“Leaving?” Arizona says, and Roxanne shakes her head at me like it is definitely time for me to shut the eff up.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask Karissa. I try to think of ways to tell them about her lies where I don’t sound like I’m trying to get some messed-up kind of revenge.
“We’re together, Montana,” Karissa says. “Your father and I. I can’t keep secrets from him like that. I’m not like you and Natasha and all these other women, keeping secrets, being half in the relationship and half out. He’s going to be my family. That means something real to me. I value him. And our family.”
Arizona winces at the name Natasha and turns away from me, so far in the other direction that she’s facing the wall. I wonder if I’ve lost her.
“But you haven’t been honest! Oh my God, this is insane! She made up everything about her family. I am not the liar here. I’m not the big ugly secret keeper!”
“Show me your hand,” Dad says again. His voice is louder.
“Show him,” Karissa says, like I’m going to listen to her instead of him. She puts her hand in his and tilts her head and assumes this motherly stance that is absolute bullshit.
“She lets us drink,” I say. “It’s probably illegal.” Now I’m desperate. If the Big Things won’t resonate, maybe I can make them believe the smaller things. The little hiccups that have been adding up all summer so far.
“Montana, I’m not fucking around right now,” Dad says. His face is severe. He’s loud and spitting. I show him my hand. The one with the tattoo. It’s funny that he finds it so surprising, given that he clearly knew it was there. “You didn’t do this,” he says.
“We’re in love,” I say.
But then I’m crying too. Because this isn’t really how it’s supposed to be. This is more like Dad telling me and Arizona about his latest wife in the diner and not at all like the celebration and romance Bernardo and I wanted. This isn’t special and ours. This, too, is like the painting of the person with the painting of the person with the painting. A repeat of a repeat of a repeat.
“Did you think I would like this?” Dad says. His voice drops, and he’s talking only to me now. Arizona stomps out of the room, and Roxanne follows her with a sigh of relief. I look to Bernardo, but he’s staying still. Steady. He’s not leaving me with this. He pours himself a coffee and keeps an eye on Karissa, like she might jump one or both of us. Like she’s an explosive.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I say. “You need to worry about who you’re marrying. She’s not who she says—”
“I thought you didn’t believe in marriage,” Dad says. It does sound like something I would have said in the diner or on the stoop or right here, over coffee, wishing I could smoke in front of my father.
“I don’t believe in your marriages,” I say.
“You’re a kid. You don’t know what you need or want. Or what you believe in.”
I have lost the ability to speak.
“You’re going to change,” Dad says. “A million times over.” It sounds more like a hope of his than a fact. And it stings, since I’ve seen a photograph detailing all the ways he’d like me to change.
“Montana doesn’t want to change for you,” Bernardo says.
“Well, what the hell do you think she’s doing with you?” Karissa says.
Bernardo pretends not to have heard her. But I heard her.
“This is all me,” I say. I mean the hair and the eyebrow ring and the tattoo and the being in love with Bernardo. But I also mean it in comparison to Karissa, and even Arizona, who are both part plastic and faking it. “You’ve always wanted me to change,” I say to my father, the most honest I’ve ever been to him, the most direct. “You gave me that stupid gift certificate and told me I’d never be good enough and you sit there waiting for me to improve, and sorry, but this is who I’m going to be.”
“Gift certificate?” Dad asks.
I wonder if there has been a single day I haven’t thought about the plastic surgery gift certificate promise in my drawer. It’s like my mother—a thing that is haunting me and changing everything. A thing I wish weren’t true.
“You and Natasha. Our thirteenth birthdays. The promise of plastic surgery,” I say, thinking we’re family and I can use shorthand, but Dad looks full-on befuddled.
“That was a long time ago,” Dad says. “A lifetime ago. I don’t remember everything single thing that happened when—”
I wish Arizona were hearing this with me.
“You don’t remember,” I say. I knew. But I didn’t really know.
“I’m sure there’s all kinds of things we both remember differently,” he says.
“It’s in my bedroom. It’s a thing you did to me. It’s the thing you did to me,” I say. “It wasn’t a lifetime ago. None of it was. It’s all part of my lifetime. All of it.” I look him right in the eye. I say it clearly, the way we rarely talk to each other.