Chapter Fifteen

fifteen

Everything at home is just how Ellie and I left it; not in a comforting, there’s-no-place-like-home type of way, but in an eerie way, like flipping back through the pages of a scrapbook and only remembering things when a picture prompts you to. Between the dishes soaking in the sink and the air mattress I still need to haul back to storage, everything we left behind feels not quite finished—everything, that is, except Ellie’s name, still drawn in powdered sugar, blending in with the quartz countertops. I wipe away her work with the side of my hand, collecting the sticky white dust in my palm and brushing it into the trash. The bag of pita chips goes back in the pantry, and her half-drunk can of LaCroix barely hisses when I empty it onto the dishes in the sink. Only then do I realize I’m one dish short; I left the Tupperware at Ellie’s. Whatever. If Mom asks about it, I’ll make up some excuse. I’ve gotten pretty good at lying today.

I drag my palms across my thighs, leaving streaks of residual powdered sugar on my black jeans, and decide the dishes can wait until tomorrow. I’m too tired for chores. Living out an entire relationship in one afternoon, it turns out, can really take it out of you. I’m better off saving up all the cleaning until right before Mom and Dad get home.

Speaking of Mom and Dad, whatever lobe of my brain makes me a decent daughter lights up. I should call them. We haven’t spoken since my hangover passed, and I’m sure they’d appreciate hearing from me more than once on our first holiday apart. I fish my phone out of my back pocket, mentally adding an hour to the time before I hit dial. It’s not quite 9:00 p.m. on Sanibel Island, and if this year’s Thanksgiving is anything like previous years, they’re drunk, sunburnt, and back in their room by now. I take the stairs two at a time as the phone rings, and Mom picks up just as I belly flop into the center of my bed.

“Hiya, Murph! I was wondering if we’d hear from you again today.” She slurs every other word, confirming that, apart from my absence, this Thanksgiving is just like the rest.

“Hi Mom, how’s it going?”

“Hold on one second.” Several decibel-pushing scratching sounds later, she’s back on the line. “There. You’re on speaker. I’ve got your father here too.”

“Who is it? Oh, Murph! How are ya?” Dad shouts, the way all dads inexplicably do on phone calls, like he needs to yell all the way into my time zone.

“Shhhhhh,” Mom hisses. “People could be sleeping.”

“Oh, Murph! How are ya?” Dad repeats in a more hushed tone, and Mom laughs at the bad joke, a guaranteed sign that her tequila sunrise has risen a few too many times.

“I’m okay. Just wanted to say good night, maybe hear about your Thanksgiving. I miss you guys.”

“We miss you too, Murph,” Mom says, her voice suddenly steady and genuine. “We wish you were here.”

I lock eyes with our family photo on the Wall of Fame, the one Ellie pointed out earlier. I wish I was there too. Not just in Florida, but back in my giant heart-shaped sunglasses, wedged between my parents, without a problem in the world. What I would give to be eight again.

“What’d you get up to today?” I ask.

“Oh, it was fabulous,” Mom says. “Your father got a new polo shirt at the gift shop!”

She stumbles through a story about Dad being too tall for the dressing rooms, and I throw my phone on speaker, freeing up my hands so I can change. I grab sleep shorts and shimmy out of my jeans, adding them to the “not quite clean, not quite dirty” pile draped over the back of my desk chair. My bra gets thrown on the same pile, but I opt not to take off the sweater. It’s cozy and, if I’m being completely honest with myself, still smells a little like Ellie’s grapefruit shampoo. Maybe that’s pathetic, but it makes me feel marginally less alone. I’m back on the bed before Mom gets to the part about Dad getting a discount…or is he planning to go back and ask for a discount tomorrow? It’s a little unclear, so I opt for the only foolproof reply: “That’s crazy.”

“Crazy is an understatement!” Dad is back to shouting, and Mom shushes him again, resetting his inside voice. “What’s really crazy is how crazy good I look in this shirt!”

Mom laughs, then hiccups, then laughs again. “He really does look crazy good!” Her giggles get louder, and I can picture Dad puffing up his chest and hitting that finger-gun pose he always does when he tries on the clothes Mom gets him for Christmas. Just the mental image has me laughing along with Mom until her giggles subside into a quiet exhaustion. “Boy, I’m telling you, I think we gotta get to bed here, Murph.”

I try to curb my disappointment. “Sure, sure. I won’t keep you up then.”

“We love you!” Mom says.

“And we miss you!” Dad shouts over her.

“I love and miss you too,” I say, but the line goes dead before I can finish the thought. I’m alone again, just me and my eight-year-old self grinning back at me from behind her heart-shaped sunnies. I wonder how she’d feel if she knew this was her future, that over a dozen years later, she’d be stuck in the same bedroom, still dealing with all the same types of drama: school, parents, crushes, and Kat. She’d probably think I was all grown up, and I wouldn’t have the guts to correct her. I wouldn’t want to break her little heart.