Calmdowncalmdowncalmdown.
“What’s that noise?” my mom asks.
“It’s Mary,” Aunt Bette says. “I told you. She’s ready to go home.”
I hear my mom say, “Bette, please. Please stop torturing me like this.”
I’m still standing on the stairs, stuck in place. Something is wrong. Very wrong. Suddenly I’m afraid to go down there.
“You need help, Bette,” my mom says, and she sounds like she’s crying. “I’m taking you away from here. This house is making you sick.”
“No no, I’m fine, Erica,” Aunt Bette says desperately. “She wants to leave! She wants to leave with you! I’ll be better when she’s gone!”
“This house is in shambles, and you’re—you’re not well,” my mom chokes out. “You can’t stay here any longer.”
Aunt Bette backs up. “You can’t go without Mary. She’s going to be upset. She’s going to hurt someone.”
“We’re leaving. Now.” Mom has the door open. I stare at it and force it closed. She’s shocked as the knob flies out of her hand. The door bangs shut, and the dead bolt clicks.
Aunt Bette cries, “Mary! Stop! You’re going to scare her!”
Ignoring her, I run to my bed and grab my suitcase and go flying down the stairs and out the door. “Mommy! I’m coming with you! Don’t leave without me!”
But then I hear the back door opening. I go to my window and see my mom with her arm around Aunt Bette, trying to walk her to the rental car. They’re leaving? Without me?
I race back downstairs and out to the car.
My mom is sobbing. She doesn’t even look at me. “Bette, please, please, get in the car.”
I run up to her. “Mommy!” I scream. I’m howling now, and the shutters on the house are opening and closing, faster and faster. I can’t stop it; I can’t control myself.
“Oh my God!” my mom screams, and she jerks the passenger-side door open and pushes Aunt Bette inside. She runs to the other side of the car and gets in, and I go to her; I pound on the window so hard the glass starts to crack.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” I cry. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I want to go home!”
“I’m sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry. I can’t stay.” Her hands shake as she starts the car, puts it in reverse, and drives away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
I wasn’t going to go to the party. Kat kept texting me, telling me to come and that she and Mary would protect me from Rennie tonight. But then this afternoon I got a text from Rennie herself. It said, New Year, new start? Come tonight. Then she sent me a picture of her hand holding a cherry Blow Pop. Her manicure looked awesome. It was all pale pink glitter, like sparkly cotton candy.
So I’m going. At this point, what do I have to lose? I don’t want to be the only one in the whole school missing out. My sister will be there. Even Kat and Mary are going. What else am I supposed to do? Go to dinner with my parents?
A few months ago it would have been Rennie and me getting ready for this party together. We’d be blasting Madonna and fighting for the mirror, going back and forth over a crimson-red lip versus a brick-red lip. Instead it was me by myself. No Nadia, because she got ready with all the freshman girls at Janelle’s house. Just me.
I found the dress at a vintage store online. I was worried it wouldn’t fit, because sizes were different back then, but when it came, it was perfect. It’s emerald-green silk, tissue thin, with a drop waist and a low V-neck and a back that dips low in an X that looks like cobwebs, delicate and fine.
I put my hair in my mom’s rollers and then I styled it in a bob. It kept falling out, so I stuck a bunch of pins in it. Dark red lipstick was the final touch.
When I walked down the stairs, my dad came out of his office to hug me and tell me how beautiful I looked. And also to tell me to remember my special curfew for the night, two a.m. and not a minute later. He told me not to drive home, to take a taxi or to call and he’d come get me. “The streets aren’t safe on New Year’s Eve,” he said. “Too many people driving drunk.” I rolled my eyes and kept saying, “Yes, Daddy. Sure, Daddy.”
At a stoplight, I text Ash to see if she’s there so I don’t have to walk in alone. She texts back and says she’s already inside. I text Alex too, only he doesn’t text me back right away. We haven’t talked much since his holiday party, since I told him that I kissed Reeve. Things were already weird between them, and I can’t help but think that that probably made things even worse. I don’t know if they’ll ever be friends again.
There’s no parking in front of the gallery, so I park two streets away, and then I regret borrowing my mom’s strappy rhinestone heels. They’re Manolos, and I’d always thought shoes that expensive would be more comfortable. But they’re not; by the time I get to the party, my feet hurt so bad I just want to take them off.
The gallery name had been scratched off the glass hanging, and there’s a for rent in the window. From the outside it looks so . . . desolate. You can’t see much inside. All the windows are steamed up.
There’s an actual bouncer at the door. I recognize him from Bow Tie; he’s one of the line cooks. I can’t believe Rennie got him to blow off his own New Year’s Eve in favor of standing in front of her mom’s gallery all night for a high school party. He goes, “What’s the secret word?”
“Moonshine,” I say, and for a split second I fear that Rennie’s changed the word and I’m not even going to get in to her party.
Then he nods and says, “Ten bucks.”
Ten bucks? I’ve never, ever paid to go to one of Rennie’s parties. “I’m a senior,” I tell him. “And I’m a friend of Rennie’s. We’ve met before, at Bow Tie?”
“Everybody’s a friend of Rennie’s tonight,” he says, and looks past me, over my head, to a group of kids coming noisily down the block. “It’s ten for seniors, twenty for juniors, thirty for sophomores—”
I’m 1,000 percent sure Ash or any of our other friends didn’t have to pay, but I don’t want to stand out here arguing with him. It’s humiliating. “Okay, okay. Whatever.” Luckily I have the cash my dad gave me for a cab. I pluck a twenty out of my beaded clutch and hand it to him.
He pulls a wad of cash out of his leather-jacket pocket and hands me back a ten. “Have fun.”