Now she’s crying, tears running down her face, voice strangled and high-pitched and I keep pacing because if I don’t keep moving I don’t know what will happen.
“I’m sorry that you hate not being expelled,” I snap. “I’m sorry that taking all the blame for the affair you’re just as responsible for as I am wasn’t enough, you also wanted pre-approval.”
She stands perfectly still for a long moment, nothing moving but her eyes, glassy and bloodshot, as she watches me pace back and forth.
“What I want,” she finally says, her voice quiet, shaky. “Is to be treated like I’m a person who gets to have input on her own damn life and not some sort of fancy pet.”
“I promise I wouldn’t blow up my entire life for a chinchilla,” I snap. “Though maybe —”
“Jesus,” Thalia hisses. She steps forward and jams one foot into her shoe and then the other, swaying as she does. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I came here.”
She jerks the door open, the cold hitting us both in the face.
“Sorry about your life,” she says, then steps through and slams the door behind her, the click of her steps fading quickly.
I stare at the inside of the door, clenching and unclenching my fists. I think of a thousand angry comebacks and they crowd into my brain, elbowing each other out of the way.
“Fuck you,” I finally say, the least clever of all, as I turn away from the door. “And fuck me for helping you and fuck — WHAT?”
“Sorry,” Seth says, and instantly disappears back into the kitchen.
I stand there. I seethe. I resist the urge to destroy all my own things.
Then, finally, I grab my coat and my shoes and my keys and I jerk the door open myself, then go for a long, angry walk in the opposite direction of Thalia’s house.Chapter FiftyThaliaFuck it, I mope.
I spend that night in my bed, wearing pajamas, my suit crumpled in the corner, watching a pirated version of The Borgias. I’ve never pirated something before, but it turns out it’s actually pretty easy.
Will the police come knocking on my door to arrest me? Maybe. After all, I’m a bad, bad girl who watches TV shows that she hasn’t paid for, sleeps with her professor, gets away with it, and then gets mad at him for helping her.
Around midnight, Victoria knocks. She’s got a mug of tea and a giant cookie from the Market Street Cafe, and she asks if I’m okay. I lie and say yes, but I let her come in and watch an episode with me in my bed while we eat the cookie, which is the size of my face and delicious.
She doesn’t press me for answers. I think she knows better. I don’t volunteer any, because I feel like a pile of garbage that someone should light on fire.
I skip all my classes the next day. Why? After that asshole quit his job and torched his career so I could keep my scholarship? Because fuck class, that’s why. Once my roommates are gone, I come out of my room, still in my pajamas, and eat some of Margaret’s ramen because she deserves to have her ramen eaten.
Around three, Harper knocks, then enters. She’s got a burrito with her, and she makes up a long story about how she accidentally got an extra burrito from Jose’s when they screwed up her order, but I don’t really believe her.
She gives me the burrito — it’s my favorite, a breakfast burrito, which probably makes me a bad Mexican but who cares — and when she does, I cry, and she comes over and hugs me, and then I eat the burrito in my bed and we watch another episode.
Harper maintains that no one in the fifteen hundreds was that clean or that sexy, and I maintain that I don’t care, I just want to watch sexy historical figures have stupid escapades because I’m afraid that if I think too much about my situation, I’ll come to some conclusions I don’t like, and I’m still mad.
Saturday, I finish The Borgias mid-morning. I was already halfway through the first season when I started this binge, and it turns out there are less episodes that I thought there were.
After about ten minutes staring at my empty laptop screen, I decide I’m going to be a person, so I grab some clean pajamas and come out of my room, don’t look at Margaret as I walk through the living room, and I take a shower.
As I shower, I wonder what I’m going to tell my mom. Does she already know? Is she going to be angry? Hurt? Will she understand?
Do I deserve understanding? Do I deserve anything?
I cry in the shower.
When I come out in my clean pajamas, at least feeling slightly less gross, Victoria and Harper are in the living room, plugging a laptop into the television.