By her twentieth birthday, there are a few things Valarie Ricci knows for certain.
She knows that her waitressing job barely covers the costs of living out of a beat up old van. She knows she's stuck in the dead end hometown her high school friends...
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Valarie, Alice, and Ithaca were towed to the nearest collision centre. After the van was examined, they were given a price estimate and told that it would be at least a week before the van could be worked on. The whole experience made Valarie feel dizzy, and, if it weren't for Alice asking all the questions and haggling about the price, she was sure she'd have just nodded blindly at anything the mechanic guy said to her.
Mom took two hours to show up, and Valarie felt like she was in a fog from the moment Mom stepped out of the short school bus she was driving. Mom wasted no time in confronting her and Alice.
In the back of her mind, Valarie was aware of the coldness in Alice's voice and the shaky edge to Mom's words, which used to happen moments before she'd declare she needed a cigarette. When she was a kid, Mom's cigarette breaks could last an hour.
Even as she felt the tension rising around her, Valarie couldn't quite tear her eyes away from Mom. She had new dark spots on her face, new lines around her mouth like she was someone with an easy laugh. Her dark, wild hair was cut short and caught in the wind that whirled around the three of them as they stood outside of the auto shop. A new piercing decorated her ear along with a dangling earring that Valarie had never seen before.
And Mom was pregnant–noticeably pregnant. Valarie didn't know much about babies, but she did know that a baby bump doesn't show up overnight. She'd been pregnant, and Valarie had no idea. Not once during their increasingly short and infrequent phone calls did Mom ever mention she was having a baby. Instead, she'd allowed the silences and ums and uhs to stretch out longer and longer between them, letting Valarie to ramble with the vague hope something she'd said would connect. It was like being left alone in that house again, even after the house was gone.
As she stared at Mom, she felt like a door was being closed in her face. Mom had a look in her eye, a protective slant to her body as she looked between Alice and Valarie, like they were intruding. It was pathetic; something that five year olds feel about a new sibling, not grown adults. But this wasn't jealousy or a sense of being replaced. It was pure exclusion.
I'm not useful anymore. Nonno was dead, and Mom didn't need her to be looking after him. The pain of Alice suggesting that Valarie go back now that the van was wrecked returned, feeling like the jagged edge of a reopened wound. Oh God. They would both realize that she wasn't needed anymore and get rid of her.
This was a mistake. Valarie had crossed a line, over-extended herself. How could she fix this? Why did she think she could call her Mom for help? She opened her mouth to apologize, to say that Mom could go back home, but what fell out of her mouth was, "You're pregnant?"
Mom either ignored this or didn't hear. She continued arguing with Alice. "–you know that's my Dad's car, right?"
Alice didn't even attempt to look sympathetic. "I understand."
"And you're gonna pay for this? Fifteen hundred dollars worth of damage?"
"I said I was going to pay, and I'm gonna pay," Alice said.
