Page 17 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

It sounds awful. Horrible. But nobody else is looking nearly as panicked as I feel. The timer starts and pens move across pages. I look around at the heads bent studiously over their notebooks, all of the hands moving smoothly. Freewriting sounds like something that requires very little effort, and yet when I look down on my empty page, I can’t come up with a single word. I force my hand down, pressing the tip of my pen to paper. If I could just get the nib to touch the paper, the words would start flowing.

It’s pressing so hard by now that there’s an indentation in the paper, and still, the words don’t come. I push the pen hard, turning the indentation into a line.

I.

I what? Please, mind. Please work. Instead, the words that come are Pam’s.I hear that every year, about a quarter of the students flunk out of the course.

How do you flunk out of a Creative Writing course?I had asked so stupidly. Well, now I’m about to find out. You fail because your mind aborts all thought, purging it out in favor of a tangle of fear pulsing under a fog of alcohol. I can’t believe that after all the hours I’ve worked, saving up every cent, after theenormous debt I’ve put myself in to be here, I’m about to crash and burn on my very first day of class.

Fucking Ani. She knew, somehow. She must’ve known. Last night was the first time we met, but I’d sensed it, that predatorial hunger in her, the shot of jealousy on her face when Thalia introduced us. She’d wanted to get rid of me, and like a complete patsy, I’d fallen for it. I’d let her motion the server to refill my glass over and over and over, and now here I am, about to fail a five-minute exercise, the first ever task given by my course.

A shrill shriek erupts from the egg timer and I jump; my butt actually leaves the chair for a split second. My heart stops, only to resume in a mad gallop.Shit, shit!It’s over. All that time I’d spent worrying about being exposed, my human mask slipping and showing a glimpse of the beast beneath, and it turns out it didn’t matter, because now I’m about to be exposed as a fraud, a wannabe writer who can’t write after all. Life’s a real bitch sometimes.

8

Twenty-one Years Ago

I hate waste. I don’t like wasting food, or time, or money. But the thing I most hate to waste is potential. And I have so much of it. I know that; I’ve known that ever since I was little. And now, at the ripe age of twelve, I know that I have the potential to really make it big. You know how kids are often told the big old lie: “You can be whatever you want to be”? Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s bullshit. But not so for me. My teachers are always raving about how gifted I am, and even Aunt Claudette agrees. She’d often say, “Child, you have a busy, busy mind. Put that mind to good use.” It’s too bad that I was born into the wrong family. Imagine the heights I would’ve reached if I’d been born into a wealthy one, with parents that could afford to send me to the best private schools, then on to the Ivy Leagues. But no, I was born to this one, a single-parent home complete with a mother who’s completely uninterested in me.

When I turned twelve, I decided it was time to punish my mother. Why? Too many reasons to count. For being a negligentparent. For failing to see how exceptional her daughter is. For being so fucking stupid that she has no real prospects, can only hop from one minimum wage job to another.

I’ve spent years studying my mother, watching her like I’m a scientist observing a rodent. My mother is a serial dater. She delights in it, plays the role of the dream girlfriend perfectly. I eavesdrop on her as she chatters on the phone each night to her friends, giggling about how infatuated her current boyfriend is. She knows just what to do to get them hooked on her, knowing exactly when to push and pull, to leave them wanting more. She loves the feeling of being desired. Then she’ll get bored; maybe she senses that they’re about to get bored of her, who knows? But whatever it is, my mother rarely stays with the same man for months. She’ll dump them, break their hearts, and when they’re gone, she’ll crook one corner of her mouth up into a smile and say, “Leave ’em before they leave you, baby girl. Remember that.”

To be fair, she did teach me a lot about men, so I suppose there’s that.

I decide that the best way to punish her is to make sure all of her boyfriends leave her instead of her leaving them. It’s the perfect punishment. She’ll be left alone, with plenty of time to ruminate on how unwanted she is.

It’s a lot trickier than you might think, scaring off someone’s boyfriend when he’s not ready to go. Most kids in my situation would start behaving badly—throw tantrums, maybe, or be a complete bitch to the boyfriend, but I know that’s not going to cut it. That’ll just paint me as the problem instead of Mom. For days, I wander everywhere, deep in thought, toying with one idea after another and rejecting them all.

The idea comes to me from the newspaper. Some guy onetown over had been arrested for molesting some kids. Perfect. That same day, I go home and smile my way through dinner as Mom and her boyfriend du jour, Jackson, make googly eyes at each other over the pasta bake. I wait patiently for them to finish their nightly routine, watching TV and making out. Then, finally, Jackson leaves the apartment. I steal out the door, being careful to walk as quietly as I can past Aunt Claudette’s apartment (I swear sometimes she just spends her time peeping out her door to catch me doing something bad), and catch up with him just as he’s about to climb into his car.

“Jackson, wait.”

He turns around and breaks into a smile when he sees me. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

Kiddo. I’m twelve and I have boobs and I bleed every month, but he’s still calling me “kiddo.” Guy deserves what’s coming to him. “I need a favor.”

He grins. “Sure, anything for you.”

Don’t be too sure about that, idiot. “Great,” I say brightly. “I need you to stop seeing my mom.”

His smile freezes on his face. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I need you to break up with her. Or not, whatever. Just stop seeing her.”

“Uh, hang on, why—”

“I don’t like you,” I say. I love the simplicity of it, the undeniable clarity.

He sighs. “I think this is something you and your mom should talk about, because I’m crazy about her, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to prove to you that I’m serious about this relationship.”

“Nah.” I shrug. “I just don’t like you. You look like an asshole.”

Now he’s lost all traces of the smile. “Okay, listen here, kid—”

“If you don’t break up with her by tomorrow, I’m going to tell everyone that you touched me.”

“Whoa, hang on a second—”

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