past me, hurrying her pace. Dragging the dog a little. “They asked me.”
“So lie!” I follow her, trailing her closely through the parking lot.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
What? What a stupid thing to say. “Because it’s wrong?” I say, mocking her. “Who the fuck cares if it’s wrong? What business is it of yours?”
She turns a little to walk around her princess-white Mini, parked just by the back door. “It’s wrong,” she repeats with growing confidence now that the car is between us. “And if I see wrong, it’s my responsibility to do something about it. That’s the problem with society—people just turn a blind eye.”
I screw my face up in disgust. “Are you for fucking real?” It’s as if she was spoon-fed the words during a little dinnertime talk with her family. “What language are you speaking? I see your lips moving, but it’s like an old lady talking.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Melissa. You’re the one who did it. You stole something.”
“God, Rachel,” I say, exasperated. “Life’s not so fucking simple.”
She crosses her arms and stands firm. “Mine is,” she says, smirking.
And that stabs me more deeply than any knife could do. Rachel is no innocent uptown girl—she knew the precision of her words. Instantly, it’s like this huge divide opens between us. Like some earthquake crack parts us. And I hate her. I hate her life. I hate her fucking car. I hate her stupid, prissy face. I want to kill her.
I look around, then down, searching for something. I don’t know … something. Anything. Then I see it: a big piece of wood sticking out of the metal garbage bin behind me. I pick it up, hold it high above my head like I’m going to launch it at her. I won’t, but I want to scare her. She ducks, and then I bring it down hard onto her car windshield. It smashes. A muffled crunch. A punctured round centre, with cracks snaking out from it.
She gasps. So do I. I can’t believe I did it. My hands throb. She looks up, horrified, then terrified that I’ll come after her. She drops the dog’s leash and it starts to hobble away, back toward the patch of grass.
She starts crying and her face gets red.“You’re fucking dead! You’re fucking going to jail!” she shouts as she runs around the side of the building, down the driveway, and toward the front door of the clinic.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I look around for a second, trying to take in what just happened. “Fuck!” I hurl the wood into the bin and then quickly run after the stupid dog, which is wobbling toward the road. I drag it back, its reluctant little nails scraping along the pavement, and loop its leash around the car antenna.
Then I take off.
Forty-Six
I always fuck up.
Before I get out of the boat, I must get in the boat.
I’m not even in the goddamn fucking boat yet.
I stand barefoot in the sooty mud by the riverbank. The tall reeds brush against my face as I reach out to the edge. I hold up my frilly dress in one hand while still managing to lift myself in. The water splashes, echoing in my head. Beautiful. I take the oar and push it into the soft ground, propelling the boat off the bank. And then I’m taken by the current. I lie down on the wooden seat, at first staring into the rippling water, then staring at the blue, blue sky. I close my eyes. Still drifting, drifting, drifting. Then I slip one foot over the edge.
I can’t sleep.
How many days since I bashed in the car? Five now?
I can’t sleep.
Each night, I wait for the police to come to my door. Listen for the knock. Wait for my mother’s devastated face. Wait for them to take me away in the back seat of the cruiser so I can spend the night in some shitty dorm room with some screwed-up girls who scare the hell out of me and make me seem like a princess.
In the middle of the night, I hear my mom in the living room. I guess she can’t sleep either. I don’t go see what she’s doing, but I know she’s upset because Scott has left her. She finally told him about the pregnancy, hoping he would assume it was his, but it turns out he got snipped a few years ago. They had a huge fight and somehow she turned it all around and