“That’s good to know, since I’m the one feeding and housing and clothing you.”
Meg gaped at her for a moment. “That’s not fair,” she said, a feeling like tears rising dangerously in her throat. It was a lot, all of a sudden, her mom being mad and her dad getting married and her fight with Emily and everything that had happened with Colby; she felt like an overfull glass. “You can’t just stick me between the two of you guys like that. It isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Meg.” Her mom stood up unsteadily, her elegant hands gripping the side of the island for balance. “If I can impart one life lesson to you, as your mother, let that be it.”
“Mom.” Now she really did start crying, one ragged sob that slipped out before she could stop it. It broke the spell, and suddenly her mom was herself again: the same person who’d managed to explain sex in a way that wasn’t embarrassing and knew if Meg had a fever by feeling her cheek with the back of her hand, who always poured potato chips into a bowl and ate the broken shards because she knew Meg liked the big ones best. “God.”
“I’m sorry,” her mom said immediately, scrubbing her free hand over her face. “You’re right, that was shitty. I’m sorry.”
“We can’t keep this up,” Meg said, not sure which one of them she was talking to, exactly. Suddenly, she felt like some low-budget actress performing to a totally empty house.
“Keep what up?” her mom asked, sitting back down again. Meg wondered with some horror if possibly she was too drunk to walk. “Come on, Meg, my girl.”
Meg shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said, grabbing her backpack and heading for the doorway. “I have to go to work.”
By the time she picked up a burrito for dinner and made it to the WeCount offices, she felt like a cartoon character who’d been in a fistfight, like she ought to have a missing tooth and an old-fashioned bandage wrapped around her head. “You good?” Lillian asked, raising her eyebrows over the partition.
“I’m good,” Meg promised.
Lillian nodded, eyes just slightly narrowed. “There are chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen” was all she said.
Meg spent the next hour talking to a sweet old man in Toledo and a grouchy old lady in New Hope, then left four voice mails in a row before finally leaning back in her chair, staring up at the fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling overhead. Em would forgive her, she told herself firmly. She’d forgive her, and they’d room together at Cornell just like they’d always planned, and if the thought of it made Meg feel like the walls of this office were closing in on her by the second, she’d just have to be a damn adult and get over it.
After all, what else was she going to do?
She tugged on her lip for a moment, remembering the conversation she’d had with Colby way back when: If you actually do want to go change things, if you actually think you can, then shouldn’t you, like . . . go out there and change them?
She glanced over the partition at Lillian, who was talking animatedly into her headset, then opened her internet browser and put in the address for Annie Hernandez’s website. She scrolled all the way down until she found it, there at the very bottom: a blue rectangular button that said Work with Annie.
It wasn’t a real plan, she chided herself firmly.
She didn’t know anyone who’d ever done anything like it.
Still, she took a deep breath and clicked.
Twenty-Two
Colby
“I’ll tell you the worst part,” Meg said on the phone late that night, her voice bright and brittle like it always got when she was putting on a little bit of a song-and-dance number. “I didn’t even get a dress for the stupid wedding.”
Colby laughed. He was lying faceup on the scrubby grass in the backyard, Tris farting periodically beside him. It had been warm out today, or almost. “Is that really the worst part?” he asked.
Meg sighed theatrically. “I mean, no, of course not, but try to find me charming, will you? I’m doing a whole bit here.”
“I hear that,” Colby murmured, sifting a rock out of the soil and twirling it between the fingers of his free hand. “That’s kind of