Lisa hovered near the kitchen counter, observing. Ronni was on the sofa, a blanket over her legs, her eyes glued to the TV. Make that her eye—Jesus. She was watching Netflix, some show about teenagers and vampires. She appeared engrossed and, if Lisa hadn’t known better, perfectly content. Hoisting the plate and bowl that rested on the Formica countertop, Lisa made her move.
“Snack time,” she said, heading to the sofa. Ronni didn’t respond, so Lisa set the bowl of hummus and side plate of raw veggies on the coffee table. “You have to eat something, hon.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ronni mumbled.
“You’ve barely eaten since you got home. You need to get your strength back.”
“Why?” For the first time, her daughter looked away from the TV. Lisa still wasn’t used to Ronni’s gaze: the left eye looked right into her soul but the right eye remained still and unseeing. The doctors had done their best to repair the socket, but part of the bottom lid had been unsalvageable. To compensate, they had pulled the skin tight, creating a thin, nearly translucent web at the corner of her eye. There was something embryonic about it, something not quite right. The eye surgeon had tried to reassure them. “Ocular prostheses have come a long way,” he’d said. “She’s lucky.” But Ronni didn’t feel lucky. And when Lisa looked at her beautiful daughter and her discomfiting stare, she didn’t feel lucky, either.
Lisa forced a smile. “You need to get back to school. Get back into your old routine.”
Ronni turned back to the vampires. “No way. I can’t go back there.”
“Honey . . .” Lisa grabbed the remote and paused the show. “Of course you can. You need to learn and be with your friends and have a normal life.”
“My friends?” Ronni said, and her eyes filled. (Lisa had quickly learned that a glass eye still allowed tear flow.) “I don’t have any friends anymore.”
Lisa thought about Hannah showing up at the hospital the day after the accident. “I just want to see her, to let her know that I’m here for her,” Hannah had said. She’d been upset, on the verge of tears. But Lisa couldn’t let that friendship stand, not with everything that was going on. She patted her daughter’s leg. “Of course you do. . . .”
“I haven’t heard from anyone! I’ve had like one text from Lauren. She’s supposed to be my best friend.”
“If she was really your best friend, she’d be there for you.”
“She says her parents don’t want her caught up in all this mess.” She wiped at the tears streaming down her face. “So I’m a mess now.”
Lisa grabbed Ronni’s hand and kissed the tears off it. “It’s not you, honey. You’re not the mess.”
“I’m a freak! And a monster!”
“No, baby. You’re a beautiful girl. Lauren’s dad’s talking about the”—the words were tumbling out before she could stop them—“lawsuit.”
Ronni pulled her hand away. “What lawsuit?”
Lisa turned away from her daughter and focused on the clutter on the coffee table: fashion magazines, teacups, used tissues, Ronni’s cell phone and iPad. . . . She tidied as she talked. “Hannah’s parents should have taken care of you girls. You were in their house, so your safety was their responsibility.”
Ronni gasped. “Are you suing them?”
“My insurance didn’t cover all your medical costs.”
“This wasn’t their fault!”
“You said you don’t remember anything—how can you be so sure?”
Ronni threw the blanket off her lap and leaned forward. “I remember that we always got drunk at sleepovers. We always sneaked booze from our parents or got it from a boot. We always had pot or pills or whatever we could steal from home. This could have happened here. It could have happened anywhere. . . .”
“But it didn’t happen here. It happened under Kim and Jeff Sanders’s multimillion-dollar roof.”
Ronni glared at her. “Everyone will hate me. They’ll take Hannah’s side. She’s popular now. She’s going out with Noah Chambers.”
“No one will hate you. You’re the victim here.”
“Don’t you remember high school at all?” Ronni’s voice was shrill, angry, nearly hysterical. “No one likes a fucking victim!”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Then don’t do this to me!” Ronni screamed.
“To you?” Lisa shrieked. “I’m doing this for you!” She loved Ronni more than life, but sometimes her teenaged self-absorption made Lisa want to shake her.
“This isn’t about me,” Ronni spat. “This is about you.” She sat back on the sofa and fixed her mother with half a hateful stare. “You’ve always been jealous of Kim Sanders.”
“I’m not a materialistic person, Ronni. You know that. I don’t conform to traditional standards of happiness.” She sounded like one of the speakers at her mindfulness retreat. Had Lisa really drunk the Kool-Aid? Or was she trying to convince her daughter that her motivations were pure?
“Give me a break,” Ronni scoffed. “You’d love to have Kim Sanders’s perfect house, her perfect marriage, her perfect family. . . .”
“They’re not that perfect,” Lisa retorted. “Trust me. I know some things.”
“They’re a lot better than this”—Ronni gestured around her—“this shitty apartment. Your stupid boyfriend. Me and you.”
Her daughter was hurting, she was lashing out, she didn’t really mean it. . . . Still, Lisa felt her face crumple. She had stayed strong, angry, and defiant through this whole nightmare and now, sitting among the clutter of her daughter’s convalescence, a teenaged vampire frozen on the television screen, she was going to lose it. “I love you more than anything,” she managed to croak through the emotion clogging her throat. “I wouldn’t change anything about you or me or our life.”
Ronni stared at her, one eye full of hate, the other blank and blind. “I would,” she said calmly. “I’d change everything.” She turned away from her tearful mother, and hit the play button on the remote.