“About three thousand,” he says immediately. “Maybe.”
“What?” I’m shocked. “But I paid nine thousand for her!”
“You were ripped off,” he says. I can hear him chewing something sloppy. Ew. “The engine needs a total overhaul, there’s rust everywhere, the tires are shot.… Four thousand, max.”
“Good to know,” I say numbly. “Thanks, Al.”
I hang up, feeling sicker than ever. Francie ripped me off. So much for cool old ladies. She must have seen me coming a mile off.
I lie back down on my bed again and stare at the ceiling.
I’m so fucked.
The front door opens and closes a few times. Angie, Jules, and Coco have all left. Thank God. I check the time on my cell. 6:40
P.M.
I just want to get this over and done with now.
6:42
P.M.
I can’t stop looking at the time.
6:43
P.M.
It’s like an addiction.
6:48
P.M.
Like, seriously.
Dingdongdingdongdingdong.
I grab the money, run downstairs, my heart hammering in my chest, and open the door with the biggest smile I can muster. A muscle is twitching in the side of my cheek.
“Nicky!”
“Hey,” he says. He’s looking at his cell, not at me. I take in his huge bulk again, his gargantuan shoulders and tiny chicken legs, and feel intimidated. Just as he intends, I’m sure.
“Here,” I say. I try to open my mouth to explain that I’m a little short, but I can’t say anything. I just hand him the cash and watch miserably as he counts.
“You’re short,” he says.
“I know,” I say quickly. “I’ll pay it back next week, with extra interest if you want, but I had to pay rent this week so—”
“You need to give me five hundred and fifty dollars, now,” he says. He crosses his arms and looks at me. “You don’t wanna piss Cosmo off, do you?”
“Cosmo will understand.…” Ah, my squeaky mouse voice is back.
Nicky shakes his head. “I’m not leaving without the full thousand. Trust me. You don’t want to deal with the consequences.”
“But I don’t…” I look out to Cosmo’s car. I can see his arm through the window. “If I could just talk to him—”
Nicky sighs impatiently, opens his jacket, reaches into the inside pocket, and pulls out … brass knuckles?
I gasp. “You’re gonna hit me?”
“Do you have the money?”
“Yes—but next week—I can’t—”
Nicky shrugs, and puts on the brass knuckles, pulls a leather glove on over it, and pushes past me into Rookhaven.
“No, no, no, please.” I turn and follow him. “Nicky, I don’t— please don’t come in, I promise—”
He walks straight through to the kitchen.
I scamper after him, begging desperately. “Please, please, please don’t, I promise that next week—” Nicky looks so out of place, so wrong in our lovely serene kitchen. He pauses in front of the sink, looking at Coco’s herb garden on the sill.
“Nice décor. Very homey.”
Then he punches the window. The sound of breaking glass is so loud that I actually make a little crying sound. He’s going to destroy Rookhaven, one window at a time, to teach me a lesson? Then what? It’s just me and him, alone in the house!
Suddenly, I feel sick with fear.
“Do you have the five hundred and fifty you owe me?”
“No, I don’t, but please—”
“I have it,” says a voice. I turn around.
It’s Coco, standing at the doorway, her outstretched hand clutching the cash. She’s shaking slightly, and she is very pale. But she’s holding his gaze.
Nicky looks at me, then at her, and shrugs. “Fine. Trust me, it’s better this way. You get the rest of Cosmo’s guys involved, with nice little girls like you, you’ve got a whole other situation.”
“Get out of my house.” Coco looks and sounds tough as nails. Wow.
We follow him back to the front door.
“Next week, have the full thousand, or you won’t like what happens,” says Nicky over his shoulder, skipping down the stoop two steps at a time.
As Coco closes the front door and double bolts it, I sink to my knees and lean over. Oh, God, I can’t see properly and my breath is all uneven and shallow again, and I’m making a funny wheezing sound. No, please, not a panic attack, not again.…
“I can’t— I can’t— I can’t—”
Suddenly a brown paper bag is thrust into my hands, but I’m shaking so hard I drop it, so Coco holds it over my mouth. For what feels like hours, I breathe in and out, with no sound but the crinkling of the paper. I feel like I’m watching myself from a distance: a trembling, shaking mess, heart racing uncontrollably, brain short-circuiting.
What have I brought into our home?
My stomach clenches, and I curl up into a ball on the hallway carpet, Coco by my side, stroking my clammy forehead. It’s so comforting, almost motherly. I looked after her this morning and now she’s looking after me. Like family.
“I’m so sorry.…” My voice is croaky. “This is all my fault.”
“Are you okay? Should I call a doctor?”
“Why … how are you here?”
“I felt sick from the Plan B just before Dad came over, so Julia went alone. I’m fine now, but are you going to be okay?”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry! That’s my fault, too! The Plan B is my fault! Everything is my fault! No matter what I do, I fuck everything up!”
“Calm down. You’re hyperventilating. Everything is not your fault.”
An hour later, the kitchen window patched up with newspaper and duct tape, we’re sitting at the kitchen table, and I’ve calmed down and told the entire story. Coco nodded the whole time and never made a wow-you-are-an-idiot face, which I really appreciate. Because I feel like a complete moron.
“I’m so sorry, I’ll pay you back, I’ll—”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Coco. “It was emergency money. And that was definitely an emergency.”
“The thing is, I really thought I could do it,” I say, numbly. “The first two weeks were so easy. But buying food costs so much, and the commissary, and gas, and rent, and bills, and I had to fix the truck, and now Bianca’s Let Them Eat Cock is like, the flavor of the month, which will inevitably affect my customer numbers, you know?” Everything is just pouring out now. “And I still have to pay ten thousand, plus the one thousand interest payment every Sunday, and I now owe you money, too. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have taken so many risks?”
“I can see how it seemed, um, rational.…” says Coco.
I shake my head. “It wasn’t. It was reckless and idiotic. I’m so scared. I think that guy Nicky is petrified of Cosmo. How bad must Cosmo be if a thug like that is scared of him? Seriously, what will he do to me if I can’t pay it back? Beat me up?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think we want to find out.”
“And my parents are coming to get me in three weeks. I wanted to prove to them that I could make it on my own. What if I can’t? I’ll have to ask them to pay it for me, and they’ll make me move in with them!”
“I’m going to make you some hot chocolate,” says Coco. “It’s what my mom always made when we had bad dreams. I still make it whenever I can’t sleep in the middle of the night.”
“Your mom sounds so nice,” I say.
“She was,” Coco says. “She was the best.”
I’d never describe my mom as the best. But … I know she loves me. I do. She always seems annoyed at me, but I know it’s because she only wants what’s best for me. She just doesn’t understand me.
But, considering I was kicked out of school twice, cheated, took drugs, never took anything seriously, maxed out every credit card they ever gave me, and have always done whatever the sweet hell I wanted, that’s not exactly surprising. If I was my kid, I wouldn’t understand me, either.
And now I’m in debt to a loan shark.
My parents will be so disappointed.
Or, maybe it’s just the kind of thing they expect me to do, because I’ve always let them down. So they won’t be disappointed. They won’t even be surprised. And that’s even worse.
Coco puts a big mug of thick hot chocolate in front of me, and a bowl of marshmallows next to it.
“Keep adding marshmallows as you go along, so you don’t have to worry about running out.”
Then she takes both my hands in hers, a gesture of affection so sweet, I want to weep.
I sigh. “I have to tell the girls, don’t I?”
I hear footsteps in the hallway, and then Julia’s voice. “Tell us what?”
An emergency house meeting is called to order an hour later.
“Before we start, it’s time to pay the kitty,” says Julia, presiding over the meeting like a judge, in her usual seat at the head of the table. I’m on her right, Coco’s on her left, Angie’s next to me, and Madeleine’s next to Coco. “Thirty each.”
“You wrote down an agenda for the emergency house meeting?” Angie stares at her in disbelief. Julia ignores her. “Also, a cleaning roster. At the moment Coco and I are doing everything, and it’s not fair. I’m going to write a list of chores and put it on the refrigerator with a week-by-week name roster.”
Angie is playing with the deck of cards we keep on the kitchen table. “I can’t believe I bailed on Mani for this shit. Can’t we pay someone else to clean?”
“No. Okay, Pia, over to you.”
Great.
“Why are we here?” Madeleine hasn’t even looked at me since she got home. “I have Bikram at nine.”
I take a deep breath. “I borrowed ten thousand dollars from a loan shark to buy Toto and start SkinnyWheels. I thought he was nice, but um, I’m starting to realize, I mean, I have realized, um, that he’s not nice. He’s dangerous. And I am so sorry that I brought this into Rookhaven.”
“A loan shark? And what do you mean, ‘into Rookhaven?’” snaps Madeleine. Then she looks behind me, at the patched-up window. “Are you telling me he
broke
our
window
?”
Coco jumps up and puts the kettle on. Sheesh, she hates confrontation even more than I do.
I nod. “Well, not him. His, um, assistant.”
“His assistant?”
“Tell the whole story,” says Julia. “From the very beginning.”
Telling the story takes about twenty minutes, thanks to Madeleine repeating, incredulously, half of the things I say. Just to really hammer it home how ridiculously stupid I am.
“You found out about a loan shark from that crazy bitch and you thought that was like a
recommendation
?”
“You liked him because he drank
Smartwater
?”
“You told him where we
live
?”
“He has a thug who does his
dirty work
?”
“He came into
Rookhaven
?”
“You now have two and a half weeks to make
thirteen thousand dollars
?”
When I’m finished, there’s a moment of silence.
“I was trying to make a life for myself, to prove to my parents—and to me—that I can do something, that I can work.…” I say, stumbling slightly over the words. “I am so sorry that I did this. I understand why you’re angry.”
“You understand why I’m
angry
?”
“Okay, Maddy, that’s enough,” says Julia. “I get why you’re pissed, too, but really, you’re not helping.”
“How can I help, Julia?” snaps Madeleine. “There is a loan shark who knows where we live and will do God knows what to Pia or any of us if she doesn’t pay.” She turns to me. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
I flinch. But she’s right.
“It’s true. I am a fucking idiot. But I swear, I swear I’ll make it better. I’ll make the money. I’ll work harder. Toto will be fixed by the morning, and I’ll sell the best salads you’ve ever seen in your life. Nothing will stop me, nothing. You have nothing to worry about.”
Madeleine raises an eyebrow.
“I believe you can do it,” says Julia supportively. Whether she means it or not, I appreciate the sentiment, and smile at her gratefully.
Angie has been by far the least perturbed by my actions. It would take a lot to shock her. “And if not, we’ll just help you. I can ask the parentals—”
“We can ask our dad, too,” says Julia.
“No way,” I say quickly. “I don’t know how or why it came to this, but this debt represents everything that I need to change about myself and my life. And I need to fix it myself, without help from my parents, or your parents,” I say forcefully, looking each of them in the eye. “It’s really important to me. I’m going to work every minute of every day and make the money back. It’s the only way.”
“Okay,” says Julia immediately. “I understand.”
“But I’m here if you need me,” says Angie. “I mean,” she adds quickly, looking around at the other girls, smiling tentatively, “We’re here. We are all in this together.”
“Always,” says Coco.
“Absolutely,” says Julia.
Madeleine isn’t agreeing, but she’s not disagreeing, either.
As I look around at the faces of my best friends, I realize I’ve never felt this safe and secure before. My parents, though I know they love me, never seemed to forgive me—let alone forget—my mistakes. But this is love without conditions attached. Understanding without judgment. I know this sounds melodramatic, but it makes me feel like I really can make my life what I want. Like I’m invincible.
This is what it must feel like to come from a perfect family.
And Angie was right.
We’re all in this together.
Then I look around, and realize Madeleine has just walked out.
Not entirely perfect, then.
“That chick is so fucking uptight,” says Angie, shuffling the deck of cards like a Vegas dealer. “Has anyone ever seen her wear something sleeveless? She even jogs in long sleeves when it’s seventy degrees out. I think she has fake arms. They’re made of, like, wood, or something.”
“She doesn’t have wooden arms,” says Julia.
Angie continues shuffling. “You know what she needs? A good fuck.”
“Stop that,” snaps Julia. “Deal the damn cards. Pia, you need to go talk to Maddy. One on one.”
She’s right.
I stand up and walk out to the hallway, where Madeleine is going through the mail.
I clear my throat. “Madeleine?” She refuses to look at me, but doesn’t walk away. I take it as encouragement.
“Madeleine … I’m really sorry about Nicky coming here, and, um, I hope you can forgive me one day … and I’m really sorry about the thing with your brother, too. I thought Mike felt the same way I did. It was just … casual.”