Page 1 of Rock Bottom Girl

1

Marley

August

This was what rock bottom looked like.

My childhood room—unchanged except for a new duvet—with the same dark green carpet, the same dull yellow walls. The same New Kids on the Block poster I’d defaced with my fourth-grade best friend and a bottle of sparkly purple nail polish.

We’d been too cool to like what everyone else in our class liked.

Yep. That same too-cool elementary school rebel was now thirty-eight, downsized, broken up with, and newly homeless.

I, Marley Cicero, was not winning at life.

My fingers worried at a pill on the peach bedspread while I tried not to think about the fact that everything I owned fit into two suitcases and three cardboard boxes, all tossed in front of the closet where I’d once hidden warm Diet Mountain Dews and pilfered vanilla cigarettes.

I’d given my parents enough of a heads up that they had time to move their winter wardrobe out of the closet and into my sister’s old room, which Dad now used as a calligraphy studio. When Zinnia got married, they’d repurposed her bedroom and left mine alone. I had a feeling it was because they knew Zinnia would never return home with a suitcase and a sob story.

My phone signaled a text, and I held the screen up to my face.

Zinnia: Welcome home, sis! Hope Mom and Dad’s retirement sex doesn’t keep you awake at night.

I sighed, hating the fact that my perfect, brilliant, beautiful sister knew what a gigantic loser I was. I’d text her back later when I was feeling less like roadkill. Rolling my head to the side took the maximum amount of effort I was capable of. The hot pink alarm clock informed me that it was 7:05 p.m. Too early for bed. Too late for me to suddenly become a less ambivalent girlfriend or a better director of social media management at my ex-job.

That left only one thing. Smothering by Harry Potter pillow. Mustering the necessary energy, I rolled and pressed my face to Daniel Radcliffe’s.

There was a quiet knock on my door. I knew that knock. It was the “tread carefully—my teenage daughter is unstable” knock.

“You aren’t in there smothering yourself, are you?” Dad asked through the door.

“Mmmph.”

Retirement must have made my father braver than he’d been before because I heard the jiggling of the handle no one had bothered to tighten since I moved out sixteen years ago. Sixteen stupid, wasted, crappy, pathetic years.

Okay. Now, I was being a little too melodramatic. It was like the room still gave off the fumes of teenage hormones of despair. It was possible they’d seeped into the drywall and carpet, poisoning anyone who entered…like asbestos. Or lead paint.

The mattress shifted under my father’s weight as he settled on the edge of the bed.

“The way I see it, you’ve got two choices, snack cake.” I’d earned the nickname due to my insatiable appetite for the delectable little plastic-wrapped desserts. My pre-teens were spent embracing the addiction, and then my teen years and early twenties were mostly focused on battling the hold that processed sugar had on me. Now, just the thought of golden cake and butterscotch icing had my mouth watering all over Harry Potter’s face.

“You can either wallow in disappointment—which is a legitimate choice—or you can embrace this change as a reboot of sorts.” My father, Ned Cicero, had the voice of a Muppet and was a retired computer engineer. A stereotypical one with plaid, short-sleeved button-downs, and thick glasses. He’d been with the local IBM headquarters for thirty years before retiring last year. You could take the geek out of the cubicle, but you sure as hell couldn’t take the cubicle out of the geek.

I lethargically rolled to one side. “Dad, I promise that I’m not going to be one of those adult children that move back home temporarily and then never move back out,” I said fervently.

“You can stay as long as you like. Did I mention we’re opening my calligraphy studio as an Airbnb?” he asked, shoving his glasses up his nose.

I sat up. That was news. My parents were golfing and calligraphy-ing and now starting an Airbnb. And what was I doing? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Squat. I’d stay here a month tops. Regroup. Refresh the ol’ resume. Try to make the new-job-every-two-years thing look like a benefit. Maybe I’d reconnect with some old friends while I was in town. Okay, maybe not.

I’d land on my feet, dammit. Or at least my hands and knees.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Dad. But I’m going to do something,” I promised.

He patted my knee in that absent, fatherly kind of way. “Sure you are.” It was the kind of parental enthusiasm applied to preschooler statements about becoming astronauts and rock stars.

The door burst open, and my mother exploded into the room. Where Ned was calm and contemplative, Jessica Cicero was an effusive ball of energy. She was excited over everything from the first snowfall of the year to front-load washers with windows. This unusual zest for life had served her well in her former career as a first-grade teacher.

“You arenotgoing to believe this, Marley! Fate has intervened,” she announced grandly. The plastic bangles on her left wrist clanked against tan skin. She was pretty. And not just for her age. She had lovely blonde hair that she touched up every four weeks and kept cut short in a face-framing bob long enough to pull back into a stub of a ponytail. She had bright blue eyes that crinkled nicely in the corners because she was always laughing or smiling about something.