The phone beeped in my ear, telling me he’d hung up.
I was more shocked than mad. Was his date really that important that he couldn’t spare thirty seconds to tell Joy to go the fuck away? And now he was acting like I was his goddamn secretary or something?
Now I was pissed.
I sat down and tried to collect myself. It was probably karma, I reasoned. I hung up on my mother, and now my father had hung up on me. I totally had it coming.
Except that I felt like I’d been cheated, and that he owed it to me to do something about this.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but it wasn’t long before the doorbell rang.
I ignored it. Nobody said I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home.
Then I realized the stupidity of that idea. Joy had called my dad’s house phone and I’d answered it. She knew I was home.
The doorbell rang again.
“Goddamn it,” I said, getting up and going to answer it. It probably wasn’t important mail anyway. All of my important mail was being sent here now.
I flipped on the porch light and opened the door. Joy stood there, staring at the door jamb, hair pulled back and a bag slung over her shoulder.
I didn’t say anything.
She suddenly gaped at me in what could easily be taken for extreme horror. “What the hell is in your nose?”
My hand flew to my face, where I could feel a steel ring dangling from my septum. Goddamn it! I’d forgotten to take it out.
I’d had it when I lived with Joy, but I lived in dread of her discovering it, so I was constantly flipping up the ends or taking it out, depending on which kind of ring I was wearing. My dad didn’t care that my nose was pierced, so now I wore it constantly (and, consequently, often forgot I was wearing it).
“This is what you’re doing now?” she said, eyes wide, like she was face to face with Pyramid Head and about to face her end at the point of the Great Knife. “Drilling holes all over your face?”
Actually, it was just the one hole, although I had been considering piercing an eyebrow. Jonah seemed to think it would look good on me. “No,” I said, still covering my nose with my hand.
Joy scoffed. “What do you think I am, stupid?” She pointed at my face. “I can see very well that your nose is pierced.”
“Yeah.” My hand was still over my nose.
“I can’t believe your father lets you get away with stuff like that.”
“Oh my GOD,” I said, taking my hand away from my nose to gesture wildly with it. My hand, I mean, not my nose. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just one little hole and you can’t even see it unless the ring’s in.”
“It makes you look like a bull.”
“It does not!”
“Or a pig.” She gave a self-righteous sniff.
I blinked, thoroughly surprised. “Now you’re just being intentionally offensive,” I said.
She shrugged. “If the truth offends, let it offend.”
Labels: january brings few faces
