Jessica Martinez - The Vow

“So you’re coming over winter break?” she asks.

“Depends. Turns out I need special permission to leave and come back if I’m in the process of becoming a permanent resident.” Another of Sam’s bombshell revelations.

“Oh.”

“So Mom’s not there?” I ask even though Dad already told me.

“Nope.”

“Has she been a total basket case?”

“No. Yes. Both. Yo-yo. How’s Annie?”

“Fine.” I put my feet up on the coffee table, and Satan’s Cat hisses from her lookout. I flip her off.

“Are you giving me the finger? Was that Duchess?”

“No and yes.”

“Can I see her?”

“I couldn’t make that cat come to me if I was wearing a catnip suit.”

“Okay. Parting request, once she calms down, rub her belly for me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then ask Annie to.”

I roll my eyes. “If I remember.”

She smiles. “Thanks.

“You’re welcome.”

We hang up, and I stare at the empty Skype window.

Living alone sucks.

I could email Bryce. Yeah, I’ll do that. I open up a new email, ready to tell him the truth—or the lie that Annie and I are in the process of making true—but I can’t. I stare at the white screen and blinking cursor instead. There isn’t a good place to start. And I can’t even concentrate on it because as worried as I am about Bryce’s reaction, it’s not what’s really gnawing at me.

I’m worried about Annie.

She was so stalwart yesterday, a rock, an Amazon warrior, but then she had to go all comatose on me in the car after—how am I supposed to process that? I thought we were in the clear, but the delayed zombie routine means we’re definitely not. Not until she’s actually told her parents. If she’s even going to tell her parents.

Satan’s Cat thumps her tail against the wall.

“Stop it.”

She glares, keeps doing it.

“Seriously. Cut it out.”

It’s hypnotic, the swirly eyes, the rhythmic thump . . . thump . . . thump.

“I swear, I’ll put you in the bathroom.”

She smiles at me. It doesn’t seem like she should be able to, like that’s even anatomically possible for a cat, but I swear, she smiles, and that smile says Go ahead. Try.

I sigh. We both know I can’t put her in the bathroom without sustaining significant lacerations to my face.

I close my laptop, email unsent. Next week Bryce’ll be home for five whole days before he’s off to Greece. I’ll tell him then.

“Happy now?” I growl.

No answer. Just thump . . . thump . . . thump.

* * *

I spend the rest of the afternoon making room for Annie: cramming all of my clothes into the bottom two drawers, pushing my hangers to the left side of the closet, transferring my toiletries into just one of the drawers in the bathroom, clearing my books and retainer case from the bedside table. I strip the sheets and put clean ones on for her.

I’m not sure when I forget how miserable talking to my family made me, but I do. Somewhere between stuffing pillows into fresh pillowcases and scrubbing the toilet, the anger is replaced by a wave of sheer relief. Because Annie’s coming. And when she’s around I’m not spiraling toward insanity or begging the cat to stop screwing with me or worrying about Sarina. I get to live with my best friend. It’ll be fun. We’ll stay up late watching South Park reruns, and she can set up her easel in the corner of the family room where my boxes and junk used to be, and maybe she’ll even make some half-decent food every once in a while. Not like I’m expecting her to, but it’d be nice. I could offer tutoring for food. Or even better, she could teach me how to make some half-decent food for myself. That would work too.

The relief doesn’t last long before guilt finds me, prickles my skin like the glare of that evil, evil cat. I am one selfish bastard. I’m sitting here thinking about how awesome this extended slumber party is going to be when Annie is at home packing up her life. Closing down. Logging out. Shutting off.

It’s not that I don’t feel bad, because I do. But I didn’t ask her to do it. She dreamed it up and chose it again and again and again, even after I tried to talk her out of it. So maybe it makes me a jerk, but for the first time since my family left, I’m happy. After a few days of loneliness, living with Annie sounds like heaven.

Annie

You look like hell,” Flora says.

“Thank you.”

She takes the cigarette out of her mouth and chucks it into the parking lot planter. It looks like it may have held a plant at one time, before being converted into a giant ashtray. “Hon, when’s the last time you ate?”

“I’m sick,” I say.

She takes lip gloss and a compact from her purse and starts reapplying. “Lovesick?”

“No. He’s not here, is he?”

“Believe it or not, he’s sick too. Y’all are either sharing germs or driving each other insane.”

“Neither. Not anymore.”

She sighs and slips the gloss back into her purse, her lips like shimmering worms. “Do I want to know what happened?”

I shake my head.

“You aren’t here to quit, are you?”

“Is Soup here?”

She rolls her eyes, then scratches the back of her head, and the entire hairsprayed mass of burgundy shifts back and forth. “Half of his staff is dying of broken teenage hearts and too sick to work. Of course he’s here.”

“I’m not quitting over a broken heart,” I lie.

“Just like how working here in the first place wasn’t about trying to become your sister?”

I’m too tired to argue, so I just scowl.

“What? If you aren’t going to be working here anymore, it seems like I should be able to say my piece. Your sister was a sweet girl. You’re a sweet girl.”

I stare at my car keys, run my thumb over the panic button. If I press it, she might be startled enough to let it go.

“Stop trying to fill her place in the universe. You’re going to be miserable if you’re always trying to be what other people need you to be.”

“Okay.” I take a step toward the door.

“I’m not done dispensing life tips.” She puts her hand over the knob. “Boys are breakable. Even the big, strong ones that act like nothing touches them, so be careful with them.”

Panic button. Panic button. Panic button. My thumb traces the indent, and I’m about to press it when she pulls the door open and holds it for me.

“Okay, now I’m done,” she says.

I walk through, still looking down so she won’t see the tears pooling in my eyes. Being lectured is so much better than being pitied.

Quitting is awkward, but Soup takes it well. He’s unreasonably kind actually, considering I’ve cheated on his brother-in-law and left him short-staffed with no notice. But maybe Reed hasn’t told him yet. Soup even gives me a hug and tells me to take care, which makes me feel worse about everything and almost unable do what I really came down here to do. After all, I could’ve quit over the phone.

I’ve never stolen anything before. It seems like everybody has a childhood shoplifting story to tell—Mo took Tic Tacs from a Kroger—but I never stole anything, or if I did, I don’t remember it. Maybe that’s why I’m sure someone’s watching me as I stuff the acrylic peach apron into my shoulder bag. Ruffles and ties and more ruffles, I cram them in with my heart thumping, even though I know Flora and Soup are back at the counter scooping custard.

Mo was right all along. This job was a bad idea. I was never trying to become Lena, but I was supposed to get closer to her in some way. I’ve failed. I don’t know how I thought I was going to do it, but without a doubt, I have failed.

I slink out with burning cheeks and my tightly packed bundle of peach memories.

Driving back to my house, I come to the conclusion that I may never feel good again. Not good as in fine. I mean, I may never feel like a decent human being, someone who isn’t pure poison to the people who love her, who doesn’t betray and deceive and abandon. And steal aprons.

The memory of Reed’s eyes at the exact moment the lie stuck makes me wish someone would hurt me like that. Just to make it even. Maybe I didn’t say the words, but I stood in front of him and cried, and let him think I slept with Mo. He’d told me about his ex-girlfriend—why didn’t I dream up a different way of doing it so he didn’t have to be betrayed like that again? Anything would have been better than slicing open his half-healed scar.

I can’t remember his eyes yesterday afternoon without remembering his body. His wanting sharpens the pain, the way his hands reached for me, pulling me in to him, and how his lips found the base of my throat like he’d been just waiting for me to come by so he could taste me. Before he knew I was really there to shred his heart, he needed me.

As I’m pulling into the driveway, my phone rings. I don’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Hi, Annie, it’s Sam.”

I’m too drained to fake cheerfulness. “Hi.”

“I just talked to Mo about some of the details on his application, and I thought I should give you a call too.”

“Oh. Mo’s got all my info and documents and stuff. I don’t really know—”

“No,” she interrupts, “that’s not why I’m calling. I felt like we should have had a conversation yesterday when you came in. Just you and me.”

I turn off the car, but don’t get out. “Okay.”

“What you’re doing, was it your idea or Mo’s?”

“Getting married?” I ask. “Um, mine.”

She’s silent, and I can feel her not believing me. It didn’t matter so much with the lady at the courthouse, but for some reason it matters that Sam thinks I’m a liar.

“Really,” I say firmly. “It was my idea. I asked him to marry me.”

“Okay.” She pauses, and I picture her putting the phone to her other ear, regrouping, changing tactics. “But if you wanted to change your mind—”

“I’m not changing my mind. I’m married. I want to be married.” It takes every ounce of strength in my body to say it and mean it.

“I believe you,” she says. “I do. But I was doing some research this morning, and there are a whole bunch of different student visas Mo could apply for. He might even be eligible for a high school—”

“I’m not changing my mind,” I interrupt.

“I just need you to know that you can change your mind, that you aren’t locked into—”

“I’ve got to go,” I say.

“All right.” Her voice sounds sad. Or maybe it’s pity, and I don’t want Sam’s pity. I want her to like me, but if she feels sorry for me, it’s too late for that.

“Call me if you need anything,” she says, “or if you want to talk.”

“Thanks,” I say. I won’t.

I say good-bye, slide my keys out of the ignition, and go inside.

* * *

After dinner, I tell my parents I’m working on the mural and retreat to my room. That, of course, is a lie. I’m never working on the mural again. Head down, I stuff clothes into duffel bags so I won’t have to look at it, but still, it’s screaming at me, rushing around me, sucking me down.

So my obsessions are off-limits—I’m not thinking about Reed, I’m not thinking about my mural—which leaves my parents and what I’m going to tell them. When I’m going to tell them. What they’re going to do.

Tomorrow morning, Mo and I will move my stuff over; then I’ll come back and do it later in the day. That’s it. The way it needs to be.

I jingle my bracelets, but they sound different. Hollow and sad. I look down. I can’t even remember the point of wearing them anymore. It started as a reminder. I wasn’t going to be the kind of girl who got pressured into doing anything I didn’t want to do, ever again. I was going to stick up for myself.

But what are they really? What are they now? A reminder of being weak, of feeling bad about myself, but I’m not that girl anymore. At least now I’m doing what I want to do. I just thought being my own person would feel better than this.

I notice my hands are shaking as I pack my toiletries, so I stop and eat the last half of a box of stale Junior Mints from my purse. There won’t be space at Wisper Pines for all my books and pictures and the meaningless crap that’s sprawled over my dresser and desk, so I’ve packed a single box of keepsakes that I can’t live without: the music box Dad brought back from a business trip in Chicago, the stuffed giraffe Mo won for me at the state fair, my picture of Lena. The rest is meaningless: Mardi gras masks I used to collect, hair ribbons from ballet recitals even though I quit ballet in eighth grade, tacky pottery I stopped painting years ago. I won’t miss it.