Page 42 of Enemies to Prom Dates
“But I thought you hated him.”
“I thought I did, too,” I muttered. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to think about boys when we really need to be considering what needs to be done next.”
“What needs to be done next?”
I moved to sit on the couch with her, Fitz’s earlier point made.
“Mom, how long are we going to deny the reality? We can’t keep fooling people. We have to get a lawyer and deal with the fact that dad isn’t coming back.”
“What has gotten into your head? Wearefooling people. No one thinks there is a problem and, as long as we can keep doing that, we’re going to do it. Besidesyoudon’t know that he’s not coming back. None of us do.”
I closed my eyes. “But it can’t last. How much jewelry do you have?”
“Enough to buy us more time.”
“More time until what? Maybe we get through this year. Then what? And there are Mary and the twins to consider. What do you imagine their future is going to be like?”
My mother’s expression grew hard. “I don’t know, Beth. I don’t have all the answers. I can only take this one day at a time. I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions.”
Because I’d been willing to believe that some miracle was headed our way, but spilling it all out for Fitz, I knew this whole time I’d been burying my head in the sand. Closing my eyes and sticking fingers in my ears, cryingI’m not listening. I’m not listening.
I could see it in Star’s face earlier. The realization of what we were doing or attempting to do. It was foolishness. Eventually, everyone would know what happened.
Clearly my mother wasn’t ready to come to that understanding tonight. I was just going to have keep chipping away, until it finally sunk in with her.
Dad was gone. He wasn’t coming back. We were broke. Our lives were going to have to change.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Just tired. It was a long day.”
“Then you should go to bed,” she said, although it sounded more like an order rather than a request.
Go to bed, Beth. Don’t say the bad part out loud.
I leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. I didn’t want to upset my mother. I just wanted her to start acting like a responsible adult.
That only seemed fair.
Making my way upstairs, I could hear the twins giggling about something in their room behind a closed door. That was a relatively new development. Last year they didn’t mind doing their giggling with the door open.
Mary’s door was also closed. She preferred her own company above any others’. Something else this family maybe should be concerned about. She’d always been quiet, but since Dad’s abandonment it’s like she’d become nearly invisible. Which made it too easy to forget she was suffering, too. I had a thought I should stop and knock on her door. At least try to have a conversation with her, but the effort of that seemed like more energy than I had to give.
At least not tonight. I would talk to her tomorrow. Tonight, I wanted to get into bed and not think about what Fitz had meant about practicing.
10
The Next Day
Beth
“Ow! Hey,” I yelped, stumbling into Janie after Jeff, one of the offensive linemen on the football team, bumped into my shoulder as he walked down the hallway in the opposite direction.
“Sorry,” I apologized to Janie. “Did you see that? He just bumped into me and didn’t say anything.”
“Asshole,” Janie said.
We continued to walk toward our next class, when this time, I saw Wick walking toward me. I smiled and nodded, only because it was polite. Then he steered in my direction, seemingly deliberately on a collision course, just moving away at the last second but also bumping into my shoulder.
Hard.
