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Mom looks embarrassed, but I feel only sympathy as tears fill up my sister’s eyes. Why can’t anyone else understand that you can’t just make substitutions and act like it’s all okay? A pile of meat is not a drumstick. Mom’s orange rolls are not Dad’s orange rolls.
I wish I was sitting next to my sister so I could tell her I understand. But I bite my tongue and watch Mom scold her.“If you can’t behave yourself, you can eat in the kitchen by yourself.”
“Can I have the drumstick?” Lily blubbers, tears spilling down her cheeks.
I push back my chair. “I’ll eat with you, Lilypad,” I say, standing and holding out a hand. “Come on. We’ll have turkey drumstick Christmas together.”
“Sky,” Mom says, frowning at me.
“What?” I ask. “She’s six. She doesn’t understand phobias. She barely remembers last Christmas.”
Lily slides out of her chair and runs around the table to throw herself at my legs, burying her face to hide her tears. I pick her up and carry her in the other room. I guess I’m not the only one causing scenes this year. At least Lily has an excuse. She’s a little kid who probably stayed up half the night in her excitement about hearing Santa on the roof. But whatever. It’s not like either of us could ruin Christmas more than Dad already has.
I’m relieved when dinner’s over and we can go to bed and put the whole shitty day behind us. The next morning, Frederick comes knocking just before noon.
“Hey, girls,” he says, poking his head through the door. “Y’all want to go shopping? Me and the girls are heading down to Little Rock to hit the after-Christmas sales.”
“And buy into the consumerism on yet another day of material gluttony?” Meghan asks, sounding bored. “No thanks.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound as cool as her, and not like I can’t go shopping because I’m broke and I know Mom is too, but that she’d insist on buying me things we can’t afford so no one would catch on. “I’m not really into that, either.”
“Don’t you work at the mall?” Frederick asks, raising a brow at me.
I shrug, but I’m breathing deep to try to keep a blush from rising to my cheeks. “Whatever,” I say. “That’s how I know.”
When he’s gone off with Aunt Diana and Mom—the cousins left after Christmas dinner—Megan and I take a walk along the lake.
“How’s the whole love triangle thing going?” she asks.
“Same as always,” I say with a sigh. “What about you? I’ve barely seen you the last few months. Do you have a dreamy college boyfriend?”
“Oh, yeah, Brian,” she says, crushing out her cigarette on the bottom of her Converse. “You?”
“Actually, I do. I’m officially dating Todd now.”
“The homecoming guy who likes the bitch?” she asks.
Gotta love her bluntness. Maybe that’s why I find Daria’s so endearing.
“That’s the one,” I say, laughing.
“You gonna bone him?” she asks.
“Meghan,” I protest. “No one calls it that.”
“Brian and I would have had sex the first time we met if there had been a mattress,” she says in her deadpan voice. “But we waited until the next time we met.”
“Seriously? And you’re still together? My friends always say if you sleep with a guy right away, he’ll never date you. That you have to string him along for a while.”
“Your friends are dumb. Brian and I have been together for like, pretty much the whole first semester.”
“Or maybe you’re a voodoo relationship master to keep a guy for that long after sleeping with him on your second meeting.”
“Are you stringing Todd along?” she asks as we stroll down the gravel beach.
“We haven’t done it yet, but I think I’m ready,” I admit. “Whenever we get back to school, if I can stay out of trouble long enough to go somewhere with Todd, then I think I’ll do it.”
“You could always sneak out, you know.”
