Another Piece of My Heart (16 page)

“It will pass,” Drew says. “I believe you feel that now, but this is Ethan, your husband. You love him. You know his blind spot is Emily, it always has been, and you’ve always accepted that. This is a terrible situation for all of you. I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels, but Andi, this baby isn’t supposed to be yours. If it was, it would be. If you were supposed to keep this baby, you would. We always talk about how everything happens for a reason, and you have to accept that everything in God’s world is exactly where it is supposed to be. I know it’s painful. Oh, love, I know this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, but you will get through it.”

“But I don’t want to get through it anymore,” Andi bursts out, feeling as if she is becoming completely unhinged, but no longer caring. “I’m
done
!” she cries. “I’m
done
! I don’t want to get through it, to walk on eggshells until the next damned drama. I’m already so angry I don’t know how I’m even going to look at Ethan again. I don’t want to be around him. I’m tired of being hurt. I’m just done.”

Drew looks at her mutely. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Part Two

FAMILY

Eighteen

I often wish I could turn the clock back. Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed at night, I think back to the last time I was happy, and I play those memories in my head, constantly rewinding, like watching a favorite old movie.

The memories are so sparse. I seem to have only a handful from when I was a small child. Sometimes I wonder if things were so bad that somehow I blocked them out, but the things I remember are good; I just wish there were more of them.

I remember Mom waking up and actually being fun! Her crazy mop of hair would be sticking up everywhere, and she’d pretend to be blind without her glasses, feeling our faces and making us giggle like mad. Even Dad.

I remember cuddles, and love, and both of them taking turns to come up and kiss me good night, my dad always telling me not to let the bedbugs bite before tucking the comforter tightly around me.

My childhood should have been happy, at least until I realized my mom wasn’t like all the other moms, that the other moms didn’t slur their words once the sun went down, that their moms didn’t explode with rage at the tiniest thing, or lurch toward us with raised arm, ready to slap, before tripping over the coffee table.

When we were small, from the outside, our family looked happy, but even then, I never was. I never felt like I belonged; I was awkward in my body, uncomfortable in my skin. I was on the outside looking in, wanting to be one of the gang, wanting to be the same as all the others, but I never was. I never am.

Still.

I am not … enough.

I was always aware that I was different. Not different
better,
and I’m not sure I ever thought it was different worse, not consciously, but I have never felt like the others.

When the girls chose who to play with at recess, I was never picked unless it was a last resort. I remember wanting to be petite, and little, and pretty, like all the other girls, but I was always taller, chubbier. Even today, although I think I can look really good with a ton of makeup, I’m the first to admit I look pretty damn rough first thing in the morning.

I like my eyes. And I like my teeth, although I hated wearing the braces that led to them looking like this. They used to call me Buckeye, before the braces, and I was so excited to finally get braces, thinking it would make me cool, but it just gave me sores in my mouth; I couldn’t wait to get them removed.

My mouth is okay. I wish my lips were bigger. Since I became more goth, I started using black lipstick, and I like that I can change the shape of my lips with black eyeliner. I have a picture I found of an old singer called Siouxsie Sioux that I keep in my drawer because her look is awesome, and I try to copy it although I won’t cut my hair.

I love my hair, especially now that it’s raven black. It’s soft, and silky, and falls down my back. Michael Flanagan always loved my hair, said it was the softest thing he’d ever felt, even though it was just regular dull old mouse brown at the time.

When we’d lie on the pillows, head to head, in the tree house, he’d play with my hair between his fingers and draw strands of it under his nose, brushing it over his lips, a million times. It was weird. But cute.

Michael Flanagan.

I’ve seen him only occasionally this summer. He’s been working at Woody’s, and Sophia is totally addicted to the cable car chocolate frozen yogurt, so we go there quite a lot. I try to stay in the car, because I don’t know what to say to him anymore. Andi’s all,
Hey Michael! How’s the job? Emily’s in the car, I’ll tell her you said hi!
Which drives me nuts. I’m in the car because I don’t want to see him, and he doesn’t say hi. Not anymore. He ignores me.

The thing is, I befriended Michael way before he was
Mike
. I went out of my way to get to know him because both of us were the class outcasts, and I figured we might as well be outcasts together.

I took pity on him. He used to sit at his desk and pick his nose when he thought no one was looking, but of course everyone knew. He was skinny, and little, and he smelled kind of sour although that didn’t bother me. And he was adopted, so the other kids would say that even his own mother didn’t want him. I felt so bad for him.

So one day I went up to him during recess and offered to split a Twix with him. We weren’t supposed to bring chocolate in, healthy snacks only, but I had it, and his face lit up. I told him there and then: You have to stop picking your nose because it’s gross. He was embarrassed, but he stopped.

I hadn’t ever had a best friend before, and I loved having one. I know we were an odd couple—I was twice his size, but he made me laugh so much. Sometimes the two of us would get the giggles so badly, my cheeks would hurt, and he’d clutch his stomach, moaning.

He had this tree house that his dad had made when he was small. You had to climb a ladder to get up there, and he had pillows and blankets for sleepovers. We’d take a ton of food up and just lie on the pillows and talk for hours. I told him everything. He was the best listener.

When my parents divorced, he was the one who totally got me through. He knew what pain was like because of being adopted. I know some kids are totally fine with it, and he always said that he loved his mom and dad, that he was really lucky and they were amazing, but he always had this nagging fear that his real mom, his
birth mother,
gave him up because he wasn’t good enough.

We were more alike than you might have thought.

If I wasn’t at his house, which I was almost all the time, we’d sit on the phone. He’d walk over and meet me every morning, so we’d get the bus together, and we’d do homework together every day after school. If it hadn’t been for Michael, I don’t even know if I would have got through it.

But then in eighth grade things changed. He went off to camp that summer, and I wrote to him every day—long, funny letters filled with silly stuff I’d seen, or done, things I thought would make him laugh.

I think I maybe got three letters from him all summer, and even calling them letters is a push. They were notes, totally impersonal.

Hey Em!

Having a great time! I learned to sail, and I’m playing football—can you believe it! You would totally hate it here
See you when I’m back. Later, Mike.

I should have known.
Later?
What the hell was
that
? What happened to
Love
? And when did he become Mike? Of course, the minute he got back I saw that he’d become Mike at roughly the same time he grew a foot, his hair was bleached blond from the sun, and he suddenly seemed … built.

He didn’t look like weird, skinny, smelly, adopted Michael Flanagan anymore. He looked like Mike, a jock. He looked, in short, like one of the popular kids.

Maybe it’s as simple as that. I’d never stopped to think about it, but maybe it is as
lookist
as that: if you look like one of them, you
are
one of them. All I know is that I spent the summer before eighth grade missing my best friend desperately and writing to him every day, and we started eighth grade, and I lost my best friend.

I still don’t get it. How do you go from one day being virtually inseparable and telling each other everything, even those embarrassing awful stories that you would never tell anyone else, to being virtual strangers?

I’d pass him in the hall, surrounded by the pretty, popular blond girls. He’d look up and catch my eye, and I’d pause, expecting him to break away, to come and talk to me, but he’d just look away, as if he was embarrassed to know me.

I started hanging out with the emo/goth crowd, and the more involved I became with them, the more distant I felt from Michael.

For a while we’d pass each other in the hallway and if neither of us were with anyone else, we’d do that
“Hi, what’s up”
thing, then, after a time, we’d just smile, then we’d nod, and suddenly we stopped even acknowledging each other. If I saw him at the end of the corridor, I’d change direction. If I absolutely had to pass him, I’d suddenly remember something I had to get out of my bag, so I’d be busy getting something, or texting someone … something,
anything
that meant I didn’t have to meet his eye.

By the way, he was doing the same thing. I saw him change direction many times. He didn’t get busy with his bag, but he got his phone out or pretended to be on it. I only know he pretended because there was this one day when he thought I hadn’t seen him. He put his phone to his ear and started having this fake conversation.

As he passed me, saying, “Yeah, it was a totally cool night,” his phone started to ring. I swear. His damned phone started to ring. He looked embarrassed, rightly, and I just gave him this withering look.

“God you’re lame,” I said. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I had to. It was just so pathetic. I will say for a second he looked like the Michael of old. He looked sorry, and sad, and I just wanted to be back in the tree house, laughing.

He looked at me for a long time, then he said, “Em, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“Me?” I gasped. “Me? You’re the one who became this big freaky popular jock.”

“And you became this weird, miserable goth.” He stared at me then while I felt the knife turn in my heart. “And your hair. Your beautiful hair.”

“What? What about my hair?” I snapped.

“Why did you dye it?” He reached out and touched, actually touched my hair with such incredible gentleness, and I knew I was about to cry. I could feel the lump in my throat, and I turned so he wouldn’t see, and the tears started running down my cheeks, and he didn’t see.

“Fuck you,” I threw over my shoulder as I walked off. When I got to the edge of the quad, I turned around. He was still standing there, looking at me. But not close enough to see the tears.

I guess that’s when it all started to go a bit wrong for me. I started drinking in ninth grade. We’d steal liquor from our parents’ cabinets and go up to the canyon and get wasted; we started smoking weed, too.

I loved how both took me out of myself, numbed me to the point that I didn’t care about my parents, didn’t care that my mom was totally disinterested, and usually drunk herself. I didn’t care that my dad hasn’t wanted to have anything to do with me since Andi came on the scene.

I didn’t care that I had lost my best friend, and that there was nobody in the world who knew me anymore, and nobody in the world who loved me. There were times when life was so painful that I almost couldn’t get out of bed. I would want to hide under the covers forever, and just … disappear.

But my friends were doing the same stuff as I was.

Andi knew more than Dad. She’s always watching me. For the record, Sophia’s always watching me, too; but it’s different. I know she loves me, and I know she doesn’t judge me. Sure, she hates me some of the time, like I hate her some of the time, but at the end of the day, we’re sisters.

Put it like this. She might drive me nuts by being oh-so-mature and Miss Goody Two-shoes, but let me tell you, if anyone was ever mean about her, or did something to her, I would kill them. Seriously.

That’s why the watching doesn’t bother me, and anyway, it’s not just me. Sophia watches everyone and everything. She’s the one who usually warns me about Mom when she’s about to throw a shit fit. I have no idea how Sophia knows it’s coming, but she always does, and she’ll text me and tell me to stay out of the way.

Sophia knows more about my life than anyone else in my family, but I don’t tell her everything. I know she doesn’t judge me, but there’s no way I would tell her about sex, for example. Or who I’ve had sex with. No way.

The judging thing is a big problem with Andi. Huge. I can get away with almost anything with my dad—he’s always willing to see the good, to believe the good—but Andi’s ready to jump on the worst, always sees the bad in every situation. At least when it comes to me.

I feel like she’s always judging me, and I’m always disappointing her. But then … there are other times she can be so nice, it confuses me. When I’m sick, or really depressed, or … today. I was so scared today, I am so scared by this whole pregnancy thing, and Andi is being amazing.