right? So it’s not like you told him to go buy pot from the scary meth dealers in their dangerously explosive meth-cooking trailer,” I pointed out.
It was hard to believe that it had only been a little more than two weeks since the night of the fire. The night I’d met Mickey. I’d spent most of that time trying to ignore him. Two weeks . How was that possible? I already felt like he’d been haunting my thoughts forever.
“You don’t understand,” Melinda said. She buried her head in her pillow. She wasn’t ready to listen to reason, and I didn’t have the patience or energy to try to force her to, when she just wanted to escape into sleep.
I met my mom in the hallway outside Melinda’s room.
“She’s napping.”
“Good. She can sleep it off. I’ve locked up your father’s liquor cabinet,” Mom said, grimacing with distaste.
“That’s not enough. She needs rehab, Mom. She’s not going to get better on her own, especially after Caleb—”
My mother sliced a hand through the air in dismissal, as if I were an unruly child. “Whitfields don’t go to rehab. It’s trashy. Do you really want your sister exposed to that whole celebrity rehab mentality?”
“You haven’t even been a Whitfield your whole life! How did you buy into their line of crap lock, stock, and barrel?”
“I’ve been a Whitfield long enough, Victoria,” she said, sighing and showing me a rare glimpse of the real person under her mask as she pulled her sweater tight around her shrinking body.
“Are you eating, Mom? I’m serious.” I suddenly wanted to hug her, even though part of me—the tiny, selfish corner of my soul I kept stuffed far down in the dark—wanted to run away from my family and their problems. I was so tired of playing the parts of dutiful daughter and responsible sister.
Her face stiffened and closed off, as if I’d crossed an invisible line labeled “Priscilla’s Anorexia.”
“I’m fine. There will be no rehab. We deal with our problems ourselves.”
I threw my hands up in the air and headed down the hall toward Buddy’s room, where I could hear him talking to his Xbox. I could always tell when I wasn’t going to get any further with my mom. I’d try my dad later. I lobbed a parting shot, though.
“My sister needs to go to rehab, whether you think it’s trashy or not, or you might have a Whitfield who winds up dead.”
When I walked in his room, Buddy immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me down to sit next to him on the bed, handing me a controller for the game. Finally, the one relationship in my life that wasn’t complicated. I settled in to fly dragons and defend the palace from evil trolls, wishing that I could identify the bad guys so easily in real life.
CHAPTER 12
Mickey
I don’t get the ‘giggles’ part of Suds ’n Giggles,” I told my sister. “What’s funny about doing laundry?”
We sat in the tiny family room of her apartment. Caro was on the beat-up purple plaid couch, trying to hide her cigarettes between the worn cushions, probably so I didn’t get on her case again about smoking in front of the girls. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor while my nieces brushed my hair, jumped on my lap, and told me the kind of long, rambling, incomprehensible stories that only four- and six-year-old girls could tell.
The apartment, like the Laundromat itself, had seen better days. The walls were painted a particularly nasty color of institutional green, the mud-brown dining table and chairs had probably come with the place, and the only splashes of color came from the secondhand red, white, and blue toy box and giant pink dollhouse that Caro had picked up at a garage sale.
Autumn, Caro’s black-haired, blue-eyed eldest, had once spent an hour and a half at a barbecue telling me about the thirty-minute TV show she’d watched that morning. I’d walked around the rest of the day with my eyes glazed over and my brain stuffed full of pink sparkly unicorns. Summer, the
It was hard to believe that it had only been a little more than two weeks since the night of the fire. The night I’d met Mickey. I’d spent most of that time trying to ignore him. Two weeks . How was that possible? I already felt like he’d been haunting my thoughts forever.
“You don’t understand,” Melinda said. She buried her head in her pillow. She wasn’t ready to listen to reason, and I didn’t have the patience or energy to try to force her to, when she just wanted to escape into sleep.
I met my mom in the hallway outside Melinda’s room.
“She’s napping.”
“Good. She can sleep it off. I’ve locked up your father’s liquor cabinet,” Mom said, grimacing with distaste.
“That’s not enough. She needs rehab, Mom. She’s not going to get better on her own, especially after Caleb—”
My mother sliced a hand through the air in dismissal, as if I were an unruly child. “Whitfields don’t go to rehab. It’s trashy. Do you really want your sister exposed to that whole celebrity rehab mentality?”
“You haven’t even been a Whitfield your whole life! How did you buy into their line of crap lock, stock, and barrel?”
“I’ve been a Whitfield long enough, Victoria,” she said, sighing and showing me a rare glimpse of the real person under her mask as she pulled her sweater tight around her shrinking body.
“Are you eating, Mom? I’m serious.” I suddenly wanted to hug her, even though part of me—the tiny, selfish corner of my soul I kept stuffed far down in the dark—wanted to run away from my family and their problems. I was so tired of playing the parts of dutiful daughter and responsible sister.
Her face stiffened and closed off, as if I’d crossed an invisible line labeled “Priscilla’s Anorexia.”
“I’m fine. There will be no rehab. We deal with our problems ourselves.”
I threw my hands up in the air and headed down the hall toward Buddy’s room, where I could hear him talking to his Xbox. I could always tell when I wasn’t going to get any further with my mom. I’d try my dad later. I lobbed a parting shot, though.
“My sister needs to go to rehab, whether you think it’s trashy or not, or you might have a Whitfield who winds up dead.”
When I walked in his room, Buddy immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me down to sit next to him on the bed, handing me a controller for the game. Finally, the one relationship in my life that wasn’t complicated. I settled in to fly dragons and defend the palace from evil trolls, wishing that I could identify the bad guys so easily in real life.
CHAPTER 12
Mickey
I don’t get the ‘giggles’ part of Suds ’n Giggles,” I told my sister. “What’s funny about doing laundry?”
We sat in the tiny family room of her apartment. Caro was on the beat-up purple plaid couch, trying to hide her cigarettes between the worn cushions, probably so I didn’t get on her case again about smoking in front of the girls. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor while my nieces brushed my hair, jumped on my lap, and told me the kind of long, rambling, incomprehensible stories that only four- and six-year-old girls could tell.
The apartment, like the Laundromat itself, had seen better days. The walls were painted a particularly nasty color of institutional green, the mud-brown dining table and chairs had probably come with the place, and the only splashes of color came from the secondhand red, white, and blue toy box and giant pink dollhouse that Caro had picked up at a garage sale.
Autumn, Caro’s black-haired, blue-eyed eldest, had once spent an hour and a half at a barbecue telling me about the thirty-minute TV show she’d watched that morning. I’d walked around the rest of the day with my eyes glazed over and my brain stuffed full of pink sparkly unicorns. Summer, the
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