The Last Laugh by Mindy McGinnis

Author:Mindy McGinnis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Tress

Tuesday

Your dad was cheating on your mom.

It’s one of the last things Felicity Turnado said to me, right before I killed her. I’d denied it, screamed at her, thrown a trowel that had bounced off the wall next to her head, ricocheting and breaking our only light bulb. Things got dark after that, literally and figuratively.

I uncap a bottle of my water and suck down half of it as I sit in the library parking lot, sweating in Cecil’s truck. The school secretary had taken one look at my pale, gray skin and let me sign out when I said I had a doctor appointment. Given that most of the student body was puking up everything from dinner to their own stomach linings only a few days ago, it wasn’t a difficult lie to float.

Your dad was cheating on your mom.

I hear Felicity’s voice as clearly as I did last night at the ruins of the Allan house, the coal chute sending it up to me, along with the pulse pound of a beating heart. I couldn’t outrun that rhythm, and now her voice has found me again, too.

“So what?” I say.

And really, seriously—so what? People cheat. Like, all the time.

But do they go missing?

That’s not Felicity’s voice. Annoyingly, it’s my own. I rest my head against the steering wheel, let the cheap rubber burn against my forehead.

What do you control?

That’s my mom, her voice low and sincere. Probing. This was her trick, one that undercut any problem, any difficulty, and all the drama. If I came home from school upset because there hadn’t been room for me at my friends’ lunch table, Mom would listen, hands on her hips and then say, “Tress, what do you control?”

And my answer, the only possible one. “Myself.”

“That’s right,” she’d say, kneeling down. “The only person you can control is yourself. You can’t make someone do what you want them to do. You can’t make a girl get up to create a space for you. You can’t make anyone go with you to a new table.”

I’d sniffed, knowing this was all true, and hating the finality of it.

“But the good news is,” Mom had said, cocking her head, “is that this means no one else can control you, either. People can do things to you, Tress. But only you decide how you react.”

“How’d you get so smart, Mom?” I’d asked, looking up.

Her smile, tight and thin-lipped. “Experience.”

I pull back from the steering wheel, the imprint of it a red half-moon on my forehead. The journals lie on the seat next to me, pages fluttering in the light breeze coming through my open windows. The girl in those journals didn’t have experience, and she had controlled people. Page after page was filled with schemes to break up couples and friendships, put people who stepped out of line back in their place. Annabelle Usher had run Amontillado High during her stretch there, and the evidence is in a bloodstained pile on my passenger seat.

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