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I crave Rory. I crave his life, the one he’s letting me in on. I crave Finlay, and the life he shies away from. I crave Luke and the life he wants back. I crave Danny, for reminding me of what’s real.
Above all, I crave betterment for myself.
“It’s not a bad thing, is it, to want to improve?” It’s pointless. Mom will only come out with another stinger, sharp enough to rival any wasp, irritating enough to rival nettle. “This is what you wanted for me.”
But when Mom stares at me, her gaze is almost troubled. “I didn’t want to lose my daughter in the process.”
She makes me want to fidget. Each too-observant comment. Each pierce to the armor I’ve carefully constructed because of her, each rattle to my overprotected soul.
“Maybe I want to be lost,” I say. She’s not getting the better of me. She doesn’t deserve it. Maybe I want to destroy everything I grew up with and replace it all with a newer and better life. “I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”
“You really want to erase all existence of me, huh?” It’s soft enough to be spoken only to herself. “After everything I’ve done for you. Raised you. Improved you. Made a better life for you. Tolerated you at your worst and loved you at your best.”
“Sounds great,” I drawl, trying to mimic Rory, wishing I could be as casually callous as him without it backfiring into my heart. “You should put that on a bumper sticker.”
Mom doesn’t rise to it. That’s new. “Do you even understand where you came from?” she asks instead.
“Greenvale Medical Center.”
“You’re being a smartass, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”
I give Mom a puzzled look.
“While you’ve been gone, they’ve closed down the medical center. Nearest one is an hour’s extra drive now.” She pauses and then adds, “They’ve been doing a lot of that in town. They aren’t redeveloping. They’ve cleared away the rubble at the block we used to live, but they’ve done nothing with the land. Like we were a nuisance all along, a blemish on the state.” The look she gives me is full of worry. “And that’s what you’re doing to me. Pretending I don’t exist. Pretending, to your fancy new friends, that I never have.”
“That’s not true—”
“Greenvale High’s gone. The board voted not to bring it back — generations of us graduated from there. Most stores are still shuttered. A lot of people have left for the cities already, and there’s only the Speedee-Mart to keep the rest of us fed and watered. So yeah, Iamgrateful to have a job there. I’m grateful to earn money when everyone else I ever knew has been forced to leave to survive. But please feel free to keep turning your nose up at me.”
I stare at her in horror. I’ve been trying to be a better debater, better at making my points clearly, but this has backfired terribly.
“Our town’s slipping into dust, Jessa. It’s been taken over by desert and neglect. The world will forget its name soon. It’s shrinking so fast it’ll be gone from maps. And your roots arethere. Your home wasthere. Those of us who still live there are strong people — strong people, proud people brought to their knees — we’ve been through some real sh—” She breaks off, glancing around the classroom, as though remembering where she is. “And I know this place is a world away from it — and maybe you needed that. Maybe I wasn’t giving you the right thing at the time.
“But if you think I’m the only one suffering after what happened, you should come back to see what we’ve been through. And you should also take a look in the mirror. Because I can see you’re hurting just like the rest of us, and I understand how that feels more than anybody else. You aren’t a convincing liar, Jessa.”
I’m shaking my head before she’s finished. I can’t listen to this. I don’twantto listen to this. All these walls, all this armor, and my mom isheretrying to raze it to the ground like another fucking hurricane.
“No.” It’s one syllable, one word, but I may as well have screamed it for all the force behind it.
“I just don’t understand your penchant for self-destruction,” Mom says, and I find this rich as fuck from a woman I last saw passed out in bed surrounded by empty bottles. My mind is already scrambled — I’m still reeling from the news that my entire town seems to have vanished in just over a year. “Our lives were already destroyed, and you thought you should shut down and destroy them more.”
She wants me to cry. She wants me to open up and flood this classroom with my tears. Has Mom been off doing touchy-feely therapy shit, too, in between bouts of fortune-telling? Because I’m not going to do it. I refuse to be vulnerable.
“I miss him, too, you know,” she says softly, and I have to turn away. We’ve never spoken about him directly. Not emotional stuff. Business stuff, practical stuff, fine, but not soft-spoken condolences shared together about Dad. Not sad-sounding memories as we discuss our lives. No acknowledgment of the unfixable hole left in our stubborn, still-beating hearts.
It seems insane to bear something so vast and painful, and to only ever communicate it properly to Oscar Munro. But then he is vast and pain-inducing himself, so perhaps it makes sense in its own way.
“Don’t.”
Mom sighs heavily, her arms still wrapped around herself. I hate this. She’s brought me down to her level, wiped away my summertime joy with her permanent woe. All I want to do is scream by the loch. Fuck in the loch. Ruin myself abundantly and dance the pain away.
I take a deep breath. I think of the chiefs — cling onto them, grasp onto their knowing smiles, the mischief in their eyes, the love they’ve shown for me over the last weeks. It steadies me.
“That’s the thing about boys, about men,” Mom says, and I want to shove my fingers into my ears. “They leave. They always do. Whether they’re taken from us or they leave of their own accord, they’ll never be there as long as you think.” I try to picture the chiefs leaving me, just to smash my heart up some more. It doesn’t come. I can’t even imagine it. I don’t know why Mom is so concerned they’re going to break me. I don’t know why she’s telling me any of this.
“If you aren’t going to listen to anything I say, at least listen to this,” Mom continues. “You have to rely onyourself. Be resilient. Be as strong and as brave as our community, as the home in your heart, in the face of persecution. You can’t rely on male whims to see you through life. Especially those boys you arrived with.”
“Leave them out of this.”
