Ink Is Thicker Than Water (15 page)

“You’re bad at lying, Kell,” she says. “You’re too honest a person.”

I roll her sweaters very tightly, though I realize she’ll probably want to wear one of these on the plane. I unroll the pale green one and hang it up on her closet door where she’ll see it first thing in the morning. “Sorry, then. I don’t think it’s weird now, at least.”

“It’s fine.” Sara jumps back up and nods at my additions to her suitcase. “You did that problem perfectly, by the way.”

I do a brief victory dance. “Are you nervous about going?”

“Why would I be? We’ve emailed a lot by now, so I know I’ll get along with him.”

“Yeah, but…taking a trip with Camille seems kind of like a big deal. Right? Like a total mom thing.” I hadn’t meant to say that last part, but now it’s hard to stop. I can at least steer my tone into
nonchalant
. “Do you feel like Camille’s your mom now?”

“Of course I don’t.” Sara stands up and steers me back to my textbook. “But she’s…she’s something. We have a lot in common, and it’s easy to talk to her.”

I want to defend Mom, but Mom is a kooky artsy lady who loves us to death and wants us to be happy. Yeah, those are good things, but I understand. I don’t want to have that ping of recognition, but Sara must think that Camille is better than Mom at things that matter.

Because maybe that’s true.

“Finish your homework,” Sara says. “You understand it better than you think.”

Mom really wants to drive Sara to the airport on Friday, but instead Camille is swinging by to pick her up. I’m meeting Oliver to hang out soon, but I wait on the front porch and pretend to be jotting down ideas for next week’s story when really I just want to bear witness to all of it. Or stop it completely, like I’m going to single-handedly save my family from the unraveling I see Camille capable of starting.

Camille’s car pulls up, and I make very serious business of writing down story ideas so that she won’t look over my shoulder and see so far I’ve just made a list of songs that could play if I ever get around to having sex with Oliver. (I cross out The Beatles’ “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” but I’m still sort of laughing about my genius thought. Is laughing during sex considered bad form?)

“Hello, Kellie,” Camille says as she walks up the steps to the porch. She is dressed in jeans like Kaitlyn owns, a pair I remember her using her fancy Amex platinum card on even though I’d insisted her butt had looked just as good in the jeans she was wearing from Old Navy. It’s weird I hardly talked to Kait this week. I’d been someone who believed the inherent promise in signing yearbooks and school photos
BFF
. And therefore I had no idea a predator was maybe moving in this whole time: the allure of cool and my terminal resistance to it.

“Is Sara ready?” Camille asks.

I jump up and open the door, where both Sara and Mom are standing. For some reason I have the urge to see Mom throw her arms around Sara and demand she doesn’t go, but why would Mom do that? Why
should
Mom do that, except for of course keeping our family from collapsing?

…Is it weird I actually think that?

“Call me as soon as you get in,” Mom tells Sara.

“I’ll try. It’ll be late and—”

“Call me,” Mom repeats, touching Sara’s face with both her hands. “And have fun, sweetie.”

“Thanks.” Sara waves at me as she picks up her suitcase. “See you, Kell. Thanks for helping me pack.”

“Of course,” I say, even though I want to throw her suitcase away from her as a delaying tactic while I beg her not to leave us. “Thanks for imparting your geometry genius.”

“Ha.” She waves and gets into Camille’s car. Maybe I should take comfort that Sara’s clearly not making this some big, dramatic good-bye. But I still feel the metaphorical earth metaphorically shifting.

Once Camille’s car pulls away, I run up to my room, deposit my notebook safely in my desk drawer, switch my faux-vintage Monkees T-shirt for one from my shopping trip with Mom (brown and fitted with little buttons on the cuffs I think are kind of sophisticated), and dash back downstairs. Probably better to just not think about Sara or Camille for awhile. “I’m going out.”

“Wait a minute, young lady.”

Young lady?
Luckily, when Mom walks into the room, I can tell from her smile she’s kidding. “What? I’m running late already.”

She hugs me really tightly. “You know about being careful, right, baby?”

Oh my God, did she see my list earlier? “Why are you asking me that?”

“Because you’ve been out with Oliver a couple times now, and I’m not stupid.”

“I’m not stupid, either,” I say. “And if stuff started happening—which it hasn’t—I know about being careful, yeah. Okay? Can I go now?”

“Be home by one,” she says. “And, yes. Have a great time.”

“Who doesn’t have a great time after talking to their mom about their sex life? Bye.” I dash out to my car and back out of the driveway like I’m still running away from that conversation. I wonder if Mom had grilled Sara about her hypothetical sex life. I wonder if Sara
has
a hypothetical sex life. Mostly, though, I wonder if Sara will get to San Francisco and gaze upon the two perfect people who created her and ask herself why she should ever bother with us freaks again.

When I arrive at Oliver’s dorm, his roommate is out, but the pizza has just arrived. That means we get right to eating, not making out. Still, after watching my sister leave, it is good to be across town doing something completely unrelated.

“There’s some party going on tonight,” he says as I’m determining whether or not there is a classy way to lick delicious pizza grease off my fingertips. “You want to go after this?”

“Like a frat party?”

Oliver laughs, but not at all like I’m dumb. He is seriously The Nicest, and it makes me feel lucky just to know him. “Do I seem like I go to frat parties, Kell?”

“Sorry, I don’t actually know anything about college, just some special my mom made me watch last year about fraternities hazing people. And, yeah, sounds good. So, um, I noticed you—”

“Oh.” He jumps up from the bed, where we’re sitting to eat, and gets a little book off his desk. “I just remembered, sorry. I got you something.”

I wipe my greasy hands on a napkin before taking it from him. It’s a philosophy book about some guy in a wig named David Hume. Lucky for Oliver I’m not a girly type who figured the first gift from her boyfriend—okay, I said
boyfriend
, does that mean it
is
official?—would be flowers or candy or jewelry. “I hope this is like
Philosophy for Dummies
.”

“Well…it—” Oliver laughs and sits back down, but closer to me this time. “It sort of is. I just thought maybe you’d be interested, since you asked me what I liked about philosophy.”

“Thanks,” I say, and not just because I realize I haven’t yet. “Hopefully, I’ll understand it, civilian to the philosophy world and all.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I like Hume a lot, and I just thought you’d like it, too, what he says about life and all. I mean, it’s out of our control, but it’ll keep going on, even when things get rough.”

I like the sound of that a lot. Also, I like the sound of Oliver’s voice, how this old, wigged guy means a lot to him. And I really like that this book is in my hands, and this guy who thinks about things bigger than himself also cares about me. Maybe a lot of the things I’m into aren’t very serious, but I still think it’s better to really care than not.

“Anyway, sorry I interrupted, what were you saying?” Oliver kisses me right before taking another piece of pizza. “You noticed I what?”

Now that I’m holding this book and thinking how truly much I just
like
this guy, I wish I hadn’t brought it up. Just Talk to Him, though, yeah? “Just your, um, your Facebook profile? I saw you put that you were in a relationship.”

“Oh.” Oliver looks sort of relieved, then confused, and then he takes both my hands in his like we’re some cheesy romantic couple who does things like that all the time. “Not cool?”

“I just thought—” I stop and try to figure out the fairest way to say it. Both for him and for me. “I guess I thought we’d talk about it before doing something like making it Facebook official.”

“Sorry,” he says quickly and takes a deep breath. “I’ll take it down if you—”

“No, it’s okay,” I say. “But I hadn’t even told my sister that we were going out yet, and because of you doing that, she found out from Facebook and not from me. If we could just talk about stuff first…”

“Definitely.” He’s nodding like I do when Mom or Dad lectures me about something where we all know I’m dead, dead wrong. On one hand, awesome that he is with me here on this. On the other, is that really the reaction I want from my boyfriend? “I hear you and what you’re saying. I just really like you, Kell.”

“I really like you, too,” I say. “Also, duh, I was joking about Facebook official being some big thing.”

“You are a big thing, though,” he says. “To me.”

I used to think sincerity was some kind of foreboding of the dorkiest of humanity, but a lot has gone kind of crazy lately, and one thing that hasn’t is him. I start to thank him for saying the sweetest things ever, but instead I just kind of pounce on him and kiss him.

It seems to be the right reaction.

The party is in the next dorm building over from Oliver’s, and even though it’s basically just a ton of people shoved into a few tiny rooms, listening to loud indie rock and drinking crappy beer, I’m glad to be here. College party, keg beer, sneaking gropey moves when people aren’t looking, all checked off my list of Tasks to (Hopefully) Accomplish in High School. And Oliver has all these friends who want to talk to him and ask him about classes! He looks so alive when he talks to people, too; he isn’t at all someone who could sit back and not care. These days I am over anyone who can do that.

Oliver’s friends ask my name and my major—sometimes I cop to being a junior at Ticknor, sometimes I just make stuff up. (Oliver laughs particularly hard when I respond with
oceanography.
) Everyone includes me in their conversations, and it’s nice to think that even if I can’t get into as good of a school as Sara will that maybe college will still be pretty great for me.

Plus, like all of that isn’t fantastic enough, it turns out that Oliver’s roommate is gone for the whole weekend. We, of course, decide to leave the party early to take advantage, but even with an empty room and Oliver’s cozy bed, I keep getting distracted.

“You okay?” he asks me. “Thinking too much about your oceanography finals?”

I laugh and shrug. “It’s sort of a weird night. All this stuff going on with Sara, it’s making me crazy, I think.”

“What stuff? You want to talk?”

I start to say
no
, but actually I do. I’ve been keeping so much of this inside. “Sara’s been hanging out a lot with her biological mom. And I just sort of have this gross feeling that the more time she spends with her, the less use she’ll have for us. We can’t compete with some crazy-smart scientist woman, right?”

“I don’t think it’ll be like that,” he says. “Not to disregard your feelings.”

“What if you had some other family member who was super into philosophy?” I ask. “Wouldn’t you want to run in their direction? Because if the only family I had was, you know, Dad, and he was still the same, telling me how I’m bad at life, and I had some way out, wouldn’t I take it? Maybe Sara’s whole life has been like that, being a Normal in a family of—”

“Listen, I get it, trust me. But even if she fits in better with her biological family, I think that just adds to her life, doesn’t take away from yours.”

I want him to be right, but maybe it’s enough that he believes that.

“You need to get home? It’s almost twelve thirty.”

“I do, yeah.” My great curfew protector. “Thanks for listening.”

Oliver shrugs. “It’s what I’m here for, Kell.”

I love how much he really means that.

Chapter Fourteen

After work the next night, I meet up with a bunch of people from the paper (and some of their significant others) at Mokabe’s. There’s something about the crowded atmosphere that is kind of what I picture hanging out at a bar is like, so for people in high school, I guess it’s the next best thing. For people like us in high school, at least. Kaitlyn probably has a fake ID by now and a regular bartender who makes her some girl drink, pink liquid in a martini glass. I imagine her drinking it alongside Lora and Josie and whoever else and wonder if she would be thinking about me at all, even if it is to speculate about how uncool my night probably is in comparison.

I’m pretty sure I see Oliver walk by, so I make up a lame excuse about phone reception and duck outside. I’d been wrong but not totally off base; it’s Dexter who is walking up the sidewalk. “Oh, hey.”

“Oh, hey, you.” He walks back from his pack of dudes. “What’s up?”

“Honestly?” I laugh and hope I don’t sound crazy. “I thought you were Oliver.”

“I
knew
it, like since when would Kellie Brooks go chasing me down? Sorry to disappoint. Actually, though, while I’ve got you out here, have you heard from Sara? Since she got to Frisco?”

“I don’t think anyone actually says that. And she called my mom to let her know she was there, because Mom said she had to, but that’s it. I guess you haven’t?”

“I haven’t.” Dexter crosses his arms, frowns in a way I haven’t seen from him. “Not used to her blowing me off.”

“I’m sure she’s just busy,” I say even though I don’t like the sound of that at all.

“Yeah, maybe. Anyway. Gonna jet.”

I wave to him and walk back inside, where Byron has taken my spot. Adelaide yells at him as soon as she sees I’m back, and Byron hunts down another chair.

“Were you out talking to Dexter?” Adelaide asks me. “I used to think he was really cute, you know.”

“Before you met Byron?” I ask.

“That’s right, Kellie, once I had a boyfriend, I never looked at another guy again. No, when I first met him. Post going out with Byron, thank you very much.”

Adelaide is so mature.

“The thing about Dexter is, though,” Adelaide says, “he’s a great guy, but he’s always trying so hard.”

“I’ve totally thought that, too!” I’m a little thrilled that someone else sees part of life just how I do. Especially someone genius like Adelaide.

“You can’t really blame him.” Byron appears with a chair he’d commandeered from somewhere. I had no idea he’d been listening. “It’s probably rough feeling like you have to make up for your brother’s screwups,” he continues, which sends jolts through me.

“Byron, did you know Oliver is Kellie’s boyfriend?” Adelaide asks way more calmly than I would have. Not that there’s any reason for Adelaide to freak out about Oliver being some kind of huge disaster.

I look over to make sure no one else is listening to any of this, because I definitely don’t want the whole
Ticknor Voice
staff to think I’m going out with a Huge Disaster.

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” Byron says. “But—really?”

“Oliver’s great,” I say. Because he is. Still… “What did he do?” But I don’t really want to know. Right now I want to keep Oliver in my life, and if I hear more, maybe I won’t.

Or maybe—worse?—what qualifies Oliver as a disaster is just the same set of details that makes up A Description of Kellie Brooks, i.e. worse than her sibling at
everything
. Maybe if Byron and Adelaide knew more about me, they’d laugh at themselves for thinking I was worthy of hanging out with. My new world of achievers and geniuses just got scary again.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.” Byron jumps up from his new chair. That doesn’t sound like the kind of avoidance you need just for something like
Well, he’s a bit of an underachiever in comparison to Dexter
. Avoidance tactics are for bigger, scarier things. “I’m getting some water. Anyone else?”

“Please.” Adelaide picks up whatever fancy drink she’s working on and takes a giant gulp. I even hear the sound in her throat,
gulp
. “So, what do you think you’re writing for next week’s paper?”

“What do I think I’m
writing
? Oliver killed someone and we’re talking about the stupid
Ticknor Voice
?”

“Oliver didn’t kill anyone, Brooks,” she says. “Let’s just drop it.”

“But—”

“Dropping it.” Adelaide takes out a giant notebook that was somehow in her purse. She’s like the Hermoine Granger of Ticknor, complete with the magic bigger-on-the-inside bag. “Can I run some questions past you that I’m planning on asking your mom for my paper?”

“It’s Saturday night,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“It means people don’t want to do homework,” Byron says, speaking my mind as he walks back with a couple of glasses of water.

I think about bringing Oliver back up, but something overrides the honest and open part of my brain. It’d be different if I wanted to marry him. He’s just my boyfriend, and I’m only sixteen, and as long as he isn’t a crazy murderer, things are fine.

(Is this what denial is like?)

Before long we kind of disband. Adelaide and Byron are taking off together, which makes me wonder what they’re like when no one else is around. I can’t imagine Adelaide as someone who does much besides save the planet, but I guess they probably go to Byron’s dorm to have sex or at least make out. People can save the planet and still have time to do it, I’m sure.

Mom and Russell are up when I get home, but I just wave a fast hello and head to my room. It’s completely normal for me to be home before Sara on a Saturday night, but the house seems extra quiet, and San Francisco feels so far away.

After brunch the next morning, I head back up to my room to work on a few ideas for my next column, but I’ve barely started when Mom leans into the room.

“Hey, baby. Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She walks up and kisses my cheek before sitting down on the bed next to me. “So how’s everything going?”

“Everything’s fine, Mom. Why?”

Mom laughs. Her ponytail swings down and brushes my cheek. “Can’t a mother ask how her daughter’s life is going? We don’t hang out as much as we used to.”

“I know. Does that make me a bad daughter?”

“Absolutely not. You’re sixteen, you should be going out and having as much fun as possible. How’s everything with Oliver?”

I realize something wonderful: if whatever Oliver had done to provoke Dexter’s overachievement was that horrific, Mom would likely know and therefore not let me date him. Good deduction, self. “Everything’s good.”

“So I had a thought. How about tonight, you and I drive to the airport to pick up Sara, and then the three of us will go out for dinner? Girls night out.”

“Totally.” While I like this whole thing where I have a life and therefore places to be and more people who want to hang out with me (and even one who wants to make out with me on a regular basis), being with my family is tough to beat, too. It’s rare that just the three of us spend time together anymore, but it always gives me a good case of nostalgia. Back when Dad had first moved out, I got sad sometimes, but I also loved the slumber party atmosphere that had descended upon our house.

Mom heads back downstairs to hang out with Russell and Finn, so I get back to brainstorming. Luckily my chat blinks, saving me from having to have too many smart thoughts at once.

Oliver McAuley: What’s up?

Kellie Brooks: just newspaper stuff. what about you?

Oliver McAuley: Hoping to talk to you actually.

Aloud I say, “Aw!” but I only type back: i am the only point of the internet after all.

Oliver McAuley: Ha ha.

Oliver McAuley: You still didn’t accept my Facebook thing. Is there anything we need to discuss?

I read it like five times and blink a bunch, but it never gets less weird to me.

Kellie Brooks: are you serious? it’s really not a big deal. it’s stupid facebook.

Oliver McAuley: We’re not a big deal?

Kellie Brooks: i didn’t say that. it’s just the internet. and i haven’t been on much since we talked.

Oliver McAuley: Fine.

Kellie Brooks: why are you making a big deal about this? i told you i liked you. doesn’t that mean more than facebook?

Oliver McAuley is now signed off and did not receive your message.

I slam my laptop shut and walk downstairs and out the front door. It isn’t like I have anywhere to
go,
but I can’t sit still while my brain overloads with thoughts of Oliver being sort of crazy. So I walk down the block while trying to figure out what to do. Stupid thought or not, I want to call Kaitlyn, because—despite her real-life experience level—she’s spent a lot of time and energy thinking about guys. And unlike Adelaide, who’d probably just tell me either that Oliver is crazy or good people and to act on that, Kaitlyn and I could have talked it out. We used to spend entire days just talking things out.

The only thing I hate more than this stupid Oliver situation is how much I miss Kaitlyn.

I head back inside and hang out with my family because they’re better distractions than aimlessly walking. Mom ducks out of the living room to take a call from Sara who is on her layover in Phoenix (for some reason no airlines want to fly direct to St. Louis from anywhere useful), while Russell and I continue our game of Go Fish with Finn.

“Hey, Mom,” I say as she walks back in. “It’s your turn—”

“Kell-belle, let’s go into the kitchen for a second.”

I don’t like her tone or that her blue eyes seem a little dimmed. Close up I can see that the corners of her eyes are damp, and her eyeliner and mascara have smudged all around. If Mom is crying about anything that isn’t a touching film or inspiring book, things aren’t fine.

“I just got off the phone with your sister. We don’t need to pick her up because she’s staying a few nights at Camille’s.”

Okay, I’d totally called it—well, sort of—but I guess I didn’t think it was
really
going to happen. If I truly had, this wouldn’t feel like a well-aimed punch to my gut.

“Are you okay?” I ask despite all the evidence to the contrary.

“Of course.” She cups my chin in her hand. “I just wanted you to know. So how’s your evening look? Still want to have our girls’ night out?”

Of course I would have agreed anyway, but now there’s no answer but yes. I make a joke about a steakhouse in an attempt to make her smile (it works), but it hits us that it is actually a
really good
idea, so that’s where we end up. I really want to fix this for Mom, because no one as selfless as her should have to feel like crap, ever, especially for a reason like this. But there is no fix; maybe we’re going to lose Sara, and definitely none of us have the useful skills to do anything about it.

At dinner we talk about Mom’s latest big projects at work (a half-sleeve of ivy, a line of text up someone’s spine) and how much I’m liking newspaper so far. We laugh about Finn’s preschool teacher’s observation that
he’s very much interested in zebras,
and of course, we rave about all the meat we’re eating.