Chapter Fourteen

She was scared to tell her mother. Whitney marveled at her stupidity, at the brown paper bag in hand that held her soup container and metal spoon. She hadn’t even thought that through—how she’d still need to carry that nasty, damp bag because she couldn’t throw away the bowl or the silverware. This made her want to cry, but then it made her angry. Everything was out to fail her.

The wind tried to whip at her ankles, but her coat dragged long enough to spare them. She suddenly felt like she was walking in a sleeping bag, and everyone was judging her—the woman pushing the stroller with its wonky wheel, the kid who was walking home from the library. It was Friday and the whole world had plans that involved leaving their usual, typical messes for a small ounce of fun, but Whitney knew she wouldn’t be receiving her share.

Her boyfriend was gay.

“No,” she said, stopping and shaking her head. The woman halted the stroller slightly but then kept pushing, avoiding Whitney’s eyes. “He can’t be,” she said. She didn’t know who she was talking to because talking to herself would be almost as stupid as carrying a torn-up bag of nonexistent soup. She didn’t even have leftovers, opting to pour the rest she couldn’t stomach down the kitchenette’s sink in the breakroom.

She managed to keep walking despite the stares, real or imagined. Despite the gnawing in her stomach where the acid fought boldly with the partly digested cabbage. How could she not have seen it? Even Stacey had been fooled.

That should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. Knowing Marge hadn’t sensed it didn’t make her feel any better either. She felt like a dolt surrounded by dolts. 

Her anger turned onto Franklin. How dare he tell her now when he could have told her earlier, at least before she’d given up everything to help fund his son through school. She’d even cosigned a school loan, something she was thankful she could do because of her job at Timex. The thought made her sick.

By the time she got to the front door, Whitney’s head felt like a wayward carousel. Everything spun, and she didn’t know how to fix the spinning. She couldn’t tell anyone—not her mother who would throw up her hands at the world’s injustice, or her brother who wouldn’t understand what she was saying, or her best friend who would only feel sorry for her, for trusting in something other than herself to change the scope of her circumstances.

For the first time, Whitney realized how disconnected she felt and spied a bird next to her, searching the ground for grubs. But then she remembered the gun in her mother’s closet, a lone thought she pecked at. She wiped her face with the fist holding her lunch bag, opening the front door with the other.