Mom works her scissors around this dress that looks like it's for an eighty-year-old. She's not wearing that. “You know about Carlos.”
“Oh right. Caaaarlos.”
“Caaaarlos.”
“My one true love.”
“Sorry, Dominic.”
She laughs a little and shakes her head so I know she's joking, but really I wonder all the time what she'd do if Carlos were still alive. They were together her last year of high school and started college together, but he didn't like school and ended up dropping out to enlist and died somewhere overseas. Mom told me she cried for weeks. Between dealing with that her freshman year and having a baby her senior, it's pretty incredible she even graduated.
I watch her smile sadly and clip her pictures of floral arrangements.
“Do you really think it's like that?” I ask. “You get the one true love and that's it?”
“Of course not! Look at me now.”
“So maybe Carlos wasn't the one, then. Maybe he was just a stop on your way here. Would you have married him?”
“Yes.”
“Then you never would have had me.”
“If only.”
“You're the worst.”
She scratches under my hair. “I've never really had anything work out like I planned,” she says. “Carlos dying. Never going to nursing school.”
“And surprise Taylor.”
“Surprise you. Falling into that office job after college and realizing I loved it. Meeting Dominic at that seminar.”
“Which one was it again?” She goes to a lot of seminars.
“Intercity illiteracy.”
“That's a good one for picking up guys, you should have seen that one coming.”
“I don't know about these dresses,” she says. “All this white.”
“It's a wedding!”
“I have a teenage daughter, people are supposed to think I'm a virgin?”
“If everyone who wore white was a virgin there'd be no bridal shops south of Daytona Beach.”
“And you say I'm the worst.”
“But you like me.”
“I do.” She keeps scratching my head, like I'm a small animal. It feels amazing. Maybe I am a small animal.
I close my eyes. “You happy, Mom?”
“Yes. I'd be happier if you'd sit your butt up and help me with this. You know what, I hate all these dresses. Look at this one!”
I sit up to look at it. It is truly horrible.
“I could wear that to the Halloween party,” I say. “I wouldn't even have to do zombie bride makeup. I could just wear that and scare the crap out of everyone.”
“You haven't told me about this party yet.”
“I did too, it's at Elisha's.” She invited me after the swim meet, while she looked over at Josey retreating and made it unbelievably clear that she was waiting until she was gone to invite me. She wasn't trying to be subtle. She didn't think that would offend me. (Because Josey's not my real friend. Josey's a grade-obsessed, '90s-throwback pariah. Why would leaving her out offend me?)
(It did.)
“Are her parents going to be there?”
“I assume. I didn't ask.”
“Tayloooor.”
“Do people's parents actually just leave for parties?” I say. “I mean, maybe they're incidentally out of town and the kid gets people over, but are they seriously going to just leave their house open on Halloween?”
“Maybe they have a Halloween party. Getting their groove back.”
“It's not even on Halloween,” I say. “Halloween's Friday, the party's Saturday.”
“So what you're saying is you have no idea if her parents are going to be there.”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder if that Lucas is going to be there,” she says.
“Probably not. He and I don't exactly run in the same circles.”
“Hey. Be nice.”
“You just called him that Lucas!”
“I'm allowed to be concerned that you're spending time with a bad influence!”
Ha. If only she knew the bad influences I actually was spending time with.
“I do hope you make some new friends. Good influence ones. You know it wouldn't hurt you to expand your horizons some, mija,” she says.
“I'm expanded!” I grab my belly flab and shake it at her.
“All you do is swim team, since you were tiny. All your friends are swim team friends. Maybe try something new, hmm? New school, new start.”
“Like going to a wild party with no parents?”
“I was thinking math club,” she says.
8
I end up dressing up as a firefly for Elisha's party, because I don't know what the atmosphere will be, and you never want to be a naked nurse when everyone else is a skeleton, or, possibly worse, a skeleton when everyone else is a naked nurse. I wear a black leotard and black leggings and make wings out of poster board and tulle and my mother helps me wrap some Christmas lights around my hips. I actually look quite adorable. I asked Alexis if I could borrow her antenna headband, but she said no, she needed it, and proceeded to wear it around the house all day even though she trick or treated the night before and she was a Power Ranger with no antennae to speak of.
“You look nice,” Dominic says. I'm standing at the mirror at the hall dabbing glitter on my cheeks.
“Thank you. I'm thinking of trying this look for every day.”
He messes up my hair, which is sweet but at the same time, I just spent ten minutes doing my hair and I'm sixteen.
“Do you need a ride?” he says.
“No, Mike's coming to pick me up.”
“Ooooh.”
“No.”
“Who's Mike?”
“Mike is No. And seriously, don't do any of that when he's here or he might think he's not No.”
“Oh, to be a teenager again.”
I hunt around for a wide-tooth comb to attempt to retame the ball of frizz. My mom keeps buying me brushes, like she thinks that if I have enough I'll magically turn me into a person whose hair won't puff up into the stratosphere if it even touches a brush.
