Sweet Filthy Boy

I think I found a place to live. Thanks for sending the list, H. I’m really trying not to lose my calm right now.

Let us come to your motel, Harlow answers. We’re going nuts not knowing what the hell is happening.

Tomorrow, I promise them.

Hang in there, Lola says. Life is built of these little horrible moments and the giant expanses of awesome in between.

I love you, I reply. Because she’s right. This summer was the most perfect stretch of awesome I’ve ever had.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

JULIANNE REALLY IS a goddess because she calls before eight in the morning. With the time change, I was awake before five, and have been pacing the tiny motel room like a madwoman, praying it would all work out and I wouldn’t have to spend another day apartment hunting.

“Hello?” I answer, phone trembling in my shaking hand.

I can hear the smile in her voice. “Ready to move in?”

I give her my most grateful—and enthusiastic—yes and then I look around the dingy room after I hang up, and laugh. I’m ready to move into an apartment ten minutes away from my parents’ house, and I hardly have anything to take with me.

But before I can go, there’s one more call I need to make. As much as my dad refused to acknowledge my passion for dance, or even be kind about it, there is one person who was at every dance recital, who drove me to every rehearsal and performance, and hand-sewed my costumes. She did my makeup when I was tiny and watched me do it myself when I grew older, and stubbornly independent. She cried during my solos, and stood up to cheer. I’m horrified to realize only now that Mom weathered my father’s disapproval for years while I was dancing, and she weathered it because it was what I wanted to be doing. She was there when I moved into the hospital room for a month and quietly drove me, when I was depressed and deadened, to the dorms at UCSD.

I wasn’t the only one who lost a dream after my accident. Of anyone in my life, my mother will understand the choice I’m making.

I can hear the shock in her voice when she answers. “Mia?”

“Hi, Mom.” I squeeze my eyes closed, overcome with an emotion I’m not sure I’ll be very good at articulating. My family doesn’t discuss feelings, and the only way I learned was through threat of torture by Harlow. But my awareness of Mom’s strength during my childhood and what she did to help me chase my dream is probably one I should have had a long time ago. “I’m home.” I pause, adding, “I’m not going to Boston.”

My mom is a quiet crier; she’s a quiet everything. But I know the cadence of her tiny gasping breaths as well as I know the smell of her perfume.

I give her the address to my apartment, tell her I’m moving in today and that I’ll tell her everything if she comes to see me. I don’t need my things, I don’t need her money. I just sort of need my mom.

TO SAY I resemble my mother is an understatement. When we’re together, I always feel like people think I’m the Marty McFly version of her that has traveled from the eighties to present day. We have the same build, identical hazel eyes, olive skin, and dark, straight hair. But when she steps out of her enormous Lexus at the curb and I see her for the first time in over a month, I have the sense that I’m looking at my reflection in some sort of fun-house mirror. She looks the same as she always does—which is to say not exactly thriving. Her resignation, her life settling, could have been me. Dad never wanted her to work outside the home. Dad never took much interest in her hobbies: gardening, ceramics, living greener. She loves my father, but she’s resigned herself to a relationship that doesn’t give her much at all.

She feels tiny in my arms when I hug her, but when I pull back and expect to see worry or hesitation—she shouldn’t be cavorting with the enemy, David will be furious!—I see only an enormous grin.

“You look amazing,” she says, pulling my arms to the side to take me in.

This . . . okay, this surprises me a little. I showered under the dull dribble of a motel shower, have no makeup on, and would probably perform crude sexual acts for access to a washing machine. The mental picture I have of myself falls somewhere between homeless shelter and zombie. “Thanks?”

“Thank God you’re not going to Boston.”

And with that, she turns and opens the back of her SUV and pulls out a giant box with surprising ease. “I brought your books, the rest of your clothes. When your dad calms down you can come pick up anything I’ve missed.” She stares at my surprised expression for a beat before nodding to the car. “Grab a box and show me your place.”

With every step we climb to my little apartment above the garage, an epiphany hits me directly in the gut.

My mom needs a purpose as much as any of us do.

That purpose used to be me.

Ansel was as scared to face his past as I was to face my future.

I push open the front door, giant box nearly tumbling out of my arms onto the floor, and I somehow manage to make it to the table in the living-dining room. Mom puts the box of my clothes down on the couch and looks around. “It’s small, but really sweet, Lollipop.”

I don’t think she’s called me that since I was fifteen. “I kind of love it, actually.”

“I can bring you some of the photographs from Lana’s studio, if you want some art?”

My blood buzzes in my veins. This is why I came home. My family. My friends. A life here that I want to make. “Okay.”

Without much more preamble she sits down and looks directly at me. “So.”