutting down and leaving me in the dark.

“Sometimes, I would come home from work and your diaper would be filthy, and it was just because your mom was too overwhelmed to even change it. Looking back now, I realize she needed help, like professional help, but at the time, I thought I could do it all. I tried to be everything for you both, and I’m sorry.”

“Dad—” I began to say, hating that he was blaming himself for being a loving father and a devoted husband, but he just put his hand up.

“Just let me get all this out, okay? I’m not trying to excuse your mom, and I know you’ll still hate her when I’m done talking, but . . . she really did love you, Dee. She just didn’t know how to love you. She tried and tried to be who she thought she should be, but over the years I think she just . . . she just lost herself.”

“There’s no excuse for walking out on your eleven-year-old child, Dad,” I said, stern in my convictions in spite of everything he said.

“No, there’s not,” he agreed. “And I guess that’s why I can’t hate her. I feel sorry for her, Dee.” His almond eyes became glassy, and he stared across the counter at me. “Because look at the beautiful woman you’ve become, and she missed it.”

When we met each other at the side of the bar and hugged, I wasn’t sure who was being strong for who. Maybe we were being strong for each other. Like we’ve always been.

“You alive over there?” Rowan asks, pulling me from the memory.

“Yeah.”

“Sure you don’t want IHOP?”

“Yeah . . . I just want to go home.”

Over the entire week, I spend my days wanting to ask her a single question that dare not be spoken: Is this how you felt when you broke up with Brady?

I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I make T-shirts for the band’s website, but I don’t enjoy it. I’m a robot—I go to classes, I suffer through homework, and all of it hurts.

I don’t hear from Joel, but neither does anyone else. He’s a ghost, haunting me with his absence through a phone that never rings. On Friday, after he skips out on the the band’s first practice with Kit, Rowan threatens to file a Missing Persons Report and he finally texts her back. But all he says is that he’s fine, and he refuses to say where he is. I spend my nights imagining the girls he’s with, the ways they might look, the ways he might touch them. I wonder how long it will take him to forget me, but then on Saturday afternoon, my phone rings and Rowan is on the other end. “They think he might be at his mom’s.”