That’s a lie. Ricky Hannigan was best friends with anyone who walked in his door. A few weeks before my junior year ended (and I unwisely came out), Mom arranged with the Reverend to get me into the Meals on Wheels program, so I’d waste my summer doing Christian things for Christian people. Most of my customers were cranky old dickheads, but not Ricky. He always smiled when he saw me.
I don’t get smiled at a lot.
Ricky wasn’t any older than the Reverend, but he needed meals delivered because he’d been in an accident forever ago. He could barely talk, so I never pried much about his injury. Then last weekend, I showed up at Ricky’s house with his usual tray, but his hospital bed was empty. He was gone. After that, the Reverend stopped my deliveries altogether, as if Ricky had been the only customer who mattered.
Outside our window, the black van cruises by for a fourth round. This time, Mom and I both spot it. Startled, her hand jumps, her fork and plate clattering, and the sudden noise stops my heart. Clearly, I inherited the panic gene from her, so thanks a bunch, Marcia. When she finishes blotting the gravy stain out of our plastic tablecloth, Mom pulls back a curtain of dark hair and announces, “Connor, your punishment’s over.”
Honey and sunshine flood my heart for the first time in weeks. For real? Just like that? After this long and bloody war, her 180-degree turn takes me by such surprise that I can’t stop myself from blurting, “Why?”
“You don’t want it to be over?”
“No! I’m sorry I said it rude like that. I just…What changed your mind?”
Mom closes her eyes, leaving me to twist in agony until she reopens them. “Because my punishments aren’t changing anything.”
Holy sanity! Don’t sass her back, Connor; just smile and nod.
At long, long, long last, Mom slides it across the table to me—my phone, encased in a turquoise shell. My portal to worlds other than this one. I close clammy fingers around my old friend; its cool, metal touch is bliss and already slowing my rapid heartbeat. Without another word, I lift the phone to nourish my eyes with dozens of texts, pictures, and “I miss yous” from Ario.
But there aren’t any. The display stays black. Mom didn’t keep it charged.
Exhaling slowly, she unfolds a crinkled scrap of notebook paper, flattens it beside her uneaten meal, and scans the page. As Mom reads to herself, she inhales deliberately deep, calming breaths. I have no idea if I’m supposed to stay or get out of her sight, so I mumble “Thank you” and slide back my chair.
“I’ve got one last thing to do,” she whispers, eyes still on her paper. I drop back to my seat with nothing to focus on but this ominous pulling sensation in my gut. “I’ve been reading about setting boundaries and ultimatums,”—she swallows—“and I’m gonna read mine to you now.”
“All right,” I say without breath. I’m being kicked out. She’s never been nervous to chew me out before, but all of a sudden, she hands me my phone and can’t stomach eating dinner?
This is it. Ultimatum time.
“Connor,” Mom reads, “it’s clear you’re choosing to reject your responsibilities so you can be with another boy. Whatever you might think is fair, this choice has consequences. This boy, or any boy or man…I won’t meet him. I don’t want to know him in any way. If you…marry a man, I won’t go to the wedding and he won’t belong to our family. If you have more children someday—you buy them or whatever—they won’t belong to our family. You’re always welcome here. But nobody else you’re married to, unless it’s Vicky. These are my terms, and that’s the price of this phone. Do you accept this?”
She looks up, her eyes stained pink.
“Um…fine…sure,” I say, swirling my filthy fork around my plate. Why couldn’t she have just screamed? I don’t even want to cry. The twisting in my stomach has vanished, replaced by a great, big, empty nothingness. Raise a baby that’s not mine—and force my best friend to marry a guy who likes guys—or be alone forever. These are the only choices Mom will allow for me.
“That wasn’t what you expected me to say?” she asks, fluid clogging her eyes and nose. “What did you expect me to say? That none of this matters? That it doesn’t change how I feel about you?”
“Does it…change how you feel…?”
A blank stare greets me. Anxiety drives hard and fast through my limbs like I’m wearing vibrating armor. I’d rather text Ario than have a meltdown at the dinner table, so I collect my phone and Mr. Hannigan’s envelope and leave. I’m rounding the breakfast island, almost to the stairs, when Mom charges after me with brand-new, furious energy:
“And don’t go online and talk about me! I know you do it.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“How do you know? You don’t know my account!”
“Gina sends me screenshots.”
Gina. Beneath the kitchen archway where the tile meets carpet, I spin around with shock. BE-TRAY-AL. My cousin Gina, with her condescending, asshole lawyer husband, has got nothing better to do but snitch on me and breastfeed her fugly baby. How come everybody in my family wants to literally kill me?
“You’re all scum!” I roar. But anger never works on Mom; it only makes her more self-righteous. Her tears have already dried.
“Do not discuss our private business with anyone else or online. Am I clear? And you’re gonna take down your kissing pictures.”
“No.”
“You have to take them down or you can’t—”
“THEN I’M OUT OF HERE!” I don’t give her the satisfaction of finishing her threat: —or you can’t stay. I kick the kitchen tile so hard, I think my foot might crack it.
Still, Mom never blinks.
She’s really doing this to me. I’m really getting kicked out? Where will I even go? Dad lives in a totally different country, and he cares even less about me than she does, if that’s possible. Maybe I could crash with Ario…I’d hate to burden him with my family drama more than I already have, but I don’t have a choice and his mom would jump at the chance to help me.
She’s so nice. She’s so normal.
How come everyone else gets a mom who’s nice and normal, and I get this mess?
I fight for a full breath while pins and needles unfurl a cape of anxiety down my back. Don’t faint. I need music—Carly Rae. Ariana. I’d take anyone at this point if it would pull me out of my spiral. Finally, I nod—numb from head to toe—and drag myself upstairs. I pass a wall of glazed, ceramic crucifixes and framed portraits of my parents’ wedding—colorful, tacky dresses and dapper men in suits. A true collision of Floridians and Englishmen. I’m somewhere in these pictures, a four-month-old fetus. The secret wedding guest. And my parents, the happy liars. They’ve been split up almost half my life and she’s telling me what’s cool and not cool with God.