Wasted Pretty by Jamie Beth Cohen

Author:Jamie Beth Cohen [, Jamie Beth Cohen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2016-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

“Mom wants you up.” Nate is standing in my doorway. I wish the damn doors in this house locked.

“What do you mean?” My vision is blurry. I couldn’t have slept more than three hours.

“She wants you downstairs. She made a frittata. It’s gonna get cold.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I don’t really have time to remember anything that happened last night, but when I look down and see I’m still in Chris Thompson’s shirt, it all comes back pretty quickly.

“A frittata, Alice. You know, an omelet, with potatoes on the bottom, starts on the stove, finishes in the oven. My favorite breakfast food?”

“You are such a freak,” I say. “Can you get out of here?”

“You need to get up. Mom needs help setting up for her thing.”

“What thing? What mom? She hasn’t made a hot breakfast since you left for college. Frankly, she hasn’t been home since you left for college.”

“Well, she’s home now, and she wants you downstairs.” He leaves without closing the door.

I get out of bed slowly. I can smell the food downstairs, the baked eggs, the coffee, something sweet. The house smells the way it used to when Nate still lived here, and I ate real food. Before my mom finally hit on the perfect recipe for weight loss. Suddenly, I’m hungry, and the hunger propels me downstairs. I don’t even care I’m wearing Chris Thompson’s pajamas. Still, in a haze of sleep, I take the bottom two steps in one motion and see Karl Bell sitting at the kitchen table. For a split second, I think I’m hallucinating. I hope I’m hallucinating. And then he smiles at me; it’s a smile I couldn’t dream up in my own head.

“Good morning, Princess!” Princess?!

I freeze long enough to see my mom, looking like Suzie Homemaker, turn around from the stove and smile at me, beaming with pride. I’m supposed to be happy she has brought Karl to the house. I make it to the half-bath just in time to hit the toilet with bile. Maybe the rumors the birth-control-bitches started are right about me. Everything makes me puke.

Propped against the door, I’m shivering. My fingers feel like they’re dissolving. I shake them to try to get more blood into them. I feel unmoored, like I might float away, but the reality is, I’m trapped in my own house. When I let myself out of the bathroom, I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. The smells of coffee and eggs, which moments ago filled the house with warmth I had desperately missed, are now mixed with the smell of Karl Bell’s cologne.

“Late night, huh?” He and Nate are eating while my mom opens and closes cabinet doors, looking busy. She’s pulling out all sorts of products with the butterfly stickers on them to show Karl Bell, her new investor.

“I’m not hung-over,” I say, too defensively. “I just don’t feel right.

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