Page 80 of The Do-Over

Dear God, I had a tattoo. That saidthat.

“Oh my God.” I looked into the mirror and stared at my own face.

What have I done?

CONFESSION #18

I’ve gotten three flat tires in the past year. All three were because I wasn’t paying attention and drilled a curb.

“Your mother is here—that’s awesome.”

We pulled into my dad’s driveway and I felt queasy when I saw my mom’s car, parked a little off-kilter next to the curb as if she’d squealed onto the block and sprinted to the house from her vehicle.

Inside, she was standing in the kitchen with her arms crossed, and the second we entered, her long index finger pointed directly at me. Her teeth were gritted and she said, “Emilie Elizabeth, go get whatever you need from your room. You are coming home with me. Now!”

“For God’s sake, Beth, can you settle down for a minute?” My dad dumped his keys on the counter and looked exhausted. I felt guilty for making him worry, especially since he’d refused to talk to me in the car.

The minute we’d walked out of my grandma’s I’d managed to get out the word “I’m” before he barked, “Don’t talk to me right now, Em.”

I’d spent the rest of the three-minute drive thinking of all thethings I’d done on the DONC. It seemed fuzzy after the multiple Valentine’s Days, and I wasn’t 100 percent sure it all had really and truly happened.

Because it couldn’t all have happened, right? I mean, repeating days didn’t exist in real life. Surely there was some other explanation. Maybe it’d been a dream on top of a dream, like a dreamaboutrepeating days.

“Are you kidding me? Settledown?” My mom’s eyes were narrowed and she was ready to fight. She was wearing tartan plaid flannel Ralph Lauren pajamas, and her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. The faint smell of her moisturizer cream wafted across the kitchen and hit me with a one-two punch of nervous dread and homesick longing. “I have a hard time settling down when your lax parenting led to our daughter misbehaving at school and not coming home last night.”

“Shh.” Lisa, who was sitting in a chair at the table, moved her hands like she was patting the air to remind everyone that the boys were sleeping.

“Oh, come on, you know I’m not a lax parent.” My dad lowered his voice and dragged a hand through his messy hair. “Emilie is a teenager. Teenagers make stupid decisions sometimes. Just because she did doesnotmean that—”

“Yes, it does!”

“You guys—shhh!” Lisa pointed upstairs, where the twins slept.

“No, it goddamn doesn’t,” he whisper-yelled. “I know you’re perfect, Beth, but the rest of us—including our daughter—are not. Can you just be reasonable—”

“Don’t youdarecall me unreasonable when you couldn’t find her!”

“Shhh!”

“Youshh, Lisa—Christ!” My mom gave up on volume control and barked at me, “Go get your thingsnow; tomorrow—today—is my day, regardless of this bullshit.”

I was still just standing right inside the door, paralyzed by their fighting. I glanced at my dad and he gave a terse nod, so I ran up to my room. I blinked fast and tried not to cry as I jammed clothes into my backpack; I was way too old to cry about parents fighting, right?

It was just that it’d been a while since they’d had a big fight. And Ihatedwhen I was the cause and they talked about me like I wasn’t there. Like I was an object they were arguing over instead of the kid they were supposed to love.

Thankfully, I discovered early on that I had the power to extinguish many of their Em-related disagreements. By bending over backward to please whichever one of them was aggressively upset, I was often able to curtail the fight.

My superpower, if you will.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to help me—at all. Not this time.

I ran down the stairs, and the second I walked into the kitchen my mom said—

“I will be at my lawyer’s the second his office opens, Tom. I’m filing to amend our custody arrangement because there’s no way inhellI’m letting her visit you in Texas after this.”

“I haven’t even had a chance to tell her—”

“Good.”

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