“Just the night?”
She can tell the lady doesn’t believe her. Lorna’s face is flaming. The internal shiver is getting worse, but her arms and legs aren’t moving. She wants to flee to her room, to cover her face with her pillow, to scream. “Just the night,” she insists.
They keep asking questions, keep trying to make her say something else. Lorna puts her head down on her arms and tries to sink into the table.
Finally, they leave. They tell Mom they will be checking back in the next few weeks.
Mom watches until they drive away, then turns on Lorna. “What the hell did youdo?”
Lorna tries to deny it, but she is no match for her angry mother. She finally confesses that she asked Mrs. Kleberg if she could live there.
Her mother looks stunned. Confused. “Why?”
“Because you and Kristen are always fighting,” Lorna says.
Her mother blinks. “And so you betray me? What a stupid, childish, moronic thing to do, Lorna,” her mother says coarsely. “I can never show my face in this town again.”
“It’s your fault,” Kristen snaps at her mother.
“Oh sure, my fault that you’re running the streets,” her mother says. She picks up her phone. “I’m calling your father.”
“Great,” Kristen says. “That’s helpful. What will he do, say he can’t come over right now, that he’s burping his kid or something?” She points at Lorna. “Thanks for all the drama. Now we have to listen to one of Dad’s dumb lectures.”
Mom gets off the couch and goes into another room to call Dad and yell at him. Kristen grabs her backpack. “I hate this place,” she says, and goes out, the door slamming shut behind her.
Nana puts her arm around Lorna. She smells of booze. “It will be okay, honey.”
How can it be? This is a complete disaster. Her envy of Callie and her family has been revealed and rejected. How can she go to school now? Everyone will know the very lame thing she did.
Her shame is so great that Lorna stops being friends with Callie. She avoids her at school because she can’t bear to look her in the eye. It is surprisingly easy to do—Callie is avoiding her too.
Chapter 15Lorna Now
Lorna wasn’t ready to admit it to montreal, but she was beginning to appreciate the morning meditation practice, especially since they added yoga flow to it to “fire up her nervous system.” She didn’t know about that, but she was managing to silence her wild pinging thoughts and follow instructions to look inward. She could imagine her breath sliding over organs and down to her toes, then slowly sliding out of her and into the universe, carrying all the stress and worries of the day.
Of course, that ended the moment the gong sounded and she was herself again. The thoughts would recommence their pinging. She was suspicious of those around her, and especially the lady who offered to take her mat. Why would anyone offer to take another person’s mat and put it away? Nevertheless, this morning she felt optimistic. She’d finally done something. She’d unlatched the door of her bomb shelter. She hadn’t opened it, just cracked it, but knowing that it could be opened was sort of amazing.
Micah whooped when she showed him the codicil list and reported she’d reached out to Callie. “Lorna! This is epic!” He jumped up from his beanbag and onto his haunches, like hewas going to leapfrog around the room. She sincerely hoped he did not.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” she warned him. “Anyway, it’s notepic. It was just a Facebook message. No one even uses Facebook anymore. She’ll probably never see it, and if she does, she’ll ignore it. It was pretty stupid if you think about it.”
Micah was still grinning as he waited a beat. “Are you done?”
Lorna thought about it. “One more—I probably have the wrong Callie.”
“Glad we got the negativity out of the way,” he said jovially. “But you are missing the point, as usual.”
“Asusual?”
“As usual. You’re a master at missing the point. This is great progress, Lorna. This is a step in moving past your fears.”
Lorna rolled her eyes. “I haven’t moved past anything—in fact, I’m even more afraid now. What if she emails back and says she hates me? Worse, what if she wants to see me and thenseesme? What do you think that is going to do for my fragile self-esteem?”
Micah was unfazed. “Let’s look at those two possibilities. If she hates you, well... that’s her problem, isn’t it? You can’t control another person’s emotions or thoughts, right?”
Lorna stared at him.
“Right?” he said again.
