Rory
"Tre you're sure…" I took a deep breath and looked over to my best friend sitting next to me. We were wrapped in blankets perched on the alcove outside my window passing a joint back and forth. It was Halloween night and the streets were swarmed with trick or treaters. Ashley and Luke had joined some of our neighbors walking Olivia around the streets to collect candy. Aside from her showing up to the homecoming pep rally sauced, Ashley had slightly mellowed out in the days following my father's return. I couldn't tell if it were his presence that helped or if he was just pumping her full of sedatives every chance he got.
Theresa's face was twisted. "Look, all I know is what I heard. Consider my source we all know she's full of it." Theresa stared at me with her big brown eyes full of worry.
Rumor had it that the Saturday after homecoming that Nick had gone to a party at one of his friends beach houses and hooked up with some sophomore. He told me he had a family party that night and apparently somehow ended up down in Scarborough with Jenna Connors, some barbie doll looking bimbo.
My mind started racing of all of the weekend nights we hadn't been together over the last few years. Was Jenna the first? Had this been happening all along? Was it even true?
Theresa had been through her own share of boy issues this year. She had been dating Nick's best friend Tony since shortly after we got together. We always thought it was so great, two best friends dating two best friends.
Tony's family never liked theresa, she lived in castle view but in a smaller house and weren't in the country club crowd like Tony's family. Tre's dad was a state trooper who died on the job when we were in junior high. They were able to keep his pension, but both Theresa's mom and sister worked as hairdressers to make ends meet. Tony and Theresa's relationship was always a little more up and down than mine and Nick's.
Over the summer, everything had fallen apart. tony knocked up alice Gilmore, a pretty blonde haired junior who'd he'd been having a secret fling with for months. His parents are friends with the gilmores and determined the solution was for them to get married when tony graduates and raise the baby together. Theresa was collateral damage.
When word got out, things got ugly. All of our old friends sided with Tony and turned on Theresa. Nick and I stopped speaking for two weeks because I refused to cut her off. Tony was to blame for all of this, and Theresa was only getting cut off because the Castle View Country Club families stick together. She's been my best friend since first grade and watching people who I thought were my friends cut someone off so coldly completely shook my world. I quit the cheerleading squad, told off the whole pack of them and sided with theresa. Nick eventually came around, but it's awkward when we go to parties now and half the room refuses to speak to me. Him cheating on me with Jenna would make so much sense...the whole tony/Theresa situation had caused some stress between us and there was so much pressure on him to land a football scholarship...Ugh I didn't want to think about it.
"Look it might not be true. I just worry cause he lied about where he was…" Theresa continued.
"I know." I was silent. I was upset, but not as upset as I would have been six months ago. Nick's ego had grown immensely over our time together. He never treated me poorly, but it did bother me the way he picked on the nerdy kids in class and the way he looked down his nose at "working stiffs" as he called them. His obsession with making senior year the best year of his life was over the top. You heard about it all the time, couples who are together until senior year when one of them wants to go buck wild before college. Maybe we had just run our course?
"You're too quiet you're scaring me." Theresa snapped me out of my thoughts.
"I'm trying to figure out why I'm not more upset." Her eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
I sighed. "I feel like the last few months I've only stayed with Nick cause I can escape my house when I'm there."
Tre knew that things at the Scanlon house weren't pleasant. I spent a lot of nights sleeping over her place. Her mom was a riot and I'd become good friends with her older sister nancy and her best friend Jeanette. They had been a welcomed breath of fresh air when we stopped hanging out with the cheerleaders.
Theresa furrowed her brow. "Honestly, with your mom so unhinged this is the last thing you need to worry about."
"Exactly. Her little appearance on stage when I got crowned was the most embarrassing thing ever. Nick asked me if she was drunk and I said she was on cold medicine." I shook my head thinking about it.
"Rory you don't even tell your boyfriend of three years what's going on at home...I mean if you can't rely on him for that why are you planning on following him to college?" The words stung but she had a point. There were no secrets between me and Theresa, we always kept it 100% honest. I had applied to exactly 6 colleges-5 places that Nick was being recruited by and one that I had kept secret, just to see if I could get in. Nick's first choice was penn state, and a bunch of other big name state schools with big football programs rounded off the list. I had always dreamed of going to college in a city. My dad was from Boston and we would go visit family there a couple times a year. No one had to know I had applied to Boston University, it was my little secret, one I hadn't even shared with Theresa.
"You keep zoning out, talk to me." Theresa snapped me back to reality again. "Look, I applied to one other school. I guess subconsciously i thought I should have a backup plan. My future isn't necessarily tied to his, but I don't have the mental capacity to deal with a big relationship talk with him right now. I just want to go through the motions until I know for sure he's messing around on me."
Theresa's jaw dropped. "What school? Oh my god he will kill you if he finds out you have a backup plan…"
"BU and he won't find out cause it's just you and me that know." I held up my pinky to swear our secrecy and tre linked hers with mine.
"Lips sealed. Can we go inside? I'm freezing!" We both slid through the window and jumped on my bed, feeling light and airy from the joint.
"Is it selfish for me to want you to break up with Nick so we can be single together? I mean, we would absolutely kill it." We collapsed in a fit of giggles.
"Ugh breaking up with Nick seems like so much work. I wish he would just dump me-"
I was interrupted when my bedroom door swung open.
"I hope you're joking." My mother stood there coldly looking down at me.
"What?" I popped up and rubbed my eyes, trying not to look stoned.
"Lauren I just heard you say you were thinking of breaking up with Nick what on earth are you thinking?"
Whatever my dad had given to calm her down before heading out to play "happy trick or treating family" had clearly worn off. "It's nothing, don't worry about it." I mumbled.
"Theresa it's time for you to leave. I need to chat with Lauren." Tre's eyes grew wide as she gathered her stuff and slipped out of the room.
"I was walking to the bathroom and clear as day I hear you yell that breaking up with Nick would be too much work...would you like to explain how a thought like that ever entered your brain?" She was eerily calm. My heart raced a little faster.
"It's nothing we were just joking-." Before I knew it my head snapped as her open hand slapped across my cheek. I grabbed my stinging face and looked up at her horrified.
"Have you lost your mind?" I jumped off the bed and away from her.
"Have you!? You have the perfect life and you're thinking about throwing it away on a whim to be single with your pathetic girlfriend!"
"Do you really think my life is perfect? You think because I got some stupid homecoming crown that everything is wonderful?" I glared at her, backing away further.
"You've thrown away so much. You quit cheerleading, wouldn't stick with pageants, and now you want to break up with the most popular boy in school?"
"Have you ever thought for a second that I don't want your life? That I'm sick and tired of you telling me who I'm supposed to be? If you must know, I said what I said to Theresa because I found out he's got someone else on the side. Do you expect me to put up with that?"
"For a boy like that, absolutely. He could play professional football and give you an incredible life! Do you think your father's been faithful? Girls like us make sacrifices!"
I scoffed. "Girls like you maybe, I'm not going to set myself up to be miserable and then spend the rest of my life drinking away my troubles." That was harsh. I was going to pay for that.
Footsteps running up the stairs distracted her momentarily. "Mommy I can't find my pajamas!" Olivia yelled as she barged into my room, still in her Cinderella costume and tiara. The sweet little thing had no understanding of what she had walked into.
"For the love of god Olivia can you do anything for yourself? Mommy get me a juice, mommy find my pajamas, can you breathe for yourself?"
I jumped over to Olivia, whos lip started to quiver. I picked her up and carried her down the stairs as she sobbed into my shoulder.
"What the hell happened? Why's she crying?" My father stood in the hallway.
"Your psychotic wife just slapped me across the face and made your seven year old cry, why don't you do something about it for once?" He stared daggers at me then turned on his heels and marched upstairs.
I sat down on the couch with Olivia on my lap. "Please don't cry, she doesn't mean it." I held her close.
"Kendall says she's a drunk. People at school say that's a bad thing." She said between sobs.
"She's sick, Livvie, she doesn't understand what she's saying and she doesn't mean it."
My little sister looked up at me with her big brown eyes. "Yes she does. She wants to hurt us so we're sad like she is." My heart broke. I wished my sisters didn't have to deal with Ashley's erratic behavior, it killed me that this little girl was starting to understand what was going on around her.
My sister's eyes narrowed. "Why is your face all red?" She touched my still stinging cheek. "I'm just upset, I don't like seeing you sad." I smiled and pulled her hand away. "Let's go find your pajamas and you can show me all the stuff you got trick or treating, sound good?" She tried to smile as she hopped off my lap.
I heard the yelling start upstairs and tried to keep Olivia downstairs to avoid it. I distracted her by helping her sort through the dozens of candy bars and treats she had come home with.
About a half hour later, my father appeared in the kitchen looking haggard. "Mommy's sorry Olivia, she wasn't feeling well. Why don't you start to get ready for bed, you probably won't sleep after all that candy but Rory or i will be up to read you a story in a few minutes."
I glared at him. Keep making excuses and then pumping her full of pills to knock her out. It doesn't fix anything. Olivia reluctantly headed upstairs, I went to follow her knowing my father would stop me.
"Look she shouldn't have hit you…" he said as soon as Olivia was out of eyeshot.
"astute observation. Did you read that in a parenting book?"
"What am I supposed to do, Rory? She's losing her mind there isn't a clear cut solution for this!"
"Send her to the spa. She's doing more harm than good here you have to be able to see that."
He rubbed his face. "She won't go."
"Make her! Call the police on her or something and let her get dragged away she can't be home anymore!"
"If I ever embarrassed her like that she'd never forgive me. If anyone knew…"
"Dad people aren't stupid! She acts crazy all over town. If you had seen the way the Fredette's stared down at me when I picked her up there that day she was drunk, you'd know there was no way they'd keep this to themselves. She ran on stage drunk at homecoming in front of the whole town, everyone knows she's a disaster. You are the only one who can do something about it and you're just paralyzed." I stepped closer to him. "Dad I'm begging you, you have to help her we can't keep going on like this."
He looked away. "It'll be fine once she gets some sleep. Trick or treating was exhausting."
My heart sank. I had never felt so let down in my entire life. I felt tears start to form in my eyes and a pit grow in my stomach. This was the new normal. I walked toward my room and turned around to my father. "This is on you. Whatever happens from this moment forward is all on you. I won't forget how you did nothing." He winced at my words and I spun away.
I peeked into Olivia's room and she was sitting up in bed with a large picture book on her lap. "I'm glad it's you and not daddy." She smiled and handed me a copy of Eloise, one of our favorites. The story of a little girl who lived like a princess at the plaza hotel. As I read, Olivia gushed about how she wished she lived in a hotel and how she would roller skate through the halls just like Eloise. "Eloise seems pretty happy without having a mom to wreck everything." Olivia said quietly as i read the last page and closed the book. I kissed her forehead. "Don't say that liv, things will get better in the morning."
I stepped toward the door and flipped off her light. I could barely swallow how easily i repeated my father's words to my sister. I just didn't want her to worry. I thought for a moment if maybe my father looked at me like I looked at Olivia, like a little girl he didn't want to worry about a problem she couldn't solve.
