Page 19 of The Summer I Destroyed You

My mother isn’t speaking to me when I get home, which happens a lot. Her silence is a snake in the grass, waiting to strike. A slap she’ll deliver when I least expect it. All I can do is wait until she decides it’s time.

That night, I do my homework, ignoring my growling stomach as I wait. I no longer eat lunch at school, because I can be eating half what Bradley Grimm does and she’ll still suggest it’s too much, and I don’t dare get a snack when my mom’s already mad. The clock moves from five to six, from six to seven, and she continues to watch TV and drink her coffee with disapproval pinching her lips. Now that Jeff’s at college, there’s no guarantee she’ll make dinner. The only thing that’s certain is that she’ll get mad if I make myself something to eat, and she’ll be mad if I ask if she’s cooking. I’m always choosing the lesser of two evils. Occasionally I long for a choice that doesn’t involve any evil at all.

“Are you making dinner?” I finally ask. My voice is too quiet. She’ll dislike that. She’ll think it’s weak and pathetic. But if I ask boldly, she’ll say I’m arrogant. Again, it’s the lesser of two evils.

She jumps up so fast that I automatically move to shield my cheek. That hand of hers tends to strike without warning on days like this. “What did you just say to me? Am I your servant now?”

“No. I just wanted to know.”

She scrunches her face up to mimic me. “I just wanted to know,” she says in a nasal, whiny imitation. “Do I suddenly owe you dinner? You’re nearly grown.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she mimics again, high-pitched and sniveling.

It’s a relief when she goes to her room and slams the door shut behind her. I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but even when the sandwich is gone, there’s no relief. Instead, I’m more aware of something nameless inside me, something bottomless and suffocating at the same time.

I gather my babysitting money and walk down the road, past the creek that smells like rotting fish and decay, to Black’s, a shitty little convenience store that mostly sells beer and cigarettes.

I buy chips and donuts and Skittles and a large blue slushie to wash it down. I don’t make eye contact with the cashier, who’s probably already deduced it’s all for me. I walk back down to the creek, until I’m certain I’m alone, and then I eat all of it—the chips, the Skittles, the donuts. I eat until my stomach hurts, and I continue to eat past that. I eat until the very last bite is gone, and I’m sick, but I wish I had more.

People imagine a girl like me devouring her food with unashamed gusto, licking her fingers and sighing theatrically, but that’s not how this is. I barely taste it. All I want from food is the way it makes me absent, the way it allows me to float above myself for the five or ten minutes it takes to inhale it and stop feeling anything at all.

I want to be numb.

And I’d give anything if I could just make that numbness last.

* * *

I wake early to get ready for a call to Nashville. My mother isn’t up yet and it’s not as if she’d want me around if she were. Aside from when I go grocery shopping and drive her to appointments, I’m pretty sure she wishes I’d just disappear.

Snowflake trots up to me. “Don’t get dirty,” I warn as I let her into the backyard. “This suit is Max Mara. You don’t want to know how much it cost.”

I fill her bowls with water and dog food and then I go to the back deck. It’s barely seven thirty, but Liam’s already setting up for the day, his jaw unshaved and set hard.

I wish Gary had half his worth ethic, and I wish Liam had Gary’s so I wouldn’t have to fucking see him all the time. Especially now. Because he put my mom in her place and is offering to work for free on Lucas Hall, and no matter what he ostensibly did to me when I was a teen, he no longer seems to be that guy. He seems, in fact, to be the opposite—the exact person I imagined he was back when I was in New York, getting to know him by text.

I can’t persuade myself he’s my enemy, though after yesterday’s absolute trouncing at the hearing, I imagine I’m his.

“Hurry up, Snowflake,” I call. “I’m on a schedule.”

“Yard’s a mud bath,” Liam says. “You’d have been better off taking her for a walk.”

Ah, there’s the one thing that will prevent a man from ignoring you: the chance to offer unsolicited advice.

“I’m wearing four-inch heels,” I reply. “They’re not really ideal for dog walking.”

He shrugs. “Then I hope they’re made for being covered in mud, because that’s what’s next.”

I ignore him. Snowflake isn’t even my dog. If she comes back muddy, Jordan can get off her lazy ass and drive to Elliott Springs to wash her.

“By the way,” he says, “your mom told us to toss everything in the shed before we tear it down, but we found a lockbox. Do you guys want it?”

I freeze. The shed was my father’s domain, and we left it untouched when he abandoned us. A part of me is tempted to say yes and hire a locksmith to break into it, hoping it will provide some answers, but a man who couldn’t bother to tell us goodbye when he ran is unlikely to have gone to the trouble of locking away an apology for us to one day find.

“You can toss it,” I tell him. “Snowflake! Come here, girl!”

Snowflake emerges from the woods, covered head to toe in mud.

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