Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers

Author:Courtney Summers [Summers, Courtney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Social Issues, Mystery and Detective Stories, Family, Fathers and Daughters, Psychology, Young Adult Fiction, Family & Relationships, Interpersonal Relations, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Parents, Death & Dying, Grief, Self-Help, Suicide
ISBN: 9780312656737
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-12-20T23:00:00+00:00

Beth gives me the most disgusted look when I step through the door; I’m still in the bikini I borrowed from Jenna. That’s a crime, I guess. She has one of those nature CDs on. It sounds like a thunderstorm. That is probably not a coincidence.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s upstairs.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

I find a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water, my back to Beth. I hope she’s looking at me. I hope she’s seeing how young I am, how perfect I am in all the right places while her skin is turning into one giant problem area. Cellulite and stretch marks and wrinkles.

“And whose fault is that?”

“What do you want from me?” I face her. “You don’t want me here while you help her, so you tell me to leave. I leave. I come back and you give me shit—”

She slams her hand on the table and the sound makes me jump.

“I’ve had enough of your attitude! I’m not an idiot, Eddie. I know what you’re thinking when you give me those looks. You don’t want me here, that’s fine. But I am. You could cooperate more. You could say thank you—”

“You could leave me alone—”

“I am trying to keep this household together!” She actually shrieks it and then she pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to collect herself. Cleansing breaths. “And that requires a certain level of organization. I need you to be present in some ways and absent in others so I can pull your mother out of this and then we’ll deal with what’s left—”

“You mean me,” I interrupt.

“Your mother needs it now,” she snaps, and my heart stops because I think she just told me my pain was less than my mother’s, but I cannot get my mouth to move to ask her. “Don’t look at me like that, Eddie. I don’t understand where you’re coming from half of the time—”

“Side effect of aging,” I suggest.

“Why can’t you just be mature about—”

“Maybe your brain cells are dying.”

“You know, your father would hate that you’re talking to me like this.”

I see red. I see it. Everything goes red, a red door, and I throw the glass I’m holding into the sink. It breaks. It’s not some spectacular shatter into a thousand pieces, it just goes into two pieces. The cracking sound it makes is so fucked up—how loud it is.

The quiet it creates.

“Would he?” I ask her, my voice trembling. “You think? Really?”

Beth starts to cry, and as cutting as the sound is when it comes out of my mother, it’s so surprising, so awful coming from her. I want to ask her if she misses him too. But I can’t.

I don’t know what to do.

“Go,” she says. “Get out of my sight.”

I go upstairs. I shut the door to my bedroom and sink down to the floor and my hands are shaking, cold. I pinch them. I can still feel them. Just cold. This is awful. This is so hopeless. We’re all lost in different ways, so how do we even help each other find our way out.

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