anyone who’ll be your boyfriend?”
“At least my love life exists in reality, unlike some people’s,” she said. “If you really did screw it up with that guy, it’s probably your fault. Did you freak out when you realized you might actually be falling for a real boy instead of some made-up man creation in your head?”
“Fuck you,” I said, having no other answer.
“No, fuck you,” Candace said, as I got out and slammed the car door.
I walked the rest of the way home, like I should have in the first place.
Thirty
I ditched school on Monday. Mom chalked it up to my busy weekend, and the way she said it, I knew no one had told her what had really happened. “You don’t have a fever,” she said. “But you do look a little peaked. Too much excitement.”
She was in a flurry after getting back from her trip, because she’d gotten an interview somewhere she said had a female hiring manager, which she hoped might mean a better shot at getting the job. The interview wasn’t until Thursday, but she’d laid out her outfit already—the briefcase, the shoes—and while she vacuumed before leaving for work, I heard her reciting answers, or parts of them. “My strengths: staying calm, pressure, resourcefulness, attitude.” I hoped more than anything she didn’t have to hear about the wedding until after the interview.
Tina called and I pushed my pseudo-symptoms. “My throat really hurts,” I said. “I’ve been throwing up.” I wasn’t sure those things were consistent with any particular disease, but she didn’t press me. She also didn’t ask about the wedding, which I thought meant maybe Candace had told her what had happened and Tina was giving me the choice to tell her. But I didn’t want to. Not right then, anyway.
I still didn’t go back on Tuesday. For Mom, I feigned worsening cramps and a headache. She sat with me on the couch in the morning before she left for work and we watched Bozo’s Circus Show. Some kid cried when he missed the last bucket, and Bozo comforted him with a shoulder pat that made the kid cry harder.
After Mom had left for the day, telling me there were Lipton soup packets in the pantry and aspirin in the bathroom, I alternated the first few hours lying in my bed or on the couch, staring blankly at the ceiling or the TV, imagining what would happen if I did go back to school. I couldn’t look at Bobby again, that was for sure. But I wasn’t nearly as sure of anything else.
Why had I said Bobby’s name in the closet? Was I really afraid of a real relationship? God, did I have any idea what I even wanted at all? Maybe I’d been fooling myself about everything, from playing soccer to thinking about college.
Tina called from a school pay phone that afternoon. I was sprawled on the floor of Mom’s room, painting my toenails. I had two toes with busted purpled nails from soccer, but the three coats of red I’d used were hiding them nicely. “What’s going on?” she asked. “You never miss two days in a row.”
“Cramps, horrible ones,” I lied.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “And yesterday you were throwing up, with a sore throat. When do you think these cramps will subside? Everyone was looking for you at practice yesterday. Bobby seemed really concerned, too.”
Telling her that I wasn’t ever coming back to practice seemed like something she deserved to hear in person. And, ugh, did I have to tell the whole team, because I was the captain? The title felt like a booby prize, a concession you gave someone too stupid to realize it meant nothing, like the cases of Rice-A-Roni they gave to the loser on a game show. For a second, you thought at least you’d gotten something, until you had to lug twenty pounds of rice to the airport. If I wasn’t captain, I could just stop showing up.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said.
I guess that wasn’t enough for Tina, though, because she showed up at my house that day after practice. The doorbell rang, nearly startling me off the couch, from which I hadn’t moved in several hours. I ignored it for the first buzz, but it kept ringing and ringing so I couldn’t hear Family Feud. I dragged myself to the door, figuring that if it was someone selling something, at least the hour of boredom I’d spent curling my hair that morning could be appreciated.