Better Than Perfect Read Free

and sniffled while I looked around the room. Even with the shades and the window up, it felt like a prison. I pictured Oliver, who’d stayed up at Yale for the summer and who’d texted me yesterday that he was going camping with friends for the week. I wondered if my dad had canceled the reservation we’dmade for the house in Maine that we rented every summer or if he was planning to go without us, to walk the familiar floors of the house by himself. I imagined Jason getting out of the car in the airport’s long-term parking lot, the sound of jet engines revving, assured he’d be thirty thousand feet up in the air soon.
    How come everyone had a get-out-of-jail-free card except me?
    I got to my feet. “Why don’t I make us a salad?” I said. “I’ll put lots of fruit in the way you like it.”
    â€œI don’t know if there’s much in the fridge,” said my mom. She looked at me apologetically, and I noticed how much gray there was in the roots of her hair. My parents had been a very good-looking couple. I’m not just saying that because they’re my parents. My mom’s hair was long and blond. (It had been naturally blond when she was younger, and as she got older and it got darker, she highlighted it.) She and my dad were in great shape, and they both wore expensive, designer clothes. My mom always liked it when I told her that one of my friends had said she was well-dressed or beautiful, which happened pretty regularly.
    Right now, though, with her strangely bisected hair and her wrinkled T-shirt and yoga pants, my mom wasn’t going to be getting compliments from my friends anytime soon. She just looked tired. Tired and a little bit old.
    â€œIf there’s nothing in the fridge, we can order.” I didn’t wantto look at her thinking about how old and tired she seemed, so I turned and went to the door. “I think you should take a shower and get dressed.”
    Because on Bad Days, I sounded like the mom.
    â€œYou’re right, honey,” she said. I heard her pull a tissue from the box on her bedside table and blow her nose. “Kathy called before.”
    I turned around. “Really? That’s great. What’d she say?” Aunt Kathy was my mom’s younger sister, and one of my favorite people in the world. She and her husband lived outside Portland, Oregon, and I guess they were what you’d call hippies. They didn’t grow pot or homeschool their kids or anything, but they didn’t care about stuff like money or fancy cars. Kathy taught preschool and her husband was a doctor on an Indian reservation. My mom and my grandparents had all gone to Harvard (well, my grandmother had gone to Radcliffe), but my aunt had gone to Oregon State. I sometimes wondered if she felt bad about that—whenever we were at my grandparents’, there was always a lot of Harvard talk—but I’d never asked her.
    â€œWell . . .” My mom furrowed her brow, then quoted her sister: “She said, ‘I don’t like the way you sound. I’m coming out to New York next week.’”
    â€œSeriously? She’s coming to visit?” I felt a sense of relief so intense it startled me. “That’s awesome.”
    My mom laughed, then made a funny choking sound. Sheburied her nose in her tissue, but not before I saw her face crumple.
    â€œMom, it’s gonna be okay,” I promised her. I could hear the irritation in my voice, and I wondered if she heard it too.
    â€œI know,” she squeaked. “I know, honey.” She took some tissues out of the dispenser, one after the other in rapid succession, then blew her nose. “I’ll be okay. Just let me shower and I’ll come down.”
    â€œI’ll see what we have to eat,” I said. I waited to close the door behind me until she flipped the covers off her legs and got out of bed.
    There was a blank rectangle on the wall immediately to