Don't Say We Didn't Warn You by Ariel Delgado Dixon

Author:Ariel Delgado Dixon [Dixon, Ariel Delgado]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The Italian Renaissance Revival was all cream columns and pink plaster, like an iced cake. The state of the yard reflected the tension indoors. Antonia said when her mother and father weren’t fighting, he paid for the landscapers, but when they were on the outs, the yard became a jungle. Antonia’s room had a window seat that overlooked an oblong retention pond adjacent to the property. A twitching, mint-green skin coated the surface, but the walls in Antonia’s bedroom were the color of a healthy pink tongue.

She had a desktop computer to herself, a high-speed connection. She was taking a quiz online. Which Leading Man Is Your Prince Charming?

Downstairs, her mother had been vacuuming for hours. Her mother smoked while she did this, because she was never not smoking. When ash fluttered onto the high-pile rug she rammed the vacuum over it instantly. Tomorrow, she was leaving for Atlantic City and taking Antonia. When she played at the Borgata, she got a champagne suite. She said it was as good as Vegas.

“Doesn’t your mom ever wonder?” I asked. “All those nights you were sleeping in Kent’s basement, and then at the Wepplers’.”

“I say I’m busy with school. We’re studying. Something like that. If she thinks it’s for school, she doesn’t have to worry.”

“But, it’s summer.”

“I have to come up with something, don’t I? When she’s not in AC, she’s here all the time. What are you telling your mom?” I realized I never really had to tell her anything. She always said autonomy was a gift she gave us, that we were supposed to use it to become our own masterpieces. “You know,” Antonia said, “now that I think about it, my mom gets all our money from my dad. Usually she takes it to AC and it’s gone pretty fast, but eventually he sends more. Who gives your mom money? Does she even have a job?”

“She just attracts money when she needs it. I guess that’s like her job.”

“She should play the slots.” Antonia selected a new quiz on her browser. This one was about matching your personal style to a season. “My mom thinks she’s going to be a motivational speaker one day. I can’t wait to move out.”

“I bet you’ll go to New York.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I don’t want to be a cliché.”

“Will you go back to Bayonne?”

“I wouldn’t give my father the satisfaction.”

I was leaning over her shoulder, watching her click around, selecting bubbles without a moment’s hesitation.

“Zeke always talks about wanting to go away for school,” I said. “Someplace across the country. California, I don’t know. He wants to surf, but he’s scared of sharks.”

“And you’re going with him?”

“I was just saying.”

“You only do something like that if you don’t want to come back.”

“Why wouldn’t he come back?”

She sighed. “It’s too hard to go back and forth. You end up picking a place, and of course you pick the place you already are.”

“My mom said she almost lived in California once.”

“She probably would have been better off.

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