(You) Set Me on Fire by Mariko Tamaki

Author:Mariko Tamaki [Tamaki, Mariko]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

NINE

Break and split

Going home felt like a humongous waste of time.

I had basically no desire to see my parents (that sounds harsh but it’s true). It wasn’t as if I’d spent any time at St. Joseph’s missing my home or my neighbourhood or high school. If anything, I’d just started feeling like I’d managed to escape that stuff.

Like, you know, thank GOD.

Of course, the first thing my mom noticed at the train station was the scratch Shar had left on my burn Halloween night. Dance Yourself to Death ",

By dinner she was picking and poking at me, pulling on my shirt to expose the borders of old wounds.

She was all over me to go to the doctor. Like, immediately. Like let’s all overreact and call an ambulance why don’t we?

“It doesn’t really look like you’re looking after it.”

“Mom! It’s nothing! I had this HUGE scab and now I have this teeny tiny sore bit—”

“It is sore then,” my dad noted.

For fuck’s sake.

“Dad. It’s a BURN. It doesn’t TICKLE.”

Overall, my parents noticed that I looked way paler than I did when I left. My dad said I had dark circles under my eyes, which he guessed was from partying.

“You know, there was this kid in my school who got scurvy when he was a freshman because he only ate beer and mac ’n’ cheese,” he noted.

“I don’t have scurvy, Dad.”

Halfway through dinner Shar called and I ran up to my room to take it.

Shar’s mom lived on the west coast and her dad lived in England.

“The fact that I’m spending my Christmas NOT in England with my dad should tell you something about my parents’ shitty power struggle,” she’d explained a week before going.

On the phone she sounded tinny and thin.

“Well, Allison, I actually don’t even have anything to say to you. Weird. Are you having fun?”

“Fun?”

“Clearly it’s a stupid question, Allison. My mom is downstairs and I don’t feel like dealing with her. So, make some small talk with me so I have something to do before I go out.”

“You’re going out?”

“Well I’m not staying here, am I?”

“Um. Okay. My parents think I’m not looking after myself. Whatever. I don’t even feel like talking to them.”

I don’t know why I was being so pissy about my parents. Kind of a stereotype when you think about it.

“Where’s your sister?” I asked.

“What?”

“Your sister. Is she at your mom’s too?”

There was a pause and a thump on the other end of the phone. The sound of a door clicking closed.

“No. She’s with my dad.”

“In England.”

“Right. Whatever. Let’s stop talking about our stupid families, shall we? What else are you doing over there?”

“Nothing mostly, I guess.” I tried to visualize myself doing things in the one day I’d been home. All I could see was myself sitting on the couch. Boring. “Watching TV. Eating my parents’ food. You know.”

“Right. Okay. Well. That’s pretty fucking boring surrounded by , c, Allison.”

I searched my brain for something interesting to say that would keep Shar on the line.

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