I'm not a discipline case and I don't get bad grades, so dear Dean Alfric, please go looking someplace else. Am I the only person in school who wasn't on that list?

I'm also not a girl who's particularly attached to sparkles and curls, so I'm not heartbroken over the latest announcement. Prom is just a cover for getting real drunk down by the river and an occasional explanation for the empire-waisted dresses and bumps under the robes at Graduation.

Not much of a dancer, anyhow.

(written in the back of her spiral-bound school notebook)

I decided to take Edith somewhere besides the beach house... I know how often Mama sweeps in there on a drunken angry weekend, vowing never to go back to Daddy again as long as she lives. And the last thing Edith needed was to be subjected to that sort of thing. I don't know why I'm worried about Edith.

So I told Mama I needed some time away from school to recuperate from "the attack" (she keeps calling it that and to get my own way I have to use her language). I told her in the best way I know how that I didn't want the beach house, and she said that wouldn't be a problem.

She booked us for five days at Michael Cottage on St. Simons. This little tiny bungalow with its own deck and an outdoor shower for two. (Who needs a shower for two? Not Edith. Not me.)

I haven't been there since I was a kid... I remember they used to rent out Helen House for us. (Even back then, Mama and Daddy slept in separate rooms.) I think maybe it's one of my favorite places in the world.

At six AM, the beach is empty. Nobody comes here at the end of February. I took a shawl but left my shoes and I sit in the sand and write in my notebook, waiting for the sunrise.

I miss... but I won't do that. Being on a secluded island makes you miss things, makes you wish certain people were with you, but... the thing is, when I wish for him to be here, he's not really him. He's someone else, someone I imagined he was before... before everything.

I hate dwelling, it's such a waste of time. I'm trying to hate him. I promise I'm trying.

"Fools in Love" in one ear and the ocean in the other, and sometimes I wonder if I haunt him as much as his eyes haunt me.

I won't do this to myself.

( Email to Gene. )


( Email to Byron. )


( Email to Freddy. )

To: ejones@euphemewebmail.net
From: lsalome@euphemewebmail.net
Subject: Beach House

Edith:

If you ever wanted to go to the beach house, now would be an ideal time.

Let me know what you think or what you might need. I'll help you any way I can, and in actuality, this time I mean that.

-Lou.

I hate Valentine's Day anyway.

Let's skip to Easter... Cadbury eggs. Not the creme eggs, the milk-chocolate ones with the candy shells.

That's worth living for. Instead of meeting weird fellows in the makeup aisle at the pharmacy.



This town is so peculiar. I'm almost glad Mama will be here tomorrow (I at least convinced her to delay her flight).

This night couldn't get any worse.

I wasn't twenty seconds in the door at the nurse's office before I had a full-blown asthma attack. I had my inhaler on me, like I always do. It passed soon enough, and then they asked nosy questions. Nobody listened to the answers anyhow; why did I bother? They wanted to give me an exam, but I turned them right down. They aren't going to find anything and they've already got Fred pegged as some kind of twisted bastard, never mind that he's just as roughed up as I am. I gave him back as good as I got, clear as day from how bruised my knuckles are. But they don't care. He's got a record, they say, like that means something.

And I admit it—I got scared. I don't want to get in trouble. I can't get expelled, and if I get suspended or even formally chastised, I lose my scholarship. It's not that we can't afford for me to go here, it's just that… I have to have it. The scholarship, I mean. It's important to me. I did it by myself; no one did it for me. I got it because I'm smart enough.

They weren't listening to me anyway so I just stopped talking. I got all cold and quiet like I do, and clammed up.

They called Mama. I don't know why I'm surprised. She's taking the red-eye out here and she's shocked-simply-shocked-Louisa-Jean-darlin'. (I hate being called Louisa Jean more than Fred hates being called Friedrich, I'd bet my left kidney.) I tried to explain to her that I'd started the whole thing, but once she heard the words "nosebleed" and "assault" and "fat lip", her ticket was pretty much bought. And I know how she is about Fred anyway.

I waded through a twenty-minute lecture from her about how no boy's going to ask me to the Valentine's dance if my eye is purple and swollen shut and my nose is broken. I wanted to say that maybe bruises are the new black, but it didn't feel as satisfying to be mean to Mama as I thought it would.

I don't care about the dance. I don't know how I'm going to pass philosophy if Fred gets expelled.

So now I'm stuck in Delaney with Mrs. Post fussing like a mother hen and putting bags of frozen peas on my face.

Like I said, couldn't get much worse.

Eupheme. I looked it up, so I could pronounce it the best I knew how (Greek has never been one of my stronger suits. I ought to have taken it this semester, but German called with its gutteral voice, and I answered with relish). It sounds like a password into a place of blessed rest.

For the first time in my life, I am entirely on my own. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I think I've always been the sort that stands independent. Emotionally, the same. I am so amazed that I managed to pull this off that I can't even write.

Let me rephrase all this. For the first time in my life, I have managed to go somewhere without my mother as a constant companion. It's not as if I hate her. She just... fusses. It has never seemed to occur to her that I'm near grown now, and can tie my shoes and brush my pigtails just fine on my own.

Of course, twenty minutes after I got off the flight, my cell phone rang. (Three guesses who it was.) She was drunk.

Hello, Eupheme. This is my induction; a phone call from my drunk mother. Hardly an auspicious beginning.

But I am here. Alone. And so excited I can feel my hands tremble. I don't know if I believe in God, or if God is a He, but wherever God is... I am chosen today.