01.

Ben Liner ruined my life.

January of my junior year of high school, I was dating Riley Price. With his blonde hair, perfectly straight teeth, and status as President of Honor Society, Junior Vice President, and captain of the tennis team - not to mention number 2 in our class, right after me, of course - he was the boy of every straight girl at Cedar Hill Prep’s dreams. We’d been together since the first day of junior year, my first day of school at Cedar, and I was convinced we’d be together until the last day of senior year. But, two things happened that month that completely fucked everything up.

The night that Riley and I finally did it, I came home to clothes strewn all over the living room, half empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter, and one lone cigarette still lit but completely forgotten on the dining room table.

Unlike my prep school counterparts, I lived far away from the suburban hellhole of Cedar Hill. I took the Metro Transit for forty minutes every school day to the southeast suburbs to attend, on scholarship, one of the best private schools in the midwest. 

And, unlike the kids at that school, I didn’t live in multimillion dollar mini mansions or drive a BMW. I lived in a rented out, two bedroom home in Briar Park where I’d learned to drown out the noises of college parties on either side of our house and across the street and I took the bus or rode my bike wherever I wanted to go. 

In my little yellow paint peeled house that night, the radio was blasting 70s rock like usual, there was a broken lamp on the floor, and everything looked like it had been left in a hurry.

Then, I got the call.

It was a $20 cab ride plus tip to the Happen County Jail and I knew with the money I’d spend on the way back, I could say bye-bye to all the tips I’d made the night before slaving over sticky floors and burnt hashbrowns. 

Dad had never looked worse for wear, pale and slumped over as I talked with the cop. Two hours before, I was tangled in the sheets of Riley’s bed as we did it as quietly as we could so his mother, down in the kitchen, couldn’t hear the springs of the mattress, and now I’m bailing my father out of jail. 

He didn’t speak a word, wreaking of cheap liquor, all the way back to the house. It was there that I finally asked, “Where’s mom?” but I already knew the answer.

My twin brother, Adam, and I were the result of a hazy, drunk and alcohol induced groupie love session between my mother and father in the nineties. His band had one chart topping hit before crashing in the way that one hit wonders did; everyone developed a heroin/coke/crack/drug of choice habit, their label dropping them, before sinking into the abyss. 

Out of the original four members, my dad was the only one still standing. Trent Orian, the drummer, had been stabbed to death by his psychotic model girlfriend in a hotel room. After spending ten years in jail, she was released early on good behavior. She tried to shop the story around to all the major studios, volunteering to star as herself, but the only deal she made with with Lifetime, and they went with Jennifer Love Hewitt. 

The bassist, Damien Wentworth, was all but forgotten - as most bassists are - until four years ago when he showed up dead in a ditch in rural Iowa, choked on his own vomit. He’d been in and out of rehab for years, even starring in a celebrity filled reality show with Dr. Phil. He’d been kicked off the show early on, which I suspected wasn’t from the Oxycontin contraband that they had made it out to be, but instead the fact that that season premiere had the lowest ratings ever for the show, mainly because everyone said, “who the f**k is that guy?”

Lorne Rush was the saddest passing, though, because when he died, everything changed in our lives. Mom and dad had always fought through my childhood, it wasn’t a new thing, but the loss of their best friends really took a toll on them. Through the tragedy, they really started to examine their lives, think about how different things would’ve been if they hadn’t completely fucked up. 

After Lorne died, Lea packed up and moved Johnny and Lila to their crazy grandparents’ house before leaving them altogether in her parents’ custody. I think that had gotten my mother thinking about taking off, too, because that’s when the broken end tables and beer bottles, the even heavier drinking, and the cheating began. 

It should’ve relieved me that she was gone, that everything was peaceful, but even though she fucked up, I still missed being woken up by Boston every morning, having the same small feet as her so I could wear her vintage fringed boots, and the way she would run a brush through my wild hair and b***h about how she wish I’d gotten her perfectly straight, frizz free, blonde locks. 

At Cedar Hill, parents didn’t leave like they did in my life. Sure, there were divorces, but those resulted in rich fathers marrying their beautiful blonde secretaries half their ages, throwing money at their kids so they weren’t bothered by their children’s emotions. And, the ex wives were all successful in their own rights, throwing themselves into their private practices or trying to make partner at their law firms.

The kids at my school couldn’t even imagine picking their parent up from the police station after the neighbors called the cops for a domestic dispute.

I didn’t even tell Riley about my mother. I know he’d never tell the kids at school, but his mother was a notoriously bored, stay at home mom who had nothing to do but gossip about everyone all day. It wouldn’t take very long for Sadie Kade to come to school, open her big, lip gloss smothered mouth and send me right back to the scholarship kids where her, and the other girls that now followed my orders, thought I belonged in the first place.

It wasn’t that hard to turn on the fake, I’d been doing it all year. The scholarship deal was overlooked because through the eyes of my peers, I was this hip city girl who got away with shopping at thrift stores because vintage, was like so in now. It was cool that I lived around smoking hot college dudes and drove a turquoise banana seat bike Uptown to hang with the hipsters. My ex-90s rockstar dad completely enthralled them, and all the girls begged to come over to my place to meet him. I tried to play it cool and say he was now this mellow, indie musician who didn’t like to talk about his huge sellout fifteen years before, but in reality I would die before letting them step foot into my lower class, white trash life.

I love you, Dad, but you smoke Newports and drink Budweiser in the middle of the day. These kids live in bedrooms bigger than our entire house and will never, ever know what its like to work in customer service.

The funny thing was, through all these kids who pretended to be my friends, who always wanted me at their parties and hung onto my every word in the hallway, and even my boyfriend who’d given his virginity to me after four months, completely forgoing his original decision to wait until marriage, it was this tiny freshman, Audrey Lee, who really saw through it all.

She was definitely a hanger on, but the fact that her hair was naturally white-blonde, she was five foot six and weighed 100 pounds, and she was the richest girl in school, everyone put up with her. She had the money to follow all the trends and her mother, who lived precariously through her, let her throw ragers at their ginormous estate, even supplying the kegs and minibars. The parties were infamous among the Cedar Hills kids, but in truth, I’d been to better. 

We don’t talk about that, though, we definitely don’t talk about it.

During lunch the Wednesday after my mother left, I’d gotten up abruptly to use the bathroom and I’d heard from behind me the clacking of Audrey Lee’s ridiculous Jeffrey Campbell booties that were all the rage now.

She followed me to the senior wing, where the bathrooms were carpeted and saddled up right next to me at the huge mirror that made the restrooms in the wing so popular. 

“Evie, you seem...annoyed,” she ventured. She slowly applied her Mac lipgloss in the mirror, making sure to apply evenly and in the lines. She, like me, was a perfectionist, but the girl bordered on obsessive-compulsive.

“That’s my default expression. Have I taught you nothing?” I roll my eyes and glare. I felt bad being mean to her, and unlike Sadie and Amie, I usually went out of my way to actually include her in things. They just used her for her house and never ending closet, dumping her when they found somewhere cooler to be. Audrey endured the abuse with the promise that one day The B***h Twins would be gone and she would be the coolest girl in school.

She gave me her best kicked puppy expression before quickly trying to hide it under a scowl. She was getting the hang of it. “Is this about you and Riley? I mean, like, everyone knows that you guys finally did it but it seems like you aren’t as lovey dovey as you used to be.”

“Everyone knows?” I snapped.

I could hear her gulp. “No, I mean...um...I just heard from that one kid on the football team, Tommy or whatever, who is friends with Riley.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. You know how much Sadie and Amie like to run their mouths.”

That shut her up for a minute, and she couldn’t even hide her puppy dog eyes and quivering lower lip.

I tried to be nice, I did, but nothing grates me more than my sex life being aired out to the public. I thought I’d escaped that mess when I waved goodbye to the Easton Public School System at the end of sophomore year. 

And, the truth was, we only did it that one time. Riley tried to make it all special for me, thinking I was a virginal princess, but in truth it lasted about a minute and a half and I’d never seen a boy look more disappointed in his life. 

I had joked that, wasn’t he glad he didn’t wait until he was twenty-five to experience that, but Riley isn’t really the joking type and his hurt face made me clear my throat and tell him quickly, “It gets a lot better from here on out, I promise.”

I sigh and stick out my hand to her. “Can I use that? Looks like a cute color.”

Audrey tries to hide her huge smile but she nods excitedly and watches me put it on. “Ooh, that looks way better on you than on me.”

A total lie; the pale pink went terribly with my dark hair, which I’d managed to style into a thick fishtail braid. They day after washes always left me with knotty, unruly waves and a tendency to be 80s hair big. 

“You can have it if you want. I’ve got, like, three others at home,” she tells me. I throw it into my purse knowing I’ll probably never wear it again.

“Thanks, girl.”

And with that, I leave the bathroom, hoping Audrey will get the hint not to get personal with me again.