Ryan was really upset with me about it, saying, “That’s a stupid way to deal with it. You have to eat.”
We got in a fight about it one night when I couldn’t finish my hamburger, hadn’t even touched my fries. I tried to explain that I just didn’t have an appetite, food turned my stomach, but he kept pressuring me to take another bite. Finally I said, “Jesus, Ryan. Get off my back and stop treating me like a little kid!” I threw my food out and made him drop me off early. Then I tossed and turned for hours, feeling bad for how I’d snapped at him when I knew he was just worried about me. I was worried about me.
I closed my eyes and sent Ryan a mental message. It was something we’d started doing a couple of months ago. If something was bothering one of us, we’d close our eyes and mentally tell each other our problems. My fights with my mom. His fighting with his dad and worrying about his mom, who was working all the time, so tired she could barely drive home. The next day we’d check if the other person had sensed something and we always had, always knew when the other was upset.
Around one in the morning, Ryan came to my window, knocking softly. I opened it a crack, holding my breath against the noise.
“What are you doing here? My parents—”
“They’re sound asleep. Your dad has his window open and I could hear them snoring.”
“Nicole might hear you.” She was a pretty solid sleeper, but you never knew.
“Stop worrying so much. Let’s go for a drive.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.” He held up a joint with a smile.
If I got caught I’d be in big shit, but my life was already so screwed up it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Ryan and I drove around for an hour, smoking a joint, filling the truck with the sweet scent of marijuana while Pearl Jam wailed in the background. We didn’t talk about anything serious, not until we parked up at the lake, overlooking the water. Then he turned to me.
“I’m sorry I was giving you a hard time,” he said. “But it scares me that you’re not taking care of yourself.”
My face hot with shame, I stared out at the water. “I know. You don’t have to be with me if you don’t like it.” It was a challenge, one I didn’t really mean, and he knew it.
“Shut up. I’m not going anywhere. I know it’s because things are so shitty at school right now, but you have to hang in there and push past it.”
“Things are more than shitty. I don’t have anybody.”
“You have me.”
I turned to him, tears dripping down my face.
“I miss Amy.” Though I’d been spending more time the last year with Ryan, which had obviously annoyed Amy more than I realized, Amy was still my best girlfriend. I missed her sense of humor, missed talking about music, our boyfriends, helping each other with homework, gossiping, all of that.
“I shouldn’t have said that stuff about her following Warren around,” I said. “She was kind of right, I haven’t been calling her as much. I feel really bad.”
He wiped away one of my tears with his thumb. “I know, babe. But don’t forget Amy’s also pissed she got found out—it’s not your fault she cheated on Warren. You guys might still work things out.”
I took a breath, looked at him, and said, “Tell me again how good things are going to be soon.”
We talked for a while about the apartment we were going to get, the stuff his mom had given us, how much money he’d saved, all the places we were going to travel. I closed my eyes and focused on his words, letting my head drop against the back of the seat, letting the marijuana take over. He was right, none of this shit counted in the big picture. School was over in a few months. I could make it until then. Screw Amy if she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. If she was willing to believe Shauna, she was an idiot.
Ryan stretched out on the front seat with his head in my lap. He lifted up my shirt and rested his head on my belly for a moment, his cheek warm against my stomach, his breath sending shivers down my legs. He kissed my stomach.
I put my hand in his soft hair, running my fingers through the strands, tugging on a few. He whispered against my skin, “You’ll always have me.”
* * *
It was now the middle of February, and Ryan had taken me out for a nice dinner for Valentine’s Day—at a fancy restaurant, where they brought warm bread to the table. I’d even managed to clean off most of my plate, happy that he loved the cologne I’d given him. At school, Amy and our friends still weren’t talking to me, but a lot of the outright hostility in the halls—shoves, glares, hateful comments—had died down. Just being ignored was a blessing. Shauna still made snide remarks whenever I was around, but they didn’t sting as much from her as ones from my own friends. Or at least the people I’d thought were my friends.
One lunch, I was playing floor hockey with some of the guys in the gym, while Ryan was off working on his truck, when Shauna decided to join the game. She was on the opposite team, of course. Rachel and Cathy were watching from the side. Kim was probably rehearsing—she was in the school play and I hadn’t seen her with the girls as much recently. More often she was with one of the other girls who was playing the lead part, and I wondered if she was trying to break away from Shauna. Good luck with that.
At first the hockey game went okay. I was making some great passes, Shauna bringing out my competitive streak. Then she started getting closer and closer, crowding me. I tried to stay cool, to push back a little and not get cornered. But she kept coming at me, trying to slash me with her stick. Finally she hit me across the knuckles. It hurt, and I spun around and slashed her legs. She pushed into me with her shoulder. Now I was really pissed. I dropped my stick and used my whole body to slam into her, knocking her down. Then I jumped on top of her, straddling her torso, and started slapping her face. One of the girls, Rachel or Cathy, was screaming in my ear and pulling my hair. But I didn’t stop, just slapped harder. The guys around us cheered. Finally, a teacher showed up and separated us. He hauled us off to the principal’s office. The principal sat us in opposite rooms and called in our parents.
My mom and dad showed up. Dad looked like he’d just had a shower and I felt bad, knowing he’d had to leave the job site to come to the school. He gave my shoulder a squeeze, but Mom barely glanced at me. I tried to assess her mood. How angry was she? Her cheeks were flushed and her hair a little messy, like she’d brushed it fast. She’d been stressed out lately, buying some new properties to flip, and I remembered she had a meeting that afternoon with her Realtor. She was probably furious that my crap had interrupted her.
The principal said, “I’m sorry to have to call you in like this, but Toni was caught fighting on school grounds, so we’re going to have to suspend her for a week.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “Shauna started it—she kept slashing at my hands!” I never did like this principal—and I knew he didn’t like me. He was an older guy, gray hair, potbelly, and supposedly married to some rich chick—their kids were in private school, which I always thought ironic. Like our school wasn’t good enough. We’d had a few run-ins before, mostly about my lipping off to teachers.
“We’ll be talking to her father as well,” he said, “but Shauna’s saying you caused the fight and she was just defending herself. There are some other girls backing up her story. They also say you’ve been threatening Shauna.”
“They’re her friends. They’re lying for her. This is such bullshit.” I shouldn’t have been surprised—it was the way it always was. Everyone believed Shauna, but it still amazed me how many times she got away with crap.
Mom turned to me. “Toni, watch your language.” She faced the principal again. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, but hopefully she’ll learn her lesson.” She shook her head and kept speaking as though I weren’t there. “I can’t control her anymore. We’ve talked and talked to her, but nothing is getting through.”
My dad said, “Is there anyone other than this girl’s friends who saw what happened? It
would be good to have another side, seems a little biased…”
I smiled at him. Thanks, Dad.
The principal said, “The other students aren’t sure what happened, but we’re looking into Shauna’s role in the fight.”
I already knew how that would go, how everyone would cover for her or wouldn’t want to get involved.
My dad looked angry but he didn’t say anything else, just glanced at me, disappointed. He wasn’t the only one.
Later, while I cleaned out my locker and my parents waited in their truck, I saw Shauna’s father go in with her. Shauna saw me watching and gave me the finger. A couple of minutes later I heard laughter in the principal’s office and remembered that Frank McKinney and the principal played on the same ball team.
I found out later that Shauna had only been suspended for two days.
* * *
That night I was sitting on my bed, flipping through a magazine and still fuming about what had happened at school, when my mom came to my room. She didn’t knock, just pushed open the door and looked around.
“I want you to clean this up.”
“I’ll do it in a minute.”
“I know you, Toni. You won’t do it until I come in here and nag at you again. Put down your magazine and clean this room. It’s disgusting.”
Okay, so my room had gotten a little messy. When I got home from school, if I wasn’t with Ryan, I just hid out in my room, napping or listening to music, dreaming about the day we would graduate—cleaning up seemed exhausting. It wasn’t too bad, though, just a lot of clothes mostly and a couple of coffee mugs with moldy coffee on the bottom. I was still pissed that Mom had never even asked for my side of the fight. I’d tried to explain on the way home, but she said I had to find a way to control my temper, like it was all my fault.
“I’m reading this article, then I’ll do it,” I said.
She snatched the magazine out of my hands and flung it across the room. I stared at her. Mom could lose her temper sometimes, but she mostly just yelled and screamed.
“I said now.” She spun around and slammed the door.
I waited until I heard her go downstairs, my heart pounding, then picked up the magazine. Screw her. I wasn’t doing anything she said now. My jaw was tight with anger, the words blurring on the page in front of me.
Nicole knocked at the door, whispering, “Toni? You okay?” I let her in.
She leaned against the doorframe. “Why don’t you just do what she says?”
I threw myself back down on the bed. “Because she’s not being fair—she’s just pissed at me about the fight.”
After dinner, I’d told Nicole about the fight, so she knew it wasn’t my fault. She’d been cool about it, giving me a hug and helping with the dishes.
Now she said, “She’ll get over it.”
“Maybe, but it’s not going to be anytime soon.”
“So what? If you just do what she wants, she’ll leave you alone.”
She was right, but that wasn’t the point, and it annoyed the crap out of me that her answer to everything was to do whatever Mom wanted. What about what I wanted? Ever since we were kids, anytime I had a fight with Mom, Nicole would check afterward that I was okay, giving me a hug or trying to cheer me up somehow, but she always wanted me to smooth things over and be the one to apologize. I used to do it sometimes, thinking maybe Nicole was right, but I was sick of being the one to compromise when Mom never listened to me.
“I wish you would just leave me alone.” I picked up my magazine.
She closed the door. A half hour later my mom opened it. When she saw that I was still reading, she yanked the magazine from my hands, grabbed the upper part of my arm—hard—and jerked me off the bed.
Too shocked to say anything, I pulled myself free but kept my arm held up as a shield. For a moment I thought she might slap me—her hand was raised, but then she dropped it and said, “I told you to clean this damn room.”
My fear turning to anger, I yelled, “It’s not even that dirty! You’re just being a control freak.”
She yelled back, “I’m sick and tired of your attitude, Toni!”
I held my arm, my eyes filling with tears that I blinked back. She was grabbing stuff off the floor and throwing it around. “You live like an animal.” She picked up a pile of my clothes, threw it in my face. I flinched when a belt buckle hit my shoulder. She picked up some shoes, threw them at me while I cringed.
“Clean this up right now or you can get the hell out of my house.” She left, slamming the door so hard this time my mirror rattled on the wall.
Crying now, I picked up my laundry. Soon Ryan and I can get out of here. Just a few more months. Then they can all kiss my ass.
Mom came to my bedroom later that night. This time she knocked, but then she walked in before I could even answer.
“Can we talk?” she said.
I rolled over, facing the wall.
“I’m sorry I grabbed you,” she said, “but you can’t brush me off when I’m trying to speak to you—it’s rude and you know it’s going to cause a fight.” I didn’t say anything. She sighed and said, “You and I need to start getting along better. I’d like to try, but you need to work with me.”
She was quiet, waiting for me to speak, but I just stared at the wall, tears trickling down my face. She left, closing the door behind her with a soft click that felt final, like I had just ended something, but I wasn’t sure what.
* * *
The next week I was lying on Ryan’s bed, going over my beefs with my family for the tenth time.
“Babe, you need to let it go,” he said.
“You don’t take crap from anybody.”
“I take crap from my dad all the time.”
“My mom’s a total bitch.”
“She’s not that bad.”
I rolled over, my mouth dropping open. “You’re kidding me. She flipped out just because I didn’t clean up my room.”
“No, she flipped out because you were ignoring her—you knew it would piss her off. That’s why you did it. You were taking your anger out on her.”
I rolled back over. He was right. I’d been angry at Shauna, and how no one believed that she caused the fight. I couldn’t control any of that, so I did the one thing I could do, which was to make my mom mad. Watching her lose it had made me feel powerful. Still, I wasn’t ready to admit that part of it was my fault.
“You shouldn’t take her side—she hates that we’re dating.” I’d never really put that in words before, but Ryan had obviously sensed it for himself.
“I’m not taking anyone’s side, you shit.” He gave me a nudge. “Just telling it like it is. It would be great if she liked me more, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so why waste the energy.”
Ryan was the kind of guy who never worried about what other people thought of him. He was nice, but he sure as hell wasn’t a people-pleaser. When his friends bummed too many rides, he’d ask for gas money. If they didn’t have any cash, he didn’t give them a ride, simple as that. He’d help friends out, sure, working on their trucks and stuff, but he expected the same in return and if it looked like someone was using him, he stopped hanging out with them.
“It still pisses me off,” I said. “Mom’s been in an even worse mood this week because the neighbors are away and my dad’s going over there every day watering their plants and stuff. She thinks he’s doing too much for them.”
“Are these the neighbors who party all the time?”
“Yeah, they’re always having people over.” We lived outside of town, in a rural area within walking distance from a river. All the houses were newer—my dad had built a lot of them—with big pieces of property. Many of our neighbors had money, their driveways full of cars, boats, RVs. And the Andersons next door threw the biggest neighborhood parties. My parents would walk over with a bottle of wine, then stumble home hours later, laughing and joking with each other. I liked that even though they were really different, they were
best friends.
Ryan looked up at the ceiling, like he was thinking. His arms were folded underneath his head, making his biceps flex in his T-shirt. Ryan had an endless supply of concert shirts, this one from Nirvana. But he’d never seen a real band play live. We always talked about going together once we had more money.
I rested my chin on his chest. “What?”
He gave me a lazy smile. “Bet they have lots of booze over there.”
I smiled back. “Probably, yeah.” I added, “My parents are going to my uncle’s for the weekend. But I’m supposed to stick around the house and I can’t have anyone over.”
“Do you know where the key to the house is?”
“Hanging by our back door.” I snapped my fingers. “And they wrote the alarm code down on a list of instructions they gave my dad—it’s on top of the fridge.”
“Want to have some fun Friday?” He grinned. “Both my parents are home, so we can’t come over here, and Dad’s been drinking more lately.”
I’d noticed the fresh bruise on Ryan’s arm. I kissed it now. He grabbed me hard, gave me another kiss. Then he said, “I think we both deserve some fun.”
* * *
That Friday Nicole took off with the phone, whispering behind her bedroom door. She’d been acting funny since that party and I had a feeling she was seeing that guy, though he never showed up at the house. We were allowed to date at sixteen, so she must be hiding him for a reason. I still suspected he was older but didn’t recognize him from my class. Was he older than me? Maybe graduated? Mom wouldn’t like that. A half hour later I figured Nicole was finished, so I picked up the phone downstairs.
“Hey, I’m using the phone!” Nicole said.
“Sorry. I thought you were done. How much longer you going to be? I have to call Ryan.”