Who's Your Daddy? (2 page)

Don’t worry. He’ll pay.

But that’s basically how I ended up hanging out with Mr. Morgenstern on day one of my five-day, in-school suspension, stuck in a little jail-like cubicle stealing peeks at
US Weekly
which I’d smuggled in with my Biology II homework, and knowing that getting suspended was a freakin’ cakewalk compared to the punishment my dad would dole out when I got home.

I just never thought he’d actually cancel my driver’s license with the Department of Motor Vehicles and cut it up right there in front of me. I mean, this was my LICENSE. And not only that, but for the first time, I hadn’t looked like a vacant-eyed, fashion-victim knuckle dragger in a photograph. Where’s the justice? As if I wasn’t already considered a freak of monster proportions, now I wouldn’t be able to drive until I turned eighteen. He might as well have whipped out his Sig Sauer P220 and shot me dead right there on the Pergo floor.

He also restricted me from my social life for the rest of the semester, which was no punishment at all really considering I didn’t HAVE a social life, but I didn’t tell him that. The only real social contact I had was hanging out with Meryl and Caressa, which we refer to as “studying” in front of the parents, and Dad said I could
continue that because it was, he thought, schoolwork-related.

I should’ve been happy to have pulled at least that off, but I wasn’t. Not with my shiny, brand new, Colorado driver license sitting like confetti in the bottom of the trash can. Plus, my dad told me I would have to perform some sort of community service, but he hadn’t decided what yet. Fine with me, because I didn’t want to know.

I spent the dinner hour sullenly pushing my food around my plate and trying my best to ignore Luke’s smirks while simultaneously wanting to kill him. I needed to get out of the house and let off steam, so thank God I was still allowed to “study” with my friends. I think my dad was sick of the tension in the house too, so he was more than happy to sequester himself in the dining room after dinner to avoid us.

Not wanting to push my luck, I dutifully cleaned up the kitchen, then hooked my backpack over my shoulder and stood in the entrance to the dining room. My dad was frowning over a bunch of case files spread out on the table in front of him, looking vaguely like Esai Morales from
NYPD Blue
, with a little more distinguished gray at the temples.

I cleared my throat. “I’m going to Caressa’s to study.”

Dad’s arms remained braced on the edge of the table, but his eyes raised from the files. “Is the kitchen clean?”

“Yes.”

“How are you going to get there?”

Rub it in, why don’t you? I thought, fighting not to roll my eyes. “My bike,” I said, attempting to sound stoic and martyr-esque, hoping the guilt would eat him alive when I made the front page of the
Peaks Picayune
after getting munched by a wild animal or kidnapped by a freaky mountain man with a meth lab in his basement. “Or I’ll walk.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s cold.”

Not to mention the bears and mountain lions and freaky mountain dudes with bad tooth-to-tattoo ratios, but whatever.

“Have your brother take you.” He turned toward the family room and called, “Luke?”

I shifted on my feet, but knew I was in too much trouble already to pitch a fit. Truth was, I’d rather end up hypothermic or mauled by a bear than ride in the car with my smug, smirking brother and his “I told you so”
attitude. I clamped my lips together and said nothing.

Luke stuck his head into the dining room, all freakin’ zoned out from a dose of
The Man Show
or
Jackass
or some other equally brain-numbing anti-stimuli—just what he needed. “Huh?”

“Drive your sister to Caressa’s.”

“But, Dad—”

“Now.”

The air of pissed-offedness hung thick and ominous in the house, premonitions of butt-kickings to come, so Luke shut his trap, too. He snagged his keys off the hook by the door with an angry swipe and glared at me. “Come on, Felon,” he growled under his breath.

I punched him in the arm. “Don’t call me that.”

He ignored me, instead spreading his thumbs and forefingers and placing them tip to tip to make a box. “
Forgery for Fun and Profit
, by Lila Moreno. I can just see the book cover.”

“Bite me, buttwipe,” I said, pushing past him into the cold, dark, Rocky Mountain night. The elk had been bugling earlier in the day—a sound I’d always loved, like whale song—but now the black night fell silent.

Thankfully, so did Luke. I had expected him to taunt
me about getting busted, but instead he drove to Caressa’s with Disturbed pounding and vibrating from the stereo speakers, drumming his fingers on the wheel. He’d left his window open to the thirty-five-degree air, though, because he knew being cold annoyed me, and he loved to annoy me. I just concentrated on the flashes of gold from the aspen trees between the black of the pines along the sides of the road.

When he screeched to a stop in the portico, I leapt from the car and muttered, “Caressa will bring me home,” trying not to let my teeth chatter.

He snorted. “Like I offered to pick you up.”

I slammed the door, wanting to stick out my tongue but deciding that was SO seventh grade. Why did I let him get me so riled up? Luke wasn’t that bad of a brother overall. He was just a guy. What can I say? Guys often suck, as a rule, and brothers are the worst. We used to be pals until … I wasn’t sure when it had changed. I think it had something to do with me entering high school and immediately being shuffled into the loser corral. God forbid Luke would stick up for me. Apparently the attentions of a certain cheerleading überskank were more important than blood relations to
His Shallow Highness. But I set his lameness aside, glad to be with my friends at last.

They say misery loves company, and if so I was in for my first bit of luck. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who’d suffered a heinous day (although we all agreed, due to the license thing, I was in first place on the suck scale). Meryl had been trying out for the debate team, but in the semifinal round that afternoon, she’d tanked in a big way when most of her topics dealt with the worst of all possible things—movies and television. Bummed didn’t come close to describing her mood. Meryl is so smart, we were bummed for her, too.

Caressa, on the other hand, had what most people would consider a good day—on the surface. Even though she hadn’t formally auditioned, she’d been cast for the lead in the spring musical—
Beauty and the Beast
. The only problem was, Caressa didn’t
want
the lead. She had no desire whatsoever to sing—it was the whole totally “doing whatever your parents had done” thing. Blech.

The coolio-factor of playing Belle and wearing kick-butt costumes weren’t even enough to drag Caressa out of depressionville. She had joined the theater club
because she likes
makeup
, not singing. No, she LOVES makeup—worships at the temple of Sephora.com on a regular basis, if you want the whole truth. She wanted to work behind the scenes, doing makeup and costuming for the various productions. But, of course, having Lehigh Thibodoux, aka Tibby Lee, for a father meant, once again, Caressa got jammed. The theater club sponsor, Mr. Cabbiatti, who is a celebrity-wannabe to an epic degree, couldn’t pass up the publicity opportunity. Now all the girls who wanted to play Belle were angry with Caressa for getting a part she didn’t even want, and Caressa was angry because she just wanted to put makeup on the beast. Go figure!

We were all sitting around that night, painting each other’s toenails, complaining about our parents and our horrid luck, and bemoaning the fact that homecoming loomed and none of us had dates or even prospects.

Surprising? No. Depressing? Uh, yes.

Fiona Apple was playing on the stereo, because we wanted to feed our already depressed moods, and so far, no directives from Mr. Thibodoux to “keep it down.”

Caressa was bent low over my feet painting my toe-nails with this sweet OPI shade she’d just bought, “I’m
Not Really a Waitress.” It’s kind of a red with sparkly gold in it. I had a hard time deciding between that and another shade from OPI’s European collection called, “Amster-Damsel in Distress,” but the gold shimmer in “Waitress” really won me over.

Caressa always has the best makeup.

Anyway, she was concentrating on my pinky toe, left foot, when out of nowhere Meryl goes, “We need to change our lives. Homecoming is on the autumnal equinox this year.”

As though those two comments were related.

“Huh,” Caressa and I said in unison, not knowing what type of response was appropriate to the equinox-announcement-slash-life-change directive. I mean, we’d been talking about how much our lives sucked, but the equinox? All I knew for sure was that homecoming had been rescheduled and would commence the following Tuesday night. Yes, a freakin’ Tuesday, if you can believe that lunacy. The switch was the school district’s brilliant solution to avoiding a big, heinous snowstorm expected on Friday.

Whatever. Tuesday, Friday. Equinox Schmequinox. You could only complain for so long, and Meryl always
launched interesting conversations, so we went with it. That’s one cool thing about having a friend who’s completely Laura Ingalls Wilder-ish out of touch with the American entertainment scene (or any entertainment scene, really)—she has tons of time to read stuff the rest of the high school universe would pass up in favor of this week’s installment of
The Real World
. She’s always popping off bits of useless but nevertheless pretty interesting trivia.

Meryl also works a couple of nights a week at the local metaphysical shop downtown, since Mr. Morgenstern put the giant kibosh on her first choice job at Blockbuster. Frankly, I think the metaphysical shop is a much better place to work anyway. It always smells good in there from the flickering candles and essential oils, and the tinkling bells and gurgling serenity fountains are soothing.

Compare that atmosphere to one of bright, corporate clone paint, fluorescent lights, zit-faced, overzealous assistant managers, and nonstop video background noise, and the choice is obvious. Plus, at Inner Power, she only has to work with the two way-mellow women who own the shop rather than all the mouth-breathing
vidiots who work at Blockbuster, and she’s learning all kinds of sweet stuff about, well, metaphysics.

“Since we’re not going,” Meryl continued, “we should all spend the night at Caressa’s and have a dumb supper.”

That made both Caressa and I blink up at her in confusion.

“If it’s okay with your parents, of course,” she added, glancing over at Caressa.

“It always is.” Caressa shrugged. Her parents, as a rule, were totally cool about stuff like that.

“A dumb supper?” I interjected, just as Caressa and I exchanged a look. “You mean, like something we all hate? Great idea, Meryl,” I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. “Brilliant. That would really cheer us up.”

“No, goof. It’s a tradition that dates back to seventeenth-century England. It’s a midsummer’s eve custom—”

“Yeeeeeah, newsflash. It’s not summer,” I pointed out, even though it
had
to be obvious, even for a person who didn’t watch the evening news. Hello, snowstorm!

“Still,” Meryl said, unfazed by my sarcasm. “I think it’s adaptable. It’s all about our intent.” She shrugged. “If they can hold homecoming on a school night, I figure
we can host a dumb supper on the equinox rather than midsummer’s eve.”

She had a point.

“What do we have to do?” Caressa asked, her eyes glowing with curiosity that mirrored how I felt.

“Well, there are lots of details, but in general we have to hold a silent dinner that starts at midnight, with only black linens and total darkness. Well, except for candles. We have to make and serve everything backward, and—oh, it’s a long story. I’ll explain it all later.” She flipped her hand. “The point is, it’s supposed to help us predict who we’ll marry, but since we’re only sixteen, I’m thinking it will help us predict who we might date instead. What do you think?”

“Is it reliable?” asked Caressa.

Meryl quirked her mouth to the side. “Well, it’s been going on since the sixteen hundreds. It can’t be
all
stupid.” She looked from one of us to the other. “So?”

“I’m game,” I said. Anything to take my mind off how much my life blew major chunks.

“Me, too,” said Caressa.

Meryl’s face spread into a huge smile. “Then it’s a date.”

“A date? Well—” I said, “even if this dinner turns out to actually
be
dumb, at least we’ll each be able to say we had ONE date this year.”

We all laughed, but the truth was, we couldn’t wait. I could hear it in my own breathlessness, in the equally nervous and psyched laughter of my two best friends. It gave us something to look forward to, and boy, did we need it.

Little did we know how this harmless, losers’-alternative-to-homecoming, dumb supper would end up changing our entire lives.

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected], [email protected]