Page 26 of The Summer I Destroyed You

“I’m not in a bad mood because I’m worried about her,” I reply. “I’m in a bad mood because she told her doctor that I’m some freeloader when the only reason I’m at her house is to take care of her. Oh, and today she implied I’d gained weight.”

“Man, your mom really is a cunt and a half, isn’t she?” she asks, which makes me laugh so hard that I fall out of downward dog entirely, collapsing to my knees.

“You’re a yoga teacher,” I gasp, wiping away tears. “Aren’t you supposed to be all namaste and ‘make peace with the pain?’”

She grins. “There’s a reason they only assign me to the classes no one shows up for. Speaking of which, I want a burger. You want a burger?”

Suddenly, I do. I really, really do.

Even as I tell her no, I wish I could agree. I wish I could afford to make someone here my friend.

16

EMMY

I moved from Elliott Springs to LA the day after I graduated high school.

For the next three months, until I left for college, I lived in a group house with seven other girls while waiting tables, and the only meal I got each day was the one I was comped at the end of my shift. Without my mother there to comment and judge, the weight seemed to fall off effortlessly, yet I made no friends in the group house or at work, though perhaps I was simply intimidated by the fact that Perry, the queen bee of our house, reminded me so much of Bradley Grimm.

She was thin and lovely and assured, and she looked at me with thinly veiled disdain every time I walked in the room. “Well, you know she’s eating somewhere if it isn’t here,” I heard her say to the others one night, and every last one of them laughed, even the girls I’d thought were sort of nice.

Those words, that laughter—it landed like a slap in the face. I hated all of them in that moment, but I hated myself the most: why the fuck had I ever thought things would be different? I shouldn’t have hoped for a minute I’d wind up making friends. People were assholes in Elliott Springs and everywhere else as well.

I celebrated my thirty-pound weight loss at the summer’s end by sleeping with Perry’s boyfriend, and I left a note announcing this development on the house chalkboard as I was moving out. And it felt good. Triumph was a thousand times better than fucking friendship.

I crave those small triumphs now. And the person I crave them from the most is currently walking straight toward me on Main Street.

Bradley Grimm was my best friend from the first day of kindergarten until she turned on me five years later. We’d loved the fact that we were born only two weeks apart, that we were both tall for our age and had blue eyes. For a long time, we’d collected those similarities as evidence of something, though I’m not sure what. She was blonde. My hair was dark. We still told strangers we were twins and they believed us. Our friendship had been the biggest, most important thing in my tiny life. It had felt indestructible.

Which made the way she stabbed me in the back later on that much worse.

I was hoping the years would have reversed our situations, but they have not. She isn’t struggling with her weight, she isn’t desperate to stop eating while a loved one’s acerbic commentary drives her to eat even more.

She’s not suffering at all, as far as I can tell. And she probably wouldn’t suffer anyway—you’ve got to have internalized a million nasty comments before you hear them in your own head, and only one of us has.

But I don’t need to have achieved a complete reversal just yet. I only need Bradley to realize she didn’t win, and as we approach each other on an otherwise empty sidewalk, the differences between us are significant enough that even she must see it.

My keratin-treated hair is glossy, while hers is in a messy ponytail. My immaculately tailored suit makes the out-of-date jeans and Grimm’s Convenience T-shirt she’s wearing look especially unkempt, and though we are the same height, my Saint Laurent pumps leave me towering over her.

“Well, hello, Bradley,” I coo, my smile positively malignant. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

Her eyes narrow. She attempts to match my mean-girl smile but can’t quite get there. “Off to Lucas Hall?” she asks. “Maybe your boyfriend finally made it.”

I was expecting bullshit from her, braced for it, and yet I’m still a little stunned she’d take it this far and that she still has no shame. What did I ever do to this bitch to warrant her hatred?

I shake my head with a feigned sympathetic smile. “Still relying on something you did a decade ago to feel okay about yourself? Maybe if you spent a little more time focused on your own life instead of mine, you wouldn’t be stuck wearing the free T-shirts you get from your mom. Have a great day.”

I start to move past her, and she snatches at my sleeve. “You’re not going to get away with this,” she snarls. “I know you’re trying to ruin us and I promise, if we go under, I’ll find a way to make you pay for it.”

I jerk my arm back and force a laugh though I’m boiling inside. “Trying to ruin you? I don’t have to ruin you. Look at where you’ve ended up. Seems to me you’ve ruined everything all on your own.”

“On my own?” she calls as I walk away. “Pretty sure if I’d grown up with half of your money, I’d be doing just fine right now. Keep right on taking what isn’t yours, you greedy bitch. I can’t wait to see it catch up with you.”

I keep moving, but I’m weighed down in a way I wasn’t before. Even when I’ve destroyed her business, it’s not going to be enough.

What happens if this plan of mine, the one that’s kept me warm for years, doesn’t give me any of the things I’d thought it would?

* * *

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