Just You (23 page)

As best we can
. Her idea of “best”
and mine were undoubtedly two very different things. Regardless, I
did as she suggested and just spit it out.

“Michael asked me to his prom.”

I expected screaming. I expected drama,
threats, and maybe even some more broken dishes. But none of those
things happened. My mother simply tilted her head at me and said,
“Huh.”

“
Huh
? That’s all you have to
say?”

She let out a little laugh. “No, that is
not
all I have to say, Taylor. You can count on that.”

“I never did stop seeing him,” I said,
launching headfirst into my carefully orchestrated speech. “I love
him, Mom. I won’t break up with him even if you tell me to.”

She leaned forward to retrieve her tea, a
tiny smile on her lips. “Teenage self-absorption never ceases to
amaze me,” she said, shaking her head into her cup. “Taylor,
honey…I
know
you’re still seeing Michael. I’ve known it all
along.”

My jaw went slack. I couldn’t have been more
stunned if she’d just told me George Clooney had called and asked
her for a date. “What do you mean, you knew? Why didn’t you say
anything?”

My mother calmly blew on her tea before
answering, dragging it out as if savoring my shock. “Taylor, not
much gets past me. I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind. And unlike
your father, I pay close attention. When you lied to me that day in
the mall, when we were at Cinnabon, I knew I was dealing with
something far more serious than I thought.”

My mouth fell open again. And here I thought
I’d had her snowed. She was an even better liar than I was. Who
knew?

“You’re just as stubborn as I am,” she went
on. “You were going to do what you wanted no matter what I said. So
I waited…and I watched. I imagined it would fizzle out on its own,
or you would break down and tell me. When a few weeks passed and
neither of those things happened, I called your father.” She paused
again to slurp her tea. “He told me all about him…the boy. Michael.
Said he’s a nice kid, comes from a good family, and he treats you
well. ‘The way she deserves to be treated’, your father said.”

My eyes watered at that. Sometimes Dad could
be sweet.

“He told me not to worry, that he was
keeping his eye on the two of you. Steven promised me he would talk
to you and lay down some ground rules about supervision. I heard
all about your little chat last month in the den. He let you off
the hook that night, I guess you could say. That was our plan.”

Flabbergasted, I again asked, “Why didn’t
you say anything?” All that time I had been (allegedly) sneaking
around, hiding Michael from her, hiding my
life
from her,
and it was all for nothing? She
knew
?

“Because,” she said, her lips thinning, “I
was waiting for you to dig your own hole, which you most certainly
did. The way I saw it, the longer you lied to me and kept this from
me, the longer I would ground you when you finally told me the
truth. Now that you have, it’s time to face the consequences.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “So you’re
saying I can’t go to Michael’s prom?”

“Oh you can go,” she told me. “But you’re
grounded for a month.”

“A
month
? I can’t do that.”

“You will do that. A month apart from the
boy is nothing, Taylor, compared to forever.” She pointed at me.
“It could have been forever, you know. Keep that in mind.”

I shook my head, exasperated. “So you tell
me I can see Michael and then ban me from seeing him?”

“It’s a month, Taylor.” She put down her cup
with a clunk. “If you still want to see him after your month is up,
then fine, I’ll allow it. With rules and conditions, of
course.”

If I still wanted to see him?
That
pissed me off even more than the grounding. “It’s not some silly
infatuation or crush with him, you know, Mom. Of course I’ll still
want to see him after my month is up. I’d still want to see him if
it were six months. Or a year. Or however long it happens to
be.”

“Fair enough.” She yawned, obviously unmoved
by my passionate declaration.

Annoyed, I jerked my head toward the TV,
which showed one of those home renovation shows with people in hard
hats working together to tear down an old house and make it new
again, providing a needy family with a new lease on life. One of
Mom’s favorite shows, though she’d never admit it.

“You can thank your aunt Gina for this,” Mom
said suddenly, her eyes joining mine on the TV screen. “She was the
one who suggested I might be projecting my own issues with men onto
you. She said I’ve been giving you the wrong idea.”

Now it was my turn to say “Huh?”

“Regardless of what Gina thinks, I still
think you’re far too young for a serious relationship. The deeper
you get into this, the more it’s going to hurt later.”

“Like later when he leaves for college? Or
later when we break up? Or both? You
want
it to end, is that
it? Are you looking forward to some big, dramatic breakup so you
can say you knew it all along? That you’d been there once too?”

“Of course not,” she said, hurt creasing her
brow. “How can you even say that, Taylor? That’s exactly what I’ve
been trying to protect you from. The last thing I want is for you
to get hurt. I know how intense these feelings can be at your age.
Break-ups can shatter you, and it feels like end of the world.”

“At any age,” I said, remembering the day I
found her at the table, balls of napkins at her feet. “You can’t
protect me from everything, Mom. I’m not six anymore. And if I do
get hurt, you won’t be able to make it all better.”

She rubbed her forehead. “That’s exactly
what keeps me up at night.”

“Some girls my age are flunking out of
school or doing drugs or burning their houses down. Would you
rather I burn the house down?” When she failed to answer right
away, I turned to glare at her. “Mom.”

“What? Houses can be replaced. Look.” She
nodded toward the TV. The new house was complete, and
unrecognizable when compared to how it used to be. The family was
thrilled, jumping around and crying and hugging each other.

“These shows are so corny,” I said, getting
up. My math homework was waiting, not to mention a month of
solitary confinement.

“Yeah,” Mom agreed, but when I turned back
to tell her good night, she was hastily wiping tears from her
eyes.

Chapter 22

“Try this,” Robin said, unearthing a small,
wine-colored tube of lipstick from the pocket of her denim shorts.
“I wear it whenever I wear black.”

“But Robin,” I said, “you and I have totally
different coloring.”

“Coloring, shmoloring. Lips are lips.”

“Really. I already have my lipstick. Ashley
lent me the perfect one.”

She slipped the lipstick back into her
pocket. “So you have something borrowed and something new. You just
need something old and something blue.”

I turned away from the mirror to stare at
her. “This isn’t my wedding day, Rob. It’s the prom.”

She grinned. “It’s all about luck.”

I stood back to adjust the bodice of my
dress, the same dress my mother and I had gone shopping for the
weekend after Michael asked me to his prom. The same dress she
claimed was “
way
too old” for me and refused to buy at
first. The same dress I had fought hard for. And won.

Of course, I had to promise to wear the
dress again to my
own
prom before she’d hand over her credit
card to the saleswoman. But it was worth wearing twice. The gown I
had fallen in love with was jet black, floor-length and strapless,
with a boned bodice that held me in and up. It had an open back and
kick pleating on the skirt. Sexy and curve-hugging. My mother
almost had a stroke when she first saw me in it. Luckily I was
getting ready at Dad and Lynn’s house and didn’t have to deal with
Mom’s disapproving glares tonight.

“I don’t need luck,” I said, turning back to
the mirror.

“I still think you need something old and
blue,” Robin said, smoothing down a flyaway strand of my hair.

I thought about it for a moment. “I bumped
my hip on the counter the other day and got a bruise,” I said.
“Will that do?”

She held a finger to her lips, considering
this. “Sure, why not.”

“Great. I’m all set then.”

Leanne exploded into my room then, dressed
and ready in her mint green gown with the pleated neckline and
glittery rhinestone straps. “Please tell me you have bobby pins,”
she said, gasping for air.

I shook my head as I applied lipstick, my
“something borrowed” from Ashley. “Sorry.”

Leanne let out a colorful string of
curses.

“I have some,” Robin said, jumping up. “I’ll
run over and get them.”

“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Robin hopped out of the room and Leanne came
over to stand next to me at the full-length mirror. “I’m not used
to all this frou-frou stuff,” she said, tucking some strands of
hair back into her rhinestone clip. “I can’t believe I’m going to
the stupid prom.”

I
couldn’t believe we were going to
the stupid prom
together
. Doubling, anyway. Since our
home-alone weekend, she and I had continued to grow closer. But if
someone had told me a year ago I’d be carpooling to the prom with
my stepsister, or doing anything socially with her for that matter,
I would have thought they were crazy. Leanne’s date was some guy
from school.
Just a friend
, she had made sure to let me
know. Michael happened to know him from one of his classes, which
was a bonus.

“Back,” Robin called as she sailed into the
room. She handed Leanne a stack of bobby pins.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“No problem.” Robin examined Leanne’s
noncompliant hair. “I can help you put those in so they won’t be
noticeable.”

Leanne looked relieved. “Thanks.”

As Robin played hairdresser, I located my
silver high-heeled sandals and strapped them on. Michael and Owen,
Leanne’s date, were due any minute now. We still had two rounds of
pictures to endure before we could even go to the prom. After here,
we were heading over to Michael’s house. I wondered briefly if his
dad would stick around to see us all dressed up.

The doorbell rang downstairs, followed
immediately by Leo’s barking. “One or both of the guys are here,”
Leanne said, standing very still as Robin finished securing her
hair.

I hunted around for my silver bracelet,
finding it on the dresser. “Probably Owen. Michael said he might be
a little late.”

“Owen’s here, LeeLee,” Lynn called from
downstairs.

“She did
not
just call me that in
front of him,” Leanne muttered.

“Done,” Robin said, stepping back to admire
her work. “A category five hurricane would not budge this
hair.”

Ready to roll, the three of us descended the
stairs and joined the gathering in the foyer. Dad was clutching his
camera and grinning wide while Leanne’s date stood stiffly off to
the side in his tux. Owen was cute and kind of preppy, which
surprised me. As a rule, Leanne went for skinny guys with piercings
who wore a lot of black and listened to dark, depressing music.

“Wow,” Lynn said when she saw us. “Steven,
would you look at our girls.”

“All grown up,” my father said, gazing at us
both with equal amounts of pride and affection, a detail that was
not lost on Leanne. She seemed flustered by all this attention.
When her date held out the corsage he had brought for her, she
quickly yanked it out of his hands, blushing even deeper. Owen
looked a little alarmed when she opened the plastic container and
pinned the flowers on herself, brushing off his offer to do it for
her. Dad snapped a picture as the doorbell rang again and Michael
finally appeared.

“Hey,” he said, smiling to see everyone
assembled by the door. When his eyes landed on me, they grew warm
with approval. I simply gaped like a dead trout in response, struck
speechless by the vision of him in a tuxedo.

“Let’s go down to the park to get some
pictures,” Dad suggested.

As everyone filed out, Michael and I hung
back for a moment so he could present me with my corsage, which
consisted of white roses and baby’s breath, all tied together with
a silver ribbon. “It’s beautiful,” I said as he pinned it on my
dress.

“You’re beautiful.”

“So are you.” I ran my fingers along the
lapels of his tux. “But you must be so hot in this.”

“Not as hot as you are in that.”

I laughed and kissed him lightly on the
lips. In my heels, I didn’t even have to stand on my tiptoes to
reach him.

We all walked the short blocks to Crawford
Park in the blinding June sun, garnering a few smiles and weird
looks from passing motorists. Dad headed straight for the walking
bridge near one of the ponds. He posed the four of us on the bridge
and proceeded to take eight million pictures while Lynn and Robin
supervised, oohing and aahing over each shot, and Leanne made
impatient noises beside me.

“I’ll bet there are a lot of baby pictures
of you,” she said to me at one point. She was right; Dad was
sentimental that way. There were boxes of home movies too,
chronicling years of milestones and birthdays and vacations. Most
of them captured my earlier childhood, when my parents were still
together and we all lived in our old house in Oakfield. Before
everything changed.

Michael nudged me between photo ops. “Look,”
he said, flicking a glance over his shoulder. I turned around to
look and saw the swan.

During my long month of being grounded from
seeing Michael, I’d walk over to the park at least twice every
weekend, sometimes with Robin but mostly by myself, in a desperate
attempt to pass the time. And on each visit I would watch the mute
swan as it glided serenely across the pond, stopping every few feet
to dunk its head in the water. It never failed to calm me.