Free Going Vintage by Lindsey Leavitt Page B

monotones. As if on cue, the “guide” says, “Bertha’s been hogging that shower for thirty years now! If you don’t believe me, just look at all those wrinkles.”
We fall quiet as we pass the apes, go under the waterfall, hear another awful joke. Ginnie pokes my side. “You distracted me with elephants. I was going to say, isn’t telling someone else to partake of the Internet Evil just the same as you using the evil yourself?”
“More elephants!” I point.
Mom leans across the French tourists in front of us, sticking her head in between the annoyed couple. “What’s evil? Jeremy? Are you two talking about Jeremy?” My mom has this uncanny ability to butt into any conversation with one easily misunderstood word. “What did he do that was evil?”
“Nothing!” I yell back, just at Ginnie offers, “He tooled out on Mallory.”
“‘Tooled out’?”
More cruise buddies are staring at us now. Ginnie goes on like we’re having a conversation about the weather in our kitchen. “Or tooled up. His ability to tool knows no bounds.”
“Is there a new meaning to the word tool I don’t know about?” Mom asks.
“Switch?” the tourists between us ask.
“Oh, thank you, yes! Come back here, Kevin.” She grabs Dad’s arm and there’s a scuffle as they maneuver to new seats. The tour guide stops his rehearsed commentary. “Sir, in the Donald Duck shirt, don’t fall overboard. Those hippos look hungry.”
Everyone has a good laugh, except us, because this guide is stupid and so is my mom for picking this precise moment to scour for details. Dad turns his attention back to the guide, but my mom huddles up to Ginnie and me, her eyes big and expectant. “What were you saying about Jeremy?”
“Look, Mom. Jeremy and I … just grew apart,” I say.
Ginnie snorts.
“So he didn’t dump you?” Mom asks.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Why would you assume Jeremy dumped me?”
“I didn’t,” Mom says a little too quickly. She adores Jeremy. She bought him a Baltimore Orioles baseball hat online. Yes, the Orioles, the most boring team in the major leagues. That should have been an indication he was a bad seed to begin with, right up there with the deep V.
“I just don’t see why you would break up with him.”
“But you could see why he would break up with me ?” I ask.
Ginnie gives a low whistle.
Mom readjusts her Cinderella T-shirt. “No, of course not. I just know how much you like him and I want you to be happy. He’s a smart boy, ambitious and nice—”
“And he’s a tool,” Ginnie says.
I am this close to adding “and he cheated on me with a girl named BubbleYum.” But then I would have to give Mom the details, and I’ve been burned enough by her lust for news. Like when I told her about my first kiss with Cameron Steeples in seventh grade, and the next day I pick up the phone to hear her dissecting the kiss with Cameron’s mom. She thinks she has a right to know my everything just because she had a forty-hour natural labor with me. My life would be so much easier if she would have just taken that stupid epidural.
“Villagers,” I say.
We boat past a village of natives, blow darts sail past us, we narrowly escape, and Dad lets out a hearty chuckle at another lame tour-guide joke we’ve heard 49,023 times. He twists around. “So your boyfriend is a tool. Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Dad! The entire Amazon rain forest does not need to know the details of my love life.”
“Did you break up with him?” Dad asks.
“Thank you!” I say. “See, Mom? Did I break up with him .”
“Well, I have to make some sort of assumption when all you give me is, you grew apart . I’ve used that excuse before; I know how it is. You never tell me anything.”
“I wasn’t a fan of Jeremy,” Dad says. “Shifty eyes.”
Mom sticks one hand on her hip. Her shirt has dipped low again, and I catch the French guy giving her scoop neck a look-see. “Kevin, shifty eyes?”
Dad wiggles his eyebrows.