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you,” her mother would say. “We stayed close to home, and we both regret it sometimes. You’ll make the right decision.”
    No pressure, though.
    It usually didn’t bother Ellie to hear her mother or her aunt talk about herself in the plural form—both of them did it, practically unconsciously. Every once in a while, though, it made Ellie feel lonely. Like she was the only one who didn’t get someone. She’d never have a person, not like they did. Mom and Mariana had been born together—Ellie couldn’t compete with that. Her half sister, TeeTee, was eleven and a total brat. She competed in beauty pageants, for god’s sake. Her stepmom totally did the whole makeup and puffy hair
Toddlers and Tiaras
thing. It was creepy.
    Sometimes Ellie thought she could almost remember when her dad was actively still being her dad instead of just some guy who sent money to her mom and called her once a month to apologize—again—about how busy his life was and how he couldn’t come pick her up to have lunch even though he lived only an hour away. Other days she wondered if she was just making up the memories, crafting them from photographs, stitching them together with wishes like her mom stuck rickrack to kitschy potholders.
    Sometimes she just wanted to be the most important person to someone. That was all. If she’d said it out loud, Mom would have denied it—would have said that she loved Ellie best of all. But she knew the truth. She was okay with it, mostly.
    Now that Mom and Harrison had done the deed, they’d probably shack up, too. They were probably already talking about her going away to college so they could have sex in every room. Loud, middle-aged, horrifying sex. You would think once anyonehit
forty
, they would give up on the idea. What was the point? Also,
gross
. Ellie had suspected it, sure, from the way her mom suddenly stopped going to Harrison’s house for her glass of wine at night. Yeah, Ellie was out of the house one night and suddenly they couldn’t look at each other? It had been pretty clear.
    Ellie would have preferred it, though, if it had just remained a suspicion. Hearing it confirmed while she was coming down the stairs—that was just disgusting. It changed immediately from kind of amusing to just plain awful.
    No whoring around.
That’s what she and Samantha said laughingly to Vani at school, who basically slept with anything that moved, up to and including the janitor, Simmons. The
janitor
. But that was hilarious. That was just Vani. She’d always been advanced, and she didn’t mind that Samantha and Ellie weren’t ready yet.
    Ellie stared at the numbers on her phone, which were changing so slowly she could almost hear the electrons inside gathering, rallying to change shape and charge. She knew she’d never say the words to her mother in jest.
No whoring around, Mom.
Even thinking the words made her kind of want to cry.
    What if they wanted to get married or something? What would happen to the house? What if Mom sold it when she went to college? College students went home for the holidays, and if there was no home to go to, didn’t that just mean there was no point to having holidays? She’d be the one student eating in the freezing cafeteria, the women dishing out plates of turkey and mashed potatoes with a side of pity. One of the cafeteria workers would probably take her home with her that night, saying that any girl needed to be in a warm family home on Christmas Eve. For some reason, Ellie pictured this happening in New York City, even though she wasn’t planning to apply to any school there. But the cafeteria worker who ushered her into an old station wagon driven by her red-cheeked husband lived just a bit upstate, and in her imagination, they sped through New York, the husband surprisingly good at jostling for road space among the bossy taxicabs.He drove hard and fast until they reached a country road lined by trees covered with snow, and then, inside the cozy suburban