by Louise Rozett
Release Date: 01/25/15
Summary from Goodreads:
For Rose Zarelli, freshman year was about controlling her rage. Sophomore year was about finding her voice. With all that behind her, junior year should be a breeze, right? Nope. When a horrific video surfaces, Rose needs the one person she wants to be done with, the person who has broken her heart twice—Jamie Forta. But as the intensity between them heats up, Rose realizes she isn’t the only one who needs help. The thing is, Jamie doesn’t see it that way—and that could cost them both everything.
***
ROSE ZARELLI is done confessing because confessions are for people who have done something wrong. And I haven't done anything wrong. Here, I'll prove it to you.
1) After my mother got that call, I “borrowed” her car. (Because you can’t steal your mother’s car, can you?) I don’t really remember driving downtown, but I do remember...
2) …getting past the bouncer at Dizzy’s (I mean, it’s his job to spot a fake ID, so that’s on him)…
3) …and then later, telling my mother the truth about the bar but lying about how I got in. (A truth totally cancels out a lie, right?)
After all, what’s a little duplicity when finding Jamie Forta is the only thing that’s going to keep you from losing what’s left of your mind?
See? Junior year is off to a great start.
Buy
Links:
Excerpt:
“Stolen
Car,” 1000 Kisses, Patty Griffin
_______________________
Chapter 2
“Rose, you cannot just take my
car without asking.”
My mother is trying to hide from
me the fact that she’s been crying. She’s still in her earth-toned shrink
clothes though I know she saw her last adolescent head-case over two hours ago.
We’re side by side in the kitchen, standing at the sink in front of the picture
window framed in tiny white lights, where she and my father used to drink
coffee and look out at the backyard together in the mornings.
My mother leans forward and snaps
on the outside lights, and I see that our big, beautiful maples are beginning
to turn. In another week or two, our back lawn will be covered in leaves the
color of fire. She will have to ask me twice before I rake them—I love the way
they look.
“My car is not yours to do with
as you please,” she says.
We stare straight ahead, not able
to look at each other. We both know we’re not really arguing about the car.
It’s just easier than arguing about the video.
Has she watched it? I try to wrap
my brain around the idea of my mother seeing my father—the man she fell in love
with and married and had two kids with—die in a video taken on some jackass’s
smartphone. A smartphone.
When I finally look at her, I see
my face in hers, in the curve of her chin and cheekbone, in her red-rimmed
eyes. I made this whole thing worse for her by disappearing for a few hours. I
wonder if she feels like people keep abandoning her: Dad, my brother Peter, her
boyfriend Dirk, and now me.
When I touch her arm, she’s
surprised, although whether she’s surprised that I touched her or that I’m
still standing here, I’m not sure. “I’m sorry I left like that. I don’t know
what happened.”
“Where did you go, Rose?”
This is the question I’m trying
not to answer. I could lie, because lying comes easily to me these days, even
when I’m trying to be sincere and genuine—definitely something to be proud of.
But my guess is, she already knows the answer.
My mother made it clear that
Jamie was off limits for a while after the parking lot incident. Part of me was
fine with that—Jamie didn’t give me the chance to explain my role in that whole
thing, so he didn’t deserve my explanation. I didn’t call him and he didn’t
call me, which was basically a repeat of what happened last summer. Except last
summer I knew I’d be seeing him when school started again. Not the case this
time. So one day I caved and asked Angelo—Jamie’s best friend and my bandmate—how
Jamie was doing. That’s how I found out he was working at Dizzy’s.
I’m not sure how my mother found
out, but I think she keeps pretty close tabs on Jamie, as much for his sake as
for mine. He was my mom’s patient after his mom died, and she likes him. I’d go
so far as to say that she has a soft spot for him. She knows he’s a
heart-of-gold guy who has had a lot of rough things to deal with. But as far as
she’s concerned, he now has too many strikes against him, not the least of
which is that he’s a dropout with a “history of violence” who works in a bar.
It doesn’t matter that he’s only
violent when he’s defending someone he cares about. It also doesn’t matter that
I’ve had my own issues with violence—she prefers to overlook that. I can’t
blame her. What mother wants to acknowledge that her daughter has an ugly
streak?
When I don’t answer her question,
my mother goes over to our rickety chrome and Formica table, which still has
our dinner dishes on it, and drops into one of the vintage red vinyl chairs.
She slides her glasses up onto her head and pushes the heels of her hands into
her eyes. She always forgets what this does to her eye makeup, and I usually
remind her not to do it, but not this time. “Just tell me where you went in my
car without permission.”
I sit down across from her, the
vinyl chair squeaking in protest—or warning—that I shouldn’t do what I’m about
to do. I do it anyway. “I went to see Jamie.”
She pulls her hands from her eyes
to look at me. “At his house?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“You went to Dizzy’s? And they
let you in?”
“I told the guy at the door that
I just had to talk to Jamie for a minute. It wasn’t like they were going to let
me drink anything.” I am able to rationalize my decision to keep the part about
my fake ID to myself because I no longer have it. Why worry her even more?
She shakes her head, dumbfounded.
“You’re sixteen, Rose. There are no circumstances—none—under which you should be in a bar. No car for two weeks. And
if I find out that you set foot in that place again, or that you’re seeing
Jamie, you will be grounded until you’re done with high school.” I’m getting
off easy, but I stare at the table and keep quiet because I don’t want her to
know I know. “I thought we decided you were going to keep your distance from
Jamie.”
I don’t remember much about the
time that passed between when my mother told me about the video and when I was
standing in line at Dizzy’s. But I do know that talking to Jamie was suddenly a
matter of life or death. “I felt like he’d know what to do. About watching it.”
“And did he?”
“It turns out he wasn’t
interested in talking to me.”
When she speaks again, her voice
is hesitant. “So you haven’t seen it yet?”
“No. Have you?” The question
slips out before I can think better of it.
She looks at her hands clasped on
the table as if she doesn’t recognize them.
She watched it. My mother watched
it. By herself.
Maybe if I ask her about it, I won’t
be tempted to go online and undo all the progress I’ve made in the last two
years managing the rage, the panic and my out-of-control imagination. But when
her hands slowly rise from the table to cover her mouth as if she’s afraid that
what’s happening inside her might come out, I know I’m not going to ask her a
thing.
I gently wrap my fingers around
her wrists and hold on. “Breathe, Mom,” I whisper.
Her blue eyes meet mine, and I
can see that she feels terrible that I’m comforting her and not the other way
around. But she’s the one who saw the jackass’s video, not me, and
unfortunately for her, there are no rules for this situation, there is no
self-help book. My brain inappropriately churns out a title—What to Do When Someone Films Your Husband’s
Death With a Smartphone: A Handbook—before it settles.
I think this is what our shrink, Caron,
meant when she said grief isn’t linear—it just keeps looping back around. Caron
also said that sometimes all you can do is breathe and exist, and that’s
enough. So that’s what my mom and I do. We sit there, inhaling and exhaling.
When the front door opens, my mom
looks up at the clock. We listen together as Holly drops her keys in the tray,
steps out of her noisy clogs and makes her way toward the kitchen, her silver
bangles clinking against each other on her arms. It’s a sound we’ve both gotten
used to in the last few months, and it’s a comfort.
Last year, the alarmingly lovely
Holly Taylor and her dad, Dirk, moved to Union from Los Angeles so he could
teach for a year in the drama school at Yale. Holly is that rare breed of girl
who is as nice as she is beautiful. She and I became friends and then Dirk and
my mother started dating. I was not a
Dirk fan. Despite—or because of—his being a famous movie actor, he was a total
cheese-ball. Plus, there was the small matter of him not being my father. But
he made my mom happy. I hadn’t seen her happy in a long time, so I got over
myself and tried to be supportive. When his year at Yale ended, he went back to
LA to do a TV show, but Holly didn’t want to leave Union. Mom told Dirk she
could live with us, and while he didn’t love the idea, he said yes.
Holly goes through life believing
that good things lie just around the corner for everybody. While I don’t
believe that, I like being in proximity to someone who does. Kind of like my
not believing in God but taking comfort in knowing that Vicky is praying for me
weekly down there in Texas. Well, she says she does it weekly, but I think she
does it daily—she just doesn’t want to freak me out by telling me.
I love having Holly here,
especially since Tracy spent so much of the summer in the city and my brother
Peter went back to Tufts early. My mother likes having her here too, although
it’s complicated for her. Holly is dating a college guy, which my mother sure
as hell would never let me do. I
don’t think Dirk would have let Holly do it either, except that Cal was in one
of Dirk’s classes last year and Dirk liked him. I don’t know anything about
being a parent but I’m guessing Dirk realizes the futility of keeping guys away
from his beautiful daughter. So if she wants to go out with a guy he knows and
trusts, it’s probably in his best interests to let her.
Holly stops in the doorway and leans against
the frame. “Sorry I’m late,” she says, her gaze shifting nervously between my
mom and me.
“How was the play?” My mom’s voice rises a little—she’s trying to sound normal. She pulls a chair out for Holly, patting the seat.
“Dad would have been happy with
their performances but not ecstatic.” Holly makes her way to the table and tucks
a leg under her as she sits, her bangles jingling. “Are you both...?” She stops
short of asking us if we’re okay. “How are you?”
In the silence, the clock over
the stove ticks. And ticks.
“I think we’re in shock,” my
mother finally answers. “Like it just happened again. Which is impossible.” She
sounds like she’s trying to convince herself, her voice cracking. She clears
her throat, picks up the plates that I neglected to clear after dinner in my
burning desire to get the hell out of the house and carries them to the sink.
“Girls, I’m sure you’re curious, but once you see it, you can never unsee it.”
“I’ll load, Mom. It’s my turn.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. “I
can’t keep you from watching it,” she continues as she opens the dishwasher and
puts the plates in without rinsing them, which I’ve never seen her do in my
whole life. “All I can do is tell you that I wish you wouldn’t.” She closes the
dishwasher and turns out the lights, forgetting about the glasses and serving
bowls still on the table, forgetting that Holly and I are still sitting there.
“Rose, I left Peter a message—I just said I needed to speak with him. If you
hear from him, let me know. Don’t stay up much longer—school tomorrow.” As she
leaves us sitting in near darkness, she adds, “No car privileges for a week,
Rose.”
I almost point out that earlier
she’d said two weeks, but I don’t have the heart. Or maybe I’m just being
opportunistic. Holly and I listen as she goes upstairs to her room and closes
her bedroom door.
“She called and told me what
happened—I think she thought you were coming to find me,” Holly whispers, as if
my mother can still hear us. “Did you get my text?” I nod. “So where’d you go?”
“Dizzy’s.”
“Rose! What happened to your plan
to stay away? Wait, how did you get in?”
“I used the ID Tracy gave me.”
Holly gasps delightedly. “And it
worked?”
“Ish. It got me in, but the guy
knew it was fake and he took it when I left.”
“Ooh. Tracy’s not going to like
that,” she says, spinning the bracelets on her arm.
“Well, obviously it wasn’t a very
good fake ID.”
“Obviously. So, what happened to staying
away from Jamie?”
I sigh, wishing I’d handled
everything so differently tonight. “I didn’t go down there to get him back. I
just needed to tell him. I wanted him to say he’d watch it with me, but none of
that matters because he was too busy bartending.”
“How is that possible?” she asks.
“I guess his fake ID is way
better than mine,” I say, knowing that Jamie doesn’t need a fake ID for
anything, ever. “He’s making a lot in tips and he’s very popular.” I think of Ms. Cargo Pants, with her chestnut hair
and green eyes, and her special smile just for Jamie. I snatch a serving bowl
off the table, sending a big spoon clattering to the floor. “There was a girl.
A Yalie,” I add scornfully, before remembering that Holly is dating a Yalie.
“Sorry.”
She waves away my words, scooping
up the spoon and taking the bowl from my hands. “Is he with her?” she asks as
she rinses and loads it.
“I don’t know. They were
definitely flirting. Whatever—I don’t care.”
“Oh stop it, Rose, of course you
do.” She takes out the plates my mother loaded and rinses those, too.
“I don’t. He is not boyfriend
material, and boyfriends are just a distraction anyway—”
Holly has heard my Killing Cinderella diatribe about the
Romance Industrial Complex before. She cuts me off. “None of that stuff changes
the fact that you love Jamie.”
I close the dishwasher a little
too hard, making the glasses clank against each other inside, and change the
subject.
“I love that you went to a play
tonight and I used a fake ID to get into a dive bar. ‘Which one of these girls
is more likely to have a meaningful future?’”
“The bar was more exciting than
the play, trust me.” Holly loops her arm through mine and leads me out of the
kitchen. We turn off the rest of the lights on the first floor and double-check
the front door. When the only light left is the glow of the streetlamps through
the window, Holly says, “I’ll watch it with you if you want.”
I love Holly for offering, but I
shake my head. “Mom is right. You’ll never be able to unsee it.”
“That’s okay.”
“Whatever it is, you don’t need
it in your head.”
“If you’re going to watch it, you
have to watch it with someone, whether it’s me or Jamie or your mother or
Peter. Promise me?” Holly asks.
Can I imagine watching the video
with my mother or my brother? It’ll be brutal enough dealing with my own
feelings—I’m not sure I can handle theirs, too. Which is probably why I went to
see Jamie. But Jamie has his hands full with the Yalies. In fact, he might literally have his hands full of Yalie
at this very moment.
As if she can read my mind, Holly
says, “He’ll come around. He always does when it comes to you.”
Guest Post:
The Drinking Thing
by Louise Rozett
Because of the drinking in No More Confessions, people have asked if I was a party girl in
high school. I wasn’t totally wild back then, but I didn’t exactly play it
safe, either. I had a great group of girlfriends with good heads on their
shoulders, and we all did really well in school. Our parents trusted us (for
the most part), and they weren’t entirely wrong to do so, because we looked out
for each other and had designated drivers when we went out. But the fact is, there
was a lot of underage drinking. It
was a different time, and until recently, I had assumed it was a lot easier back
then to game the system and get alcohol than it is now. But the more stories I
hear, the more I realize that kids are more connected than ever to people who
can hook them up with whatever they want. Kids today have to be way smarter and
savvier in order to stay safe than I did when I was in high school.
My friends and I were incredibly lucky. Nothing terrible
happened to us because of alcohol, although some terrible things happened to
people we knew. So it wasn’t really my experience as a teenager that inspired
the drinking storyline in No More
Confessions. It was my experience as an adult. I’ve watched people I care
about figure out that they had a problem and needed help. I’ve watched them go
through AA and start on the path to getting better and getting their lives
back. It’s an amazing thing seeing people go through recovery, and it’s amazing
to be a small, supportive part of it, even if that support has to come from a
great distance. But it’s also really hard. It’s hard for all sorts of reasons,
mostly because you feel helpless on the sidelines, and maybe also because
you’re still pissed off about things that happened, or didn’t happen.
Without giving too much away, I’ll say that No More Confessions delves into the
downhill slide of alcoholism and touches on the beginnings of recovery, and my
hope is that readers will have sympathy for everyone involved. The book is for
all those people, no matter how young or how old, who are struggling with any
kind of addiction, and for the people who care about them. Because it’s not
easy on either side of the fence.
What’s your take on the drinking thing? Post your answers on
www.facebook.com/LouiseRozettAuthor,
or @Louiserozett.
Links
to Book One:
Links
to Book Two:
About the Author:
Louise Rozett is an author, a playwright, and
a recovering performer. She made her YA debut with Confessions of an Angry
Girl, followed by Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend, both published by
HarlequinTEEN. The next book in the series, No More Confessions, is due out
January 2015. She lives with her 120-pound Bernese Mountain dog Lester (named
after Lester Freamon from THE WIRE, of course) in sunny Los Angeles, and pines
for New York City. Visit www.Louiserozett.com for more info.
Author
Links:
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