Tell Me Three Things (10 page)

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Would make things easier,” Theo says.

“For you, maybe. I have nowhere to go.”

“Not my problem.”

“No, it isn’t,” I say, and stand to leave. I’ve had enough of these people.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it. Was your dad going to call me a…Never mind.”

“He wouldn’t have. He’s not like that.”

“Whatever. Want to smoke up?” Theo reaches for his rolling papers.

“No thanks. And for real, he wouldn’t have called you anything bad.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I know my dad. He was going to say flamboyant. Which, come on, you kind of are,” I say, and wonder if I’ve overstepped my boundaries. I hold eye contact with Theo, to let him know that I am not trying to be hurtful, just honest.

“I knew in, like, kindergarten that I’m gay, so I figure I should own it, you know? Give the people what they want,” Theo says, and starts digging through his drawers. “No one should be spared my fabulousness.”

“Lucky us,” I say, but I smile. I’m starting to have a new appreciation for Theo. He approaches life with manic enthusiasm, an antidote to most of Wood Valley’s laconic teenagerness. There’s a layer of kindness underneath him too, and he’s authentic in his own over-the-top way.

“So who are you texting with all the time?” he asks, and again it occurs to me that he could be SN. Maybe he wanted to help me without having to face our bizarro new family situation. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted; maybe SN’s flirtation was actually just Theo’s enthusiasm. I hope not.

“None of your business,” I say, which doesn’t seem to bother him in the least.

“Since you don’t smoke, wanna stress eat instead? I have some emergency Godiva somewhere around here,” he says, and finds what he’s been looking for: a giant chocolate bar.

“I’m in,” I say.

“So you think your dad signed a prenup?” Theo asks, and I hate him all over again.

I head straight to work after school. I’m not avoiding home. Not really. But what if my stuff has already been packed up again into my duffel bags—Gloria would do it carefully and respectfully, take the time to fold my bras, ziplock my shampoo bottles—and the whole Rachel-Dad experiment is over, just like that? Poof. What will happen to me?

At breakfast, I was the only one sitting at the table, and when Theo stopped in to grab a juice, he just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Apparently, he’s as much in the dark as I am. A few minutes later, Rachel came in, and she did that busy thing she does, where she talks out loud to no one in particular, or maybe to herself, a whirling dervish of nervous energy and rhetorical questions.

“Coffee! Where’s the coffee?” she asked, though it was exactly where it always is. In the coffeemaker, brewed by Gloria or an automatic early-morning timer, I’m not sure which, though I put my money on the former. Gloria is amazing at doing things without you seeing her do things, and also doing all the things you didn’t even know you needed done in the first place. If we have to leave, I might miss Gloria the most. She calls me Yessie and folds my pajamas under my pillow and insists I eat chocolate calcium chews. “And keys. Where are you, keys? In my bag. Damn it, where’s my bag?”

Like all of Rachel’s belongings, apparently, my dad was also MIA, and for a second, I panicked that maybe he’d taken off without me and headed back east. When the worst thing you could possibly imagine happens to you, you think maybe other previously inconceivably bad things can happen too. But no way would he ditch me. Of course, I never thought he’d lie about a convention and come back remarried instead of loaded up with samples to give to his middle-age friends like a normal person, but still. Except for the last few months, he’s been a good dad.

“Sunglasses?” Rachel asked, which made me realize just how rattled she must have been by last night’s fight, because she started patting down the empty white countertops, as if her sunglasses would appear out of thin air. Sunglasses are not usually part of her morning soliloquy.

“On your head,” I said.

And then she jumped a little and looked up at me, as if my voice caught her by surprise and she was just noticing I was sitting here. She looked sad for a moment, or disappointed. But then she pulled her glasses off her head and put them on, and just like that, most of her face was covered, and I couldn’t read her at all.

Liam’s sitting on the desk when I get to work, playing his guitar and singing to an audience of zero. Turns out I was right: Book Out Below! doesn’t get a whole lot of customer action. A few regulars here and there, one guy who thumbs books in the self-help section but never buys, and that’s about it.

“ ‘Imagine,’ huh? A classic.” I’m surprised by Liam’s voice. It’s soft, earnest, almost sweet. He looks different with a guitar. Dri’s crush makes total sense.

“Sorry. Didn’t hear you come in.” Liam swings Earl off his shoulder and slides him back into his purple fur-lined case. It’s a graceful move, one I’m sure he’s done a thousand times.

“You don’t have to stop on my account.” I wonder if I can somehow slip my phone out and secretly record him for Dri but then realize that’s just too weird and invasive. “You’re good. I mean, for real.”

“Thanks. I wanna go to Berklee College of Music next year, if I get in, but my mom doesn’t want me going so far,” he says.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s in Boston, right?”

“Yup. Honestly, what I’d really like to do is skip college and try to hit it big with the Oville guys. But my mom would go postal. I keep telling her that’s what Maroon 5 did—they’re from Brentwood School, you know—but she’s all, ‘Maroon what’?”

I laugh, try to think of what to say next.

“So are you coming?” he asks, saving me from my embarrassingly blank brain.

“Excuse me?”

“To my gig. At Gem’s party.”

“When is it, again?” Of course, I remember when it is. Dri and Agnes have already convinced me that we should all go, and have even picked out my outfit. They claim Crystal and Gem will be so wasted they won’t even notice I’m there.

“Next Saturday night,” Liam says. “Okay, so it’s not a real gig at a club or anything. But it’ll be fun. Promise.”

“Cool, I’ll definitely try to make it.” Liam pats the desk, an invitation for me to sit next to him. I jump up and sit cross-legged but turn so my back rests against the wall. I scan the children’s section behind his head, check out the bright covers of the books, which are shelved to face outward. They are not shy at all.

“Are you working today too?” I ask.

I hope not. Working with Liam makes me uncomfortable; it’s hard to make conversation for three hours in a row. There are only so many times he can tell me about the food at his Google internship, which apparently was really, really good. I mean, we don’t talk the whole time—thank God for my iPhone, which I pull out whenever I feel awkward, but that only gets me so far. Now that I know the basics here, I’m not sure why we would both need to be on duty. It’s not like there’s anything to really do anyway.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind. I need the cash, so…”

“Oh, I mean, do you want me to go, then?” I ask, and my heart sinks. Dri and Agnes go to Coffee Bean every day after school. As sad as it sounds, I need Ice Blended money.

And also this: I don’t want to go home.

If my dad and I have to move again, will SN and I still write to each other? Will he finally tell me who he is?

“Nah, I figured we could both work. My mom doesn’t care.” I wonder if he feels sorry for me, looks down on me the same way his girlfriend does, and that’s why he’s letting me stay. I’ve noticed the scholarship kids at Wood Valley—you can tell by their clothes and how they stick together in nondesigner clumps. No one seems to pay any attention to them. The other day, some girl wore a T-shirt that said
GAP
across the front. Gem didn’t even nudge Crystal. For whatever reason, I seem to be her only target.

“You sure?” I ask. Crap. I sound hopeful, even to my own ears.

“I’m sure.” And then Liam picks up Earl again and begins to play.

Liam starts playing a new song, one I’ve never heard before. The lyrics go:
“The girl that no one knows, the one that secretly glows, all right, the girl that no one knows is mine, all mine, all mine….”
It’s catchy.

I realize I’m quoting Dri here, but I think she’s right. It’s not nothing. Not to get all parental, but there are diseases and pregnancy, and yeah, I know Scarlett would use a condom—we’ve all seen
16 and Pregnant,
which is the best form of birth control ever—but still. Adam Kravitz? My old neighbor Adam Kravitz? The only guy who’s ever shown any interest in me, if you call interest making out with me once, drunk, at the bowling alley on a Saturday night?

My history with him isn’t the issue, though. Scarlett is free to be half peened or full peened by him. I just think she’s being a little faux casual about the whole thing. She’s more like Dri and me than Agnes’s sister, as much as she talks a big game. There’s a difference between talking about sex (and even being comfortable about talking about sex) and actually
doing it.
Abstractly, sex is simple—one person’s body parts touching another person’s, nothing more, nothing less—but for some of us, the reality is something altogether more complex. Equal parts exciting and scary. I can’t explain why, but I just know that’s how it seems to me.

There’s traffic on Ventura, so I don’t get home till after eight. Gloria has left me dinner on the counter: a perfectly serrated leg and thigh of roasted chicken, string beans tossed with almonds, a dainty portion of mashed potato, all showcased under a glass dome. My silverware sits on a cloth napkin. In Chicago, we used paper towels. My mom was an okay cook—a little too prone to experimentation—but I miss her big hearty stews, everything thrown together and unidentifiable. My dad’s car is in the driveway, but Rachel’s is gone, and I don’t hear any noise coming from upstairs, not even the steady bass that usually emits from Theo’s room. I eat my chicken alone at the kitchen island, wipe my mouth, and am about to head upstairs, when I notice someone sitting on the deck.

Dad.

I open the glass doors and step outside. Wrap my arms around myself, because there’s a sharp breeze and a bite to the air I associate with Chicago.

“Hey,” I say, and my dad gives me the same look Rachel gave me this morning. As if my very existence comes as a surprise.
I am here,
I want to scream.
Why am I so easily forgotten?

“Hi, sweetheart. Didn’t hear you. Sit with me.”

I flop down into the lounge chair next to him. I want to ask about our status—
Are we evicted?
—but I don’t have the courage.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

“Just thinking.”

“Ouch,” I say, and my dad smiles.

“It occurred to me just now that I’m finally, officially, in every single way a person can be, a bona fide grown-up. But honestly, sometimes I forget, and think I’m twenty-two. You know what I mean?” he asks. I hope he knows I do not. How could I? Twenty-two sounds old to me.

“If it helps clarify things any, I’m pretty sure you’re forty-four. You’ve been a grown-up for a long, long time in my book,” I say.

“Right. You’re almost a woman yourself, and I’m your
father.
But damn, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m equipped for adult life. Any of it.” His voice suddenly turns raw and shaky. After my mom died, I never saw him cry, not once, but in those first few months, he had perpetually watery and bloodshot eyes, as if he had just finished weeping somewhere unseen.

I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say. My mom is not here to help us.

I’m not equipped for this life either.

“I wish when you were little someone had said to me: These are the good times. Right now. These are the good times. You are young and things are simple. And one day it’s all going to blow up in your face or bottom out or whatever metaphor you want to use—your mom would have a good one for us—and so relax and enjoy while you can. When I first started out, I used to have nightmares that I gave out a wrong prescription. That I gave Mrs. Jallorari Valium instead of her heart medication. Or that I dosed out the Zackowitzes’ kid’s lithium incorrectly. Your mom and I, though…that part was always easy.” I feel his shoulders start to shake, and so I stare straight ahead. If he’s going to cry, if he is going to choose
right now
to fall apart, after everything, after him making all of the decisions—selling our house, getting remarried, moving us here and my having no choice in the matter,
none
—I will not look at him. I’m sorry, but I cannot give him that.