Every Ugly Word Read online

  I exhale sharply. “Yes.”

  Doc nods like I’m a good child. “So, I’d like you to think about the fact that if you’d first, believed enough in your relationship with Matt to be honest with him, then second, allowed yourself to hope for a solution to your problems, you might have made different decisions. And, ergo, some of what you experienced might not have happened.”

  “Are you saying I brought this on myself?” I sputter.

  “No,” he says, emphatic. “I’m saying that what you believe to be true impacts what you do. So, in some ways, your conflicts with others were . . . self-fulfilling prophecy. All completely subconscious, of course.”

  I am suddenly humming with nervous tension.

  He can’t be right, can he?

  I swallow. “Can I walk?”

  He gives a short nod. “Certainly. Whatever makes you comfortable.”

  I push to my feet, past the big coffee table, past the lamps, to the other side of the room, near the broad, heavy desk, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the ugly wallpaper.

  I stop in front of a fake fireplace in the corner. There’s a huge picture of one of those old-fashioned sailing ships with a dozen square sails hung over it, and I’ve been wondering whether it’s real.

  A lot of people don’t understand the difference between a real painting and a print. They figure, you get a picture to look at either way, so what’s the big deal? Right? They don’t understand. Artists don’t just work with color and shape. They work with texture. With material. With light. You can’t get that from a print of a painting any more than you understand the taste of rain from a photograph.

  Anyone can fake in two dimensions.

  Either Doc has taste, or he got lucky. The painting over his fake fireplace is real.

  It’s an oil painting. Realism. A near photographic reproduction. A boat is lurching out of the white-topped, green-gray waves, the clouds behind her deep and ominous.

  It’s not my style, but it’s beautifully done. I can feel the wind chasing her. Feel her deck pressing on the feet of the sailors as it crests the wave. Like the way you feel when an elevator takes off too fast—

  “Ashley?”

  I jump. “Yes? Sorry, what were we . . . ?”

  “We were talking about whether it was a good decision to attend the afterparty.”

  Oh. That.

  •••

  “Overnight?” Mom chewed on the word. She stood at the kitchen counter, stirring pasta sauce into noodles. Her dark hair hung in layers around her shoulders, and she wore heels even though there was no one other than me around to admire them.

  I picked at my thumbnail. “Yes.”

  “With boys?” She pursed her lips. For a second I wondered how this conversation would go with another mom.

  “Yes.” To hide my blush, I grabbed two glasses out of the cabinet and filled them with water, getting ready to set the table.

  “And you’re supposedly going with Dex again?”

  I flinched. “Yes.”

  “Will Matt be there?”

  “Yes, Mom.” I groaned. My nerves shrilled because I was suddenly sure she’d say yes. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. Thinking about the kiss with Dex that morning made me melt inside. But also . . . this was an overnighter.

  Was I ready for that?

  Then Mom put the wooden spoon on the counter, the red pasta sauce pooling around it like blood. “I guess . . . I mean, I went overnight with my date after my prom. I can’t see why . . .”

  Oh, Lord, she’s going to say yes. I opened the silverware door and pulled out some forks and knives.

  “But, Ashley, you’re going to have to promise me you’ll be careful.” She grabbed a sponge and wiped up the mess of sauce.

  I pressed the tines of a fork into my finger until it turned white. “I will be.”

  “I’m not joking, Ashley,” she said, pointing the sponge at me.

  “I’m not laughing.”

  She picked up the spoon and started stirring again—a little faster this time. Then she smiled. “Can I help you get ready?” she asked, almost shyly.

  “Oh, um, sure,” I said, caught off guard.

  “Great!” Mom picked a piece of pasta out of the bowl and chewed it. “Try to find a dark-colored dress,” she said, pulling plates out of the cupboard over her head. “It’ll be more slimming.”

  •••

  After a dinner during which I simmered and Mom was quieter than usual, I headed to my room. I’d intended to work on my portfolio, but as soon as I passed the mirror, Older Me appeared.

  “So . . . you’re definitely going?” she whispered. She looked at me and I couldn’t tell if she was afraid of what I would say, or sad about it.

  I nodded. “It’s weird. I’m nervous, but . . . I don’t want to miss it.”

  Older Me nodded, too, but she didn’t smile. Little white lines of tension framed her mouth.

  Then her head snapped around and she muttered something I didn’t catch. She just kept glancing behind her. “Look, I have to—”

  “Again?” She hardly ever showed up anymore, and when she did, she’d been running off almost every time we did get a chance to talk. I knew she had to be careful. Her roommates had heard her talking to me a lot lately.

  “I’m sorry. But . . . I have to go.”

  That was when I realized she looked different. A little more put together than usual. She was in black slacks with a simple, collared button-up over the top. Her hair had been blown out. She had some makeup on.

  “Where are you going?”

  She jerked to look at me. “Nowhere. I mean, just . . . work stuff.”

  “Since when do you work?”

  “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Or maybe tomorrow. Just, whatever you do . . . just remember, no one’s perfect. But you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror the next morning. No regrets. Better to make the right choice than to hate yourself the next day. You know?”

  “I guess . . . ?”

  She ran a hand through her hair, and for once it tumbled onto her shoulders prettily. “Look, don’t do anything Karyn would do. Okay?”

  And with that totally random piece of advice, she walked out of the frame.

  I was left sitting on my carpet, staring at my own open mouth, wondering what I had missed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Doc taps his pen against his pad. “You keep mentioning abrupt ends to these conversations. What was happening to keep the two of you apart?”

  I try not to sneer, try to keep the cynicism off my face. “People like you,” I say under my breath.

  Doc looks surprised. “Excuse me?”

  I drop my head back against the chair. “Doc, you aren’t the first person to think I talk to myself when I look in the mirror. Sometimes . . . sometimes I think both of us were just trying to get through. Trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves. Sometimes keeping our relationship a secret seemed more important than the relationship itself.” I grind my teeth as soon as the words come out of my mouth, because I know they’re true. “It shouldn’t have been that way,” I mutter. “People you love should always be more important than people who judge you.”

  Doc nods. “Is that an adage you’ve always lived by?”

  Will wonders never cease. “No. Clearly. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” I flip my hand, indicating the room.

  “Do you think you need to be here?” Doc asks. “Because some important people in your life think you do. Like your mother.”

  “Yeah, because my mother’s such a paradigm of mental health,” I say sarcastically.

  Doc’s lips twitch, as if he’s trying not to smile. “So I take it getting ready for prom wasn’t your favorite mother-daughter activity?”

  I smirk. “How did you guess?”

  •••

  A couple of weeks later I stood in my room, just in front of the mirror. The floor was scattered with hair tongs and curling irons, cords snaking across
the floor to the socket in the wall, and bags of Mom’s makeup were strewn everywhere. I’d worked on my portfolio right up to the minute Mom insisted I get in the shower, and all my paintbrushes and pencils were piled around an unfinished sketch on my desk.

  She immediately started reminding me of Dex’s no-show the year before and making comments like “. . . such a pity. You’d be so pretty if you just lost a little weight.”

  By the time we got to the eye shadow, I was ready to become an emancipated minor.

  Older Me appeared, silently watching the proceedings while Mom put my hair in massive curlers. When Mom turned to find a new roller, I glared at Older Me.

  She gave me an innocent look. “What?”

  I gritted my teeth. With Mom there, I couldn’t ask Older Me where she’d been recently—since she certainly hadn’t been in the mirror. In fact, apart from showing up twice to remind me to be careful tonight, then disappearing before I could ask her why, I hadn’t seen her in almost two weeks.

  Finally, Mom let the rollers out and my hair fell just past my shoulders in big, loose curls. My bangs were wrangled into a stylish swoosh that cut just over one eye and made me look two years older.

  “You look pretty,” Older Me murmured.

  My stomach swooped.

  Matt was going to freak.

  I meant, Dex. Dex was going to freak.

  “Something just isn’t right.” Mom sighed dramatically and dug into her makeup bag again. “Oh!” she exclaimed, pulling yet another bottle out of her bag. “I do still have the glitter! That would look great on your arms—”

  “Glitter?” Older Me and I cried simultaneously.

  Mom’s head snapped up. “Well, not glitter, but shimmer—”

  “No! No, that’s it. I’m done.” I put my hands up to wave off whatever it was she was pulling out of her bag. “This is fine. This is all I need, Mom. Thank you,” I finished, working hard not to let the sarcasm into my tone.

  Mom stared at me for a long moment. “Then there’s only one more thing I need to give you,” she said quietly, and in a tone I’d never heard before. It was stilted. Almost wistful. And she kept looking at the carpet when she lifted her hand out of the bag, clutching a small, shiny packet.

  I frowned, uncertain, until I realized that pinched between her fingers was a thin, foil-wrapped square.

  “A condom, Mom? Really?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You can’t be—”

  “I’m very serious,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Behind me, Older Me made a choking noise.

  “Ashley, I know this is your first overnight party . . . and you probably don’t really know what to expect. I wish we’d had time to sort of . . . grow you into this. But the fact is, your school friends are getting up to all kinds of things, and they have been for years,” she said. “And I don’t want you going into that kind of thing unprepared.”

  “Take it,” Older Me said in a strange voice. “Just take it and—”

  What the hell?

  “I’m not taking that!” I snapped at both of them. “I’m not having sex with Dex!” The idiocy of the rhyme struck me. I swallowed a laugh that hurt going down.

  “You might not be planning to—” Mom said carefully.

  “I’m not planning to because I’m not going to,” I cut her off.

  “We all think that when we’re standing in the light of day. But when you’re with a boy and he’s excited and you want him to be happy . . .” She trailed off with a meaningful look.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Just take it,” Older Me said, tugging on the strings of her hoodie. “It doesn’t mean you have to use it. It will end the conversation sooner.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at all,” I muttered.

  “This is Mom,” Older Me said. “Ignore her. Pretend she’s telling you to wait for love and . . . and not to undervalue yourself. That your self-respect is worth more than Dex’s—than anyone’s—hard-on.”

  Mom twitched under my glare. “There are plenty of parents who wouldn’t allow you to go tonight, Ashley. And I’m sure they’d all mean well. But if a girl like you wants to keep a guy’s interest—”

  “Are you seriously telling me to use sex to keep a guy interested?”

  Her lips thinned. “I’m telling you I would understand if you did.”

  Older Me dropped her head into one hand. “She is terrible! The worst!”

  I was quivering. Absolutely seething. My skin felt like fire. “Is that what you did, Mom?” I snapped. “’Cause it looks like it worked out great for you.”

  Mom’s head whipped back as if I’d hit her. But years’ worth of anger at her was curling into rage. Older Me’s voice broke through. “Don’t make her mad—”

  “Listen . . . ,” Mom hissed. She leaned in, waving the condom in my face. “I don’t know what possessed that boy to invite you tonight, but he did. And I’m telling you, this is your chance for something like a normal high school experience. I’m helping you—”

  “So I should take advice from you?” I laughed, but even to my ears it sounded forced and brittle. “I may be a hopeless social leper, Mother, but you’re still a woman whose husband left her for a younger woman, and who hasn’t been on a date in two years. But maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe you don’t bother with the dating part. Maybe you just jump into bed—”

  I didn’t even see her hand move, just felt the ringing slap on my cheek, saw a crack of lightning across my vision.

  Older Me swore. “Oh, Ash . . .”

  My mother and I stood toe-to-toe in front of the mirror. Her breath sucked in and out as if she’d been running. Mine was locked inside. Until it all came out in a shaky rush on the words, “Better do the other side, too. Otherwise my blush will be uneven.”

  This time I saw it coming. I closed my eyes and let it happen.

  Now both my cheeks stung.

  “Are you finished?” Mom held my gaze, her jaw hard, hands clenched at her sides now.

  I waited. Her chest rose and fell too fast. Mine too slowly.

  But she just stared, her nostrils flared. “Most of the girls in your class would kill to have a mother like me.”

  “Too bad I’m not one of them.”

  Her cheeks sucked in and her knuckles turned white. For a second, the fury on her face made my courage falter.

  But then the sound of the doorbell rang through the house.

  Dex was here to pick me up.

  Mom shoved the condom into my hand, then brushed past me without another word, slamming my door behind her.

  A minute later the sound of footsteps down the hallway broke through everything else. Mom had sent Dex to my room?

  “Ashley?” Dex said quietly. The door started to open. With a little yelp, I dove for my purse, shoving the condom deep inside, then stepping back to face the mirror, playing with my hair as if I was trying to get it to lay right.

  “Hey, you look great!” Dex said from the now-open doorway.

  I tried to smile, smoothed the front of my royal blue skirt. The neckline of my dress was deep and round, offering a hint of my cleavage without being too revealing. And it showed off my shoulders, while the tiny sleeves capped the thickest part of my arm. I’d felt pretty when I tried it on, and given the way Dex was looking at me now, it seemed like he thought so, too.

  “Thanks,” I said, relieved that my voice sounded normal, if somewhat subdued.

  I turned away to grab my purse from the bed and suddenly his hands were on my arms. He turned me around.

  “Are you okay?” Dex’s voice sounded gentle.

  I shrugged. “Just nervous, I guess.”

  One of his hands rose to touch under my chin, force it up, force me to look at him. Dex fixed me with a dark, penetrating stare. He frowned. I took in the perfectly cut suit jacket that hugged his massive shoulders, tapering to his trim waist. The way the trim-cut pants slouched over his shoes.
/>   He looked sleek and sexy. And he was looking at me like he cared.

  “This is our night, Ash. The night we should have had a year ago. We’ll get through it together.” Something deepened in his gaze.

  He tipped his forehead to mine. “Are you ready for this?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

  “Not even close,” I said honestly.

  Dex chuckled, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to the door. I slung my bag over my free shoulder and followed, wobbling a little in my new heels, half afraid and half excited about what was to come.

  Chapter Twenty

  Doc’s expression is halfway between concerned and amused. I glare at him.

  “So your mother . . .”

  “Encouraged me to act like a whore. Yes,” I say darkly.

  He frowns. “From what you’re describing, that wasn’t her goal.”

  “Really? Then let me describe it again, so I get it right this time.”

  “Ashley—”

  I flap a hand at him. “I know what you mean. It just . . . bugs me.”

  “The condom?”

  I shake my head. “No, that was probably smart. But it was the reasoning behind it. She wasn’t trying to help me be careful, or whatever. She just assumed I’d give myself up for Dex—for any guy who gave me that kind of attention.”

  “You did ask to go away overnight. With a date.”

  “Yes, I did. But you’d think that would have spurred a little motherly advice, right? Something about caution, maybe?”

  Doc shifts his weight and his notes start sliding off his lap. He grabs for them, straightening them as he talks. “So, did she do anything right that night?”

  I looked past him to the hideous wallpaper. I don’t want to give Mom credit for anything—after she shoved me in here. But in hindsight . . . “I think she understood the situation better than I did,” I admit reluctantly. “That’s why she offered me the means to protect myself.”

  “From sex?”

  I shiver, and the weight of all of it presses me into my chair. “Yes. But also from guys who only think about themselves.”