Read Online Why Can't I Be You by Allie Larkin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Allie Larkin
Ads: Link
takeout orders so she wouldn’t get mad at me for ordering pizza too many times or not enough or, worse, decide that she didn’t want what I’d ordered and get in the car to go pick something else up. I’d been both the passenger on those car rides and the one sitting by the phone, waiting to hear her car in the garage, my breathing getting shallow if I happened to hear sirens off in the distance. So I kept a calendar in my room, taped to the underside of my desk blotter, and used color-coded dots to remind me what we’d already ordered that week. Red for Chinese, green for Italian, blue for salads from the pizza place, yellow for chicken wings.
She didn’t eat much anyway. Like she was on a hunger strike or trying to out-skinny whoever my dad might start dating next. Like she was trying to disappear. When I took the garbage out on Sunday nights, I bagged all her bottles in opaque black plastic so no one would see them in the recycling bin.
I had to make excuses for why Sheila and the Rachels couldn’t come over anymore. When Sheila said, “Did you see Johnny Depp on the cover of
US Weekly
? I can’t wait to come over and read it!” I told her that my mom was redecorating and there were paint fumes. That only worked for about two weeks, and then it just compounded the lie, because not only did my mom spend all day in her room, watching soap operas in her nightgown, but we didn’t have freshly painted walls and new slipcovers on the couch cushions. We had a big stack of mail on the kitchen table, newspapers piled in the hallway, and dirty dishes all over the house. For a few weeks, I smuggled the magazines to Sheila at school, hoping that being her supplier of Johnny and Kate gossip would count for something, but it wasn’t the same. I was weird. I was lying. They shared their secrets, and I wasn’t sharing mine. I felt like they could tell.
Eventually, I stopped getting invited to their houses. They made plans without me. I could never get my mom to take me to the store to buy me the right kind of sneakers or hair clips. One day in October, they sat at a lunch table that only had three open seats. They didn’t even look back apologetically or anything. They just sat there and went on with their perfect little teenage lives, and I didn’t exist anymore. They didn’t skip a beat.
It’s not like it really mattered. Between schoolwork and trying to keep the house clean and our bills paid with alimony and child support so the electricity wouldn’t get shut off again, I didn’t have time to have friends anymore anyway.
Sometimes I couldn’t help but think, if only my dad had sent the check on time. If only he’d had the good sense to tell Cheryl not to pick up the phone at his place, if only he’d walked on eggshells like we were supposed to, I’d have been wearing a pink scrunchie and Tretorns with a matching pink stripe, sitting with the rest of the Four Amigos, laughing when Rachel K. snarfed Diet Coke out of her nose right in front of Trent Wilner. I wouldn’t have gotten stuck sitting at the loser table, where no one talked to anyone and we all averted our eyes to hide the embarrassment we felt for not having anywhere else to sit, for even existing.
Sometimes I still believed the person my mother was that summer before high school was the person she most wanted to be. Sometimes I still missed her.
Myra and I finished every little last bit of our room service order.
“Oh,” Myra said, holding her stomach. “That was amazing! I’ve been so busy with the store. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real meal! Thank you, Jess!”
“No problem,” I said, picking up the tray and carrying it to the hallway.
Myra got up and opened the doors to the balcony. The sound of water rushing over the falls behind the lodge filled the room. “Wow, Jess! Have you been out here yet?”
I put the tray outside the door and met her on the balcony. The air was damp and smelled like pine trees. And if you
She didn’t eat much anyway. Like she was on a hunger strike or trying to out-skinny whoever my dad might start dating next. Like she was trying to disappear. When I took the garbage out on Sunday nights, I bagged all her bottles in opaque black plastic so no one would see them in the recycling bin.
I had to make excuses for why Sheila and the Rachels couldn’t come over anymore. When Sheila said, “Did you see Johnny Depp on the cover of
US Weekly
? I can’t wait to come over and read it!” I told her that my mom was redecorating and there were paint fumes. That only worked for about two weeks, and then it just compounded the lie, because not only did my mom spend all day in her room, watching soap operas in her nightgown, but we didn’t have freshly painted walls and new slipcovers on the couch cushions. We had a big stack of mail on the kitchen table, newspapers piled in the hallway, and dirty dishes all over the house. For a few weeks, I smuggled the magazines to Sheila at school, hoping that being her supplier of Johnny and Kate gossip would count for something, but it wasn’t the same. I was weird. I was lying. They shared their secrets, and I wasn’t sharing mine. I felt like they could tell.
Eventually, I stopped getting invited to their houses. They made plans without me. I could never get my mom to take me to the store to buy me the right kind of sneakers or hair clips. One day in October, they sat at a lunch table that only had three open seats. They didn’t even look back apologetically or anything. They just sat there and went on with their perfect little teenage lives, and I didn’t exist anymore. They didn’t skip a beat.
It’s not like it really mattered. Between schoolwork and trying to keep the house clean and our bills paid with alimony and child support so the electricity wouldn’t get shut off again, I didn’t have time to have friends anymore anyway.
Sometimes I couldn’t help but think, if only my dad had sent the check on time. If only he’d had the good sense to tell Cheryl not to pick up the phone at his place, if only he’d walked on eggshells like we were supposed to, I’d have been wearing a pink scrunchie and Tretorns with a matching pink stripe, sitting with the rest of the Four Amigos, laughing when Rachel K. snarfed Diet Coke out of her nose right in front of Trent Wilner. I wouldn’t have gotten stuck sitting at the loser table, where no one talked to anyone and we all averted our eyes to hide the embarrassment we felt for not having anywhere else to sit, for even existing.
Sometimes I still believed the person my mother was that summer before high school was the person she most wanted to be. Sometimes I still missed her.
Myra and I finished every little last bit of our room service order.
“Oh,” Myra said, holding her stomach. “That was amazing! I’ve been so busy with the store. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real meal! Thank you, Jess!”
“No problem,” I said, picking up the tray and carrying it to the hallway.
Myra got up and opened the doors to the balcony. The sound of water rushing over the falls behind the lodge filled the room. “Wow, Jess! Have you been out here yet?”
I put the tray outside the door and met her on the balcony. The air was damp and smelled like pine trees. And if you
Similar Books
