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“Go on, Teal,” she ordered. “I have more important things to do than baby-sit a sixteen-year-old girl who should know better.”

I left the office and, with her walking beside me, went to the nurse’s office, which fortunately was only two doors down.

Mrs. Miller looked up from her desk. She was completing one report or another. That’s all she ever seemed to do in this place, I thought, complete reports or coddle one of the snob birds who was having a bad monthly, as she referred to it.

“What is it?” she asked, staring up at me, her eyes glittering with suspicion.

“Our Miss Sommers has had something alcoholic to drink, apparently. She needs to sleep it off until her mother arrives. She was sent to the office but Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t want to see her in this condition.”

Mrs. Miller was up and around her desk. She took a long look at me and then directed me to one of the small rooms in which she had a cot-size bed.

“How are you feeling now?”

My hiccuping had finally stopped, but that didn’t help all that much.

“Nauseated,” I said.

“Lie down. If you have the urge to regurgitate, use this,” she said, putting a basin next to the bed. There wasn’t any sympathy in her voice, just firmness. “Why do you do this?”

Instead of answering her, I closed my eyes. The question seemed to reverberate in my brain: Why do you do this? Why do you do any of these things, Teal? Who do you think you’re hurting? Where is your appreciation for all the wonderful things you have and all the wonderful things we’re doing for you? Blah blah, I thought. It was like a broken CD or like being locked into an echo chamber.

I felt my stomach settle down, and moments later, I was asleep.

“What have you done?” I heard someone shout through the walls of my pleasant cocoon. I groaned, opened my eyes reluctantly, and looked up at my mother.

I never fully appreciate how tall she is, I thought, or how bony her shoulders are, even through her stylish designer suit. My father accused her of being anorexic, but somewhere, at one of her spas, no doubt, someone told her if she stayed thin, she would never look old. To me, just the contrary was happening. She was in her late forties, but looked ten years older. Her skin seemed so taut over those high cheekbones she prized, and the effect of that was to emphasize her jawbone. In dim lighting, with just a glow on her face, she looked like a skeleton. I told her that once, and she nearly took off my head with a sharp slap. Despite the miles and miles of skin creams she had available on her vanity table, her hands were never soft to me. I couldn’t remember them ever being soft, and of course, she had perfect nails always. She once missed an important gynecological exam because it conflicted with her manicure.

“Well?” she demanded. She swung her purse toward me in an aborted move to club me into attention. It hovered over my face a moment, and then she brought it back toward her.

I scrubbed my cheeks with my palms and, unfortunately, burped.

She stepped back as if I was truly going to explode.

“You’re disgusting,” she said, pulling the corners of her mouth down.

I sat up.

“Is it morning already?” I teased.

My mother’s eyes were truly her best feature. They were normally big, luscious-looking hazel-green, with naturally long eyelashes. She could widen them to almost twice their size when she wanted to show her rage or surprise. For a moment she looked all eyes to me, like some sort of extraterrestrial creature.

“You’re not funny, Teal. Do you know how much your father is spending to have you attend school here?” she asked.

I always thought it was odd how she referred to any expenditures the family had as purely my father’s. She was obviously not one of those wives who believe half of everything their husbands own belongs to them. Sometimes, she gave me the feeling that she was as much a tenant in the home as my older brother, Carson, had been, and I still was.

“I forgot, Mother,” I said.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” she said, tapping her foot after each word for emphasis. To me she looked like she was keeping beat to music. “If we add that to all the money he’s spent on psychotherapy, tutors, fixing the things you’ve broken, paying off people who have lodged complaints against you, and everything else I can’t think of, he’s spent as much as some third world countries spend over a year!”

“Maybe he should ask the UN for help, then,” I said.

“Get up,” she snapped. “You’ve embarrassed me again and again. Don’t you have any concern for this family and its reputation? Oh, what have I done to deserve this?” she asked the ceiling.

“Forgot your birth control pills sixteen years ago?” I offered.

She turned a shade darker than blood red and looked out toward Mrs. Miller’s desk. In front of other people, my mother was always stylish, elegant, and able to manage her rage. She rarely, if ever, had a strand of hair out of place, and when I was little, I used to believe that creases were terrified of forming in her clothing. She would have them ironed to oblivion.

“I suppose this is really all my fault,” she said, not really sounding like she was taking the blame, “for having you so late in life.”