Almost seventeen now. She didn’t know why, but that was important. One step closer to people taking her seriously. One more step away from this sucky year.
Earlier that afternoon, her mother had driven them to the high school. As her mother filled out paperwork to sign her up for classes, the girl leaned against a pillar and watched the other students walk the halls, slouch against the rows of yellow lockers, scatter like dice when the bell rang. About the same as in Phoenix: plenty of shit-kickers, jocks, and cheerleaders overly fond of hair spray. She did see one kid who clearly worshipped Morrissey and another with a safety pin in his ear, wearing a Misfits T-shirt, so maybe all was not lost. Misfit. Ill-fitting, like a too-tight coat or shrunken gloves, like her stupid pants belted tight at the waist. Why was it she recognized herself in the prefixes, in altered meanings: Unsettled. Uneasy. Misshapen. Atypical. Ex-girlfriend. Ex-daughter.
Two boys, wearing flannel shirts and jeans and wrestling a large cardboard box, shuffled by. They both looked at her and smiled; once they’d passed, they whispered over the box and glanced back, laughing. Those laughs: at once flirtatious and threatening. She tugged her sweater over her hips and fought the urge to crouch. She thought of the Boy, whom she had forbidden herself to think of, and how she’d once gotten a buzz from his flattery, a rush of heat from his touch. She crossed her legs and twisted into herself.
Afterward, her mother drove them around town for half an hour. Up and down Main Street, through the bordering neighborhoods, around Sycamore High and Sycamore College, to the post office where her mother would start work in two days, up the hairpin switchbacks to the tiny abandoned mining town of Jerome and its tight streets, where houses teetered on steep slopes. The girl tracked road signs, freshly memorized for her driver’s license test: Do Not Enter When Flooded. Road Slippery When Wet. No Passing. Yield. Stop Sign Ahead.
At a gas station in town, the girl kept her face to the passenger window. A woman at the next pump wore mismatched striped socks and a giant yellow ribbon safety-pinned to her sweater. Across the street was a motel, the Woodchute Motor Lodge, which was built to look like cabins, all connected by a covered wraparound porch. Behind it loomed a strange black outcrop, a small mountain in the middle of town.
Her mother sighed. “The silent treatment is getting old, J-bird.”
“What is there to say?” The girl shrugged. “We’re here. It’s done.”
“There’s plenty to say. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She was thinking of everything as usual, her head spinning with a mess of the mundane and the profound: the president announcing war, how the rows of lockers looked like stained teeth, whether the letters on the Woodchute’s sign were hatched to resemble logs, the question of reality, of knowledge, of love. Her breath fogged the window, and she traced an X through the moisture. X marks the spot. You Are Here. Or was she? Were any of them?
Her mother went on, “I know we’ve been over it, but it’s worth repeating. It’s a big change, and it all happened fast. Too fast. I know, and I’m sorry. We have a lot to figure out. It’s just you and me now. I need you on board, okay? I need you—” Her mother tugged on the girl’s arm. “Look at me, would you?”
The girl pulled her arm away.
Her mother shook her head. “The aggrieved teenager thing doesn’t suit you.”
“I guess you would know,” the girl said. “Mother knows best.”
“Right.” Her mother laughed.
“It’s not funny,” the girl said. “It’s not a joke.”
Her mother rubbed hard at her forehead, pinching between her brows. Her voice rose as it did when she forgot to modulate, as if she were speaking over the din of a crowd. “Look. I didn’t want to get into all this before, because finances are my problem, not yours, but the fact is, even if I’d wanted to stay, we couldn’t. I had to sell the house. I couldn’t buy your father out, pay the lawyer, all the bullshit I didn’t want in the first place. That’s the part of divorce no one talks about. It’s expensive. It breaks you. Financially and otherwise.” She sighed again, tugging on the lobe of her bad ear. She lowered her voice. “But even if that weren’t the case, I needed a change. A fresh start. We both do.”
The girl slumped lower in her seat, thinking of her father. In California with his new blond wife, his new baby girl. Beautiful girl, something he’d once called her. The sister she’d wanted when she was younger, whom she’d begged her parents for (not understanding what her mother meant when she said, “We can’t have any more kids, honey”). She could not reconcile this new image with the mental family picture she had always known. It was as if she and her mother had been cut out and replaced with two strangers’ faces. Not a sister but a replacement. His new beautiful girl. It seemed like a bad dream creeping in during the day, and she’d think, No, that’s not real. Except it was. And her father was the one holding the scissors and paste. She had decided she would not speak to him again. He didn’t want them? Well, fuck him. Fuck. Him.
Her mother said, “We’re here. You have a year and a half left of school, college to think about. Give it a chance.”
The girl turned and looked at her mother, who sat facing the windshield, her jaw flexing as she tried not to cry. In her mother’s profile, the girl could see herself, the longish chin and straight nose, the messy curls her mother pinned with combs, the laugh lines fanned at the corners of her eyes. Like a snapshot of her future self.
She reached out and touched a freckle on her mother’s wrist.
Her mother wiped under her eyes and smiled at the girl. “I had a wild thought. What if we like it here?” She gasped and clutched at her heart.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Heaven forbid.”
Her mother grinned. She turned the key ignition and tapped the steering wheel. “You want to drive? Come on.”
The girl hid a smile in her sleeve. They switched sides, and she settled herself behind the wheel, latching the seat belt.
“Check your mirrors,” her mother said. “God, I can’t believe you’re taller than me now. Taller than your dad even.”
Your dad, instead of Dad. Another among all the changes.
The girl said, “Can’t wait for the witty repartee at school. ‘Hey, how’s the weather up there?’ ” She stuck her finger in her mouth and made a gagging sound. She thought of those laughing boys in the hall, of how she’d slumped against the pillar, trying to hide. After the Boy and his dumb lies, that’s what she’d been doing at her old school: hiding in plain sight, ducking from the sense of shame that dogged her like a shadow. Her shame wasn’t about the sex so much as being duped, as being stupid: she’d believed him. Her, the girl who questioned everything. Love—ha.