I touched below my eyes. It was always worrisome when someone said you looked tired but you didn’t feel that way.
“Listen, Maggie. We must talk.” Mrs. Boone sat up straighter in her seat and cleared her throat. “What I mean is you must listen as I speak.”
I sat up straighter, too. I knew it must be serious because whenever she was going to be stern, her nostrils flared, which they were doing at that moment.
“You have to leave your house,” she said.
I almost laughed.
Leave home?
What a ridiculous idea. She knew my situation—well, she didn’t know my situation, but she knew well enough. In the past ten years, I hadn’t left home. Mama and Daddy had enrolled me in homeschooling years ago, and whenever I needed a doctor or a dentist, my parents arranged for them to come to us. Mrs. Boone knew these facts; it was why we never had disgusting tea at her house.
Her brows furrowed. “I’m not joking, Maggie May. You have to leave. What are you going to do? Stay here forever? You’re about to graduate high school. Are you not interested in college?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
Mrs. Boone frowned. “How do you expect to ever live your life? How will you ever fall in love? Or hike a mountain? Or see the Eiffel Tower at night? Jessica, we can’t keep supporting you like this,” she said.
I paused and raised an eyebrow. Jessica?
“Your father and I are being pushed to the limit, and there’s not much more we can take. Don’t you want to be something? Do something?”
The room filled with silence, and Mrs. Boone’s brows lowered, as if she was going deep into thought. A cloud of confusion washed over her as she pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. She shook her head slightly before reaching for her tea and taking a sip.
Her eyes were filled with a state of bewilderment when she looked up at me. “What were we saying?” Where had she just traveled? “Oh right. You must leave, Maggie May.
“What about your parents? Are they just supposed to spend the rest of their days sitting in this house with you? Do they never get a chance to be married without kids in their home? They didn’t sign up for this.”
I turned my back to her, angered and hurt, but mostly ashamed, because she was right. Out of the corner of my eye, I could still see her frowning. The more I saw her frown, the angrier I grew.
Leave.
“Oh. You’re grumpy now and throwing a tantrum,” she muttered.
I knocked on the table once. No.
She knocked on it twice. “Yes. A teenage girl who is emotional and throwing a tantrum, how original. Finish your sandwich, grumpy. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Whatever, old fart. Don’t be late again. I rolled my eyes and stomped my feet hard against the floor. God, I was throwing a tantrum. How original.
“You’re mad at me, which is fine,” she said, rolling her brown paper into a ball. She stood up from her chair, placed her purse on her shoulder, and lifted up my novel. Her steps brought her closer to me and she lifted my chin with her finger. “But you’re only mad because you know I’m right.” She placed the book in my lap. “You can’t just read these books and think that means you’re living. It’s their story, not yours, and it’s heartbreaking to watch someone so young toss away their chance at writing their own story.”
“You’re really starting to piss me off, Cheryl.”
Cheryl was fighting with her boyfriend, Jordan, across the hall from my bedroom as I sat on my bed reading a novel.
Correction: Cheryl was fighting with her ex-boyfriend Jordan across the hall from my bedroom as I sat on my bed reading a novel.
“I’m just saying,” Cheryl groaned, tapping the heel of her shoe against the wall. Her arms were crossed and she kept smacking her bubble gum. “It’s not me, it’s you. I’m just not into you like that anymore.”
“You gotta be shitting me,” Jordan huffed, his feet storming back and forth in the hallway. “I broke up with my ex for you! I paid more than a hundred bucks for our prom tickets—a fucking dance I didn’t even want to go to—for you. I’ve bent over backward to treat you right. I’ve ditched parties to watch chick flicks with you.”
Cheryl twirled her hair on her finger and shrugged. “Nobody told you to do all those things.”
Jordan chuckled, flabbergasted. “Yes! You did! You even smoked my weed every night.”
“That was me being nice to you,” she explained. “You smoking pot alone would’ve just made you a pothead. You smoking with me made you a social butterfly.”
“This is bullshit,” he snapped, raking his hands through his hair. “Prom is tomorrow. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Go by yourself.”
Cheryl was beautiful, that was a given fact. Over the years, she had grown into her body—big chest, thick hips, slim waist—a lot faster than I had grown into mine. In my mind, she had the perfect body, and from years of braces, a perfect smile to go with it. After years of feeling like an outsider, she’d created this persona where she was determined to fit in—even if that meant extreme measures to lose weight for an ounce of attention.
Another given fact about my sister was that she knew her beauty existed, and she used it in almost every situation to get whatever she wanted in the world—no matter who it hurt. Then, she’d come to my bedroom and tell me about how many guys she used and abused, just to get things from them. Dates, money, presents, sex—anything and everything.
Sometimes I thought she told me so much because she resented me for making her miss out on so many things as a kid. Other times, I thought she felt guilty about what she did, and my silence gave her a bit of confidence that what she did was okay.
She was a professional fake lover of love. She made guys believe in the love, too, which wasn’t easy for boys our age—especially for a bad boy turned good like Jordan. He literally went from the biggest jerk ever to a puppy dog whenever he was around Cheryl. He always seemed as if he was begging her to love him—except for when she pissed him off. When she pissed him off, his true colors showed. People could hide their true selves for a while, but over time, the masks always fell off.
“No. Screw that. You said you loved me,” Jordan choked out, almost close to tears.
“Yeah, loved—past tense.”