Because it’s not Jason who’s waiting for me.
It’s my mother.
Fuck. Double, triple, quadruple fuck.
I wish I had taken care to open the door more quietly because then I could just turn around and make a run for it back down the stairs.
But she’s already turned her head, spotting me in the entryway beneath the Exit sign.
“Excuse me!” She waves her hands over her head like she’s directing airplanes. “And where the hell have you been? You think you’re too good for your mother?”
I steel myself internally even though my insides are roiling like a hurricane.
She won’t understand, and you can’t tell her.
Even if Mack didn’t look the way he does, even if he weren’t disappearing through a portal in just a mere few days, even if there weren’t people in the street protesting his very existence closing in on our town, even if I weren’t also maybe one of those monsters too, even if all those things weren’t true . . . I still wouldn’t tell my mother about what was going on.
By the time I make it to the door, she’s got her hands on her hips, and she’s tapping her foot impatiently against the floor.
“Hey, Mom.” I fumble with the locks but eventually shove the door open with my shoulder.
Before I can even step foot inside, she barges in.
“Come on in,” I mumble, putting my bag down on my couch. “What can I do for you? Oh, c’mon, Mom, do you have to do that in here?”
She snaps open a pack of cigarettes and lifts one out. It hangs from her fuchsia-painted lips as she flicks her lighter, the end of the narrow cylinder now stamped with a fading pink. “What?” she says after lighting the tip of the cigarette. “It keeps me skinny.”
Of course that’s what she cares about. And it’s true that I do get my looks from her. She’s also tall and lean with blonde hair, now naturally streaked with gray, but she dyes it of course. She’s had work done as well, some of it good, some of it not so good. When I stopped footing all the bills with my modeling gigs, she started getting the uneven Botox and the not-so-good migrating fillers, which give her a permanent stank face.
She inhales deeply, then blows out a gray billow of smoke right at me. I wave my hand, shaking my head and coughing.
But she keeps talking. “I have some news for you, Jules. Bad news.”
More bad news. I’m worried I’ve grown numb to it at this point. “Okay, well, what is it?”
“I have cancer.”
The words shake me, but she says them bluntly. She also takes another drag off her cigarette.
“W-what?” I stutter out. I look around the room, like I’m looking for an exit door or something. Like there’s somewhere I might be able to escape to. “Are you going to be okay? What kind of cancer?”
I don’t know what else to ask.
“Bone.” She shrugs. For someone with cancer, she’s being nonchalant. “The doctor says there’s a fifty-fifty chance the treatments will work.”
Even though I don’t summon them, tears immediately sting the corners of my eyes. I shake my head, hands coming over my mouth. “Mom! You can’t smoke if you have cancer. Put that out!” I lunge for it, but she flicks her hand away.
“Don’t you get all self-righteous on me, Juliet. You’ve always thought you were too good for everyone else. What’s it matter if I have a cigarette or two? You die doing what you love, or you die doing what you hate. Either way, you die.”
I put my hands on my hips, defiant. “You could try just a little bit, you know? For me? Your daughter?”
She waves her hand. “Don’t be so needy. And don’t make everything about you. This is my cancer diagnosis. Why don’t you do something for me for once?”
The words jolt me. So much of what I’ve done my whole life has been for her. I wasted my childhood, my teen years, my early adult years. All to keep her safe. At the expense of my own safety.
And I wish I could have the nonchalance to not care. But I still care. Even when she never does.
I don’t have anything to say back, so I shake my head. “I have to feed my crab,” I say quietly and walk over to the tank across from my bed.
My mother follows, a billow of smoke in her wake. She leans forward, squinting, while I carefully administer the frozen krill and dried fruit and pellets. The little crab runs up on his rock, snapping at the food.
“Crab, huh? Remember that fish you used to have.”
I glance up at her. “Yeah, the one Dad won for me at the state fair.”
She chuckles and takes another drag off her cigarette. “You were obsessed with that thing. You cried and cried and cried when I told you that fish died.”
I fold my arms over my chest. A makeshift hug. Sadness pierces my sternum at even the mention of my dad. It always does. “Of course I did. It was the last thing from Dad before he passed away. It meant the world to me.”
She waves her hand. “Oh, you’re still just as dramatic as you ever were. I flushed that stupid fish down the toilet. That’s how he died.”
Shock runs through my system. “Excuse me? You said you found him floating at the top of his tank.”
“Same thing. Same difference.”
“It is not the same thing. I loved that fish. Why would you do that? What could have possibly possessed you?”
My mother glares at me, then ashes over the edge of the aquarium, little gray flecks now floating at the top. Quickly, I grab a net to fish them out.
