The Pretty App (12 page)

Nigit held up his hand and waited until I high-fived him, and then Mindy did it, too. “Way to go, reality star,” Aidan said, his dark blue eyes bright.

“If you need any help picking out your outfits for the competition, just let me know,” Lindsay said. “I can be on fashion emergency call twenty-four/seven until you leave.” She was smiling so warmly I knew she was serious.

“Thanks,” I said, “I’d like that.”

The rest of the auditorium had mostly cleared out. Sara Oaks had given me an appreciative wave—I wasn’t sure if it was because of the contest or the email I’d sent her. Even Joanna and Jolene were smiling more than usual, like they were fine with us standing there and talking to Audrey & Co. Audrey was the only one who looked a little nervous. “This is really incredible, Blake,” she said. “Maybe we can get together before you go and talk.”

I was grateful for the chance to spend time with her, especially after I thought I’d ruined it last night, but what did she want to talk about? Why couldn’t she just be happy for me?

Woody and Xander were at my side before I could answer her.

“Congratulations,” they echoed each other. Xander put his hand on my waist and gave me a squeeze. I saw Mindy notice, and I had the urge to tell the two of them to just get over it and start dating, but they’d figure it out soon enough. After everything that went down this weekend, I
had a feeling I’d actually be fine with it when it happened. Maybe even happy for them.

Xander’s light hair was overdue for a trim, and it was puffy on top. I touched it and said to Audrey, “It feels like Rodentia,” and she burst out laughing.

“What’s Rodentia?” Xander asked.

“Audrey’s fatboy hamster who overexerted himself on his wheel and died,” I told him as Audrey tried to stop giggling, her serious mood suddenly dissolved. It felt so good to make her laugh. “Was he hot like me?” Xander asked.

“Super sexy hamster,” I said.

Xander grinned and pulled me against his side. “I’m really proud of you,” he said. “This is a huge deal.”

“Thanks,” I said. It felt good to be near him like that again. Even if I didn’t want him to be my boyfriend, I still wanted us to be close. We had so much history, and he liked me all those years for who I was, even when I was far from perfect. I smiled at him, and Joanna started asking about when I had to leave for LA. I was about to say I still needed to convince my parents to let me go when Leo burst through the side door to the auditorium.

His dirty-blond hair was sticking straight up like he’d just run a hand through it. His gray eyes were on me, and there was a fury there I hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t sure if it was because Xander and I had our arms around each other, or if something was really wrong.

“Leo?” I said as he came closer, and I wondered if he could hear every question I had for him echoed in that one word:
Where have you been? Are you okay? Are we okay? Is
there even a
we
or am I the only one who feels it?

I’d never seen him like this. His faded jeans and dark green T-shirt were wrinkled like they’d been pulled off the floor. He moved in my direction with an urgency that scared me.

“Blake,” he said. He glanced at the others like he’d just noticed their presence. And then his eyes went to Xander’s hand on my waist. He stepped dangerously close, his body language signaling for Xander to back off. But Xander didn’t. He just stayed there at my side, his hand dropping easily to my hip. “What’s up, Leo?” he asked.

I hadn’t told Xander about my date this weekend with Leo because there was no reason to. But if Xander hadn’t already sensed something, he would’ve today, when I’d asked him if he’d seen Leo around.

Still. Xander and I weren’t together, and I didn’t like feeling like a pawn in some weird guy showdown. I inched away from his grip.

Leo ignored Xander. “Can we talk?” he asked me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, backing away from Xander. I mumbled good-bye to the Trogs and zipped up my sweater. “Out back?” I asked, pointing to the exit door that led to the woods behind school. Leo nodded. I could feel the Trogs staring at us as Leo took my hand. We hurried over the carpet and out the door. My heart pounded as the cold air bit my skin. We crossed the grass, squinting as our eyes adjusted to the sunlight. The woods were a few yards away, and there was a spot along one of the trails with a fallen log that was perfect for sitting.

Leo followed my lead over the stones that marked the entrance to the trail. We covered the dirt without speaking, and Leo’s footsteps were hard behind mine. I moved between the trees until we found the fallen oak. I brushed my hand over the gnarled bark. Leo sat first, almost like the weight of his worry was forcing him down. I sat close to him and took his hand. Whatever was wrong felt like something huge. His gray eyes were unfocused as he stared at a divot in the dirt near our feet. “Blake,” he said, not looking at me. “I need to go back to California for a little while.”

No.
No
. He couldn’t leave me—not now.

“Good,” I said quickly, without thinking. “Me too. For the show. You could come with me. The email Public sent said I could bring someone. Please, Leo,” I said, hating the shake in my voice.

Leo lifted his chin. His eyes met mine for the first time since we’d sat. “I can’t,” he said softly. “I have to get back right away. It’s for work.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, my words choked. “You’re in high school. How can you be called away for work? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I promise I can explain things to you,” Leo said quickly. “Soon. But not right now. Please, you just have to trust me, Blake. No matter what happens, no matter how things seem, everything I feel for you is real.” He took both of my hands and held them tight in his. “Promise you’ll believe me.”

Audrey had been right: Leo was hiding something. She
was trying to protect me, and I’d basically accused her of being jealous of him. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I said, trying to fight off tears.

“I have to do this one last thing for work. And then I’m done with them.”

“Who’s
them
?” I asked. What
was
this,
The Bourne Identity
?

“The people I was telling you about,” Leo said.

I imagined some start-up company in California taking advantage of a high school kid who messed up a few years ago, and it made me pissed. “Maybe my dad could help you fight back,” I said, “so you don’t have to work for them anymore. He might get elected to office soon, and he knows a lot of people. Maybe he could do something.”

Leo’s entire body went rigid. “No, Blake, absolutely not,” he said, drawing back like I’d slapped him. “You can’t tell your dad about this conversation. Not ever.”

“Okay, jeez, calm down,” I said. “I won’t.”

“You’re not recording any of this with your phone, right?” Leo asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” he said quickly, running a hand through his thick hair. “I guess I’m a little paranoid.”

“A little?” I asked, trying to lighten a mood that suddenly felt way too dark. But Leo didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. “Let me help you,” I said. “If you just tell me what’s going on.”

Leo shook his head, and his features folded together. “I have to go, Blake,” he said. “Just remember what I told
you.” He lifted my chin and stared into my eyes. “
Everything I feel for you is real
,” he said again, and then he put his hands behind my neck and pulled me to him. His kiss wasn’t soft, the way it was in Chicago. His mouth was urgent, his lips pressing mine like he never wanted to let me go.

But then he did. His breathing was heavy when he pulled away. His gray eyes bore into mine like he was asking me something I didn’t know how to answer.

And then he left me sitting in the dark cover of the woods, all alone.

I
drove home that afternoon shaken and on the verge of tears. My mind alternated between the contest and Leo as I sped along Route 31 with Notre Dame’s golden dome shining in the distance. Leo was leaving me, and I wasn’t sure when—or if—he was coming back. I had no idea what went on in his other life, the one he lived before me, the one to which he was returning. He was so secretive about everything. Why couldn’t he trust me enough to confide in me?

And then there was the contest, and more than ever before, I wanted to escape to California. I didn’t have the excitement of Leo here, and even though things had changed for the better between Nic and me, and maybe even between Audrey and me, I still craved an escape from my parents and from Harrison, where I may as well have
been a pariah. I’d alienated everyone with what I’d done to them over the past four years. No one was going to forgive me anytime soon, and it was all my fault.

LA could be a whole new start.

If
my dad let me go. I rehearsed how I was going to ask him as I cruised past American Pancake House and the hotels that scattered the road with vacancy signs. Our town was so much quieter during Notre Dame’s spring semester, when football season was over. There were no
GO IRISH
! signs posted on lawns, no tailgaters wearing Notre Dame jerseys and smelling like beer and hot dogs, no marching bands blaring trumpets and pounding drums.

In just a few months, I’d be a part of it.

Maybe I could tell my parents that competing on the show would be good for my résumé after I graduated Notre Dame. Maybe it would set me apart or something. And it could be character-building, too, which my dad used to say was the reason he was making me get braces, even though I overheard him tell my mother he couldn’t look at my crooked teeth one more day. Character-building is just the kind of thing politicians like to talk about. Especially conservative ones.

Maybe I could make the reality show sound good if I just presented it in the right way. For a few delirious moments, I even imagined my mother saying she wanted to go with me. I saw us putting on makeup together, and her telling me she’d always wanted to be close like this but that she was under so much pressure at home. And then I imagined her telling me how terrible she felt that she’d sacrificed my
feelings all along to make my father happy.

But I knew it wouldn’t happen like that, even as I dreamed it. My mom barely seemed comfortable spending time alone with me. It was like I made her nervous or something, like she was more jittery when I was around. And it felt like it was getting worse now that we were about to be in the public eye. Maybe having Nic and me around set her nerves on edge because in some protective, maternal way she worried about what my father would say to us, or what this impending campaign might do to us. Whatever the root of her anxiety, there was no way she’d want to do a whole week of mother-daughter bonding. Plus, a reality show seemed beneath her as a potential political wife. I just needed to hope they wouldn’t think it was beneath
me
as a potential political daughter.

I had to convince them to let me go. And if I couldn’t, maybe I could resort to extreme measures and take off. I was eighteen; I didn’t need a legal guardian to agree to anything. The thought made me jittery in a good way: my first few days of officially being an adult and I was already thinking about running away to Hollywood.

I pulled my Jeep into the driveway and saw my dad’s BMW parked next to my mom’s SUV. My heart thudded against my chest as I angled behind their cars and turned off the ignition. Why was my dad home already? It was three o’clock. This couldn’t be good.

I walked slowly up the driveway, wishing I could stop time to practice my speech more before facing them. I unlocked the door and heard my mother using her singsong
phone voice, which was an octave higher than her regular voice.

“I
know
,” I heard her say. “We just can’t believe it. Well, of course, Robert can. He’s always thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. And now there’s proof, I guess.” Her voice turned a little sour at the end, but she lifted it again to say, “I’ve got to be going. I have so many congratulatory calls to return.”

I stood in the foyer, frozen. She was definitely talking about the show and she sounded happy. I dropped my keys into a white porcelain bowl on the cherrywood table. “Hello?” I called out.

Footsteps pounded the stairs. My father appeared wearing a dark suit. “Blake!” he boomed. He descended the bottom steps and stood so close to me that for a second I was sure he was going to hug me. I froze. He hadn’t hugged me in years. His arms lifted, but then he dropped them down against his sides like they were deadweight. He leaned back on the heels of his shiny black shoes while I prayed for the awkwardness to pass.

“Sweetie!” my mother said as her nude pumps clicked down the hall. She wore a taupe blazer over slim-cut navy pants. The three layers of pearls made her look like a first lady. (Not Michelle. More like Hillary.)

“We’re thrilled, Blake,” my father said, extending his hand.

I shook it and felt how warm his skin was. Could they really be talking about the contest?

My mother was grinning the smile Nic called the
Political Wife Smile, the one she used for photo ops, and my father was doing something similar.

I hadn’t done anything else to make them happy. It had to be the contest. “I’m so excited, too,” I said. “And really grateful.”
Because I can’t wait to get away from you.
“Because it will be a great opportunity.”

“It certainly will,” my father said. “If you win, you’ll be a Citizen Ambassador. The United Nations honor will go a long way with voters. As long as you keep your nose clean, this will be just the kind of exposure we need.”

I blinked. Then I forced a smile to match his.

Of course
.

How could I have not thought of this? It made perfect sense. Naturally my father would see this as an opportunity to enhance the public perception of our family. The country would be watching, which meant so would Indiana voters.

My mother moved closer to my father, slipping her arm through his and giving him a gentle squeeze. “It will be a wonderful opportunity for
you
, sweetie,” she said to me, but if she was trying to give my father a hint to rein it in, it wasn’t working.

“It could even give us name recognition among the younger voters,” my father went on, standing a little taller like he always did when he talked politics. “It could encourage them to hit the polls in November. The eighteen-to-twenty-five demographic is nearly impossible to reach. This may do it, Blake. It’s genius, really.”

He grinned like the Cheshire Cat. But I smiled back
anyway. Maybe this was what politics was all about: two people pretending they were on the same side to get exactly what they wanted. “I couldn’t agree more, Dad,” I said. “The possibilities are endless.”

My mother smiled wider, happy we were all in agreement. My father smiled at me with adoration I hadn’t seen on his face since I was a little girl. “You know, Dad,” I started, unable to help myself. “You haven’t looked at me like this in years.”

My father’s features went cold. He must have heard what was beneath my words, and judging by the look on his face, he didn’t like it. Not at all.

“Yes, well. You haven’t earned that look, have you, Blake?” He smiled like he hadn’t just said something awful, and my stomach turned. “And let’s not forget everything I’ve just told you. While you’re in LA for this contest, you won’t do anything—and I mean,
anything
—to embarrass me or tarnish this family’s image. Because if you do,” he said, “the consequences will be unimaginable.”