Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [74]
Dad thought for a moment, then his brows knitted and he opened his right hand, held it palm up and swept it across his body in the sign for You’re welcome.
And then he smiled at me for the first time in a year.
CHAPTER 40
Mom’s room was dark. She lay on her side in bed, hugging the comforter to her chin. Her breathing rose and fell with the perfect consistency of someone who was feigning sleep.
I turned on the light.
Mom fidgeted, but kept her eyes shut tight. After a moment, she produced a sound like a horse. I’m not sure what she thought it would achieve, but I almost laughed out loud.
“Lynn Vaughan,” I said solemnly, “future Academy Award winner.”
“I was asleep,” she protested.
“No, you weren’t.”
She sat up, propped a pillow behind her. Her face was streaked with tears, mascara bleeding down her cheeks.
“You look awful, Mom.”
“Says the girl with pink hair!”
It was such a perfect comeback that I couldn’t help smiling, and then laughing. After a few seconds, Mom started chuckling too.
“You look like you swallowed radioactive waste,” she said, and laughed louder through her tears.
“It’s called Atomic Pink.”
“Oh God, so you really did swallow radioactive waste!”
We were laughing hysterically as I slid onto the bed beside her and held her hand. It was warm, clammy, like a fever breaking, but she didn’t take it away. We twined fingers, and I could feel the barrier between us melting a little.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I think there’s a lot going on in your life right now that I don’t understand.”
She looked at our hands. “Ditto.”
“I need you to know that the band was important to me. I don’t know if it should’ve been, but it was. It was exciting. It made me feel . . . alive.”
“I know it did, Piper. I wish I’d realized it sooner, that’s all. I wish I’d had the energy to keep up with everything.”
“Like what?”
Mom lifted our hands and kissed mine, then ran a finger around my nails: the nibbled skin, the split nails, the massacred cuticles. She sighed, and then suddenly she was crying again, and I just didn’t understand.
“I’m so behind the times. Months behind . . . probably years. How did I miss it?” As the seconds ticked by in silence, she rubbed my nail beds with her thumb, as if she might undo all those years of self-inflicted damage. “Just today, I was telling someone at work that things were kind of difficult between us, and she suggested I take you to a fancy salon this weekend so we could get our hair cut together. I thought it was such a lovely idea. I even went ahead and booked appointments for us.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. Although I must admit that I didn’t have Atomic Pink in mind.”
It suddenly dawned on me that she’d been staring at our hands the whole time. “Look at me, Mom. . . . Please.”
Mom looked up, eyes flitting from one part of my head to another like she was searching desperately for any hair that might have survived the pink onslaught.
“I like it,” I told her quietly, firmly. “I like the color and the style. And I like knowing that I can’t hide anymore.”
That really got her attention. “Why would you feel like hiding?”
“Because I don’t fit in. I haven’t fit in for years. I’ve been the nerd at the front of the class, the one without many friends. But ever since I started with Dumb, people look at me differently.”
“You know the teachers will look at you differently too, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Maybe the teachers don’t really know me any better than the students.”
Mom ran her fingers through my hair, tucked it behind my ears. Half an hour before, I’d have batted her hands away, but I knew she was finally seeing me in the present, not as the girl I used to be, so I let her fingertips continue their gentle sweep.
“It’s going to take me some time to get used to everything, you know?” she said finally.
“I know. Me too.”
She nodded, continued gazing at me like she wanted to see right into my soul. It wasn’t going to be that easy, of course, but at least she was trying.
“What would you say to Sleepless in Seattle?” she