Mother driving me crazy.
Sure, come over.
Blythe will be here in ten minutes. That’s not nearly enough time to clean up. I assess my room. What’s the most messy thing? My bed. My bed has to be made first. But oh my God, why do I have Dora sheets? What am I—two? Everything else was in the laundry, I’ll tell her. It’s the truth! I found them at the back of the closet. Everything was dirty! But Dora sheets? How has it come to this?
“Dad! Where are those white sheets that you got me from Target?”
He’s downstairs, yelling something I don’t understand. I’m at the top of the steps.
“The white sheets from Target! Where are they? The new ones!”
“Still in the bag. Next to the washing machine.”
“Ugh, they’re not clean?”
“If you had cleaned them, Ali—”
“Does everything have to be such a chore?”
I run down the stairs, and he’s calling after me.
“It’s only a chore if you make it a chore.”
I unwrap the sheets and a duvet cover. Everything has to be white. That’s what it means to have a normal bed that’s not a loser bed. That’s not a baby bed. Everything white. I kick the bags to the side and race back up the stairs.
He follows me, stairs creaking behind me. “Why are you doing this now?”
“Blythe is coming over now.”
“Wait . . . now?”
“Don’t start with me, Dad. My room is a mess—”
“What are you doing with those?” He points to my Dora sheets on the floor.
“I’m throwing them out. That’s what I’m doing.” I’m standing on my bed trying to shove my pink comforter into the white duvet cover.
“I want to save those, Ali.”
“What? Why? Even if I have a kid one day, which I won’t, I wouldn’t let her watch Dora because her head is too big for her body and she doesn’t even look like a real person.”
“When did you decide you’re not having kids? I’m so lost—”
“Dad, seriously. Be cool when Blythe comes over. She’s upset about her mom. And I don’t want her freaking out. This is a new friend.”
All of a sudden my bed is white and sparkly. And I’m so proud of myself. I throw all my shoes and clothes into my hamper—shove it in the closet. Everything. Boxes. Books. Everything goes in the closet. I stack two bowls with pretzel crumbs and three empty water glasses together and hand them to my father, pressing them against his chest.
“Please take these down for me.”
“What’s wrong with her mother?”
“Bipolar.”
“Oh.”
His face looks worried. I see the crease between his eyebrows.
“Everyone has problems, Dad.”
The doorbell rings. It’s Blythe.
“Dad?”
He looks around my room. “It looks great. Don’t worry. I’ll be cool.”
I stand at the middle of the steps watching my dad let Blythe in. I think even he’s surprised how together and pretty she is. Her hair tonight is all swung to the side, wavy. Shiny. She’s wearing a strategically washed-out sweatshirt and tight black jeans with holes in the knees. She gives my father the whole it’s so nice to meet you shtick. I wave my hands toward her, grab her hand, and lead her up the stairs.
“Aww, your room is cute,” Blythe says.
“Can you stop calling everything I do cute?”
“You are cute, Ali. Can I have a tour? Show me everything. I want to see everything.”
I look at her strangely, because I don’t know exactly what that means, but I laugh and show her all of the main points of my life. The third place ribbon I won the year I was on the swim team. The old dollhouse I had with the super put-together nuclear family.
“What do you keep under there?” She’s staring at the black boxes under my bed. They’re filled with my stupid pictures of Sean Nessel. I never finished ripping up all the scrapbook pictures.
“Nothing is under the bed.”
“There’s always something under the bed. No one has nothing under their bed. And you have black boxes.”
Blythe bends down on the floor and eyes the boxes. She looks up at me with puppy dog eyes and smiles sideways. “Ali. There are secrets packed away in these boxes, aren’t there?”
“Honestly, it’s nothing.”
“Oh my God, I have to see now.”
She pulls at one of the boxes, laughing. She thinks it’s something embarrassing from my childhood, and because Blythe Jensen isn’t used to hearing no from anyone, she won’t take no from me. I’m telling her to stop. She’s not listening.
“You said you had to talk about your mother!” I say now, my voice shaking. I shove her back with my foot and then try to block her with my thigh down to the ground. I’m all contorted in front of her, between her and the black boxes filled with photos of Sean Nessel.
She crawls away, coughing because I guess I got her in the belly.
“Seriously, Ali, what the fuck?”
“What the fuck with you? I told you not to look at those boxes and you—you just can’t stop.”
“I didn’t know it was so serious. I thought you were doing your Ali snarky thing.”
“It’s pictures of Sean Nessel if you really want to know. I was in love with him. Stupid me. So in love with him. I used to clip pictures of him. I used to clip out everything he did.”
Does hiding it matter anymore? It just makes me look crazier than I already am. What am I trying to protect anyway? Myself? I’ve already lost it all. I drag one of the boxes out and dump it in front of her. All the cutout hearts and cutout tiny stars and the black paper and the glitter and the markers and the newspaper clips and the printouts. The feathers and gold ribbon that I used to line the book.
“Here it is. Here it all is. My life before that horrible night. This was everything. Everything that I dreamed of is here right in this box and now it’s just nothing.” I start ripping up collages and
