Page 89 of The Summer Show
“Can you all see that she’s nothing?” Her hands formed two points. She aimed them at her chest. “I’m the star. I’m the celebrity.”
“You’ve got a whole hundred followers on Insta,” I said, wheezing.
“That’s a hundred more than you’ve got,” the donor of half my DNA said, smirking.
Lina cleared her throat. “As of just now, Kathleen has one point seven million followers on Instagram.” She held up her phone as proof.
“Really?” This was news to me. “Why?”
That didn’t make sense. I barely used my social media accounts, and when I did I kept things wholesome and benign for the sake of my job.
“Because half the world is interested in you,” Lina said gently.
“Wow,” Mom said. “And did you once ask your followers to follow me? No?”
“I don’t know much about influencers and social media celebrities, but isn’t their thing having personality and likability?” Lina said to my mother. “From here it looks like you have the personality of a goat’s kolos.”
The mama bear had awakened, and it wasn’t my mother. Ana and Nick’s mom was the one doing my mother’s job because mine wouldn’t. She had just won my adoration for life. I would walk across a sea of LEGO for Lina Merrick.
“Are you calling me unlikable?” my egg donor asked.
Lina shrugged. “If the witch hat fits …”
Susan Hart burst into tears. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance that they were genuine, but knowing my mother she had robbed a crocodile on the way here. She stumbled around for a moment, searching for a place to land daintily yet dramatically. Even at her fake-lowest point, she had to make it look good for the cameras.
“I’ve worked so hard for this,” she said, sobbing.
As I watched her play her same-old role, my lungs slowly turned to brick. No one was looking at me as I slowly backed toward the door, fumbling with my bag.
Except Nick was watching out for me. He didn’t give a fig about Mom’s performance.
“Sweetheart, where’s your inhaler?”
Before I could tell him, he was in my bag, locating my inhaler and the spacer. Like he had performed the task a hundred times, he shook the inhaler, slotted it into the spacer and slid the open end into my mouth.
He pressed the canister down.
I breathed in deep and slow, and held the breath. Nick rubbed those gentle circles on my back, his heat soaking through the fabric and into my skin.
Mom noticed she didn’t have one hundred percent of the limelight. The cameras had moved, too, because for all of her drama, we were still the stars of the show.
“Anything for attention, right, Kathleen?” Mom said, nose wrinkling in disgust, “Even as a kid you were a little drama queen. I remember you boo-hooing when I burned your books.”
I pushed the air out.
Nick crouched down in front of me. “Better?”
I shook my head.
“Another one?”
Nod.
He readied another dose. According to my doctor, I could safely take up to twelve doses before overdosing, but I didn’t want to play the guinea pig. I inhaled the second dose and waited for my lungs to chill out.
They did not chill out. If anything, I struggled harder.
Nick was on top of it.