Unscripted Joss Byrd by Lygia Day Peñaflor

furious. How does my mother expect us to look professional when she’s pulling stuff like this? People will think we’re a joke.
    I plop down against the door and breathe into my knees—deep breath in, deep breath out. All I can think about is one of my triggers: we lost the house we loved in Maryland because Viva wanted to follow her beefed-up boyfriend to Tyrone, Pennsylvania.
    â€œIt’s gonna be so great!” she said. “Brendan and I are partnering with his friends and opening up a chain of upscale hair salons. There aren’t any classy places yet. The whole town is hungry for something high-end. We’ll buy the land and his friends will build. We’ll grow our money back faster than we can count it.”
    But Tyrone wasn’t great. It was a broken-down apartment with stained carpets and jittery lightbulbs and other people’s scum between the tiles. Viva was only right about one thing—there isn’t anything classy in the entire town. Tyrone is a place to leave, not to go. The town’s hungry, all right. There’s not even a Panera Bread. Sophisticated salons didn’t make sense from day one. Why would people who wear pajama pants to Walmart pay sixty dollars for a haircut?
    *   *   *
    â€œWhen are they building, Brendan? When?” My mother is screaming in our kitchen.
    â€œThe banks backed out,” Brendan says, pacing back and forth.
    â€œThey backed out? You said this was a done deal, a sure thing! I already bought the land! And for what? For nothing?” My mother’s voice rises higher and higher as she takes Brendan’s favorite CD out of the player and grabs a few others off the counter. “We’re gonna have to start all over again. Two movies! It took us two movies to make that money!”
    What does she mean by “us”? I made those movies. I’m the one who has to start all over again.
    She takes the CDs and stuffs them in the blender.
    â€œTake your hands off that blender!” Brendan rushes toward her.
    â€œDon’t come any closer!” She hops onto my step stool with the blender over her head, like she’s a crazy Statue of Liberty.
    Brendan holds a hand up to calm her. “Those are live Pearl Jam recordings. I can’t buy those CDs again! You press that button, Viva, and you’ll be sorry.”
    Viva presses the button. “I’m already sorry! I’m sorry I ever met you!” she yells, as the blender sputters and crunches.
    â€œYou bitch!” Brendan picks up the whole CD player and smashes it against the wall. His fat, stinking bulldog, Doughboy, is howling into the air.
    â€œWhat’s that? I can’t hear you!” My mother holds the blender in her arms. “I’m playing some CDs!” she yells over the racket.
    I’m pressed against the wall, covering my ears, remembering our little white house in Maryland; there were snails stuck to the pier, and our neighbors had a yellow boat with a bell on the top. They used to let me pull their crab traps out from the bottom of the water. When we pulled them out of the cage, the crabs, with their speckled blue shells and their googly eyes, would snap their claws and link together like paper dolls.
    â€œYou’re out of your mind!” Brendan crouches to put Doughboy on his leash. “I’m out of here.”
    â€œGood! Go!” Viva steps down to the floor. “We were better off without you!”
    The CDs rattle and grind faster and faster. Brendan is throwing his laundry into a garbage bag. I stare at the blender and watch the CDs turn to dust. Dust!
    Viva yanks the cord from the wall. The blender stops. She watches Brendan start the car and drive out of our lives. Now we really have nothing here in Tyrone—not even music.
    *   *   *
    I stretch my legs across the sandy wooden planks. There are dead insects above me trapped inside the light cover. For some