Just a Girl - Becky Monson Page 0,71

book in her hands. But instead, it’s Tessa.

“Tess,” I say, smiling without teeth. “What’s up?”

“I just came to see what you’re up to,” she says.

“Still working on this,” I say, knocking on the side twice with my knuckles.

She scrunches her nose at it. “Think you’ll make a lot off this one?”

I shrug one shoulder. “Maybe. If I sell it.”

“What else would you do with it? Mom won’t take that,” she says, pulling her chin inward at the thought that such a hideous piece could have a place in my parents’ home.

“I wouldn’t give this to Mom,” I say, sounding appalled. My mom has a very modern, minimalist approach to decorating. This cabinet wouldn’t fit in her world. “I meant for myself. I might keep it for me.”

“Oh,” she says, the word coming out in a two-note song.

“Besides,” I say. “Mom would just use it to stack the many diet books she buys to give me.”

Tessa makes a snorting noise. “She’s been giving them to me now, you know.”

I look up at her, knitting my brows. “She has? Why?”

Tessa has always been naturally skinny, and I’ve often hated her for it, feeling jealous that something like the retreat I went to wouldn’t even be on her radar. Food is just food to Tessa. I wish it were that simple for me.

“I’ve gained seven pounds sitting at a desk for my internship, don’t you know,” she says, with her hip popped out, her hand on her waist.

“I didn’t notice,” I say, looking her over. I motion toward her with my hand. “You look great.”

She relaxes her stance and looks down at herself. “I never thought to care, honestly. Mom’s the one who keeps bringing it up.”

“Mom,” I say, exasperated. “Don’t listen to her.”

She lifts her shoulders, briefly. “I don’t listen to her.” She looks at me, almost with a different set of eyes. Like she’s never seen me this way. “You shouldn’t listen to her either.”

I go back to sanding the corner of the cabinet, the sound barely discernible over the fairly loud hum of the air conditioner hanging in the only window of the garage.

“It’s different with me,” I say, after a few beats of silence.

“How so?”

“I actually need to lose weight,” I say.

“Says who?”

Says who? Says . . . plenty of people. I mean, up until recently I was getting daily emails from viewers about it. And just because I don’t get them anymore doesn’t mean they aren’t coming in. I get why it’s probably better for our psyches if we don’t read those emails, but it doesn’t get rid of the fact that they’re still there. Still coming in. Still judging.

“It’s mostly my job,” I say.

“That’s stupid,” she says, her voice indicating that she has no other response for that. She’s right, though—it is stupid.

The door opens and my mom walks in. “There you are, Tessa,” she says when she sees my sister. “Quinn,”—her eyes brighten when they land on me—“I’ve been meaning to call you.”

Should I do a countdown? Diet book coming in three . . . two . . .

“I saw you on the evening news,” she says, delight on her face. There’s an upturn to her chest, her shoulders pulled back. She looks . . . proud. I see this look so rarely, so little, I hardly recognize it.

“Yeah, I’m doing a feature with my boss,” I say, feeling an odd sense of pleasure at this. I also feel sort of bad that I’d so quickly thought she was about to give me another diet book. Although, in my defense, that’s usually the case. But this Mom right now, with her bright eyes and grin full of teeth, reminds me of a time before, when diets and things weren’t at the top of her list for me. When I was just her daughter and she was just my mom.

“It’s such a cute idea,” she says.

I lift my chin, feeling a surge of excitement pump through me at what I get to say next. “It was my idea, actually.”

“Really?” she says, placing her hands on her hips, her eyes even brighter. “Well, color me impressed.”

It’s not often lately that she tells me she’s impressed, and I grab on to her words like I’ve found the only flowers in a field full of weeds. I start to feel badly for what I said about her just before she came into the garage.

“Can we talk about that producer of yours,” my mom says, adding a whistle for emphasis. “That