Wide awake now, and p.o.’d! “Actually, Dad, they have me up every morning by six to work out and then I’ve usually got twelve-hour-plus days filled with pesky little things like vocal practice and rehearsals and appearances and interviews and photo shoots. It’s called a job. At least someone in this family has one.”
Low blow, I know. But when I looked around the house and saw the new washing machine and dryer, the repaired living room ceiling, the new storm-proof windowpanes, all long-overdue upgrades financed by my recent earnings, I was not about to take Dad’s shit.
Dad struck back with, “The G.E.D. was yesterday. You didn’t even have the decency to tell me you didn’t plan to take the test! What are you gonna do, sing and dance your way through life? How long do you think this current lifestyle of yours can last?”
Mom stood up from the table. “Enough, you two!” She looked like she was about to cry. She faced Dad. “I thought we agreed not to start this again. Wonder will take the test when she’s ready. Her career is obviously thriving—she doesn’t need us to tell her what to do. Just be grateful she didn’t pull a Kayla and threaten to legally emancipate herself from her parents. Just look at Wonder: She’s fine on her own—maybe better off without us.” Her eyes were a little teary as she turned to me. “Wonder, can I make you some eggs?”
I went over and hugged her. “No thanks, Mom, I just ate a Power Bar in my room.”
“See!” Mom sputtered. “You don’t need me.”
“Actually, Mom, I wouldn’t mind some eggs at all, but I need to cut the cals to make up for what I ate yesterday.” I smoothed down her hair. Dad sat at the table, shaking his head, not making eye contact with me.
“CHARLES!” Mom yelled. “Get down here now, please!”
I’d already poured a mug of lukewarm coffee and added a Sweet ’n Low—what, fifty calories?—by the time Charles stomped into the kitchen. “What?” he grunted.
“Sit down,” Dad said. “Mom and I want to have a family discussion.”
“But where’s Lucky? . . .” I let out automatically, before I realized what I’d said. I hadn’t heard my parents convene a “family discussion” since long before she died. “Sorry,” I murmured.
A sad silence hung over us, until Dad spoke up. “We wanted to wait until Wonder was home so we could tell you three . . . pardon me, you two . . . at the same time. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. Mommy and I have decided to separate.”
If Mom and Dad were expecting whimpers and cries of shock and “No!” they were mistaken. “Good,” Charles pronounced. “You’re both miserable.”
I said, hopefully, “Does that mean we’re leaving Devonport?”
Mom said, “No. Dad will remain here.”
Charles said, “I’m staying here too.” Charles looked in my direction. “I like it here. Sorry.”
Mom continued, “I’ve started looking for a job back in Boston. Once I’ve got a new position, I’ll get an apartment there. Charles, I figured you would want to stay here, but I hope and expect you’ll spend some weekends and vacations with me in Boston.”
“Yeah,” Charles said. “That’d be cool.”
Dad finished off with, “We’re not separating right away; we’ll wait till Mom finds a job and is able to move.”
I said, “You could come on tour with me, Mom.”
Mom said, “No, Wonder. But thank you for asking. Letting you pursue this career was like opening Pandora’s box. I regret encouraging you, but now that your career is ignited, there’s no turning back. And I don’t want to be the stage mom on the bus. I need to go back to Boston and get back into therapy and start my life over.”
I didn’t repeat my offer, though I suspected she would have liked me to ask her again. Mom’s Boston plan was the most sensible thing I’d heard from her in years.
And that was that. My parents’ marriage was over.
Thirty-six
After the “family discussion,” I returned to my room. I sat in the window seat, looking out at the ocean, feeling blue about Mom and Dad, then feeling bluer that I truly must be a shallow girl if I was feeling sadder because I hadn’t heard from Liam than I was about Mom and Dad’s announcement. Was he not calling me because he thought I’d put the hor in hormones yesterday? What had I been thinking when I let that happen?
My cell phone ringer was set to its highest volume and the phone never left me, nestled in my pants pocket, yet I still bothered to check the voice mail every hour, even though there was no voice-mail message light flashing. It was nearly impossible that I would have missed his call.
I was putting on my running shoes to take a jog on the beach—payback time for yesterday’s lobster roll and fries (and the bag of Oreos I snuck in my room last night) and the lack of dance rehearsal today—when Charles came into my room. A pretty, hippy-dippy-looking girl with long fine blond hair and a tiny frame under her wispy Indian sari-like outfit was attached to my brother’s hand. My baby brother had a girlfriend! Charles said, “Amy, this is my sister. Wonder, Amy. Amy, Wonder.”
“Hey,” Amy said. She lifted her free hand in a wave to me. “I’ve, like, seen you on TV and stuff. You look different in person, like . . . bigger and all.”
Thanks, Amy. I added one-pound ankle weights to each of my legs and laced my sneakers tight.
Charles said, “We’re going to the DQ. Wanna come?”
“I’m going for a run, but I’ll walk with you for a few.” I followed them downstairs and outside the house.
When we were out on our street, Charles said, “So what do you think about Mom and Dad? It’s about time, right? You know they’ve been sleeping in different bedrooms ever since Mom came back from New York.”
I was thinking that maybe he shouldn’t be talking about the family dirt in front of Amy, but her face had no reaction, like she already knew much more about what was happening in the Blake household than I ever would.
I said, “Were Mom and Dad like this back in Cambridge? It’s hard to remember what we were like . . . before. If Lucky were here, this never would have happened, she would be so upset. . . .”
Charles stopped walking and just looked at me, hard and mad. “Wrong. Lucky once told me Mom and Dad would be divorced before I went to high school, and they’d be happier for it. You act like you’re the only person who knew Lucky, like you’re the only person who misses her. You make me sick sometimes! You use the memory of Lucky like a crutch. She would have hated that. Why don’t you just go off and take your run, Wonder Fake—I mean Blake.” He grabbed Amy’s hand and stomped off, as I stood mute on the street, stunned.
What the hell was that about? I sprinted off toward the beach but didn’t make it a quarter mile before I turned around and headed straight to the DQ. Charles and Amy were sitting at an outside table, sharing a sundae. I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to go inside. I so wasn’t up for a visit with my ex-DQ co-workers during this disaster “vacation.”
I said to Charles, “I don’t understand what I did to you to make you so mad at me.” You’d think Amy might have realized Charles and I needed some alone time, but she stayed by his side and just looked down at the table, like lalalalala.
Charles said, “Dude, you act like everything bad that happens in this family just happened to you. When Lucky died, you acted like it happened to you personally, that you were the only person who loved her so you were the only person who suffered. Guess what? I might miss her more than you. She was cool; she wasn’t like . . . you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, for one thing, she wouldn’t have sold out like you, she wouldn’t have gotten so skinny you could barely recognize her, or dyed her hair a fake color, and she wouldn’t have let herself appear in music videos half-naked, singing nonsense lyrics about nothing.”
“She was going to have the same career I have now!”
Charles’s voice rose. “No she wasn’t! She played guitar, she wrote her own songs, she had her own
life going. She would never have let herself become some Kayla puppet. Lucky cared about the music, not the image. It’s like you only think about your loss, instead of the life ahead of her that Lucky lost. Maybe I wasn’t a fuckin’ B-Kid with you and Lucky, but I knew her a lot better than you ever realized. You act like everything that was hard for you after she died was because of Lucky instead of because of you, because you just weren’t strong enough to deal, even though Mom and Dad would have done anything for you.” Charles wiped at his eyes and took some deep breaths. For an about-to-turn-fifteen-year-old boy, almost crying in front of his sister and girlfriend at the DQ had to be some sore point of mortification.
Then it hit me, that in the three years since Lucky had died, we had never talked about her, not Charles and me, not Charles and me with Mom and Dad. We had just survived. And Charles was right—I did feel like Lucky’s death was the greatest loss to me personally, and I’d never really thought about how much he loved her, how much he missed her. I didn’t appreciate Charles bawling me out at Dairy Queen, but maybe he needed to vent, and if I was a good big sister like Lucky had been, I would be logical and calm instead of chewing him out in return.
I sat down on the bench opposite Charles and Amy. I took Charles’s spoon from his hand and dug into the sundae and took a bite. Just tasting the soft-serve vanilla brought me back to my earlier life, wearing a DQ uniform and longing for escape. “Huh,” I said. “Anything else I’ve done to offend you that I don’t know about?”
Amy offered, “Ever since your video came out and you’ve been in all those magazines and on TV, Charles gets picked on at school. But he’s, like, bigger than most everyone there so it’s never gone that far. But people sing back the ‘Bubble Gum Pop’ lyrics to him in the cafeteria, they’re all ’chew it, blow it, lick it, pop pop pop’ when he’s passing by, and your house has been TP’d a couple times.”
“I’m so sorry, Charles,” I said. “And you still like this damn town?”
Charles shrugged, muttered “Yeah.” Amy put her arm around his shoulder.
I said, “So if I were Lucky right now, what would I do with my career?”
Charles said, “For starters, dump those lame-ass songs and put some clothes on when you’re on TV. And do something worthwhile with your fame; I mean Lucky was killed by a drunk driver, there’s gotta be some anti-drunk driving cause you could support. . . .”
That would never happen, using my new status to become some anti-drunk driving mouthpiece. That subject was—and probably would always be—the most sensitive of issues to me, just too close to us. But maybe Charles had a point. Maybe I should use my new fame toward some form of charitable cause.
“Spoken by the boy I saw smoking a joint on the beach last night,” I pointed out.
Charles’s tense face opened in a small, sly smile. “That’s different,” he said. “I’m not driving a car, I’m going home and going to sleep. And anyway, before you bust me, who was the guy that dropped you off in the VW bus that you were playing tongue hockey with on the beach last night? Don’t think I didn’t see you. . . .”
Now it was my turn to smile and blush. Who knew my brother would turn out to be a cool guy, funny and complicated and maybe on his way to being a stoner, but, well, a brother I wouldn’t mind getting to know a little better?
Then: Who but Jen & Co., along with Doug Chase and the members of Doug’s Band, should emerge from inside the DQ and sit down at the table next to ours without even noticing me. I looked at Amy and Charles. “Excuse me for a sec, will ya? I just can’t resist this!”
I let my hair loose from under my BoSox baseball cap and took off the tracksuit jacket I was wearing over my jogging bra. Maybe I had gotten too skinny, but my muscles were tight and don’t think I didn’t want the party at the next table to notice. I stood up and stepped over to Jen and Doug’s table. “Hi, guys!” I chirped. Jen’s friend had a stack of magazines on the table in front of her, and there was my face on the cover of Teen Girl, with a caption that read “WONDER-ful!”
Jen rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” she said, but one of her friends was all, “Hi, Wonder! Wow, you look great, how did you lose all that weight? Would you sign my magazine? I’m Christine, remember, from third-period gym class—” Jen interrupted her with, “Shut up, Christine!” Yeah, I remember you Christine, you were the girl making farting noises while I was auditioning for the school musical. And now you want my autograph?
Doug looked exactly the same, good-looking but in a bored kind of way, the kind of way that had to lead to premature balding and a beer belly by age thirty. Even his serpent tattoo looked bland on his bicep, like it had been demoted from fierce killer to bored onlooker. Doug said, “Check you out, Wonder! You here to play with the band again? You look awesome.” He tugged flirtatiously at my hand, which I grabbed away from him and placed behind my back.
I shook my head. “I’m, like, going on tour with Kayla starting this week. We’re going all over the country, that kind of thing. Hey, Jen, how did that Guys and Dolls show work out for you?”
Jen huffed, stood up, and walked back inside the DQ. “Fuck off!” she called out before the door closed behind her. Jen’s friends did not follow her. Christine said, “Freddy Porter! You lucky girl! What’s Kayla like? Is it true she’s dating Dean Marconi?”
I ignored Christine. “Is Jen your girlfriend now?” I said to Doug.
“No way!” he said. Doug got up from the table, but instead of going inside to soothe Jen, he dashed over to his truck, reached inside the passenger door, and rushed back to his seat. He held out a cassette tape to me, saying. “We made a demo tape. Think you could give this to your manager, or some record company people?”
AS IF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I smiled very big, shamefully glorying in Doug’s admiring look at me. “Sure!” I said. I took the tape and stepped back over to Charles and Amy’s table. “See you guys later at home,” I said to them. I did not resist the urge to kiss Charles on top of his head and give his shoulders a tight squeeze of a hug before I took off.
I made sure Doug was watching me as I sprinted from the DQ and tossed his demo tape into the garbage can that one year earlier it had been my responsibility to clean. The clanking sound the tape made against the metal can was SUH-weet indeed.
Just because I planned to consider Charles’s desire for me to upgrade my image didn’t mean I was about to become a saint. There are some perks to the pop princess life, and a little slice of revenge on that day was one of mine.
Thirty-seven
I was walking back to the House from Hell—I mean home—when I saw this tall male figure with very well-defined shoulder muscles standing with his back to the street in the open garage at Henry and Katie’s house. Before I could duck for cover and avoid talking to what had to be their studly cousin, Science Project turned around to face me! He was wearing jeans with no shirt and ohmygawd, what steroids had he been taking to get that new filled-out upper bod of muscle? Oh, I might be such a slut! For a split second, I forgot about the Liam being who had devirginized me just yesterday. It’s not like all of a sudden Henry had turned into Brad Pitt, but last summer there was nothing on his chest besides skin and bones, and now he had filled out but good. There was definitely a grope-worthy experience going on there. This time last year, Science Project had a head of long, scraggly, dirty blond hair, and now he had a buzz cut that looked seriously Marine hot. Geez, first Mom and Dad separating, then Charles having a girlfriend, now Henry the Stud. What had been put in the Devonport drinking water since I’d left?
I almost felt all nervous and fluttery, and then my ego reminded me that I was the celebrity in this equation, not Henry who was all of a sudden so fine with the makeover. Henry who pulled his window shade down on me last night!
“Hey,” he said to me, in this casual voice like he saw me every day and I was still the same ole girl from Devonport, not the Devonport escape artist-turned-pop princess with the hit song that I could hear right
this moment playing from a car radio passing down the street.
“Hi,” I said. “You look way different.”
Henry looked at my head of platinum blond hair, then scanned my body. “I look different?” he said. “You look different!”
He walked farther into the garage, as if he had no intention of finishing our conversation. I guessed I did owe him an apology—make that apologia—for not answering his e-mails (that he’d long since stopped sending me), for jumping off the phone with him so quickly that day at the J-Pop studio, for never calling him back. Maybe I most owed him an apology for barely wondering how he was doing since I’d been gone.
Now I wondered!
I followed him into the garage. A small home gym had been set up inside, with weights, benches, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Henry lay down on a flat bench and started to bench-press. I stood behind the bar, my index and middle fingers under the bar to spot him, but he didn’t need me.
I said, “So, what’s the Schwarzenegger deal about?”
Henry finished a set of ten reps. He pointed at a mannequin standing to his side that had pencil marks all over it, lines sculpting muscle definition on the mannequin where there was none before, and Post-it flags with numbers and mathematical signs all over them. Even if I hadn’t failed algebra, I don’t think I ever in a million years could have deciphered the meaning of the scribblings.
“I’ve only gained a few inches around the chest—I’d hardly call me Schwarzenegger. Anyway, it started out as a science experiment—when you were still living here, in fact, not that you were paying attention. I’ve been getting into robotics and I wanted to test certain physiological parameters in relation to an experiment on a crash-test dummy, so I started trying to bulk up with weight-lifting and carbo-loading to see how the theories applied to a human body. The buzz cut just made it easier not to have hair getting in the way when I work out.”