I Know About You by Kaste Erin

Author:Kaste, Erin [Kaste, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

I’d come out to my mother one month before I’d turned eighteen. It was the fall of my senior year of high school, and we were in Columbus then, just the two of us.

I hadn’t meant to do it. I’d discovered the word that explained all of the jealous, possessive friendships and bizarre, out-of-place feelings I had around other girls, but I had no intention of explaining any of that to my mother until I was safely out of the house at college. She was fairly liberal as far as parents went, but I wasn’t certain that she would be so okay with her only child being a lesbian.

My math teacher, Mrs. Wyse, was the catalyst. While I’d hated her bitterly at the time, I could probably thank her for the fact that I’d graduated that spring and gotten into college. Instead of allowing me to fail her class, she’d sent a note home at midterm time and followed up with a phone call to make sure that my mother had gotten it.

She hadn’t. I’d signed her name to the note and turned it in, and wow, had that made my mom mad. What had made her madder yet was the grade itself. I’d generally done well in school, especially considering all the moving around we did, and she wasn’t about to let me get away with an F.

For the first time in my life, we’d had one of those all-out screaming fights. She’d told me she hadn’t worked so goddamn hard to see me fuck up my life like she had so many years before. I was so close. Couldn’t I just do the right thing for a few more months and be done with it? I’d struck back, cursing her for my very existence, for being a shitty mother and moving us all over the country and ruining my life. I’d known that while she’d meant every word she’d said, I hadn’t meant a single one. I’d felt horrible, but I wasn’t about to back down. We’d yelled until I was sure we were both out of scathing words and profanities. We’d stared at one another for what seemed like forever, then she’d taken a very different tone, this one icy serious.

“I’m making you a gynecologist appointment.”

“What? I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes you are. You are not going to end up pregnant so long as you’re under my roof.”

I’d never been so angry and embarrassed. “I’m not going to get pregnant.”

“Condoms don’t always work.”

“Mother,” I’d interrupted, “I am not going to get pregnant. You have to listen to me. I am not going to —”

“I’m not stupid, Liz,” she’d yelled back. “You’re spending all your time with Dylan, and I know what that means.”

“I’m not fucking Dylan, okay? We’re just friends. I barely even see Dylan.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You take off every night to go meet him.”

I’d stopped short, breathing heavily. I’d made a big mistake.

Mom had looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Cary Elizabeth, where have you been going?”

“To Lauren’s, okay?” I’d exploded, looking away.

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