“What?”
“Nice belt.”
She laughed. I wanted to impress her, so I also told her that I was the new school mascot. “Jared Mitchell got me the job.”
But she just said, “Watch out for him.”
“Jared? Why?”
“He’s got psycho eyes. You know, like he’s kind of dead inside. Like he’s constantly trying to figure out how a normal person would react. Pretty on the outside but hollow on the inside.”
“I think you’ve watched too many CSIs.”
“Possibly. But I also have parents who are psychologists, and they’ve taught me to trust my instincts. That guy gives me a bad feeling. Like, why does he just suddenly show up at our school?”
“I just suddenly showed up at your school.”
“Yeah, but your story makes sense. He showed up ’cause his big, expensive private school kicked him out.”
“But we don’t know why.”
“No. But chances are, they had a good reason.”
I didn’t share Phoebe’s concerns. True, I hadn’t met Jared in the best possible way, but he’d been really nice to me lately. He’d come to our house a couple more times after school, and as per my agreement with Ashley, I didn’t tell. I even went upstairs once and let them have some privacy in the family room. I left my door open, and I could hear them talking and giggling. When it got really quiet at one point, I stomped noisily back downstairs. I’ve taken sex ed. I know the cold, hard facts. We don’t need a teen pregnancy on our hands.
When the bus pulled up to our stop, Phoebe and I hopped off. “See you tomorrow, Stewart.” She headed east. I watched her go. For the first time, I noticed that her head is disproportionately bigger than the rest of her body. I guess it’s housing that big, beautiful brain.
So, yes. It had been a really good week leading up to Friday.
Except for one small thing.
On Thursday after school I noticed that one of my mom’s figurines was missing. I counted once, twice, three times, but sure enough, Dopey was gone. At first I figured Schrödinger had knocked it off and batted it under a piece of furniture, but I looked under all the chairs and couches and tables, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.
Next I suspected Ashley.
“As if I would ever touch those hideous things,” she said when I asked her. “They give me the creeps.”
I hope it shows up soon. It was my gift to my mom on her last Mother’s Day. She’d told me that sometimes the chemo made her feel dopey. Get it? It was supposed to be a joke, a way of bringing a bit of levity to a bad situation.
Some people might have found it tasteless. Not Mom. She thought it was hilarious.
—
BUT BACK TO FRIDAY. I was still frozen to the spot, peering out at the crowds, when Coach Stellar yelled in my ear. Well, he was yelling in the dog’s ear, but I could still hear him. “What are you waiting for? Get out there!” The kids were getting restless, and the halftime clock was ticking down. My stomach gurgled in an alarming way. I wanted to make a dash for the change room.
Then I caught sight of my dad in the stands. My heart swelled, because I knew he had to take half a day off work to come see me. I saw Ashley, too, sitting nowhere near my dad, between her friends Lauren and Claudia.
Then I spotted Phoebe, sitting with Violet, and my heart swelled again.
I took a deep breath. I thought of my mom. I reminded myself that I was doing this for her.
Then I jogged to the center of the gym floor.
With the music blasting through the speakers, I did a pirouette and gave a little bow. The crowd cheered. “Borden Bulldogs! Borden Bulldogs!”
My stomach gurgled a little less. I started skipping up and down the gym floor, clapping my hands together over my head like I’d practiced at home. The crowd started clapping with me. I did “The Swim,” followed by “The Dougie.” In a moment of improvisation, I grabbed a random ninth-grade girl from the lower bleachers and got her to dance with me.
Then I did what I instantly knew would become my signature move. I got down on the ground and started doing “The Worm.” The crowd went nuts. I kept going even after the music ended, squirming around on the gym floor. Finally, Mr. Stellar had to run out and shout at me that the game was about to resume. “Get the hell off the court, Inkster!”
I skipped to the sidelines just as Jared and four of his teammates trotted out for the third quarter.
And I was so glad I had the costume on, because suddenly I was crying my eyes out under the dog head. I couldn’t stop picturing my mom, and how happy this moment would have made her. She was never anything but proud of me, but I also know that she worried about me. I’d heard her conversations with Dad, late at night, through the vent in my room.
“He’s safe for now at Little Genius Academy, but what about down the road? He has to function in the real world, too…. I know he’ll be an amazing adult, but it’s those in-between years that scare me. Young people can be so cruel….”
So I was crying because I couldn’t help but wish more than anything that she could’ve seen me, wearing a dog costume and doing “The Worm” across the gym floor.
It would have filled her with relief to see me acting so normal.
I FELT A LITTLE bit glum when I woke up on Saturday morning. Call it post-amazing-moment-with-Jared letdown, I guess. I didn’t see him after the game ’cause the players had to go get yelled at by Mr. Stellar for a long time in the change room. But I still had his jacket, so I brought it home with me. True and slightly embarrassing confession: I snuggled with it in bed. It smelled like a mix of Jared’s deodorant and BO. It was heavenly. If I believe Stewart, I guess it means I was breathing in a few of Jared’s molecules. Which is super-creepy and super-romantic all at the same time.
Anyway, I drifted back to sleep for a while longer, then got up and did a yoga podcast in my room. I was heading downstairs for breakfast when I heard Mom and Lenny bickering in the kitchen.
“It looks like a typhoon hit in here,” Mom said.
“I’ll get to it,” Leonard replied. “I always do.”
“Yes, but sometimes you don’t get to it till a full day later. And since I can’t stand seeing the sink filled with dirty pots and pans, I usually wind up doing them myself.”
I sat down on the stairs to eavesdrop. I’d never heard them argue before. It was unsettling and entertaining.
“Oops,” said Leonard. “Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
“I’m serious, Len. Ditto all the socks you and Stewart leave lying around, even on tabletops. It’s disgusting. Is it so hard to pick them up and put them in the hamper?”
My sentiments exactly! I wanted to shout.
There was a pause. Then Leonard said, “I didn’t realize it bothered you so much.”
“Well, it does.”
“I guess we were a little more relaxed in our old house.” There was another silence. I wasn’t even in the room with them and I could tell my mom was fuming. “Are you suggesting I’m anal-retentive?” she said. “Just because I like a tidy house?”
“I’m suggesting,” Leonard said, “that you are a beautiful, smart, perfect specimen who happens to like things just so.”
Wow. Even I had to admit that was pretty smooth. Mom clearly thought so, too, because I heard her giggle. “How dare you make me laugh when I’m still angry with you.”
Suddenly my phone dinged. I pulled it from my pocket; it was a text from Jared. Want 2 C a movie tonight?
I almost screamed. I texted back. Sure.
Great. I’ll come by at 8.
I hopped up and ran into the kitchen. “Omigod, omigod! You won’t believe what just happened!” Then I froze in my tracks because they were making out in front of the coffee-maker. I made a retching sound, and they pulled apart.
“What?” Leonard asked. “What happened?”
“Jared’s just invited me to a movie tonight!”
“Jared?” Mom asked. “Who’s
Jared?”
“Only the hottest guy at our school.”
“I hope he’s more than just hot,” said Leonard, which was a comment only a non-hot person would make.
“Oh, he is. He’s also rich!”
Mom raised an eyebrow, and I knew she thought I was being, like, surfacey, so I said, “He’s also really nice. Please, can I go? He’ll come by at eight.”
She and Leonard shared a look. “Eight should be okay,” Mom said. “We’ll just get your dad over here a bit earlier so we can still have a nice, long visit.”
My heart sank.
I had totally forgotten about my dad. Tonight was the night they’d agreed on for him to come to dinner.
“Fine, but he has to be gone by quarter to eight,” I said.
“Ashley, I am not going to ask your dad to leave the house at a prescribed time. That’s just plain rude.”
“Agreed,” said Leonard.
Who asked you? I wanted to shout. Instead, I said, “He should be grateful he’s coming over at all!”
“Ashley.” Mom said my name in that tone that meant “Shut up right now or there will be consequences.” And I did not want consequences, since they would almost certainly involve not letting me go to a movie with Jared.
“Fine. But I’m leaving the moment Jared rings the bell.”
“I have the feeling none of us will mind,” she replied. “Good!”
It wasn’t until I was halfway up the stairs that I realized I’d just been insulted by my very own mother.
—
I WAS UP IN my bathroom, brushing on a little bit more of my new lilac eye shadow, when the doorbell rang. It was 5:30 p.m. on the dot.
Dad had come to the front door and rung the bell. I couldn’t help thinking how weird that was. Ringing the bell to get into the house that you’d lived in for over twelve years, the house you still half owned.
“Ashley, please answer the door,” Mom hollered from the kitchen. I pretended I didn’t hear her. “Ashley!”
Before you could say “nerd-face,” Stewart was poking his head into my room. “C’mon, your dad’s here.”
“You go,” I told him, still checking myself out in the mirror. “I’m not ready yet.”
“Ashley Anderson, if you don’t get your butt down here right now, you are grounded immediately!” my mom shouted.
Mom belongs to this human-rights organization called Amnesty International. She is always doing letter-writing campaigns and speaking at events for free, and going on about different groups of people who are persecuted in other parts of the world just because of their racial background or sexual orientation, or even just for being female. Which I found totally one hundred percent ironic, since who was doing the persecuting right now?
But I followed Stewart down the stairs. I let him open the door. I stood back a bit, my arms crossed over my chest, which was a little bit bigger than usual ’cause I was wearing the gel bra I’d bought with some of my birthday money.
My dad stood on the doorstep, grinning nervously. He looked good. But then, he always looks good. He wore a pair of designer jeans that fit him really well and a button-up purple shirt under the slate-gray V-neck sweater I’d given him for his birthday two years ago.
“Hi, Stewart. Hi, Ashley.”
“Phil, how nice to see you,” said Stewart, sounding like an adult in a midget’s body. They shook hands. “Please, come in.”
Dad took a step toward me. I tried to turn away, but I wasn’t quick enough. He put his arms around me, even though he must have seen the scowl on my face. He hugged me tight and kissed the top of my head and murmured, “Ashley, my girl,” and out of nowhere my eyes welled up and it took everything in my power not to burst into tears, because he used to hug me all the time back when things were normal; we were a very huggy family, and it felt so familiar and comfortable and warm and safe. And just as quickly, my eyes dried up and I felt a wave of fury again because he was the one who’d ruined it all.
I wriggled out of his grasp, which made him look sad, but tough bananas. Stewart, still playing host, said, “Caroline and Leonard are in the kitchen.” So Dad went into the kitchen and said hi to them, and he even gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. He dropped off a bottle of wine and his world-famous Caesar salad.
“Why don’t the three of you sit in the family room?” Mom suggested. “Dinner will be ready soon.” As we left the kitchen, I heard her say under her breath to Leonard, “And he’d better not find any stray socks.”
“He won’t,” Leonard replied. “Stewart and I were on high sock alert.”
Stewart sat in his ugly purple-and-green chair. Dad and I sat on opposite ends of the leather couch.
“You look very pretty tonight, Ashley,” Dad said.
Not to brag, but he was speaking the truth. I was wearing this adorable little blue-and-gold dress that I’d bought last year and recently revamped with my sewing machine, making it shorter and adding a gold ribbon around the waist. “Thanks.”
“She’s going on a date tonight,” Stewart added. How he even knew this was a mystery to me; he must’ve been listening in earlier when Lauren was over to help me choose the perfect outfit.
“Shut up, Stewart,” I said.
I knew Dad was dying to ask me a bunch of questions, but all he said was “Would I like him?”
Before I could even open my mouth, Stewart said, “You’ll get to meet him later. He’s picking her up at eight.”
“But you’ll probably be gone by then,” I added.
Dad just grinned. “Don’t count on it.”
Shoot me now.
Then I had a happier thought. To look at my dad, you would never guess he’s gay. So if Jared did see my dad—and I would make sure it was for no more than a nanosecond—he’d probably just assume he was straight.
“Hey, Stewart, I’d love to see your electric bicycle after supper,” Dad said.
“Sure thing. It’s really coming along.”
Dad looked around the room. “I see you’ve made some changes in the decor.”
“We brought this chair with us,” Stewart said. “And the afghan blanket you’re leaning against, which was knit by my mom.”
“I take it the figurines are yours as well?”
“Indeed they are.” Stewart beamed, like he was actually proud of the sheer amount of ugliness he’d brought into our home.
“They’re very…interesting,” said my dad. He caught my eye. And for the second time in one night, a wave of the old love I used to have for him washed over me, because I knew that look. It was a look we’d shared many times before, like when Mom would model a new outfit that she’d dared to buy without having me or Dad along. It was a look that said Yikes.
We both felt the moment. Dad started to laugh. Just a little bit at first, but next thing we knew, we were both laughing so hard tears were running down our faces. And I guess Stewart didn’t want to be left out, because he started to laugh, too.
And that’s how Mom found us when she called us to the table, laughing our heads off, and even though I still think Stewart is a total stinkpot, I had to admit (but never out loud) that having my dad over for dinner wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
The meal flew by. Mom and Leonard put on a feast of barbecued salmon and roasted veggies, and I ate more than I usually do, although I avoided Dad’s salad ’cause I didn’t want my breath to smell like garlic. The conversation wasn’t so bad, either, except they talked a little too much about politics.
Then Stewart had to go there.
“So, Phil. Tell us more about your new boyfriend.”
Dead silence.
Dad cleared his throat. “Well. His name is Michael.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a costume designer. He’s worked on some really big films.” He blushed a little. “And he’s an awfully nice person.”
“I’m happy for you, Phil,” my mom said, sounding mostly sincere.
Then the doorbell rang.
&
nbsp; Jared. I saw the look that passed between my dad, my mom, and Leonard; they were all dying to lay eyes on him. “Stay where you are,” I ordered them. “And do not embarrass me.”
I walked to the door, smoothing my dress, and opened it. Jared stood under the porch light. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a black leather jacket. He looked fantastic.
“You ready?”
“I am,” I said, and grabbed my impractical-but-cute gray wool coat, ready to take off.
“Ashley, introduce us to your friend before you go, please!” my mom yelled from the dining room.
I rolled my eyes. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
So I took him through to the dining room and introduced him. All the grown-ups had totally goofy smiles on their faces.
“Hey, Jared,” Stewart said as he pulled up an extra chair. “Take a load off. We were just talking about Phil’s—”
“Job,” I almost shouted. “He’s in advertising.”
“Oh. Cool,” said Jared, and to my horror, he sat down. “Would I know any of your stuff?”
“Have you seen those cheese ads on TV?” my dad asked.
“You mean the one with the dancing cheddar?”
“One and the same.”
“That ad cracks me up.”
“Well, it’s one of ours.”
“Must be interesting work.”
“It is, most of the time.”
Jared turned to my mom. “Ashley didn’t tell me you were the Caroline Anderson. My folks watch you on the news all the time.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Mom said. “Leonard’s the producer, making it all happen behind the scenes.”
“What do your parents do?” asked Leonard.
“Dad’s a corporate lawyer. Mom’s a stockbroker.”
“And what are your interests, Jared?” Mom asked. Honestly, at this rate we were never going to get out of here.
“Jared’s on the basketball team,” Stewart said.