My stomach revolts a few hours after I’ve fallen asleep. I wake up sweaty and rush for the bathroom. I worry for a second that I have another deadly virus I should’ve been vaccinated for, but throwing up pizza is an instant reminder that it’s only because my body isn’t used to eating things like greasy pepperoni and sausage.
I’m sure the stress of the scarlet A on our front door didn’t help, either.
After Nico left, a police officer was a towering presence in our living room, taking statements and scaring Sequoia by being there. My brother kept eyeing the handcuffs dangling from his belt. And the gun in his holster.
“Where does this go from here?” my dad asked as Officer Cooper closed up his little notepad and shoved it into the front pocket of his shirt.
“We’ll put our feelers out,” Officer Cooper said. “If I were to guess, I’d chalk this up to the local youths. You live across the street from the high school. It’s a small town. Word gets around.”
“And you want to go to school with these people!” my dad said to me. Like the sole act of sitting in a math class across the street would make me complicit in vandalism.
When I’m done being sick, I flush the toilet and brush my teeth with the DIY toothpaste my mom mixes herself in order to avoid toxic triclosan and fluoride. It’s flavored with cloves and leaves my mouth tasting like pumpkin pie, which makes me want to barf all over again. Why can’t she use peppermint like everyone else?
I go downstairs for a glass of water to wash out the taste and notice a scratching sound coming from the front door. Unbelievable. I know my parents would want me to call the police or come get them first, but if it’s some local teenager from the school across the street, as Officer Cooper suggested, I want to catch them in the act. I quickly pull the door open. My mom screams and drops the scrub brush she’s holding. It lands with a splat in the bucket of soapy water by her feet. I flick on the porch light. It doesn’t light up the whole house like a spotlight, but it illuminates things enough for me to be able to see my mom’s face.
“It’s just me, June.” Her voice catches.
I scurry outside, shutting the door behind me. “What are you doing?”
She retrieves the brush from the soapy water and scrubs at the red paint splattered across our front door. “I need to get this cleaned up before morning. Before the neighbors see.”
“They probably already saw.”
“I hope not.”
“Maybe our neighbors are the ones who did it.”
“That’s unconscionable.” She sniffs.
“Are you crying?”
“I’m having a moment.”
“What kind of a moment?”
“The kind of moment where I feel like I’m in middle school all over again and people are making fun of me in the hallways.”
“That happened to you?”
“Yes, Juniper. Every day.”
“That’s really awful, Mom.”
“It is. Or it was.” She clenches her eyes shut, like she can convince herself not to cry if she just concentrates hard enough. “But even when things were at their worst back then, nobody came around vandalizing my house.”
“Is there another scrub brush somewhere?”
“Under the kitchen sink.”
“Do you want some help?”
“That would be nice. Two of us will finish it faster. Your dad’s going to get up early with the lawn mower to see if it’ll help with the yard. It’s too dark right now.”
I go to the kitchen, grab the scrub brush, and down a glass of water. Then I return to my mom and plunk the brush into the soapy bucket.
“How about I take the right side and you take the left?” she says.
“Okay.”
“Teamwork.” She dunks her brush in the bucket. Rinses it. “What are you doing up, anyway?”
“I was sick.”
She looks at me, concerned. “What kind of sick?” The fact that I hear an edge of panic in her tone is interesting. Like maybe she really does stay awake at night worrying that Poppy, Sequoia, and I could’ve ended up like Baby Kat because of the choices she’s made.
“Puking sick.”
She reaches for my forehead to check my temperature but remembers her hands are wet and soapy.
“I’m not sick sick. I think I ate a little too much.”
“What did you have for dinner, anyway? You weren’t here.”
“Pizza.”
“Pizza!” She spits the word out in horror. “What kind of pizza?”
“Real pizza. From this place in town called Arnoldi’s.” I want to twist the knife even more. “With pepperoni and sausage.”
She throws her hands up in exasperation, and water goes splattering against the wood wall behind her. “Well, there you go.”
“It was really good.”
“It made you sick.”
I think of Nico and the way his shoulder felt against mine. And the way he whispered in my ear. And the way his hair flopped all over the place. And how he made my insides fizzy. I think of how good it was, even if it was for only one night. Even if I’m never going to see him again.
“It was worth it.”