“Hey, I think I’m gonna go out with Alex later.” I look up from my phone and the “I’m back bitchezzzz” text I’d received earlier in the morning.
My mother sets down her iron and purses her lips. She’s never been a huge fan of Alex, for some fair reasons (drinking and smoking in our house, and saying “Oh my God I’m so sorry. I should’ve offered—did you want one?” when she was caught) but also for some unfair ones. Mom would never say it in so many words, but I could tell by the way her voice lingered on the vowels when she said Paradise Springs, the trailer park Alex grew up in, that she felt her middle-class daughter should not be fraternizing with the lower middle class.
“Where will you be going?”
I lean against the kitchen doorway.
Honestly, we’ll probably be going to the college bars, or, if our luck runs out, the slightly creepier ones where they won’t card us and middle-aged men will send us drinks.
“Not sure yet. We’ll probably just meet at Alex’s house and figure it out from there.”
“Her ‘house’?” She purses her lips again.
“Yep.” I blink at her, like I’m oblivious. Daring her to explain.
“I’m not sure about this.” She holds up one of my father’s dress shirts, examining her work.
I really hadn’t meant it as a question as much as an “FYI, this is where I’ll be, so if you’re alarmed by my suddenly empty bed, don’t call the cops,” but clearly Mom still thinks I’m her little girl.
“Okay...”
“I’ll have to see what your father thinks.”
I snort before I can stop myself. He’s not even speaking to me, but yeah, let’s get his opinion on the matter.
“What was that?”
I stand up straight. “Nothing.”
“Why don’t you invite her for dinner here instead?”
Yeah, great idea, Mom. Why don’t we invite someone into our tense, silent meals? That’s just what this toxic household needs: a guest.
But her eyes are sad, and it occurs to me that this situation may be even harder on her than it is on me. “Sure.”
So I invite her to dinner.
My mom makes meat loaf and green beans. Alex wears leather pants.
We all pack into the cramped kitchen, walking around one another as we choose chairs, the shuffling sound of our feet against the linoleum loud when the rest of the room is silent.
My father still ignores me, but at least he’d thrown out a nice, “Hello, Alexandra,” when he opened the door.
So he can speak.
My mom stares at the pink stripe running through Alex’s hair and straightens the apron she wears over her dress.
She asks us about school, and Alex talks about her work with different charities on campus while my mom nods.
Then Mom turns to me. “So, Care Bear, is there a boy?”
My father makes an unintelligible sound.
“No, Mom.”
“Humph.” Her lips, done in a sensible light pink shade, tighten.
I chew my green beans and pray for this to end.
“I don’t know how I feel about this fraternity stuff, Cassie,” she says. “Who wants to date a girl who’s been so...passed around?”
“Mom.” So we’re really doing this. Now. I don’t know whether to be glad or horrified that Alex is here.
Her voice gets high. “I’m just saying—”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“She’s being ridiculous?” My father scoffs. “I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous. My daughter is living with a bunch of boys like a cheap hooker.”
Alex’s eyes go as wide as saucers.
My mother takes my hand and looks at me pleadingly. “Come back, Cass. The school here will still let you in, and the Andersons’ son goes there. He was on the football team, you know, very handsome.”
I laugh, but it’s not funny. “Mom, you know I can’t do that.”
“Cassie, please, just—”
“No.” My voice sounds harsher than I meant it to. But it kind of feels good, too. Strong. I pull my hand away. “You want me to move into a shoe box down the road with a husband and pop out kids. It’s like that’s all that will make you proud. I’m out there in California doing amazing things. I work for a Nobel Prize winner. Mom, do you realize how amazing that is? Why can’t you be proud of that?”
She just blinks at me with her Mary Kay made-up eyes.
“You know, I may not be able to give you that dream of coming home and living down the street with a bunch of kids, but keep this up and one of these days I won’t come home at all. Wouldn’t you rather love me on the other side of the country, where I’m doing what I love, than miserable and trapped here, or—or gone from your lives and never coming back?”
Tears sting my eyes. Her face is blank, and I can’t tell if she’s in shock or just doesn’t care. I stand up abruptly, my chair practically tipping over. “You know what? Don’t even worry about deciding. This will be my last break coming back here.”
“Yeah?” My father’s face grows red. “Well, why don’t you start now?”
“What?”
He slams down his Budweiser. “Get out of my house!”
I throw my napkin on the table “Gladly.”
“Cassie!” my mom calls after me.
I grab my purse off the counter. “I’ll stay at Alex’s tonight and call you in the morning, Mom.”
I burst out into the cold and immediately hear someone behind me. I turn around to see Alex, the storm door ricocheting off the frame behind her, pounding down the stairs.
“What the hell was that?”
“I know, right? Sometimes I hate them so—”
“Not them. You.”
“What?”
“You can’t tell your parents you won’t ever visit them again.”
What? “Are you kidding me? Did you hear what they said?”
“Yeah, and I get it. But this place also made you who you are.”
“Yeah, this is the place that fucked me up. God, don’t tell me growing up here didn’t fuck you up, too.” Alex had it much worse than me, and we both know it.
She runs a hand through her short hair, which is flying up almost vertically in the wind.
“Yeah, but I’d prefer to be fucked up and here than not here at all. And my parents, even when they suck, they gave me that. Can’t you see that?”
I flinch. “See what? Fine, we’re better people because we dealt with all this shit and managed to make it out, but why the hell would that make me want to come back? I just, I’m done with this okay. My life at school is what I want.”
She looks back at the house and then at me. “There’s a difference between wanting something better and thinking you’re too good for the people who can’t have it.”
I cross my arms protectively over my chest. “Maybe I want better people, too.”
“Jesus, Cassie. Who the hell are you? Can’t have non–Ivy League friends now? Who are these people you think are so evolved? Those frat boys? You know they aren’t any better than your dad, right?”
“That’s—”
“Don’t want to be left in the trailer while your husband works in the factory, Cass? So now you can find a man who’ll leave you in the penthouse while he clocks in on Wall Street. Congrats. A great improvement you’ve made.”
I just gape.
She swears as she rustles through her purse and struggles to pull out a cigarette. She lights it with shaking hands.
“I don’t know what to say.” My words have lost their edge.
She doesn’t turn, just stares out at the road, at the snow falling like ashes down on the street I grew up on. The one I biked down, pretending if I pedaled fast enough I might fly away like E.T., the one we stared down on from the roof, hoping for bigger and better places someday.
“I have no idea what I want, okay?” My voice breaks. I clear my throat. “I just know I’m not going to find it here.”
I watch her as she smokes in the light from the moon and the streetlamps, shivering in the Midwest wind. She smokes the cigarette down to the end and then flicks it to the concrete, squashing the last embers with her worn-out combat boot.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Yeah.” What choice do I have?
The walk to Paradise Springs is far, but not too far. She calls out when we come through the door. Her father is nowhere to be found, driving his truck down south again. Her mother is fast asleep in the bedroom.
I tiptoe inside.
“Don’t worry about it. She’s so drugged out, you won’t wake her.”
Alex clicks on the little TV, and we huddle together on the small couch, under three blankets because the heater is shit.
We talk about everything but what’s important and watch stupid TV. When she turns the light out, I cry against her shoulder, but she doesn’t ask why, just strokes my hair.
And for a minute I miss school. I miss that stupid frat house, where even though I’m lying and playing a part at least most people like the pretend me and no one kicks me out.
When I ring the bell the next morning, my mom unlocks the door. Which is good, I guess.
It’s probably better that I just came home instead of calling, since I think it is harder this way for them to tell me to stay gone. Instead I’m grounded for the rest of break, which isn’t much of a change.
My dad yells again, and my mom cries, and I nod silently before making my way to my room and Netflix.