Entangled Read Free Page B

She mimicked the headlines: ‘MEDIA TYCOON’S RICH-BITCH DAUGHTER ON BAIL AFTER NIGHT OF DRUGS AND BOOZE.’ Her upper lip trembled. Tears spilled through her eye make-up: ‘You’ve shamed us again’ she yelled, spraying spit. ‘Shamed your father. Shamed me. Worst of all, you’ve shamed your brother in his first week in middle school’ – she was triumphant now she’d managed to bring Adam the miracle child into the conversation – ‘and I’ll never forgive you for that.’
    It was a big deal that Adam had skipped a grade and moved up to middle school. The precocious brat had just turned ten, making him more than a year younger than most of his classmates, and his brilliant performance was in stark contrast with his big sister’s drop-out academic status – as her mother liked to remind her. ‘Everything comes down to Adam for you, doesn’t it?’ Leoni sobbed. ‘Adam this. Adam that. It’s always about Adam. Never, ever,
ever
about me.’
    But Mom yelled right back: ‘What do you mean, it’s never about you? You selfish little bitch. I JUST DON’T GET IT. Haven’t we always given you everything you’ve ever wanted?’
    You didn’t even give birth to me,
Leoni wanted to say,
so how would you know?
Part of her really wanted to get into all the big hurtful issues …
    (right now).
    But she still wasn’t sure if what she thought had happened to her was real or imagined.
    ‘Look,’ she said finally, ‘I’m sorry, OK? This is a difficult time for me. I’m adjusting. Dealing with a whole lot … I haven’t felt right about …
anything
for, like, the whole of this
year
…’
    ‘Well, let’s see how you adjust to having no car.’ Mom cut her short. ‘And no allowance. And how about we don’t pay for an attorney to represent you when this gets to court? I guess the state can provide one for you. Some kid, fresh out of law school, still wet behind the ears, who won’t be able to keep you out of jail. THIS TIME YOU EARNED IT, YOUNG LADY.’
    This time you earned it, young lady. What a jerk,
Leoni, thought,
what a jerk you are, Mom.
Her self-control broke. She uttered a short high-pitched scream at the top of her voice, ran from the kitchen, colliding with her father on the way out, knocked over a lamp stand in the hall, pounded up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door so hard behind her that two of its wooden panels cracked and flakes of white paint showered to the floor. She stalked forward, snatched up her sketch pad and Magic Marker from the bedside table and with stabbing, slashing strokes scribbled a cartoon featuring her mother being mounted by a donkey. Then she tore the drawing into confetti and collapsed on the big pillow-strewn bed sobbing, feeling like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Why was it that Mom always managed to reduce her to this?
    Five minutes later Leoni was still so angry she was shaking. But then she remembered she had just the thing. Kicking off her shoes she padded across the room to her underwear drawer and fumbled around in it for a rolled-up sock she kept way at the back. She could just make out her parents’ voices down in the kitchen, faint and indistinct. They were shouting about something. Probably about what they were going to do with her. She retrieved the sock, unrolled it, and counted out five white OxyContin pills stolen, amongst other goodies, from her mother’s drugstore-sized stash of legal prescription highs.
    Leoni had not used OxyContin before but she had heard good things about it, excellent things, and now seemed like the time. The pills were ten milligrams each. Were five too many? Too few? She’d seen her friend Billy, crystal-meth addict and heir to a billion-dollar fortune, knock back a big blue hundred-and-sixty-milligram torpedo of OxyContin and suffer no obvious ill effects – so a teensy fifty milligramswasn’t going to do her any harm, was it? And did she actually care if it did? On impulse she upped the dose to eighty