Year of Mistaken Discoveries (4 page)

“What about you? Don’t you need it?”

“Nah. I’m done.” Her mouth was pressed into a thin line.

I’d bugged Nora for years to give up on finding her mom, but now that she had, I wanted to convince her to keep looking.

“You ready to go?” Shannon said, walking up. “I can hear the ice cream in your freezer calling to me.”

“Well, there you go. You don’t want to ignore that. Once Ben and Jerry start speaking to you, it’s the end of the night,” Nora said. She backed away with a wave.

“Calling front seat!” Lydia yelled out. She ran over to my car in her impossibly high heels. Shannon was trying to argue with her, but only halfheartedly.

“Hey, Avery?” Nora had stopped. She seemed to be debating something, but then stepped forward and gave me a hug. I froze in place. It was safe to say Nora was not the kind of person you’d describe as a hugger. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

“For what?” I asked.

“For everything.” She winked. “SOC forever.”

I’d almost forgotten our shorthand. SOC stood for Sister of Choice. In second grade Nora got the idea that since we were both adopted, maybe we were sisters. We practically had proof: We loved vanilla more than chocolate, couldn’t stand the smell of cauliflower cooking, and could touch our tongues to the tips of our noses. We’d gotten really excited about the idea, until my mom sat us down and explained that it was unlikely we were twins separated at birth, not the least because Nora was part Costa Rican and I was clearly as white as they come, and having a secret twin was apparently the kind of thing the adoption agency would have mentioned in the official paperwork. When we got back to my room, I’d burst into tears. I had been so sure we were sisters. Nora patted my back and told me not to be sad, we were better than sisters, and after all, being born sisters was
just an accident of birth. We were sisters of choice. SOC. Whenever we would leave each other we would call out “SOC,” and we signed it at the bottom of all our notes to each other.

“I remember,” I said, but she’d already turned away. In her black clothing she disappeared into the inky darkness just a few steps away from the house.

“Freezing in here!” Shannon called out, startling me. “We need some heat!”

I jumped into the car and turned it over, the heater cranking on with a loud whoosh, blowing ice-cold air over us. The skin on my arms puckered up in goose bumps. I shoved Nora’s notebook into my purse. Lydia started fooling around with the car radio, turning it up when she heard a song she liked. I should have offered to give Nora a ride home—we didn’t even live that far from each other—but she was already gone.

“So what was that all about?” Shannon asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Let’s get down to the important stuff. So start talking. What’s up with you and Colton?” Shannon leaned forward so she was practically in the front seat with Lydia and me. “What the hell does taking a break even mean?”

That’s all it took for me to forget Nora. I launched into a blow-by-blow breakdown of our pantry discussion, and how I wasn’t even sure what I wanted anymore. I didn’t think about Nora again.

chapter five

T
hey say bad things happen in threes. That should have warned me that there were still two to go.

Saturday morning my mom tapped on my bedroom door a few minutes past eight. Considering the three of us had stayed up until after four talking about Colton and the definition of a break, no one was very thrilled.

Shannon rolled over on the floor in my sleeping bag, pulling a pillow over her head. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’m never drinking again,” Lydia mumbled. “It tastes like I slept with a dirty sock in my mouth.”

“That’s probably because you were kissing Karl,” Shannon said. Lydia tossed her pillow at her.

My mom tapped on the door again, this time a bit louder, and poked her head in.

“You girls still snoozing?” she asked in a loud whisper.

I rolled my eyes at Shannon. What did it look like we were doing? Both of my parents were morning people. This was one of the sure signs I was adopted. If left alone, I could easily sleep past ten. My parents both got up before six a.m. without using an alarm. Even on the weekends. They talked about how great it was to get a jump start on the day. There was not a single atom in my body that felt like jump-starting anything before lunch.

“We stayed up late talking,” I explained. “We don’t want breakfast or anything.” My dad liked to make huge breakfasts on the weekend. During the week he worked as a software engineer, but on the weekends he channeled his inner Food Network chef. He even insisted on wearing this totally dorky apron that had
I KISS EVEN BETTER THAN I COOK
on the front. I knew Lydia was in no shape to face breakfast, and Shannon, while she wasn’t a food Nazi or anything, had been a bit chubby in junior high and now could tell you the calorie content of any food item. When she saw the amount of butter my dad put in everything, she would stroke out.

“I suspect everyone’s got a lot planned for their weekend,” Mom said.

The whole point of a weekend was to not have anything planned. This concept escaped my mom. She worked as a lawyer for a women’s rights association, and she wasn’t happy unless she was juggling at least seventy things. Overachiever didn’t even begin to describe her. Last year, in one day she
testified before the state senate on the importance of contraception rights, came home and baked a hundred cupcakes for our cheer camp bake sale, and fixed the dishwasher, which had broken the night before. My mom had this way of making me tired just watching her.

“We might head over to the mall later,” I said. Lydia nodded, but Shannon still had the pillow over her face.

Mom’s brow wrinkled up. Most likely she was disappointed we weren’t planning on doing a door-to-door awareness campaign against female genital mutilation. “We need to do some stuff as a family today,” she said. “I’m afraid you girls will have to go out to the mall another day.”

I rolled over and looked at her. There hadn’t been any family activities listed on the giant calendar that hung in the kitchen, and we were the kind of family that lived and died by the schedule.

“We need to have a family discussion.” Mom was smiling, but I could tell she was serious about something.

“Oh.”

Lydia raised an eyebrow at me, but I had no idea what my mom was talking about. My stomach rolled over. Something was up.

“Do you girls need a ride home?”

Lydia sat up in bed. It was clear this party was over. “No, I can give my mom a call to pick us up. We can drop Shannon off on the way home.”

As soon as the door shut, Lydia turned to me. “Does she know about the party last night?”

Shannon yanked the pillow off her face. Her hair was sticking up. “Shit. Did someone call everyone’s parents and tell them there was booze? My folks will kill me.” Shannon had gotten caught drinking at her cousin’s wedding in June. The guy working the bar thought she was hot and kept slipping her cranberry and vodka. She’d been on house arrest for a month. The last thing she needed was to be grounded all over again.

“I have no idea,” I said, yanking off the covers.

• • •

As soon as Shannon and Lydia had pulled out of the driveway, my parents called me outside to join them in raking leaves. My hair was still damp from the quick shower I’d taken. I hadn’t wanted to face them until I had a shower. It’s hard to prepare yourself for anything when you still have on yesterday’s undies and dirty hair. I picked up a rake and started to pile the red and gold maple leaves for my dad to bag up. I wasn’t sure if I should start by confessing and hope that the honesty policy would gain me some valuable karma points, or if I should stick with the Fifth Amendment until I knew exactly what they knew. Having a mom who was a lawyer and a software genius for a dad meant needing to bring my A game to any questioning.

We raked in silence for a while. I wondered if we were going to pretend that there was nothing going on other than a sudden need to clean the yard. “So . . .” I let my voice trail off.

“We need to talk to you about something,” my dad started. Both my mom and I were looking at him, but he didn’t seem like he knew what to say next.

“You got your letter from Duke yesterday.” My mom pulled a thin white envelope out of her jacket pocket. I could just make out the raised Duke University seal. “We shouldn’t have opened your mail, but we were excited.” Her voice didn’t sound remotely excited at this point.

My heart lurched in my chest. I’d early applied to Duke. It’s the only place I really wanted to go next year. Both of my parents went there. So did their parents, along with various aunts and uncles. (Minus my uncle Raymond, who was rarely spoken of in the family except with a “bless his heart,” which was meant to excuse his vast number of screwups.) I grew up with the Duke Blue Devil logo on everything: beach towels, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, even a set of Christmas ornaments. Last summer we had driven down to the campus, and my parents walked around with me, pointing out their favorite spots. They made sure I knew what place made great pizza, or how to score valuable basketball tickets when the time came. My mom took me over to the Chi Omega house, her sorority. The girls all made a big deal out of her stopping by. Most of them were wearing matching T-shirts with the Greek letters embossed on them. I’d assumed that between being a legacy applicant and my decent grades I’d be able to squeak in for admission. Apparently, upon reflection, Duke could ferret out
that while my parents belonged, there was something about me that wasn’t quite up to snuff. I wasn’t supposed to hear until December. If they’d sent the letter already, it wasn’t good news.

“I didn’t get in,” I said, hoping they would tell me I was wrong. I wanted to kick the pile of leaves I’d made.

My dad let out a breath in a whoosh. He must have been holding it while he waited for me to figure it out. “They didn’t turn you down; they deferred your application.”

“Deferred? What does that mean?” Why was everything in my life suddenly dropped into this purgatory state of nowheresville? Now Duke wanted to “take a break” too.

Mom fidgeted with her rake. “It’s not that bad.”

It’s my experience that when people have to tell you something isn’t that bad, it means it really does suck.

“They’re going to hold your application until the general application round,” Dad explained. “In some ways you can see it as a positive. This gives you a chance to wow the heck out of them over the next few months.” He gave a fist pump like there was no telling what exciting stuff I might do to impress them.

I thought
I
was supposed to be the cheerleader in this family. “But they didn’t like me enough to let me in now,” I pointed out.

“Admission is more competitive than ever these days,” Mom added.

“And we’re not surrendering. The Scott family gets back
up when we’re knocked down,” Dad added in his new, overly cheerful voice. At this rate he was going to become one of those motivational speakers who show up on Dr. Phil and have hair that looks a bit too perfect.

I pressed my mouth together. But I wasn’t really a Scott, was I? The truth was Duke had always been competitive. No one had ever picked Duke as his or her safety school. My parents were able to make the cut, and I wasn’t. My grades were good, but I had to really work for them. I knew from talking to my grandparents that school had come easy to my parents. I could remember my dad going over my math homework with me and then being surprised that even with his explanation I didn’t have a clue how to solve for
x
.

Mom jumped in. “We set up an appointment for you to talk to a school placement consultant. She can meet with you to go over your options and help you come up with a plan B on the off chance that you need it. She comes very highly recommended.”

I had no doubt about this. My parents never did anything halfway. There was a whole shelf of books on parenting in our living room. Our family doctor was rated number one in the city. When they built the house, they’d researched local contractors until they knew who would be the best for the job. They bought into a neighborhood that would have me attend the best school. They didn’t buy appliances unless
Consumer Reports
had given them the golden ass-kiss of acceptance. There
was nothing in this house that didn’t meet their high expectations. Except maybe me.

Dad grabbed a pile of leaves and shoved them into a bag. “I’ve come up with a bunch of ideas. You can do some extra volunteer work with your mom’s agency. We can highlight the stuff you did last year for the drama club. That shows being well-rounded, things like that.” He smiled at me before bending down to scoop up more leaves.

Mom leaned forward and hugged me. “It’s going to be okay.”

I wondered if she was trying to convince me, or herself. “I know,” I lied, because I knew that was the answer that she wanted to hear. My nose was starting to run from the cold, and I wiped it on my jacket sleeve.

“Just wait until those admissions counselors get a look at the senior project you’ve got planned with Colton,” Dad said. “That’s going to blow their socks off.”

My stomach free-fell to the ground. I had no idea if Colton and I were still doing the project together. “Colton and I are kinda taking a break.”

I winced when I saw my parents exchange the look. The kind that said,
Poor thing
. I was trying to figure out how to explain I was fine when the phone rang inside the house.

“What do you say we go out for lunch today and plan our strategy?” Dad suggested, while Mom dashed into the house to grab the call. He took the rake from my hand and hung it in
the garage. He peeled his coat off and headed into the kitchen, his nose red from the cold.

All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and pull the covers back over my head and pretend the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened. I wasn’t sure I was up to acting like I thought everything was going to be fine. And giving my parents a blow by blow of my “break” with Colton over a lunch at Applebee’s sounded nauseating. I followed my dad inside. I was trying to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t sound like an excuse when I noticed he wasn’t talking to me and instead was staring at my mom.