I sighed. “I have a resume. I already asked if they were hiring at The Sword and Dice and they said they’d get back to me.”
“I doubt the comic book store is hiring,” she said, unimpressed, before she started towards the stairs. “I’m surprised Jordan Cooper’s managed to keep it open as long as he has. I’ll go down to The Enchanted Florist tomorrow and speak with Owen. That girl he has working there was incredibly rude to me the other day and refused to call him so I could make a complaint about her.”
“Okay, Karen,” I muttered under my breath.
Mom turned. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
She clearly didn’t believe me and shot a very Karen-esque look in my direction. “Well, if he’s willing to hire her, I bet he’s one of the few people in town who would be willing to overlook your new… style and possibly offer you a job.”
And there it was; yet another dig at my hair, and my new eyebrow piercing, and the fact that I wasn’t dressed like her President of the Student Council Princess anymore.
I wish I could say it had been a gradual transformation, that I hadn’t been the stereotypical example of the good-girl going wild as soon as she was on her own for the first time. However, years of living with Liz Roth, head of the Minwack Falls Homeowners Association, vice-president of the Minwack Falls High School Parent-Teacher Association, and volunteer board member for the Minwack Falls Good Neighbour Society, had instilled an almost-detrimental instinct to be honest in me.
I was absolutely the model of a rebellious girl experiencing life away from an overbearing mother and semi-absent father.
I’d left for university as a geeky girl with suitcases full of modest blouses and nice-but-not-too-tight jeans. At the end of the semester, I returned home with suitcases full of pop culture t-shirts, dark jeans that were ripped in all the right places, and Chuck Taylors that I’d kept on my feet day in and day out so I could get that worn-in look as fast as possible. I was still geeky and still a girl, but now that girl had bright blue hair, an eyebrow ring, and an exasperatedly cynical attitude.
I loved who I had become. I loved being Ramona, the girl with wild hair and full of laughter. I loved geeking out with my friends over video games and sci-fi movies and superheroes. I loved being able to show people that girl instead of the girl I had to be under my mother’s roof.
Back home, though, that girl wasn’t welcome. That girl was an embarrassment to the head of the HOA. Worse, I was in for another three full months of putting up with my mom’s pressure to dye my hair back to a respectable colour and stop wearing studded belts and ripped jeans.
“…teach you that your choices have consequences,” Mom was saying, and I’d been so distracted I hadn’t even bothered imagining what she might have said. “If The Enchanted Florist won’t hire you, you’ll need to get your hair fixed.”
“My hair isn’t broken.”
“I’m not letting you sit down here playing video games all summer. You need to get a job.”
“Trust me, I’d like nothing more,” I said. “I could use the break.”
Before Mom could respond—and trust me, her inner Karen was desperate to give me a piece of its mind—we were interrupted by the sound of the door opening above us. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.𝘤𝘰𝘮
“Your father’s home,” she said unnecessarily. “Finish tidying up here and come set the table.”
I waited until she had started back up the basement stairs to let out the breath I’d been holding, leaning miserably against the couch as the darkness enveloped me again.
It was going to be a long frucking summer.
**
I was saved from having to work on my resume with my mom peering over my shoulder by her innate need to be involved in every disaster.
Dinner was blissfully quiet. Dad didn’t say much, as per usual, and Mom’s constant chatter manifested as mumbled frustrations while she scrolled through the town Facebook page on her phone, the mushy broccoli and dry chicken on her plate abandoned as she took control of the situation via social media.
As quickly as I could, I shovelled bite after bite of mediocre, overcooked blandness into my mouth. Like most of my classmates in first year, I’d gained the ubiquitous Freshman Fifteen, but I hadn’t minded in the slightest. I’d been relatively thin most of my life, and putting on some weight had finally made me look less like a twelve-year-old boy and more like an actual, honest-to-God woman.
Unfortunately, a full summer of my mom’s cooking meant that I’d probably slim down to nothingness again unless I started stopping by the Hokey Pokey Ice Cream Parlour twice a day. Which wasn’t a terrible idea, actually; their ice cream was all homemade and it was phenomenal.
Except that would take money, and while I was rich in Rupees and Bells and Caps, the owners of the Hokey Pokey only accepted boring old dollars.
Actually, maybe the Hokey Pokey was hiring. My blue hair would be considered whimsical and fun, though I might have to take out my eyebrow piercing or at least cover it. Still, I’d have an excuse to be out of the house and away from my mom, plus I’d be able to eat all the ice cream I wanted.
I wasn’t about to admit that my mom had been right about working on my resume, though, so instead of doing something productive, I stole away to my bedroom to play video games.
Not The Circlet of Nianus, obviously. My PlayStation wasn’t so good at working without the whole “power” thing. With the whole power out, my options were limited to… well, my Nintendo Switch.
It was fully charged, thankfully, and I hoped by the time the battery was drained, the power would be back. I’d started a new playthrough of Breath of the Wild on the drive back from university since my mom had insisted on coming up to campus to “help” me pack, then on driving my car back to Minwack Falls. I obliged, but only because I probably would have driven into oncoming traffic to get away from her incessant sniffling about my horrible hair colour and insistence that my piercing would leave a hideous scar across my face, rendering me entirely unhireable.
It ended up being a good thing, though. She had pulled over for a break and I’d opened my glove box to hide my Switch while I used the grungy gas station bathroom. Mom wasn’t looking, thankfully, because I forgot there was a sample-sized bottle of lube, a bunch of pamphlets about birth control and STDs, and two handfuls of the free condoms they gave out at the university clinic. Knowing my luck, if I’d been driving, Mom would have decided to go snooping through the glove box, and then I would have for sure had to drive into oncoming traffic to avoid that uncomfortable lecture.
And, of course, it wouldn’t matter if I told her that I hadn’t actually used any of the birth control or condoms or lube. She wouldn’t believe for a second that I had all that stuff in my car and was still a virgin, even though it was true. Despite my desire to rebel, the internalization of my mom’s lectures about abstinence and not being “that” kind of girl had really fucked with me. 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.𝘤𝘰𝘮
I’d done my best to get past that, but the problem with being the wild and free type of girl with colourful hair and an eyebrow piercing is that apparently, there were a lot of guys who thought I existed solely to teach them about life, the universe, and everything. Specifically, they seemed to think that the answer lay in my vagina.
Since I was fairly certain that nothing in my vagina added up to forty-two and would therefore disappoint those wannabe hitchhikers, I’d shied away from men in general while at university. Aside from a couple of somewhat regrettable makeout sessions at parties and an unremarkable handjob, after which the guy had fumbled around unimpressively in my panties until I got bored and went back to my dorm to play Red Dead Redemption, I hadn’t really had a chance to experience the “sexual liberation” side of things.
I mean, I wanted to. I wasn’t about to wait until marriage. Hell, I didn’t even know if I wanted to get married. I just wanted my first time to be with someone who liked me as more than a concept.
That was an issue for another time, though. If I couldn’t find a guy I was willing to lose my virginity to at the university, the chances of there being someone in Minwack Falls were practically non-existent.
In no time at all, I was immersed in the kingdom of Hyrule. I’d started this playthrough in Gerudo Town just for the hell of it, and had already released the Divine Beast Vah Naboris, which was too bad; given the storm, playing the lightning-themed part of the game would have been appropriate. Instead, I decided to head to Zora’s Domain, which I guess was probably even more appropriate, given the rain and all.
It’s not like there was any other strategy for me to follow. I mean, I started the playthrough in Gerudo Town.
In any case, it didn’t matter. I found Prince Sidon at the Inogo Bridge and started my long trek towards Zora’s Domain, battling Ganon’s monsters along the way and picking up all the loot I could carry.
Falling into the world of a video game was one of my favourite things. I loved losing myself to the story, the characters, the challenge… for a while, it didn’t matter if I was quiet-and-geeky Ramona or wild-and-geeky Ramona. Ramona didn’t exist in Hyrule; in Hyrule, I was Link, and instead of battling my mother’s constant disappointment, I was battling Lizalfos which, despite trying to murder me with shock arrows, were slightly more compassionate than she was.
That thought made me picture my mom as a Lizalfos, which was far more hilarious than it had any right to be, and I was fighting back a smile as I threw bombs at a hoard of them when my bedroom door flew open without so much as a warning knock.
“It’s going to be all night,” Mom said.
