New Girl in Town

Chapter 33

It's late when Blake drops me off. The house is dark. I'm halfway to my room, thinking I've gotten away with sneaking in, when the lights flick on. I freeze, feeling Marco's presence behind me. Fuck.

"Lisa," he says.

"Yeah?" I turn around and try to look as innocent and unstoned as possible. I know I reek of weed. I should've taken up Blake's offer to shower, but the idea of doing that was too much like that night with the poison oak and Jennie. I hate that. That everything reminds me of something that happened with her.

"What did you do to your hair?"

"Cut it," I say, surprised he actually noticed.

"Okay. Fine. Where were you?"

"I was at a friend's."

He frowns. "I thought Jennie went to dance camp."

"I am capable of making more than one friend," I say, even though I'm not so sure. I am sure that what Jennie and I had wasn't friends, no matter what she said. I have no idea what Blake was. I need to find out so I can feel that I'm not just as bad as Jennie.

"I think you and I need to make an agreement," Marco says, stopping me from heading down the hall. "You need to be home by midnight."

"That sounds more like a curfew than an agreement," I say, crossing my arms.

"Fine. It's a curfew," he says. "I need to know where you are and when you're coming back. That's why you have a cell phone."

"The service sucks at my friend's house," I explain. "She lives out in the woods. I didn't get your texts until we drove back to town."

"Then tell me that before you go," he says.

"Why don't you just let me live my life, and I'll let you live yours?"

"Because I'm responsible for you, Lisa!"

"Bullshit! I'm responsible for me! I've been responsible for me forever. I've been responsible for more than me! Stop acting like I'm a kid. If you really knew what Mom was like when she was low—" I stop myself, breathing hard as he stares at me.

"Just because you can take care of yourself doesn't mean you should have to," Marco says.

"Oh, fuck you," I snap, unable to stop myself this time. "Your first instinct has always been to put you first. You ditched me. You ditched Mom. All because you didn't want to move?"

"It was more than that, Lisa," he says.

"Explain it to me, then," I say, my mouth flattening my words into a weapon. "Because when good guys break up, they don't stop being dads. Only bad guys think you can stop being a dad."

He's silent.

"You didn't fight for me. You didn't even try. No summer visits. No phone calls on Christmas. Not even a card on my birthday." With everything I list, it's like I'm opening old wounds, feelings spilling out of me instead of blood. "You were the first person who ever taught me that I'm someone nobody missed," I continue. "That I'm disposable. You're not supposed to be
disposable to your own dad. Do you know what it was like, growing up and realizing that? Understanding that there was this big hole where you were supposed to be?"

He just stands there and takes it, and I'm lost in the rush of actually saying it. The things that have been in my head, long buried because I used to tell myself when I was little that there was no use wondering about him when I'm never going to see him again.

Except now here we are. Stuck together. The most fucked-up of life's tricks. But I can scream and cry and accuse him all I want now. I can push him until he shows his true self instead of this kicked-puppy version. I want to meet the man who left us. I want to see that Marco instead of whoever this is.

I just need to push the right button. Jennie taught me that. Jennie taught me a lot of things about hurt and love and how thin the line is between them.

"Why don't we make a deal," I say. "You'll put up with my shit and I'll put up with yours. Like roommates. And the morning I graduate, I'll get the fuck out, just like you want me to."

I don't know if I've ever seen someone go so white, so fast.

"Is that what you want?" he asks, so swiftly and ragged that it startles me.

"That's what you want," I insist.

"No," he says. "That's the last thing I want. You're a year away from being an adult. And I missed most of your life so far, and I can keep telling you how sorry I am for it. Because I am. But I also can make sure I don't miss any more of it. All I want is for you to be happy and safe, and the way you've been acting reminds me of—" His mouth snaps shut, his eyes going wide at the stumble. It's like he knows it's the wrong thing to say.

Because it is. Any rage that had slowed to a simmering mess bubbles up into a boil in a second.

"The way I've been acting reminds you of Mom," I finish for him. "And you don't want to even consider that, right?"

"Lisa—"

I spin, knocking past him so hard on my way down the hall I'm afraid he'll fall. Then he'll really kick me out, and he'd be justified. I slam the door to my room closed and lock it tight, but even crossing the room to my bed is too much. I just sink to the ground, my back sliding against the door.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I press my forehead against the tops of them.

But unfortunately, Marco is learning how to dad, because I hear his footsteps down the hall, and they don't keep going past my room to his.

Instead, they stop in front of my door and then he knocks.
My hands tighten around my legs.

"Lisa?" he says through the door. "Will you please let me in?"

I shake my head, which is so stupid because he can't see.

"I know I fucked up," he says. "Now and back then. But the only way we get through it is by talking to each other."

I am so sick of talking. Feeling. Existing.

As soon as that last thought hits me, I reject it, my entire body shuddering at the thought. No. I can't think that way. That's the kind of stuff he's scared about.

That's the kind of stuff I'm scared about. That vicious edge my mother drew too close to, her mind telling her no one would miss her ... when I would. I do. I don't know how to do anything but miss her. I miss her so, it's hard to think about anything to do with her, because when I do, it hurts too much. I've blotted out two entire lives—hers and mine before she died—and now I'm a hollow shell: all the love and memories and the sense of belonging
scooped out of me.

"I never thought it'd be this way," Marco tells me through the door, sounding as broken as I feel. "I always thought ... Fuck, Lisa, I always thought she'd come back someday. That one day, there'd be a knock on the door and when I opened it, you'd both be there. And I realize now ... it was wrong to just wait for something to happen. That every time I pictured it— and I did picture it a lot, Lisa—you were both frozen at the ages you were when she left."

"You left," I snarl through the door.

There's a soft thump against the wood. I press my hand against the wood, wondering if his is on the other side. I want him to feel the heat of my anger through the door.

"I left you behind," he says. "I kept you but only in my mind, where you were three years old all this time. That's on me. That's my loss and yours, and I'm sorry. I was a coward. But I didn't leave your mom. She left me."

I can't help but ask, because I can't ask her. It's been circling in my head since I discovered he made her tiger's-eye pendant.

"Do you still love her?"

When he answers, it takes forever. That's the thing about the truth: it's hard to get out.

"I'll always love her, Lisa. Just like I always loved you, and I always will."