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She’s been totally silent since she told me we were leaving—all through packing and even the ride down in the elevator. I can tell she’s seething.
I feel too sick to know what to do about it.
Finally my ancient and rusted Benz drives up to the front of the hotel. Mom hands something to the driver and gets the keys while I slide in on the other side. The seat is hot on the backs of my legs, even through jeans.
“How could you answer the door like that?” she shouts as soon as we pull away from the curb. “Not looking through the peephole. Not calling out to ask who was there?”
I flinch at her voice.
“Are you stupid, Cassel? Didn’t I teach you better than that?”
She’s right. It was thoughtless. Stupid. Private school has made me careless. It’s exactly the kind of dumb mistake that separates a decent con man from an amateur. Plus the blowback from the emotion work makes her unstable. Not that she isn’t normally pretty unstable. But working magnifies it. So does anger. There’s nothing for me to do but ride it out.
I was used to her being like this when I was a kid. But she’s been in jail long enough for me to forget how bad she can get.
“Are you stupid?” she screeches. “Answer me!”
“Stop,” I say, and lean my head against the window, shutting my eyes. “Please stop. I’m sorry, okay?”
“No,” she says, her voice vicious and certain. “No one’s that pathetic. You did it on purpose! You wanted to ruin things for me.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. I said I was sorry. Look, I’m the one with the goose egg to show for it. So we have to leave Atlantic City? We’d have to leave in a week anyway when I went back to school.”
“You did this to me because of Lila.” Her gaze is on the road, but her eyes glitter with fury. “Because you’re still angry.”
Lila. My best friend, who I thought I killed.
“I’m not talking about her,” I snap. “Not with you.”
I think about Lila’s wide, expressive mouth turning up at the corners. I think about her spread out on my bed, reaching for me.
With one touch of her hand, Mom made Lila love me. And made sure I could never, ever have her.
“Hit a nerve?” Mom says, gleefully cruel. “It’s amazing you actually thought you were good enough for Zacharov’s daughter.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“She was using you, you stupid little moron. When everything was said and done, she wouldn’t have given you the time of day, Cassel. You would have been a reminder of Barron and misery and nothing more.”
“I don’t care,” I say. My hands are shaking. “It would still have been better than—” Better than having to avoid her until the curse fades. Better than the way she’ll look at me once it does.
Lila’s desire for me is a perversion of love. A mockery.
And I almost didn’t care, I wanted her so much.
“I did you a favor,” my mother says. “You should be grateful. You should be thanking me. I got you Lila on a silver platter—something you could have never in your life had otherwise.”
I laugh abruptly. “I should be thanking you? How about you hold your breath until I do?”
“Don’t talk that way to me,” Mom roars, and slaps me, hard.
Hard enough that my battered head hits the window. I see stars. Little explosions of light behind the dark glasses. Behind my eyelids.
“Pull over,” I say. Nausea overwhelms me.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice seesawing back to sweet. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”
The world is starting to tilt. “You have to pull over.”
