Later, I snuggle up beside her. “Tell me the story about when I almost drowned?” I ask her, so then she can be the hero and it’ll make her feel better. But she says nothing and I switch on the television and I pretend that what we’re watching is funny. It’s a sitcom about a family, two kids, a mum, and a dad. Their idea of tension is an argument about who gets the cottage out back. At the end, everyone’s happy because that’s what happens in television land. Things get solved in thirty minutes.

God, I want to live there.

chapter 23

MS. QUINN SENDS me up to the counselor on Friday. Sometimes I wonder how I come across to these people. Is it written all over my face, or does the whole world just know every detail of my family life?

I stand in front of Ms. Quinn’s desk, unimpressed. I’m not interested in someone picking my brain. Me going to see a counselor is not going to make Mia any better.

“I send everyone up to him,” she tells me.

“No you don’t.”

“How do you know, Francesca? People keep counselor visits quiet, so it’s not as if they’re going to tell you they’ve gone to see him.”

“I don’t feel like talking. I’m fine, anyway. Actually, I’m better than I’ve ever been, and if I have to speak to anyone, I trust you.”

Saying that to teachers always works. The emotional ones like Ms. Quinn thrive on being needed.

She smiles. “I’m glad.”

“Thanks for your concern, though,” I say, turning to walk out.

“No problem at all. Come and see me after you’ve spoken to him. I’ll ring to tell him you’re on your way up.”

I turn back to face her.

“I thought we agreed that I wasn’t going.”

“No,” she says, in what I know is feigned confusion. “You go to Mr. Hector and I go on to be the least gullible teacher in this school.”

No wonder the guys say she’s a bitch.

“Would it hurt to speak to someone who is completely objective?” she asks.

“Objective about what?”

“Objective about what’s going on at home, Francesca.”

“You don’t know anything about what’s going on in my home.”

“We could do this for another hour, but I’ve got classes and you’re still going to the counselor.”

“That’s bullying!”

“Oh please, I’m nowhere near the bullying stage.”

I face her, arms folded. If this woman thinks she’s going to win this one, she’s sorely mistaken.

The counselor’s not that bad.

Not that I can see myself wanting to visit him again, but he doesn’t try to make me write things down or keep a journal of my pain, and he never once tells me that things are going to be fine.

I explain to him that my dad tells me that things are going to be fine all the time. Mr. Hector asks me how I feel about that, and because I sense he’s going to start analyzing me, I make it up and tell him what he wants to hear.

That every time my dad says that everything’s okay, I want to scream. Because everything’s not okay. The woman who has driven this family for longer than I’ve been alive can’t leave the house, so how can that be okay? “Okay” is coming home and your parents are having an argument. “Okay” is Mia picking us up from school and going grocery shopping and us dancing in the aisle to the pathetic music over the PA system. “Okay” is Mia telling me what’s best for me and me completely disagreeing, and it’s Mia telling my father to carry the load a bit more because she’s sick of having to do all the running around. “Okay” is listening to them have sex at night and blocking your ears because you think listening to your parents having sex is a form of child abuse. “Okay” is them bantering with each other in front of you and you not understanding a single word because they’re speaking in riddles they alone understand. “Okay” is knowing what to expect.

In the end I don’t say much to him at all, and I go back to Ms. Quinn, who’s speaking on the phone and eyeing me at the same time. I like her office. It’s incredibly tidy, but it’s got personality, not to mention a sofa. She has music playing all the time. Today it’s Counting Crows, and I feel as melancholy as the lead singer’s voice.

“I’m cured,” I tell her when she gets off the phone.

“Are you, now?”

“Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

“No. I want to hear that you’re happy.”

“Are you?”

She thinks for a moment. She’s almost my mother’s age, and they’re kind of similar in a way. If my mum were well, I could imagine them hitting it off.

“Most of the time I am,” she tells me.

“Why not all of the time?”

She eyes me suspiciously. “You’re trying to get out of Mr. Brolin’s class, aren’t you?”

I grin and shrug. “Maybe. I bet if you were in my shoes, you would too, but you’re going to plead professionalism and not put down a colleague.”

“Go to class.”

I kind of like her when she’s relaxed. She doesn’t have that tired, looking-for-something-better expression some of my Stella teachers had. When I grow up, I think I’m going to be a teacher or maybe even a counselor.

I walk to Brolin’s class feeling lighter in mood. He gives me a detention for being late without a note. Actually, I do have a note from Ms. Quinn, but he doesn’t really give me a chance, so I say, “If that’s what makes you happy,” and he sends me down to Ms. Quinn for being rude.

“So where were we?” I ask her, getting comfortable on the sofa.

chapter 24

ANGELINA’S WEDDING DAY comes fast, and the stress that I feel over the cleavage dress is further emphasized by the fact that even the priest looks down at my chest when he’s giving me instructions.

But I take a deep breath and I do the comparison thing. People are dying of hunger and terrorists are creating fear, and evil politicians are taking advantage of that fear and refugee kids are drowning trying to come to our country and Mia can’t even go to her favorite niece’s wedding, and the list goes on forever.

Suddenly a cleavage is nothing but me being pathetic. So Pachelbel’s Canon starts and it’s my cue.

The ushers open the door and I step inside.

And I step right back outside again!

Will Trombal is in the fifth-last row, third person from the end. I can’t breathe.

“Frankie?”

The whole bridal party is looking at me.

“I can’t go out there,” I tell them.

Angelina lets go of my uncle Rocco’s arm and steps forward. The others are stunned.

“Brides and grooms are allowed to have second thoughts. Not bridesmaids,” Vera explains in her duh-brain voice.

Angelina holds up her hands as if to say, I’m trying to stay calm.

“I’m in a pretty bad mood, Frankie. My mother-in-law’s from Queensland and she wants to toast the Queen at the reception and Angus doesn’t want to upset her, but he’s fine about upsetting me. I want desperately to have a cigarette and I’ve promised Angus that I’ll give up smoking on our wedding day if he gives up his Old Boys rugby shorts. At this exact moment, I feel like that cigarette. Don’t let me begin my marriage as a liar.”

The others are looking at me pleadingly. One does not upset Angelina on any given day, let alone her wedding day. After a moment I nod. I’ve seen Angus in the shorts. They should have been thrown out fifteen years ago when he graduated from high school.

So I walk in.

Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.

I look at him. We don’t make eye contact, because he’s looking at the cleavage.

After the ceremony, my nonna tries to pin my dress to cover me up, relishing the absence of my mother. Of course Will sees all this, and I begin to wonder when my humiliation will be complete.