Page 126 of Valley Girls
Thea didn’t speak. She just stared.
“I talked to—”
“Are you out of your mind?” Thea roared, full accent in her voice like Rilla hadn’t heard all summer.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not,” Rilla snapped. “But you seem not to have one this whole summer—at least when it comes to my existence.”
“France? Celine?” Thea yelled.
Rilla rolled her eyes. “Oh, great.” Thea was going to do the inexperienced climber thing again.
“What planet are you living on?” Thea said. “You aren’t going to France. You don’t even have a passport. And you weren’t supposed to be climbing—and what ...” She sputtered and stopped. “What’s this about Celine.Celine Moreau?”
Rilla crossed her arms. “I climbed with her. She invited me to France along with Caroline. I’m a climber. A good one.”
Thea rubbed her face and groaned. “What? You have got to be lying.”
Why did everyone suddenly think she was lying? Rilla swallowed down a sick feeling. “I’m not. Ask Walker. Ask Caroline. Ask any—”
“I don’t know how to do this,” Thea interrupted. “I don’t know how to be a parent.”
“I don’t need a parent. I already have two.” There were no vacancies, despite the situation.
“Anactualparent is what you need. For once in your life.”
The same horrible, shit-brown feeling crept over Rilla’s shoulders and tightened up her neck. Thea should be the one person, at least, who knew that her life wasn’t a ridiculous stereotype she needed to be saved from, even if it sounded that way. “You can sell that load of shit to everyone else about Mom, but you can’t sell it to me. I know the truth,” Rilla snapped.
“The truth?” Thea swung around to face her, black hair nearly blue in the shade and uncharacteristically wild around her face. “Mom’s chaotic, in and out of jail, unstable, addicted to a variety of substances including men, and does not see a problem with her lifestyle.” Her tone was serious. Intense. “She refuses to even acknowledge her own history. Or how much danger you were in.”
Rilla pulled back.
“Yourdad’s got the IQ and reasoning skills of a golden retriever and we both know he just does whatever Mom does,” Thea continued. “Mine is thenon-functioning addict. And as much as I understand you wanting to defend them, trust me when I say there’s nothing to defend.”
How could Thea say that? Had she forgotten how Thea’s dad, Marco, read stories and her dad, Tom, taught them to ride dirt bikes. How Lee encouraged them to live wild and unfettered, and to not give any mind to what others might say. How all three showed them how to live and love even planted in a place that kept trying to pluck or poison you out like some rampant weed? “You don’t know shit,” she seethed, too furious to even argue. “You can’t even see you’re just like her.”
Thea froze, her face white. “You know mom had a baby before us. I mean, she was pregnant—when Grandma kicked her out. Do you know what happened?”
Rilla froze.
“Her boyfriend beat the shit out of her and caused her to miscarry.”
Rilla’s stomach plummeted.
Thea leaned forward, wide-eyed. “Yep. And you know what? She went back to him.”
She didn’t want to hear this. Rilla closed her eyes, hating the sudden eruption of heat in her chest. “But she sent me here,” she whispered.
“I convinced her. Yes, she sent you. And it’s my job to do what she can’t do. You are not going to France. You will graduate high school, so help me god.”
Rilla’s face twisted, fighting the coming tears. “She left. She did the right things, in the end. She did the best she could.”
“In the end, sometimes it doesn’t matter,” Thea said. And she headed back to her post, leaving Rilla all alone again.
She could go home now. Mom had said, in August. Mom had said she could take the GED. All it would take was one phone call. Rilla could use the last bit of her money for the ticket. By that night, she could be on her way. It would solve everyone’s problems—Thea’s, Petra’s, Walker’s, everyone’s. Even hers.
Rilla lifted her chin to the view of El Capitan staring over the trees and her heart wrenched. She couldn’t leave. Not without trying The Nose. It was the thing she’d been working toward. The thing that mattered more to her than anything else. Somehow, she’d have to find a way to even the score and make them all wrong.
It came to her while setting aside Petra’s gear to return it. It went, money—copper tub—everyone said it was dumb to steal a copper tub because—watch!
