The Last Forever by Deb Caletti

Author:Deb Caletti
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon Pulse

chapter fourteen

Ecballium elaterium: squirting cucumber. The seedpod of this plant bursts open and shoots its seeds up to twenty-seven feet away from the parent plant. The seeds can zoom off as fast as sixty-two miles per hour in order to get away. Let’s just say that some people see the logic in this.

It’s where we also begin, every single one of us: a seed. It is our beginning before our beginning. We become an embryo, an immature plant, in our own enclosed case, and we, too, will grow under the right conditions, seeking the sun and light.

Of course, some of us come from a bad seed.

And there is mine, leaning against his truck.

Can we just start with what he’s wearing? Because remember when he said he never bought his clothes himself? He’s wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt with an ironed-on image of the Road Runner on it. I forgot about that one. Let me make this clear: There is no way in hell my mother would have bought that.

I walk past him as if he isn’t there and he hasn’t just said what he just said.

“Where are you going?” he asks. “Aren’t you going to even give me a hug?”

I spin around. I’m furious. I didn’t even know how furious I’ve been. My anger erupts from its own hard case and begins to grow at a manic pace, the beanstalk I will use to climb my way out of here. I just stare at him with narrowed eyes.

“You got shit—” I flick my shirt to indicate he should do the same. Silvery cat hair. He also smells of mildew, the faint odor of old basement. I turn away, stomp up the porch steps.

“If you hurry, we can make the last ferry,” he calls out after me. I slam the screen door. He slams the screen door. He’s following me. “Tess, please.” Oh, look, he’s pleading. I rather like how the tables have turned.

Now I slam the door to my room. I lock it. He’s jiggling the knob. I sit on the floor with my back against the door. I smell something. What the heck? Baking bread? Jenny did not have her day of painting after all. I am beginning to understand that her cooking is a nervous reaction. She probably makes brownies just to swirl her finger around in the batter when she’s having a bad day. It’s a miracle she doesn’t weigh a thousand pounds. Then again, her life was probably pretty calm before we came along.

“I’m sorry, Tessie Tess! I had myself a little breakdown,” my father says through the door. “You know, I’m okay. I got it together. I apologize. We were standing at that canyon, right? And then at the crypt . . .”

I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of a response, but I can’t help myself. “A pyramid hotel. In Las Vegas, Dad. Land of all-you-can-eat buffet, Father. Cocktail waitresses with cleavage as deep as the Colorado River, Pops.”

“Come on, Tess.” He tries out a stern approach.

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