Page 44 of My Unscripted Life

“I’m glad to hear that,” she says, adot dot dotclearly implied. When I don’t fill in details, she gives up and gets to the point. “To be honest, I sort of can’t believe I agreed to let you stay out that late with a boy I barely know. You were just so unhappy about the whole honors program thing, I was primed to agree to anything that might make you smile.”

Rubix wanders in through the open back door and plops down at our feet, waiting for someone to offer him a biscuit or a bite of whatever’s on the table.

“Does that mean I can get my nose pierced?”

“Not a chance,” she says, her tone more than serious. Damn, I knew I should have kept that one in my back pocket a little longer. “Speaking of smiles, you seem to be sporting a fairly large one today. Anything I should know about?”

“Just a nice night,” I say.

Mom pauses, looks like she’s considering something, and then sighs. “Were you safe?”

I recoil. “God, Mom! Gross!”

She holds her hands up in mock surrender. “You know the rules. I give you your freedom, you give me your honesty.”

“Well, that’shonestlyawkward, and also not even up for discussion. We’ve barely been going out for a minute,” I tell her. “If you must know, we just kissed.”

Mom can’t hide her sigh of relief, even though she practically pulls a muscle trying to turn it into a regular old exhale. “I know the party line is that I’ll support you in whatever choices you make for yourself, but I’m not going to lie, I’m really glad to hear that.”

“Good. Can we be done with this conversation now?”

“Of course,” she says, seemingly as happy to move on as I am. “New topic?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Mom takes a deep breath, the kind that comes before some seriously huge parental news, and I can’t help it. My mind goes to the absolute worst scenario. Are they getting divorced? That would be pretty much the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, and that includes the fact that I’m dating Milo Ritter.

She lets out the breath long and slow, then places a book on the table. The cover is all black, with a pale woman’s hand holding what appears to be some kind of whip.A Most Dangerous Game,the cover screams in bloodred letters. The words “lust” and “whimper” leap off a blurb from the front cover, but that’s not what catches my eye. I blink, but the letters don’t rearrange. No matter how long I stare, the name at the bottom still says “Marilyn Wilkie.”

I pick the book up off the table and turn it over in my hands. “A once-in-a-lifetime night of lust turns into a once-in-a-lifetime love…” reads the tag line in loopy red script. The blurb below goes on to talk about someone named Natalie and her experience with someone named Randolph, and I have to stop reading because the words are starting to blur and my stomach is starting to turn. Because this is not my mother’s usual romance novel. This is not duchesses and farm boys and ripped bodices and quivering members. This is…well, my mother has leveled up on her romance game, apparently. Or down, depending on your perspective.

I drop the book like it’s going to burn me.

“Thisis your new book?” I say when I can’t take the silence anymore. I can’t believe this is going to be in stores, where people Iknowcan read it. “How could you not have warned me about this?”

Mom sighs. “You were so miserable; I didn’t want to add to it. And then you got so busy on the movie that I guess I let it get away from me,” she says. “Plus, telling your teenage daughter that you write erotica? It’s, well, a littleunseemly.”

“Well,yeah! Ya think?” I say, my voice rising to a pitch that makes Rubix raise his head from his paws and cock his ears at us. “I can’t believe you wrote this.” The book is sitting on the table between us like a bikini-clad elephant.

“Are you embarrassed?” she asks.

I pause, thinking about it. I mean, I guess, knowing mymotherwas the one writing those things. It’s like walking in on your parents fooling around. I know they do that stuff, and that’s fine, but I donotneed to see it.

Or read about it.

I find myself stuttering and sputtering, fighting away images that the cover and the jacket copy conjure up in my head. “I just…I mean…not really, but…why?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know, I wanted to try something new? Get out of my comfort zone?” She takes a sip of her tea and sits back in her chair, rolling her neck. “Being creative as a job can be exhausting. The only way to keep it fresh, to not let it drain you, is to change it up. Rock the boat.”

“Well, you certainly did that,” I say, and I can’t help it, I laugh. Because this situation is ridiculous. Insane. It’s like your mom giving you “the talk” on acid. I wonder if anyone has ever had to discuss her mother’s erotica with her. But the longer I laugh, the more her words sink in. About staying fresh and rocking the boat. About how draining creativity can be, and it occurs to me that that’s a little bit of what I’ve been going through. I’ve been blaming my artistic paralysis on my rejection from Governor’s School, but the truth is I was having a hard time before that. I was grinding away at the same old stuff, and I wasbored.And what finally snapped me out of it was trying a different outlet for my creativity. Working on the movie, thinking about art in a more physical way, has really gotten me excited again. And while I’m not bolting for my sketchbook, I have found myself looking at the world around me and picturing the way it would look through the lens of a camera. I’ve imagined props I’d move or alter to make the scenes around me more dynamic. And the excitement I get from that feels remarkably similar to what I used to feel when propped up with my sketchbook on my knee.

“Is there anything I can do?” Mom asks.

I think for a moment, since yanking the book from stores isn’t an option. Besides, if it’s as popular as the other dirty books I’ve seen on the shelves, then this thing could more than pay for my college education.

“Just promise me I won’t ever have to go to a reading,” I say.

She laughs. “Deal.”

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