“Uh, not quite.”
My mother plays with her wedding ring, twisting it around and around her finger. “There’s no graceful way to say this.… Your aunt is fresh off a stint in rehab. Her longest one yet.”
My eyebrows go up. “Rehab? For alcohol?”
“For… a lot of things.” She pauses. “I don’t feel comfortable telling Carlene’s story for her, but I didn’t want you to be in the dark since she’s staying here.”
“Is that why I haven’t seen her in so many years?”
Mom nods.
“How long? Since I’ve seen her?”
“You would’ve been young… really young,” my mother says, looking down at her hands.
“You said ‘her longest one yet.’ How many times has she been in and out of rehab?”
“I’m not sure, Birdie. She’s been dealing with substance abuse issues for a while.”
“How long?” I feel like a broken record.
Mom pauses and doesn’t look at me when she says, “Since she was your age.”
I didn’t know anyone in our family had addiction issues. Isn’t that supposed to run in families? My parents aren’t big drinkers, but they often have a glass of wine with dinner or to relax afterward. And my father always has a beer with his Thai food. Except I remember that he didn’t tonight.
I don’t drink. Like my mother, my ex-boyfriend, Mitchell, didn’t like parties, so we never went to any—not the ones thrown by kids at our school nor at Laz’s. Mitchell always said we were too smart to hang out with people who deliberately got wasted on the weekends, and I never challenged him because it was easier to stay quiet.
“Like I said, it’s not my place to tell her story,” Mom says, and I wonder if my emotions are cycling across my face as rapidly as they’re traveling through my head. “But you’re old enough to know.”
I nod. And I’m secretly pleased that my mother thinks I’m old enough to be let in on what has been a family secret up until now. I wonder if Mimi knows. The part of me that never gets to experience anything first takes pleasure in maybe knowing before her, but I doubt that’s the case. Mimi knows everything.
Mom kisses me good night for the second time this evening and closes the door softly behind her.
I turn off my lamp and close my eyes, but I’m not tired at all. Especially not now. I can’t get my mother’s tone out of my head. She was trying to sound neutral, but it landed somewhere between judgmental and disappointed. If she feels that way about her own sister, how would she feel if I told her about Booker? All about him. As much as I’ve tried to tell myself she might surprise me, I don’t think she would.
So I can’t say anything. Not yet.
I look at my phone to see if he’s texted again, but he hasn’t. His last message is still there on the lock screen, marked as unread.
You could always sneak out
I don’t want to leave him hanging until tomorrow. But I don’t want to say the wrong thing. If I keep giving excuses for why I can’t meet up with him, he might stop asking to see me.
I take a deep breath, type as fast as I can, and send the text before I can think too much about it:
How about tomorrow?
THE PERSON WHO KNOWS ME BEST IN THIS WORLD IS MIMI, BUT SINCE SHE’S my sister, that’s always seemed like a bit of a default. Of course we don’t have to be close just because we’re related—my mom and Aunt Carlene are proof of that—but it’s always been easier to work with her than against her.
There was a noticeable gap in my life when Mimi went away to school in Wisconsin just before I started my freshman year. We still text and video chat, and e-mail sometimes, too—but it’s not the same as having her here every day. We didn’t even get to be at high school together.
Thank god for Laz. He’s the one I choose to let know me best, and I don’t know what I’d do without him. We’ve been best friends since second grade when his mom, Ayanna, went into business with my mother to open the hair salon. They met in cosmetology school and became fast friends, both working at other salons for a few years before they decided to take the plunge and go into business for themselves. Laz and I circled each other curiously the first couple of times we were both at the salon, and after we got over our shyness, we could barely stand to be apart.
He goes to another school, so we only get to see each other on weekends and afternoons sometimes. Laz is on the water polo team, which always takes up a lot of his spring semester. Stowing our books and breaking from practice is always the sign that summer has officially begun. And it means that we finally get to see each other when we want to during the week.
I text him the morning after my aunt arrives to tell him I need his help seeing Booker.
He takes a while to respond. I picture him emerging from his crumpled bedsheets, blackout shades blocking the sun so the phone’s glow is the only light in his room.
Tell me what you need to me to do
Too tired to think
I tell him I want to sneak out and need to say that I’m with him. I finish making my bed as I wait for him to wake up, pulling the sheets tight over the mattress and fluffing the pillows like I’ve been doing every morning since I can remember.
Can’t wait till this weekend? Easier for you to get out then
I slip on my loafers and hook my bookbag over my shoulder as I text him back:
I can’t wait
There’s a long pause before his next text, and I tap my foot against the rug, hoping Laz isn’t falling back to sleep. He likes Booker, but I don’t think he ever expected us to get involved. I know he didn’t. He’s introduced me to lots of his friends and I’ve never been interested in any of them. Even after Mitchell broke up with me a few months ago, I didn’t think I’d meet anyone new. Not so soon, anyway. Maybe it’s more that I couldn’t trust myself to know what I really wanted. I thought I wanted Mitchell for the year and a half we were together, but now I think maybe I just liked the way we looked on paper. Or maybe I liked the idea of someone who told me they wanted me, even if his actions didn’t always match his words.
K, let me know what our fake plans are
I never do things like this, and I can’t believe how good it feels.
I smile so big that my mother asks why I’m so happy when I head out to school.
The day is long and uneventful, and I’m counting down the minutes until I can see Booker as I sit down to dinner.
We decided to meet at the library. It’s foolproof. Laz and I study together sometimes, and it’s a place my parents are comfortable letting me go by myself at night. But that excuse won’t work this summer. Not even people who are great at school want to spend time studying when it’s out of session. Not even those of us who happen to be enrolled in SAT prep courses.
I saw my aunt at breakfast this morning and I braced myself for another awkward meal, but my father had already left for work and my mother seemed more relaxed than last night. Maybe she’s getting used to Aunt Carlene being here. Mom made her eggs, and when she set the plate in front of her sister, my aunt looked up with raised eyebrows and said, “Just the way I like them.” Mom shrugged and said, “Who else likes their eggs so runny?” But there was a comfort between them that put me at ease.