Free The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore Page A

what I’m asking you.”
    Angela put on her best exasperated face. In fact she had been crying in the afternoons. She couldn’t explain it to her mother any better than she could explain it to herself. She was not, in general, a crying sort of person. She tried to make her expression
impassive.
    “So you haven’t been crying? Angela?”
    “No, Mom, I haven’t been crying.” Angela bit down on her lower lip, hard. God.
    Angela, did you practice?
    Angela, kick the ball! Angela, reach for the wall!
    Her mother exhaled audibly and rubbed her hands together like that was that and said, “Good.” Then she said, “Mrs. Fletcher called earlier.”
    Instinctively, Angela checked her phone, which she kept on the desk but which she turned facedown and muted while she was doing homework. “I didn’t get any calls.”
    “The home phone.” Angela’s mother looked around the room, seeking, no doubt, another pile of clutter to which she could bring order. But with the exception of the recently folded shirt Angela did not allow clutter; her room was as neat as a pin (seriously, what did that mean?). All the clutter in this room was smack-dab in the middle of Angela’s mind. Which was a crowded and bewildering place.
    “She did? She called the home phone? Nobody calls the home phone.” Angela chewed at a fingernail. She thought painting them black might have helped her kick the habit, but so far it hadn’t.
    “Just telemarketers,” agreed her mother. Then gently moving Angela’s hand away from her mouth, “No nibbles, honey.” (That’s what she used to say to Angela when she was young, Cecily’s age, and had first begun biting the nails.) Angela thought about protesting the choice of phrase, but she was too tired. She let her hand fall to her lap. “But anyway. She wanted to know if you could babysit, on Friday night.”
    “Babysit?” Angela had stopped babysitting regularly for the Fletchers. Too busy, for one thing. And for another, Joshua Fletcher was a sweet kid (sort of, sweet
ish,
anyway), but he had so much untamed energy that Angela spent half the time running around just making sure he didn’t hurt himself. When the younger Fletcher, Colton, was eleven months old—Angela was thirteen—Angela had been there when he’d taken his first steps; she’d thought to capture it with a video taken with her newly acquired phone, and Mrs. Fletcher had been forever grateful. Recently Joshua had been diagnosed with ADHD and the Fletchers had gotten divorced.
    “Do you think you might do it, Angela? She’s really in a bind, she sounded desperate. Things have been tough for them, and she never even asks anymore, she knows you’re so busy. It’s the night before the auction and I realize I asked you to stay here with the girls and I hate to take up your whole weekend. But.” Angela’s mother put the heels of her palms to her forehead and massaged the skin outward. Angela had asked her once why she did that and Nora had said, regretfully, “Trying to smooth away the wrinkles.”
    Angela said, “I don’t know…there’s a meet on Saturday.” She flipped through
Angela’s Ashes.
So many more pages to go. Her flute, still in its case, seemed to be reprimanding her.
    “Oh!” said her mother. “You’re reading
Angela’s Ashes
! I loved that book.” Then, channeling Cecily’s dance teacher, the eminent Seamus O’Malley, Nora said, “Bit of a downer though, yeah?”
    Angela allowed herself a small smile: her mother was trying.
Assiduously.
“That sounded British,” she said. “Or South African.”
    “Listen, honey, you know I don’t try to dictate your schedule to you but this time I would really, really appreciate it. If you would help out Anna. She’s had a hard time since the divorce and I have a feeling”—here she lowered her voice, as though the walls were listening—“I have a feeling that she might be going on
a date.
”
    Henrietta Faulkner had beaten her on two out of six hills. There