New Girl in Town

Chapter 13

"Is that you, Lisa?" Marco calls as I let myself in the house.

"No, it's a burglar, breaking into your house to rob you of your gemstones," I call back.

There's a pause and my stomach drops, wondering if I've pushed too far. And then a low chuckle comes from the living room.

"They're not worth that much," he calls. "But there's leftovers from dinner if you want them. I didn't know when you were coming back."

I sigh, walking down the hall and standing in the doorway of the living room. He's sitting on the couch, watching TV.

"Are you gonna give me a curfew?"

"No," he says, looking horrified. And then: "Should I?" He almost sounds like he's asking both of us, instead of just himself. Or maybe he's asking some spirit of fatherhood he thinks he's going to summon so he can be enlightened. Like, read a book, dude. I know they write them about parenting. There are too many shitty parents for that to not be a booming business.

"I picked up a new phone for you," he says, gesturing to the phone sitting on the coffee table. "Try to make sure this one doesn't go in the lake?"

"Thanks," I say, grabbing it. "I can pay you back—"

"Lisa, no," he says, gently, so gently that I kind of hate him for it.

"I should get a job," I protest. "Pull my weight—"

"You're starting a new school in August. That's where your focus should be."

"You don't even know if I'm good at school," I mutter.

"You could sit down and tell me," he offers, scooting over and patting the couch next to him, and for some reason, I draw closer. But when I do, his expression completely changes, his mouth dropping open.

"What?" I ask, looking behind me. Nothing. Is there something on my face?

"That jacket," he says, his voice suddenly choked.

"What?" I say again, clutching it to me.

"Where did you get that?"

I lick my lips. "It was Mom's."

I don't know if I've said that word out loud since I got here. It feels strange in my mouth. Like I've forgotten what it's like to say it half a dozen times a day. Will I forget, someday, what it was like to have a mom at all?

"Yeah, I know," he says, a slow smile breaking across his tired face like sun across busted sidewalk. "She, uh, 'borrowed' it from me years ago. Never gave it back. She always said it looked better on her than me." The smile's so wide now, awash with memories I'm not part of, and I hate him, suddenly, for having so many pieces of her that I will never get now. This was supposed to be mine. Mine and hers. A way to hold on to her the way she couldn't hold on to me.

But now I have to share it with him? He's tainted it, and it's like he knows, because he rubs his hand over his stubbled jaw and says, "It looks really good on you."

"I'm not hungry," I say in response, getting up. "I'm really tired. I'm just gonna..." I fade off, not even finishing as I hurry to my room. He's not worth it. None of this is worth it. This is just something to endure. Living with him and surviving the next year of high school until I'm eighteen and I can get the fuck out.

And then what? A little voice lurks in my head. Then what? Then I'm alone with no one. No family. No friends. No help. Nothing.

I lie down on my bed, not fighting as tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, my fingers curled in the cuffs of the jacket. No wonder it's so big, if it was his originally.

For better or worse, I'm wrapped up in my family and I hate it instead of love it. Because it's not real. I know whatever Marco thinks he's trying to build isn't real. I thought Mom and me were real, but now I wonder.

I think about those family portraits on Jennie's walls. How I'll never have that. Don't you have to know what a family feels like to build one? I've been part of a duo. A gruesome twosome, Mom liked to joke. Us against the world. But I can't remember being part of a unit. Two parents and kids and a house and pictures on the walls that chronicle an entire life. All these branches of a family, so it really is like a tree, like a living, breathing thing that makes sure you're never alone.

Sometimes I think that's what killed her. The loneliness. I know it's not as simple as that. I know it's complicated. That pain is complicated.

But loneliness is gnawing. Like a trapped animal that's unable to do anything but follow instinct. Even when you know better, even when you know yourself and your worth, it can eat away at you, until there's no you left.

I'm scared, sometimes. That I'll lose myself, too.

That I'll never find myself at all.