Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
That day after school, he lay in my lap, silent tears running down his beautiful face. I’d run my fingers through his hair, my heart beating so wildly in my chest, it had taken everything I had not to let the I love you beating with every thump burst out of my lips. I only kept it inside because I actually did love him, and I knew that, with all the pain he was going through, it would be the most unloving thing I could do to burden him with my emotions right then.
Still, still, I thought, he has to feel it. He has to know.
And so, when the week of prom came around, I got it into my head that he finally reciprocated my feelings. He saw the gem I was inside and out, and he’d pull out all the stops for some ridiculous prom-posal that would sweep me off my feet…
Instead, he asked Hannah Bradley, the longtime girlfriend of one of his basketball buddies. Theo had recently broken up with Hannah because he didn’t want to do the long-distance thing in college. After school, Drew joked with me: Wasn’t it lucky Theo wanted to be free to fuck college girls?
When I wasn’t obsessing about Drew, I read books and had recently begun watching YouTube videos about mental health. One nugget of truth I kept coming across was: When people tell you who they are, listen.
Drew had been telling me who he was all along, hadn’t he?
“Kira?”
I blink and look up. Drew and my mother, along with half the table, are looking at me as if waiting for a response to some question.
“Yes?” I ask weakly, looking from face to face.
My mother grins in that polite way that manages to hold a furious glare of disappointment underneath for losing track of the conversation. “Mrs. Garcia was just asking who’s designing your wedding gown. I told her how I’ve dreamed of my daughter wearing my own vintage Dior since the time you were a little girl.” She looks around the table, giving a calculated but gentle laugh. “But of course, she’s got her mind set on a Carolina Herrera. Young people. What are you going to do?”
Laughter echoes from around the table. Ah. My mother is in her comfort zone, holding court.
“So we’ve decided to leave it up to the last minute, getting both sized to her proportions.” I feel her searing eyes pinning me like a butterfly to a board. “Have you made your decision yet?”
Again, I feel everyone’s eyes on me, and sweat bursts out on my forehead. My breath immediately gets tight in my chest.
I don’t want to wear my mother’s dress. Just trying it on made my skin crawl. Not that it fits. I feel the same way about the Carolina Herrera that she ordered in the too-small size she refuses to allow the tailor to let out.
I’m frozen, my fight or flight response making me feel like a deer in the headlights. Play dead. Play dead. If you just stop talking and pull back far enough inside yourself, the predator will go away.
Or you’ll end up dead meat smushed on the pavement.
At some point, you’ll have to stand up to your mother, my therapist’s voice repeats in my head. Last session, you even connected that it makes you ill when you don’t.
“I was actually thinking of something different than either of them,” I burst out in a rush, pushing my glasses up my nose. “I’ve got a friend at school who’s a really amazing costume designer. She was sketching out this gorgeous dress for me last week. She said a couple months would be a squeeze, but because we’re friends, she’d fit me in. She’s a genius, and I told her I’d be honored to wear an original of hers.”
I beam at everyone around the table. “It’s going to be stunning.”
I’m met with silence in return.
Intentionally, I don’t look Carol’s way. But even with her in my periphery, I can feel her horror at what I know she’ll later call an outburst. I can already hear her shrieking the next time she gets me alone because I’ve heard it so many times before: How dare you embarrass me like that in public?!
But all I’m doing is being myself. The one mortal sin in the Roberts’ household.
“So,” I smile at everyone, then pick up my chopsticks, my breathing returning to normal as I finally suck in a deep breath. “That’s exciting.” I pinch a piece of sushi in between my sticks and pop it in my mouth.
As I smile and chew, conversation slowly picks back up around the table as partners begin to first murmur between each other and then to those around them. They sneak glances at me and Drew, then my mother. I can feel Carol boiling in her cauldron at the head of the table, but I just keep smiling, popping another sushi roll in my mouth.