Cynda and the City Doctor - Theodora Taylor Page 0,57
yells, tugging frantically on the pillow. “And fact check, we don’t want to live with you!”
I let go of the pillow and E goes stumbling back a few steps. She obviously hadn’t expected me to give up the fight.
“What? What do you mean?” I ask E. “That’s the plan. That was the plan all along.”
I don’t remember A’s still in the room with us until he says, “E, don’t…C’mon.”
E’s eyes dart from her brother back to me, and it seems like she’s making a decision when she says, “No, that was your plan all along. We never wanted to keep on living with you after college. That’s why we both applied to go to C.M.U.—you know a school all the way across the country.”
Her words don’t just shock me. They cut me, like a knife slicing into my stomach. “No… no…that’s not true.”
I look to A. “That’s not true, right?”
He drops his head and looks to the side. “We didn’t want to hurt your feelings. But we’re eighteen. We just want to start doing stuff for ourselves.”
“You want to start doing stuff for yourselves?” I repeat, my voice caustic. “Well, how about paying me rent then? How about giving me back the last three years I—”
I stop. The “wasted on you brats” fading with the memory of how their mom left.
When the twins and I had staged an intervention about her drinking, she’d turned on us like a caged tiger.
“You ruined my body! My prospects! You want me to go to rehab, talk to somebody about my problems! The only problems I have is all the years I wasted on you brats!”
Her temper tantrum had reduced her twins to tears and apologies she didn’t deserve. And then the next morning she was gone. And the twins had cried like her leaving was all their fault.
And I’d vowed never to hurt them like that. To be there for them, no matter what.
But there’s a difference between that vow and what I was planning to do by moving to Pittsburgh with them.
That new realization hits me like a tornado-level wind. Rhys…he’d been right. At least about this.
I sink on to the bed. “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “I’m sorry I clung to you like that. I should have spent this year figuring out how to let you go. Not smothering you.”
Teenagers, they act so tough.
But hearing my apology melts E out of her defensive stance.
“No, I’m sorry!” She sits down on the bed and throws her arms around my neck. “You’re the only one who’s ever cared enough to smother us. I love you. I love you so much. I just need to get out of here.”
I shake my head at her. “But why? Am I really that terrible to live with?”
E shakes her head. “No, it’s not you. It’s not…”
Her face collapses, and that’s when it all comes out in a torrent of tears.
As it turns out, E not being able to see and talk face-to-face with her non-related classmates did not dial down her high school drama one bit.
After all the unreturned messages, August announced that he had decided to take someone else to virtual prom. Somebody who actually returned his calls. Someone who didn’t play games.
“Clara Reynolds,” E announces with an annoyed huff.
I huff right along with her. Clara Reynolds was the cheerleader who’d been perfectly happy accepting roles she didn’t deserve. But she’d acted a total fool when E finally got cast as Cinderella in Into the Woods. As opposed to admitting to herself that she just wasn’t talented enough to land the part of Cinderella in the spring musical, she’d claimed that she’d been edged out of the role because E had made such a stink about no actresses of color getting major roles in the school productions for three years straight.
It had been peak entitlement and the kind of microaggression you can’t really battle against. So hearing that she’d been replaced by Clara of all people had upset E to the point of wanting to “get the hell out of this stupid, backwater town!”
By the time E’s done with her story, we’re all sitting on the edge of her bed, with A and I on either side of her.
“Did you tell him you were grounded and didn’t have your phone?” A asks. “He’d understand if you told him that probably and uninvite Clara.”
E shakes her head mournfully. “That’s not how it works.”
“Why not?” A asks. “That’s what I would do if I could get a girl