Quiver by Julia Watts

Author:Julia Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Three Rooms Press

CHAPTER 12

MOM AND DAD ARE WORRIED. EVER since the thing with Libby’s dad the other day, it’s like I’ve fallen back into the habits that put me in therapy after Hadley and I broke up. I lie in my room listening to the same song over and over (“We could be heroes just for one day”), and I don’t come down for meals until Mom literally begs me. It’s not that I’m trying to annoy her or anything; it’s just that it takes so much effort for me to move.

I know it’s weird. It’s not like Libby was my girlfriend or anything. But she was the only person outside my family I had here, and I think I may have been the only person she had outside her family at all. And to tear us apart like her dad did and to tear Owen apart from his little pals—the cruelty of it shatters me. The fact that Mr. Hazlett justifies his dictatorship through religion makes me think of all the families and communities and countries that have been torn apart because of people who claimed to be acting in the name of God.

“Zo, I’d like to come in.” Mom’s at the door.

“Okay.”

She walks straight to the stereo and lifts the needle off the record. “Okay, Z, I’m doing an intervention. This album’s going back to Dad’s music room for a while.”

“If it’s bothering you, I can listen with my headphones on.”

Mom slides the album into its sleeve. “Yes, but then you’d still be listening to the same damn song over and over instead of taking a shower or a walk or reading a book or talking to a friend or—dare I say it?—your mother about why you’re so upset.”

“I don’t even know why I’m so upset,” I say. “I miss Libby, but it’s more than that, too.”

“I know.” Mom sits on the foot of the bed. “Don’t forget it’s not just you and Owen who lost a friend. Becky and I were getting to be pretty close, too.”

“Well, you were teaching her weaving.”

“Yes.” Without my asking, she starts giving me a foot massage. Part of me would like to complain, but it feels too nice. “When we did the weaving lessons, I’d get all the girls settled down with their mini-looms, and then Becky and I would work on the big loom. While the girls chatted about kid things, Becky and I talked quite a bit. She’s a nice person. There’s more to her than her religion.”

“That’s how I feel about Libby, too.”

“And yet you can’t escape the religion with them either,” Mom says. “Maybe it’s because we were weaving at the time, but I kept thinking of religion for her being like a web—a big, sticky spider web. The little bug can flap his wings and struggle against it, but he’s still stuck.” She sighs. “Not that I’m saying Becky was struggling—she only said good things about Bill and their beliefs. It was more like she was trapped in this web and didn’t even know it.

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