Please Ignore Vera Dietz: Part Three

The phone makes that beeping noise once it’s off the hook for too long and I can hear it from the sliding door, where I’m standing, watching Dad pick up winter debris.

My need to escape inflates exponentially and the beeping on the phone is getting annoying, so I walk over and hang it up.

I go to the kitchen and fix myself a plate of cheese and fruit. This is a novelty. Another snack, time to study, an extra shower. It’s like I’m a normal kid or something.

I look out to where he showed me his first buck and I remember his smile and the way he’d look up through his unkempt bangs, how he’d look at me that flirtatious way, and how I’d ignore it.

Now, there’s a red-headed woodpecker making the thing swing, and cardinals dot the forest scrub with red coats, waiting until the bigger birds have their fill.

He breathes deeply through his nose. I see his diaphragm move. In. Out. In. Out.

...I don’t know if you understand how bad it is for your body or how susceptible to alcoholism your genes make you, but more important to me, you planned on driving home last night.

For the last four weeks, we’ve only made out in covert places.

She pays us that and a bonus, which makes my Super Bowl total $185 cash, plus the eight bucks an hour I’ll get in my next paycheck. Not too shabby for one night’s work.

She glares at me as I drive by. She thinks she’s intimidating me.

My MST classmates are so indolent, they wouldn’t read the book for homework, so the teacher is making us read it aloud to shame us.

We’re at the beginning, Chapter Two, where the kids are only just realizing that they’re going to have to fend for themselves.

I don’t know if Gretchen or any of the other Flickites are telling him this, but each day, Mr. Shunk says, “I guess I’ll have to wait another day to hear the dulcet tones of Mr. Corso reading Golding.”

Charlie and I were separated by the plethora of new people we’d never met before who went to the other middle school.

The older I got, the more I realized that my happy-Mom memories were often fabrications invented to make me feel better about her being chronically unhappy.

The older I got, the more I realized that my happy-Mom memories were often fabrications invented to make me feel better about her being chronically unhappy.

The next day, right before closing, they returned the dog and asked if we had anything older or more docile.

I liked how Mrs. Parker trusted my judgment (she called me her secret weapon), and though it was sad to see an animal returned to us, I was elated when my few hunches turned out to be right.

Though they smelled like death and were covered in matted, sometimes bloody fur, I fell completely in love with them.

Charlie told me about his new plan to do half days at the vocational school for either HVAC like his dad, or maybe carpentry, because he liked
wood.

Because if we were all supposed to carbon-copy our parents, then I’d
end up a brain-fried loser who runs away with a foot doctor, or a downtrodden Zen calculator.

I’m a naive eighteen-year-old girl who doesn’t even belong in this bar.

So I sheepishly separate from James and approach him.

The first time Charlie got high school detention, it was for smoking.

He was reticent, and I reminded him that this was a step toward real self-sufficiency for me.

During Christmas break, Charlie arrived in our driveway clad in a full set of blue and red racing leathers.

I kept my job at Arby’s and hoped to work a lot of hours in the summer to save up for my own cell phone—something Dad was vehemently against paying for, on account of him being stuck in the Dark Ages.

We get to a clearing and he stops and looks up.

Mom and Dad had agreed never to buy each other anything on the day. It was a false, Hallmark holiday. A sham.

Dad had put them in an old crystal vase we had, and left the sealed envelope at its base next to a note from him that said Back at 5. Had to go to the notary.

Though he meant it to be sweet, all I could see was control and manipulation.

While I bounced around on the back of his bike, I felt stupid for not asking him where we were going first—for allowing him to lead me, like I was some blind idiot disciple mesmerized by his coolness, like everyone else.

We took our helmets off, and I reached up and tousled my hair to feel better about it.

But when I rounded the corner of the pagoda and saw him showing Jenny Flick and Bill Corso and the rest of his new friends how paper airplanes (this time, Corso’s three interim reports to warn of his impending failure) soar in the fast, frigid current, I turned around and headed home.

But when I rounded the comer of the pagoda and saw him showing Jenny Flick and Bill Corso and the rest of his new friends how paper airplanes (this time, Corso’s three interim reports to warn of his impending failure) soar in the fast, frigid current, I turned around and headed home.

I'd venture a guess that he was...

Now that I’m here, I see that Jenny Flick was like Darth Vader, and that the dark side is enticing.

James has his hand under my elbow as support, and is jabbering a mix of
garbled concern.

It feels like I’ve just sprouted a Ping-Pong ball on my hairline. And there’s blood, but not a lot. Just that familiar tacky feeling.

I am very aware that I should not be driving, and yet I seem to be doing this without expending any thought or energy.