“It seems as if I could do anything when I’m in a passion; I get so savage, I could hurt any one and enjoy it.”
—Little Women
When I was a little kid, Mom used to send me outside to jump up and down or run around the house when I got angry. She called me her little firecracker, because my temper flared up and then burned out.
This flavor of anger was different. Sprawled out on my bed after the family meeting, I felt like the burned-out casing of a bottle rocket. Empty. Singed around the edges. Done. There was nothing to fight for, no way to change my fate.
The phone buzzed on my nightstand. I flopped in that direction. It was a text from Hudson. Underneath a picture of an empty parking lot with a small mound of trash and dead grass piled against a crumbling cement divider he’d written: Wish you were here?
Probably the joke was supposed to be that his current situation sucked. This happened fairly often with Hudson, where I sort of got what he was talking about, even though part of me was left wondering if I’d missed a reference to something obscure and artsy.
Yes, I typed back.
What are you doing right now?
Thinking about murdering my sister. My fingers operated without permission from my conscious mind. Hopefully he wasn’t expecting me to say something sexy.
Amy?
Meg.
The screen flashed with an incoming call.
“What did she do?” Hudson’s voice said in my ear. He sounded halfway mad already, like he was just waiting for me to tell him why we were pissed. It made a nice change to have someone respect my emotions. Even the ugly ones.
“She’s leaving.” I gave him the quick and dirty version of events.
“And your mom expects you to stick around and take care of everything?”
“I know, right? It’s like Amy stealing Jo’s trip to Europe.”
“Someone’s going to Europe?”
There was an audible uptick in interest. It would put the story in a different category for Hudson if one of us was jetting off to a foreign country—more relevant to his interests. I’d forgotten that he wouldn’t recognize the reference to Book Amy’s multistage betrayal, possibly the bitterest pill in the whole book. Instead of going on the trip she’s been promised for years, Book Jo nurses Beth through her final illness, then keeps house for her grieving parents while Amy gets a months-long luxury vacation. The sparkler on top is that Amy comes home married to Laurie, who was supposed to be in love with Jo, except his attention span was too short.
“Forget it—just a book thing.” I shook my head, not so much for Hudson’s benefit (since he couldn’t see me) but out of frustration with myself. “So how are things there?”
“We’re actually heading back to New York tomorrow.”
“Really?” I wondered whether he would have told me if I hadn’t brought it up. Though I supposed his Instagram feed would have clued me in eventually.
“This place is tapped out, and so am I.” He yawned the last word. “For once, Andrea agrees with me. We’ve got as much as we’re going to get.”
I told myself it was a compliment. At least we’re better than the animal hoarders!
“I guess that’s good? You can talk to your mom more about art school.”
“What’s the point? Andrea has me working so much I haven’t had any time to focus on my portfolio, so there’s no way I’ll get accepted anywhere I’d actually want to go.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, and get this—my friend’s uncle runs a gallery. Basically, if I want an internship, it’s mine.”
“And that would help you get into a good school?”
“Absolutely. The networking opportunities would be unbelievable. You’d think Andrea would be ecstatic, since she’s all about hands-on experience.”
“What did she say?”
“‘If you want to order people’s lunch and call it a job, you should at least get paid.’ That’s a direct quote.”
“Ouch.”
There was banging in the background, and then the muffled sound of Andrea’s voice.
“Hold on.” Bedsprings groaned, followed by the creak of a door. I wondered if he would tell Andrea who he was talking to, and how she would respond if so. A nod? Tell her I said hello? Or would she ask to speak to me herself?
Hudson must have had his hand over the phone, because I couldn’t make out more than a few words of what either of them was saying, and then the sound of a door closing.
“You know what we should do?” His voice was low and intimate, speaking only to me.
“What?”
“Take a vacation from our mothers.”
I made a noise like I agreed, even though my dreams didn’t involve lounging by a pool. I would have been thrilled with Meg’s supposed punishment: hanging out on a college campus, doing a job that didn’t involve costumes or sappy dialogue or overhearing audience members say, That’s funny. I thought she’d be smaller.
Still, I liked that he wanted to go somewhere with me, even if it was never going to happen.
After we hung up, I drifted across the floor to my dresser. Although I was as alone as I’d ever been, my head pounded with the pressure of too many voices talking at once. Andrea saying she worried about me. Meg telling me I never did anything but complain. David implying it was my choice to live this way. Hudson suggesting we run away together.
I leaned closer to the mirror, studying my face like it might hold the answers. Skin, so-so. A mouth that was on the large side. Brown eyes that could be bigger, but at least the lashes and brows were dark enough not to disappear. There were things I would have changed—not surgically, but if you could order a smaller forehead online, I might have been tempted.
As much as I fought against being lumped in with Jo March, some things bled through, including the sense that I was just okay-looking. Not the beauty of the family. Kinda plain, but what a lively personality! After all, no one had ever looked at me and said, Are you nuts? That girl is much too pretty to be Jo March.
I untwisted the rubber band from my ponytail. Basic brown, my hair fell almost to my elbows, thick and heavy with a hint of wave. I never left it down; having all that hair in my face was too annoying. For now, though, it was a relief to let go of the tightness around my skull.
If only there were a way to get some of this weight off my shoulders for good.