Page 116 of Regretting Youu

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What did it say?”

“You would know if you hadn’t gotten wasted.”

Ugh. I walk to my closet and pull one of my favorite shirts off a hanger. Then another. “Better take these shirts. Take all my clothes, actually. I don’t need them. I can’t leave the house anyway. Even if I could, I’d have nowhere to go, because my boyfriend broke up with me on my birthday. Probably because my mother is crazy!” I drop an armload of clothes onto the hallway floor.

“Stop being dramatic. He didn’t break up with you. Go to bed, Clara.” She closes my bedroom door.

I swing it open. “We did break up! How would you know if we broke up or not?”

“Because,” she says, turning to face me with a bored expression. “That text was from him. It said, ‘I hope you sleep well. See you at school tomorrow.’ People who break up don’t text like that—or send heart emojis.” She starts to walk farther down the hallway, so I follow her because I need to know more.

“He put a heart emoji?”

She doesn’t answer me. She keeps walking.

“What color was it?”

She’s still ignoring me.

“Mom! Was it red? Was it a red heart?”

We’re in the kitchen now. I lean against the counter because I feel something speeding through my head. A whoosh. I grip the counter for balance, then burp. I cover my mouth.

My mother shakes her head, her eyes full of disappointment. “It’s like you printed off a checklist for ways to rebel and you’ve been marking them off one at a time.”

“I don’t have a checklist. But if I did, you’d probably take that from me, too, because I like checklists. Checklists make me happy.”

My mother sighs, folding her arms over her chest. “Clara,” she says, her voice gentle. “Sweetie. How do you think your father would feel if he could see you right now?”

“If my father were alive, I wouldn’t be drunk,” I admit. “I respected him too much to do that.”

“You don’t have to stop respecting him just because he’s dead.”

“Yeah, well. Neither do you, Mom.”