Jagged Little Pill, page 1
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Originally produced on Broadway by Vivek Tiwary, Arvind Ethan David, and Eva Price and Caiola Productions, Level Forward & Abigail Disney, Geffen Playhouse-Tenenbaum-Feinberg, James Nederlander, Dean Borell Moravis Silver, Stephen G. Johnson, Concord Theatricals, Bard Theatricals, M. Kilburg Reedy, 42nd.club, Betsy Dollinger, Sundowners, the Araca Group, Jana Bezdek, Len Blavatnik, BSL Enterprises, Burnt Umber Productions, Darren DeVerna & Jeremiah Harris, Daryl Roth, Susan Edelstein, FG Productions, Sue Gilad & Larry Rogowsky, Harmonia, John Gore Theatrical Group, Melissa M. Jones & Barbara H. Freitag, Stephanie Kramer, Lamplighter Projects, Christina Isaly Liceaga, David Mirvish, Spencer B. Ross, Bellanca Smigel Rutter, Iris Smith, Jason Taylor & Sydney Suiter, Rachel Weinstein, W.I.T. Productions/Gabriel Creative Partners, Independent Presenters Network, Universal Music Publishing Group, and Jujamcyn Theaters.
For Lyrics Credits, please see this page.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-5798-3
e-ISBN 978-1-6470-0477-4
Text © 2022 Alanis Morissette, Diablo Cody, and Glen Ballard
Book design by Heather Kelly
Published in 2022 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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For Erik Helewa.
You’re the biggest fan of this musical I know.
And I’m the biggest fan of you.
Chapter One
Frankie
I step out of my room and groan at the smell of pancakes. Between that and the sound of my mother’s furious typing coming from the kitchen downstairs, I’m not sure what’s going to be worse: her latest attempt at a Paleo breakfast or being subjected to the rough draft of a Christmas card she’s been desperately trying to hone these last two weeks, sharpening her words and our family’s accomplishments like a knife.
If you wield your loved ones like a blade, who are you fighting?
I squat down at the top of our stairs. I can hear her talking to herself over the keyboard, as well as my brother, Nick, clattering about in the bathroom behind me. She’s definitely reading lines from the holiday letter again, muttering “Harvard” a little louder than everything else. There’s a series of loud spritzing noises behind me, and just like that, the upstairs hallway reeks of a chocolate-scented body spray, despite the closed bathroom. My brother’s “cologne” permeates even the thickest of wooden doors, and I am not riding with him to school today. That stuff will sink into my sweater and never leave.
I sigh and choose the lesser of two evil smells and make my way downstairs, my thick black combat boots loud against the hardwood steps.
“Frankie?” Mom ventures as I walk through the living room. The protest posters I was up late illustrating with Jo are still sprawled across our coffee table, a dozen bright neon markers popping against the earth tones of our home. Every piece of furniture is “reclaimed” or “repurposed” this or that, so Mom has a story to tell whenever one of her so-called friends from around the neighborhood or the school’s PTA stops by.
Oh, this table? Rescued from a home that burned down. All proceeds went to the family, of course. The picture frames? So glad you noticed and asked. Built from the old gym floors of a shuttered YMCA. I sometimes imagine the stories the wood could tell, the people who walked on those boards, who played, who lived—
Ugh.
She looks up at me from behind her laptop in the kitchen, and I glance over at the countertop near the sink. It looks like a bakery exploded in here, several kinds of different flour bags sitting in various states of disarray, their contents spilled out over the cold gray marble.
Marble salvaged from a torn-down church, lest we all forget.
“Oh, good!” she exclaims, looking relieved. “Come here, come listen to this. I think I’ve finally got it.”
She scoots her chair back, staring intently at the screen. She exhales, like this is some kind of performance, which, when it comes to Mom, almost everything is. I mean, it is barely seven in the morning, and she’s already immaculately dressed, wearing a white button-down shirt and black slacks that somehow don’t have flour all over them. Her blond hair is done up, her makeup is on point, and I wonder who she does all this for. It’s certainly not for Dad, not with the way he grumbles around the house and falls asleep in the den. The two of them try to fake like everything is okay when I’m around, and I’m guessing whenever Nick is here, but for every forced softened expression there’s a comment with a sharp barb, waiting to pierce the illusion.
I see right through them. And I’ve read enough novels and watched too many teen dramas to know that once Nick and I shuttle off to college, there’s no way they are sticking together.
I just wish they’d rip the Band-Aid off now.
This wound isn’t getting any better.
“Dear friends and family . . . Oh, wait! Do you want breakfast?” Mom asks, pointing at the middle of the kitchen table. There’s a stack of pancakes that look a bit too thick, like someone tried to make flapjacks with the consistency of a Chicago deep-dish pizza. “I’ve got a plate for your brother over on the counter, but I know you like to choose your syrup.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say through a yawn, grabbing a plate and riffling through the cabinets for the syrup before checking the fridge. They’re lined up in a rainbow: strawberry, marmalade, lemon, blueberry, a raspberry so purple it’s almost black. But nothing green, because what would green syrup even be made of? Mint? Whatever concoction goes into a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s?
Sometimes . . . I wonder if Mom or Dad know. About me. About me and Jo, and how our night of crafting posters turned into an evening of snuggling and softly kissing on the couch when my family fell asleep. About how it’s been more than just that one night, and more like a year of us tangled up in each other, secret moments and whispers when we can find them.
It’s the little things like this, the syrup. Like Mom and Dad are signaling that they see me, that it’s okay—or it’s just another trend my mom spotted on Pinterest, I don’t know. There’s also the way she loves organizing the big bookshelf in the den according to color, a rectangular rainbow, big and bold, made up of the family’s combined books. Dad’s collection of Michael Crichton and Daniel H. Wilson, Nick’s various Best American Essay collections I don’t think he’s ever read but that Mom keeps buying for him, my pile of books by Lamar Giles and Ashley Woodfolk, and Mom’s massive collection of photo albums, thick as dictionaries.
Our family’s story is the only one I really care about, she once said, when I asked her where her books were. I’d caught her running her hands over the spines of those photo albums, having just dusted the shelves, like the contents were something so terribly sacred.
She forgets I’m the adopted one.
And so much of my story is missing, simply not there for photographs. There’s no pregnancy shoot with Mom and Dad, no newborn at the hospital pictures. I’m just suddenly there, the memory of my arrival wedged between a series of photos from Nick’s third birthday and his first day of preschool. Like a commercial.
I haven’t always felt so bitter about this. Being different in this house. Standing out. The Black girl in the white family. But lately, as these cracks keep forming, these fractures between Mom and Dad, the secrets I keep holding close to my chest—about Jo and about how I’m feeling, and how Nick just seems like he can’t wait to get out of here—it’s becoming almost easier to see things that way. I can’t help but think how messed up that is, finding this comfort in knowing I don’t belong here, in this family.
I grab the strawberry syrup and hope that a mix of this and endless powdered sugar will make the barely cooked dough Mom’s trying to pass off as a pancake taste passable.
Pancakeable.
“Okay.” Mom clears her throat. “Here we go.”
I grab a seat and get to drowning my breakfast in sticky syrup.
“Dear friends and family, Merry Christmas from the Healy family!” Mom exclaims, like whoever is getting the letter is right here in the kitchen with us, or like she’s on the phone. She reminds me a little of Jo when she’s practicing one of her opening statements for Mr. Schneider and Mr. Hudacsko’s speech and debate team at school, only instead of a carefully written speech about civil rights, it’s a holiday card no one is going to read anyway. I’ve seen enough of her awful group of gossipy mom friends to know they pretend they care but don’t really. They act more like they’re in high school than Nick or I do. And we’re in high school.
“We hope that you and yours are well,” she continu
The syrup bottle lets out a loud pbbbbttt, spattering strawberry dribbles around my plate and on the table. I wince, and Mom sucks at her teeth before returning to her letter.
“Frankie,” she stresses, and gives me a little smirk, “is busy with her art and social justice movements.”
Her eyes flit over to me, looking for approval, and I shrug and nod, honestly a little surprised at the mention. She’s not wrong, and she smiles and looks back at her computer as I take a bite of the pancakes . . . which do not get the same humoring endorsement. It’s like accidentally getting a mouthful of sand after being knocked over by a wave at the beach, and just as salty. Why is there this much salt in these pancakes? I fake a yawn and spit the glob of not-quite-cooked batter into my hand and hide it in a napkin under my plate.
“And Nick, our sweet boy, just got the best news ever this past week. He’s been accepted into Harvard, early admission!” Mom sits back from the laptop, looking at the screen with pride, and wipes at what I guess are tears in the corners of her eyes. Jesus. That acceptance was a whole thing. This dreaded holiday letter could have been sent by now, but she wanted to wait to see if the news came in first, which only added to Nick’s stress. He walks around the house like a boiling teakettle with a cork in it, eager and unable to scream.
“And as for me,” she continues. “I’m still recovering a bit from the car accident in the summer, but I’ve got my loving family helping me get through—”
“There’s my perfect wife.”
Dad suddenly strolls in, interrupting, and leans down to give Mom a kiss . . . and she shifts away, her head shirking back sharply. I’m surprised to see him but not surprised at Mom’s reaction. He completely deflates, mutters something I can’t quite make out, and walks over to me, squeezing my shoulder. But even that gesture seems to have lost any of the joy he came into the room with. He’s got a thin layer of stubble on his face and a red tint to his eyes, like he’s had a hard night or just didn’t sleep. Maybe both.
“Morning, kiddo,” he says, yawning a little.
“Hey, Dad.” I sigh, feeling bad for him.
“Steve, please, it’s just . . . I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,” Mom says, adjusting herself in her seat, looking from me to him to her computer. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Sure.” He sits down at the kitchen table with a huff as Mom gets up and fusses with the coffeemaker, the two of them moving up and down and away from each other in this devastating broken-family choreography. The Keurig pod hisses loudly, interrupting the awkward quiet.
The air in the room is just . . . so heavy.
I perk up when I hear Nick’s feet thundering down the stairs, a short traditional pause followed by a boom, signifying him jumping down the last handful of steps. A routine as old as us, it feels. He’s been leaping like that since we were kids, though lately, it feels like he’s just been bounding further and further away from me. And it’s not just him and his plans to move to Boston or Cambridge or wherever Harvard actually is. It’s how much time he spends with his bros, in particular that rich douchebag, Andrew, and how he shows zero interest in Jo’s and my events and protests, and how he just keeps drifting.
He’s going to sail off in six months. Would it kill him to stay moored, stuck with me on this shore, just a little while longer?
“Dad?” Nick asks, walking toward the kitchen and lingering for a minute in the living room. He glances at me, confusion on his face, before looking back at Dad. “What are you doing here—”
“I can’t be a little late for work to celebrate my son’s college acceptance?” Dad beams. He gets up, brushing against Mom, who sucks at her teeth again.
“What?” he snaps, looking at her sharply. His tone sounds like a cracked whip.
“Nothing,” Mom mutters. “Just . . . I almost spilled your coffee.”
“Right.”
Oh my God, I hate it here inside this powder keg. All this needless tension and passive aggression. And over what? It feels like it’s all just gotten so much worse since Mom’s accident. Little moments of quirky bickering about dishes or the lawn just got cranked up to eleven, with Dad just straight up not coming home from the office sometimes.
Dad turns back to Nick, a little smile peeking at the corner of his mouth. He unclasps the first few snaps on his wrinkly dress shirt, which looks slept in, and then tugs at it a little like Superman, revealing a HARVARD DAD shirt underneath. It’s bright white with HARVARD in bold crimson lettering.
“Huh?” Dad grins, gesturing at the shirt. “What do you think?”
Nick glances at me, a knowing look of amusement on his face, and back at Dad. He laughs a little. “It’s nice, Dad. It really is. I haven’t even started yet. How did you get that shirt so fast?”
Nick finally strolls into the kitchen and grabs a chair next to me, shaking his head and nudging me with his arm. I nudge him back, and he pulls out his phone, tapping on the screen while looking at me. His whole getup is infuriating sometimes. The jeans, the Hollister shirts, the permanent bedhead that somehow he pulls off. He has this whole Nick Robinson look about him, the perfect mix of Mom and Dad, and being able to see that so clearly makes it even worse.
But as irritated as I am with him lately, I still love him.
“Oh please, I knew you were going to get in,” Dad snorts. “I ordered it, like, two weeks ago.”
“That’s sweet, Steve,” Mom says, but Dad just ignores her as she puts a mug in front of him.
It’s so hard, watching this. It’s bad enough I don’t feel like I belong in this family, but the only family I really have is just crumbling apart. And instead of facing any of the tension or arguments head-on, they snap at each other and then act like nothing happened.
Nick nods at his phone, his eyes flashing a little as he looks at me.
I pull my phone out.
I straight up push him this time, and he laughs a little. Asshole.
“No,” I whisper to him with a bit of a snarl. I look up and Dad is reading something on his own phone, Mom back in front of her laptop. Nick nods, typing quickly, and my phone buzzes.
He slides the phone back in his pocket, and a flash of warmth fills my chest. Even as he pushes away—with college, with his friends—every now and again he shows up for me. Little moments that say, I’m still here.
Mom’s phone rings, that Wilson Phillips “one more day” song blasting. I wouldn’t know this song if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s the ringtone set for all of Mom’s friends. I swear, it’s like their “live, laugh, love” anthem. I glance up at Dad, who is glaring at the phone, and when he catches me looking at him, he shrugs.
Mom answers the phone and puts it down on the table, on speaker.
“Hey, Libby!” Mom sings, as though we all aren’t in the room. Dad grumbles something into his coffee.
“MJ!” Libby, better known as Mrs. Porter, exclaims. “Just checking in to make sure you’ve got everything you need for the fundraiser.”
“I think I can handle a few dozen cupcakes, Libs.” Mom laughs, looking over at me and Nick as though we’re somehow in on the joke.
“Okay, just remember we need them on time. And nothing store-bought, the kids and parents can tell.”
“Ugh,” Mom groans. “The cupcakes from the spring were not store-bought, how many times do I have to—”
“All right, love, I have to get going!” Mrs. Porter interrupts, and Mom leans back in her chair. “See you at the meeting!”
“Okay, I’ll—”
And the line goes dead.
“She’s always so busy!” Mom looks over at Dad, rolling her eyes. “Can you imagine?”
“I cannot,” Dad snorts, putting his phone down, his demeanor shifting noticeably, like he’s getting ready to give me or Nick a talking-to about a failing grade. But instead of looking at either of us, he turns his attention back to Mom. “MJ, you know . . . you really deserve friends who aren’t too busy to have a conversation.”
“Oh, shush.” Mom waves him off, focusing back on her laptop. “We talk.”
“Do you?” he asks. “Or does she just talk at you?”
Mom exhales through her nose and zeroes back in on the screen. That chat is apparently over. But Dad’s right—I’ve noticed it, and even Nick has brought it up once or twice, whenever one of them stops by. How Mom’s friends don’t really feel like friends but like . . . I don’t know, a clique of popular girls who never got over ruling the hallways of their school, so now they try to rule over a suburb.
