Music thumped out of the speakers and Izzy knew that any moment now Charlie’s mother would holler upstairs to turn it down because she couldn’t hear herself think. The predictability of it scratched at her skin.
It was Saturday night. In her previous life, Saturday nights were always reserved for friends, for hanging out, for doing teenage things. Being here should have felt good. Home made her think of her mom, and it was emotionally exhausting. Spending time with her friends should have been a distraction, but it wasn’t. She felt displaced.
“Charlie!!” The voice came up the stairs, decibels louder than the music. “Turn that noise down, now!”
Charlie rolled her eyes and cranked up the volume. “I’m drowning her out. She’s annoying the hell out of me. First it’s my grades, then it’s what I’m wearing, the way I’m talking…”
Avery blew on her nails. “I had a fight with my mom, too. She wanted me home by eleven. How embarrassing is that? Also, the car. They wanted me to learn to drive, and now there’s like a fight every time I want to borrow it. I can’t wait to go to college, and I’ll be applying on the other side of the country to get away from the nagging.”
There was a humming in Izzy’s ears.
They moaned the whole time. About trivia. Stuff that just didn’t matter. The contrast between what they thought was important and what she thought was important was so vast they might as well have been living on different continents. If she’d crawled past them bloodied and injured, would they even have noticed? That was how she felt on the inside.
Was she a terrible friend? If it mattered to them then it should matter to her, too, shouldn’t it? Or were they terrible friends, not understanding how she felt?
She reminded herself that probably qualified as “all or nothing thinking.” No one was terrible. Everyone was doing the best they could, but there were days when she felt their best wasn’t enough for her.
There had been a time when the trivial stuff had mattered to her, too. What would she give now for her biggest worry to be whether she wore the blue top or the red top?
“The first thing I’m going to do when I’m in college is buy a new wardrobe and new makeup.” Charlie swiped orange nail polish onto her nails. “Mom won’t see how I’m spending my money, and if she does find out she won’t be able to do anything. It’s going to be so great to get away.”
It didn’t seem to occur to them that moaning about their mothers might be tactless. They were supposed to be her best friends, but these days she felt isolated and alone.
Freaked out by her own thoughts, she grabbed the can and knocked back her drink. The sudden rush of sugar gave her energy. Maybe the sugar was the reason she decided to speak up. Or maybe it was because she was sick of being silent and pretending she thought what they thought. Felt what they felt. Maybe part of her wanted to shock them. She wanted to shake them and tell them to wake up to what they had.
She’d had a fight with her mother, too, and she hadn’t been given the chance to put it right. And now she had to handle those feelings all alone. She wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to them.
If she could turn the clock back, her motto would be a hug before bed, and nothing left unsaid.
But how could she not have talked about that phone call she’d overheard? There was no way she could have ignored it, although maybe she should have found a way to have the conversation without shrieking.
“Your mom cares, that’s all.”
Charlie admired her nails, spreading her fingers until her hand looked like a starfish. “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. She cares about herself. Everything has to be the way she wants it. I might add a glitter strip to this. What do you think?”
“She cares about you, you dumbass.” Izzy scrunched the empty can in her hands, her knuckles turning white with the force of it. “She says all that stuff because she cares.”
Charlie rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. You don’t have any of this shit to deal with—” Her voice tailed off as she realized, too late, what she’d said.
“Yeah, I’m so lucky to have lost my mom. Makes life so much easier.” Izzy didn’t recognize her own voice. It was as high-pitched and shrill as the school fire alarm. If her friends had any sense they’d evacuate, but they didn’t. They sat there gaping at her. “I bet you envy me. No one to tell me what to do. No one to tell me to turn my music down or wear my skirt longer. I mean it’s great, really. I can’t tell you how cool it is.”
Charlie glanced at Avery. Avery turned pink and gave a tiny shake of her head, embarrassed and defensive at the same time.
Izzy was furious with herself. This was the second time in as many days that she’d lost it. What was happening to her?
Panicking because now she was going to have to have a conversation she didn’t want, she slid off the bed and walked to the window.
“Ignore me. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Sorry, Izz.” Avery spoke in a small voice. “We weren’t thinking. You know we didn’t mean it that way. We were just being normal around you, that’s all. You said you got sick of people tiptoeing. Treating you weirdly, like a freak, you know?”
She knew.
Izzy stared out the window, watching as Charlie’s mother climbed into the car. Her mother had hated driving. She’d taken cabs everywhere. Everyone teased her because when she reversed out of the drive she often went across the corner of the grass, leaving deep gouges, stripes of brown across green. Izzy missed seeing those tire marks. Just one of those small details you didn’t even notice until a person had gone.
She felt a sudden urge to tell Avery and Charlie what was going on, or at least part of it. They were supposed to be her friends. She should treat them the way you were supposed to treat friends. Maybe, if she did that, she’d feel normal for a few seconds.
“My dad is seeing someone.”