You Know Me Better

Already Gone

What happens now?

…now I move on.

 

Always being alone for five years (going on six), Gina never knew what it was like to have someone go to bat for her or to have someone stand up for her when she couldn’t do it for herself. She didn’t have the slightest idea of what that looked like, so imagine her surprise when she found herself in Miss Jenn’s office this morning listening to her aforementioned teacher and Kourtney passionately discuss her (previously non-existent) future in the play, and at the school in general.

The sound of Miss Jenn’s fingers frantically tapping away at her keyboard helped. It helped her drown out her thoughts of Ricky. Last night. And the dreams that wouldn’t let her sleep.

I wonder if they can see the dark circles under my eyes.

The thought crept in without consent and she found herself turning her head slightly to the right to try catch a glimpse of herself through Miss Jenn’s window. She did her best to cover them up with her mom’s concealer. Thank God she was a heavy sleeper and didn’t catch her swiping her make-up bag from her purse. Her mom thought she “wasn’t ready” for make-up (whatever that meant), even though she was fifteen. So sometimes, and she wasn’t proud of this, she would sometimes steal it from her mom’s room. Not that she ever noticed. Once she even emptied out some of her foundation just to see what would happen. But nothing, nada, zilch, zero. And today was no different.

Miss Jenn was still tapping away on her computer when she turned back to look at them and Kourtney was standing behind her peeking over her shoulder at the screen as they ping-ponged phrases like “day after tomorrow”, “club meeting” and “cast vote”. She wished she could string all those words together to try and make sense of what they were talking about, but it felt like so many things were happening at once, like her brain was in a storm of thoughts she couldn’t seem to settle.

It’s how Kourtney got the jump on her.

She’d just gotten off the bus thinking about her mother’s attempt at conversation in the kitchen this morning: it was empty too…basically, with the wooden dining table that came with the house still right there in the middle. But it was naked now because her mom packed up the floral tablecloth they bought to cover up the white paint peeling off the wood. It was in a box now, in the corner of the room by the door just waiting to be taped up and shoved in the back of a U-Haul (shoved with care though because there were glasses and dinner sets in there).

Anyway, her mom was trying to talk to her, and it was awkward because she could tell she wanted to ask her about what happened with Ricky last night even though she didn’t come right out and say it.

So, this was how the conversation went at the breakfast table instead:

Mrs. Porter: Morning baby

Gina: Hey

Silence…

Mrs. Porter: So your friend seemed nice…

More silence…

Mrs. Porter: Do you want some eggs?

Gina: Cereal is fine.

And even more silence, then…

Mrs. Porter: …Are you mad at me?

When she asked that Gina looked up from her bowl and locked eyes with her mother. She could still hear the echoes of the door slamming with Ricky’s exit and realised that her mother was there too. She was in the kitchen, but still…she heard that door slam as much as she did, and Gina wondered if she got triggered too.