Pretenders (24 page)

Sheridan Spencer knows.

October 10th

Mom and Dad had a huge blowout Sunday night. I don’t know how it started but I heard how it ended. The entire neighborhood did.

Mom said married couples have affairs at the hotel all the time. There was a time when she couldn’t understand that kind of betrayal—cheating on someone you love. But she understands it now. Because people need affection to survive. Affection fuels the heart. If we can’t get it from our partners we look for it somewhere else.

Dad told her to stop being so dramatic. And that he says he loves her all the time. She said talk is cheap. I don’t want to hear it, I want to
feel
it. He asked if it was that time of the month.

She said, “Yes, what’s your excuse?”

Then she threw a bunch of clothes in a wheelie and said she’d be spending the night at the hotel. He wished her luck with the affair and went back to the computer.

Mom called that night to tell me and A.J. she loves us. I cried and asked when she was coming home. She said she was working late and she’d see me in the morning.

It’s Wednesday. She’s still not back.

I keep begging Dad to make her come home. He says he can’t make that woman do anything and she’ll come when she’s ready.

We needed Beni’s.

But I had just gotten another B and my bracelets were being held by U.S. Customs officials. The mindless bureaucrats who kept putting me on hold, transferring me, and disconnecting my calls said they don’t know why. They don’t know when I will have them. I asked if they knew anything, like how unequivocally stupid they are. They hung up.

The Girl Scouts Young Women of Distinction contest is in two weeks. Without my SWAPs I can’t enter. Without entering I can’t win. I am still not captain of the track team. Principal Alden is not easily impressed. Debate club was a bust. And the Phoenix Five thing is months away. The future of our family and the outer layer of my epidermis rested on A.J.’s rounded shoulders.
⁴⁶

I sat on the roof and waited for him to get home from work.
I prayed he sold a car. If he didn’t I prayed he’d lie and say he did.

Then we got a call from the school. A.J. kicked in a locker and took off. Dad tried to reach him at work. Mr. Spencer said he fired A.J. that afternoon. He stole the M3 GTR and took it for a joy ride. Dad asked if he was sure. A.J. loved this job and wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize it. But we all knew he loved that car even more so we weren’t surprised.

When A.J. got home Dad lost it. I ran up to the roof, blasted my iTouch, and cried.
⁴⁷

How could I have been so unequivocally selfish?
⁴⁸
Those grades were what held my family together. And I let them slip for a boy. A boy who hasn’t even asked me out even though he says things like, “I love this girl.”

I listened to that Adele song “Someone Like You” and cried holes through my emotional ozone layer.
⁴⁹
I mean, do you know how hard it is to get straight A’s and win awards and wear long sleeves in the summer? It’s an endless marathon of exhausting.

I knew A.J. would mess this up but I let myself believe he
wouldn’t.
⁵⁰
Not because I had faith in him. More because I needed a rest.

I listened to the Adele song again and imagined playing it for Blake. That’s when A.J. showed up on the roof and sat beside me. He hung his head between his knees. It was his turn to cry.

“I didn’t do it, Ness.”

“Why do they think you did?”

“Because I love that car. I’m the new guy. I’m in high school. I dunno.”

“Well, what did they say?”

“Just that someone added twenty miles to it Friday night.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

A.J. gazed past the satellite dishes and phone wires and sighed. “They found a Noble High key chain on the backseat.”

“Oh.”

His blue eyes filled again. I rested my hand on his back. He was wearing his favorite flannel—purple-and-gray plaid. The colors were not as vibrant as they used to be. None of us were.

“Wait,” I said, breaking the silence. “You have a Noble High key ring?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I just love how it matches my Noble High sweats and my Noble High hat and my Noble High binders.”

“So, it wasn’t you.”

“I told you that.”

We didn’t speak again for a while. I was thinking about life and how unfair it can be. Then A.J. said, “You think Mom and Dad will get divorced?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are your grades?”

“Crap,” I said.

Nothing about that was funny but we smiled anyway.

“Without your A’s and my job, how are we going to fix this?” he asked.

We never talked openly about Beni’s or why we loved it so much. I convinced myself that A.J. liked going for the food. Because if A.J. went for the peace, like I did, then A.J. knew about the dysfunction. And if he knew about the dysfunction it had to be real. I couldn’t wave it away like a lone wisp of dandelion fluff. I’d have to admit that the fluff was part of something bigger. A beanstalk I didn’t want to see.

“You went to stop the fighting too?”

“No, the teppanyaki. That high-speed chopping never gets old,” he said. “Jeez, does everyone in this family think I’m a moron?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“Okay, genius, now what?”

Midterms were coming out this Monday and I didn’t have a single A. I knew with a little effort—okay, a lot—I could get my grades up and we’d be back on track. But we didn’t have time for that; Mom was gone now.

“How badly do you want this?” I asked.

“Uh, I don’t want Mom and Dad to get divorced, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“So you’d do anything to save their marriage?”

“’Course,” A.J. said.

I paused to assess the desperation behind his eyes.

“Anything?”

“Yes!”

“Teach me how to hack.”

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The buttery aroma of béchamel sauce welcomed me home from school. I hadn’t even pulled my key out of the door when Mom shouted, “Lily, in the kitchen. Now!”

I wondered if she busted the lock on my journal. If she had, Karb, Kalorie, and Kardio were the least of my concerns. She’d know about my Duffy obsession, that my savings is now an homage to Bryanboy, that I toss my Hebrew National salami because it has Dead Sea amounts of sodium. Most of all, she’d know how badly I long for normal. A longing that negates everything she’s ever taught me.

Anyway, it was a false alarm. I was late for International Cuisine Night and she was koncerned (ha!).

ICN is Mom’s way of filling my free time with activities I would never tell a Pub person—living or dead—about. Ever. The point is for me to translate a foreign recipe, cook it, serve it, and digest it. You can see why I wasn’t racing home.

“Sorry, Mom, I had a style club meeting,” I said, peering into the bubbling saucepot. “What are you making?”

“What
you
were supposed to be making,” she snipped. “Kosher Croque Tartiflette.”

“Oy, how French.”

She wiped her hands on a black dishcloth and tossed it on the island. “Lily, should I be concerned?”

“About what?”

“Look at you.”

Concern would not be an uncommon reaction to the bike chain suspenders that held up my striped golf pants. But they were a small price to pay for Pub-ularity.

“Bubbie Libby from next door stopped by,” she continued. “You were supposed to walk…”

“It’s okay, they don’t have names.”

“You didn’t even call her. That’s not like you. You’re more responsible than that.…” Her voice trailed off. “You used to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I haven’t seen a single grade since that A you got in Algebra.”

“A-plus.”

“Still.”

“Mom, I’m fine. I promise. I was at school. That’s all.”

“Not for long,” she mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Pardon me.”

“Sorry. Pardon me?”

“I was reminding you of our agreement. Straight A’s or you’re back at home.”

The preheat alert beeped. She put in the Croque and let the oven door slam shut.

“Mmmmm, what’s that smell?
Très magnifique
,” Dad said, home from work. He stuffed his commuter train newspapers in the recycle bin, kissed us hello, and asked again what smelled so good. We didn’t answer. Mom turned her back to me and sighed. I rolled my eyes.

“Looks like everything is under control in here.” He poured a glass of red wine and hurried off. “Call me when it’s ready.”

Dad is a senior editor at the
New York Times
. He is the most intelligent person I have ever met. He manages a department of smart journalists because he’s even smarter than they are. But the guy is seriously challenged when it comes to girl fights.

After he left, Mom said, “I’m not kidding, Lily. I will pull you out of that school tomorrow if I have to.”

When I was three, I put a dry cleaning bag over my face and tried to breathe because my mom said not to. I wasn’t getting any air so I breathed harder. That made it worse. My lungs became bricks and my face turned blue. Leaving Noble and going back to Homie would feel more stifling.

“Am I clear?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Yes, I understand.”

UGH!

“Yes, I understand.”

I understood that I couldn’t leave Blake, Vanessa, or Duffy. I wasn’t exactly mentally stimulated by the girls in style club, but I had fun looking through celebrity magazines and debating who wore it best. The point is, I am learning to function in society. To live among my peers. To connect. Of the plethora of things Mom taught me, she never taught that. She refused.

While the Croque cooked, I thought about my bungee-ing grades (A+, B+, B, A-, B, A, C). Correction. Okay, that’s a lie. I should have. Instead, I stared at the side of Duffy’s house and wondered why he left school with Sheridan yesterday. What they talked about. Why we never walked home together. If he got the Evite to Octavia’s girl-ask-boy party Friday night. If it was his first house party too. What he would wear. What he thought I should wear. If Octavia’s parents were going to be there. If not, what he would tell his parents. What he thought I should tell mine. What he would say if I asked him to be my date.