by D. L. Green
I looked at my phone again. Nothing from Dad. He was far from a billionaire, but he could still hang out with me and maybe take me to a bakery.
My thoughts churned back to who had it worse in the dad department. It was complicated. I tried to list different dad situations in my head, but that got even more complicated. So I took my pen and notebook out of my backpack and started writing.
DAD SITUATIONS FROM BAD TO WORST
1. Your dad isn’t home much because of work.
2. Your dad isn’t home much because of fun (bars and gambling).
3. Your dad says he’s working, but your mom accuses him of really being at a bar or casino.
I stared at my notebook. All three of those situations were about the same dad: mine.
“What are you writing?” McKenzie asked.
I knew I could out-silence her.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look up. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just concentrating on the list. But I didn’t mind being mean.
I heard McKenzie playing a game on her phone. I pulled my notebook closer to my side of the table, put my hand over what I’d written, and continued my list.
DAD SITUATIONS FROM BAD TO WORST
4. Your dad moves out because of your mom. He still sees you.
5. Your dad moves out because of your mom. He doesn’t see you.
6. Your dad moves out because of you. He doesn’t see you.
7. Your dad dies.
8. Your dad moves out because of you. And he doesn’t see you. And then he dies.
I probably qualified for number five. So McKenzie, at number seven, had it worse than me. Death is the most extreme worst thing.
But even though my dad was alive, I should have been able to complain about him without McKenzie saying, “At least you have a dad.”
When the bell rang, I still didn’t talk to McKenzie or even make eye contact with her. I put my notebook in my backpack and gathered my lunch trash to throw out.
I was about to stand up when McKenzie kicked my shin, hard, under the table.
“Ow!” I glared at her.
“Oops.” She shrugged.
“That was really, really mean!” I said.
By the time I thought about kicking her back, she’d already stood and started walking away, her head held high as if she couldn’t care less about what had just happened.
In a horrible way, I was glad she’d kicked me. Now I had a solid reason to quit our friendship.
TWENTY
When my phone finally rang that day, it was after school and I was rehearsing onstage. I was barely listening to Ally’s beautiful singing, even though Mr. Goldstein always said listening techniques separated the pro actors from the amateurs. He also said to silence your cellphones at rehearsals. I hadn’t listened to that either. I was definitely an amateur.
I grabbed my phone from my back pocket, looked at the caller ID, and let out a long breath of worried air I’d been storing since last night.
Then I hurried downstage and jumped off. “Dad,” I said as soon as I landed.
“Violet,” Mr. Goldstein said testily in front of me.
“Violet,” Dad said testily in my ear.
I walked away from Mr. Goldstein, who repeated my name more testily.
“Her grandmother’s dying in the hospital,” Kimmi said.
“Great-grandmother,” Diego said.
“You two have poor listening techniques,” Sarah said. “It’s Violet’s great-aunt.”
I hurried to the side exit.
“Violet?” Ally called out. She was the first person to say my name without sounding testy. She sounded concerned.
I walked out of the auditorium and closed the door behind me. I didn’t know how this phone call would go, but at least I knew I could talk to my father. McKenzie could never talk to hers again. I shouldn’t have been so mean to her.
“What’s going on, Vi?” Dad asked. His voice was softer now, and I wondered if he missed me as much as I missed him, or at least almost as much, because it would be hard to match how much I missed him. He said, “You and your mother left so many messages, you filled up my voicemail.”
“Mom called you?” Each word came out like a panicky gasp.
“Violet, what’s wrong?” Dad’s voice seemed testy again. Mom used to say he had no patience. Dad used to say he just didn’t suffer fools.
I didn’t want to be a fool who made him suffer, so I said, “Everything’s wrong. But I don’t need a therapist.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t need a therapist.” I kept walking away from the auditorium.
“Okay. It would be hard to come up with the money for that anyway,” Dad said.
It should have made me relieved that I’d won that fight. But it hadn’t been a fight. I wished he’d put up some kind of fight, or at least a small protest, to show he cared.
I hadn’t filled up his voicemail and checked my phone a quadrillion times and walked out of rehearsal for nothing. So I said, “I don’t understand why you can’t see me.”
He didn’t respond. It was like today’s mostly silent lunch with McKenzie. If I had been sitting across from Dad, I might have kicked his shin, like McKenzie. Or possibly tried to hug him.
But I wasn’t sitting across from him. I was miles away from him—maybe fifty miles, maybe a thousand, I didn’t even know. I wasn’t sitting either. I was standing by myself on gray asphalt, between the side of the auditorium and a dumpster. It was cold outside—a near record low for Orange County this time of year, the TV weather lady had gushed excitedly—and my jacket was inside.
I couldn’t play the silent game with Dad like I had with McKenzie. It was a terrible game. Plus, I didn’t know how long I could keep Dad on the phone. What if he hung up on me? So I said, “When are you coming back, anyway?”
“Violet, I’m not moving back with you and your mother.” He used that firm/weary/pitying tone my mother used. It sounded even worse from him, because he’d hardly ever been firm, weary, or pitying with me before.
“I wasn’t asking you to move back in with us,” I said. Though I did want him to move back, so he and Mom could solve their problems and we could stay a family. “I meant when are you coming back to town?”
“What?”
“Where are you? You said in your email you’d be out of town so you can’t see my play, which is coming up soon.”
“What email, Violet?”
Why did he have to make everything so hard? “You wrote me those emails,” I said. “You told me I need a therapist. You’re the one who needs a therapist if you can’t even remember what you wrote your daughter about or what city or state you’re in.”
“I don’t understand,” Dad said, sounding impatient.
I used to think he was the only one who understood me. But now he didn’t even understand my simple questions about his emails or where he was. “Have you been drinking?” I asked, sounding horribly like my mom.
“No, Violet.” He had the same annoyed tone he used with Mom. He had never sounded like that with me before, though I had never asked him if he’d been drinking. “Violet, listen to me. I didn’t send you any emails. I’m not going out of town.” I stood with the phone clenched in my hand, trying to make sense of things. I crossed my arm over my chest to keep out the cold, but it was impossible.
Dad hated silence as much as McKenzie did. So he said, “Vi, I’m going to be straight with you.”
“You weren’t straight with me before?”
He ignored that and plunged in. “I’m taking a break from responsibility. You only have one life, right? I was spending most of my life working or looking for work or pretending to look for work to fend off your mother, and running errands or fixing things around the house or doing yardwork. Your mother loves the
domestic stuff, the routine. She insisted on the three of us eating dinner at the table every night like one of those old-fashioned families. But that’s never been my style.”
“You didn’t like eating dinner together?” I said softly.
“I did, Vi. But not with all those rules—same time every night, no cell phones at the table, no TV. And the arguing was too much. I need to simply be me for a while, without so many responsibilities, without being a husband or father or—”
“But you are a father. You’re my father.”
He didn’t respond.
I stood with the hard, silent phone against my ear. This was the worst Dad Situation ever. It was number quadrillion on the list. I wished this were only a scene from a play, a tragic one where I was a fictional character shivering in the cold at a dreary school on a gray day near a smelly dumpster.
It would be the dumbest play in the world. No one would ever see it. No one would want my pitiful part.
I didn’t want to play that part, to be that character. Not anymore. I cleared my throat and pretended to be the Lion—the “not actually cowardly” Lion charging at the Witch of the West. “How dare you send me emails telling me you—”
Dad interrupted me. “Whatever the emails were telling you, they didn’t come from me.”
I’d been about to say telling me you loved me.
He added, “I don’t know what kind of jerk would send you fake emails in my name, but it wasn’t me.”
I closed my eyes so I could think. The dumpster stench filled my nose and Dad’s words burned my ears. But I figured it out. I realized what kind of jerk would send me emails in Dad’s name. A lying, interfering jerk.
“Listen, Vi,” Dad said, unnecessarily because I’d been listening. I’d been listening so hard. I’d been hanging on to his every word—not only now, but all my life. He said, “Your mother wanted me to see a therapist.”
Of course she did.
“Actually, she wanted both of us to go. Marital counseling, it’s called. But that’s not my style. I don’t like strangers trying to figure me out or tell me what to do,” Dad said, like that was something to be proud of. “But that’s just me. I’ve always been a free spirit. What I’m getting at, Violet, is maybe you should see a therapist. You sounded really upset on the phone last night.”
I kept my eyes closed and wished he weren’t my dad. I wished he were only an actor playing a dad, a horribly selfish dad. I wished my real dad was like Ally’s nice, annoying dad—or even McKenzie’s saintly dead one.
And I wished again, I wished so hard that I were only an actor playing the part of Violet—pathetic Violet, shaking outside in the cold, too dumb to have taken her jacket, wanting something she couldn’t have, someone who didn’t really exist.
“The therapist will probably say I’m a bad father and blame all your problems on me,” the dad character said. “But I think our time apart will be a positive, not just for me, but for you and your mother, too.”
The actor playing Violet opened her eyes and barked out a laugh.
No, actually, I barked out a laugh. If this really were a scene from a play, it would be a comedy. No one could take my dad’s dialogue seriously.
As he rambled on about his need for solitude and search for meaning, I moved close to the dumpster to give his words the stinky setting they deserved.
“Violet?” Ally called out. She and Diego stood outside the auditorium door. Ally was holding my jacket.
They started walking toward me, looking around.
I clicked off my phone as if it were nothing, ran behind the dumpster, and crouched there like a movie hero setting up a surprise attack on a bad guy.
But the only bad guy was my dad, and I’d hung up on him.
The dumpster smelled awful. I plugged my nose and stayed still. Luckily, Ally and Diego hadn’t seen me. I just had to wait until they gave up looking for me.
“She ran somewhere behind this dumpster,” Diego said. He must have walked closer, because he wasn’t shouting, and I could hear him fine.
Great move, Violet. Nothing like wading in soggy trash behind a stinky dumpster so you can be seen by the boy you’ve had a crush on for the last fourteen months.
“I’ll talk to her,” Ally said. She was right near the dumpster too. “Go back to rehearsal, Diego. Tell Mr. Goldstein we’re sorry for leaving, okay?”
“I can stay,” Diego said, because he’s a guy, and guys always want to stay with a beautiful girl like Ally, even if it means suffering with a pathetic girl in soggy trash behind a stinky dumpster.
“I got this,” Ally said.
“Mr. Goldstein will want you back in rehearsal. You’re the star of the play,” Diego said.
“I’m also Violet’s good friend.”
That would have made me happy if I weren’t so sad.
“I like Violet, too,” Diego said.
Like liked me or just liked me? Either way, that would have made me happy too.
“Let me talk to her alone,” Ally said.
I heard footsteps walking away from me. Then I heard other footsteps coming toward me.
“Violet, can we talk somewhere away from the dumpster?” Ally asked.
I didn’t say anything.
The footsteps came close—right to the edge of the trash. Ally really was a good friend.
I walked to her, stopping halfway to shake off the slimy wet cardboard and weird plastic stuff from the bottom of my shoes.
Ally threw my jacket around my shoulders and gave me a hug.
Then I did something almost as embarrassing as hiding behind a dumpster. I burst into tears. Not pretty, soft ones, like Ally’s that night at her house. More like loud, snotty, croaky, ugly crying. Also, I was shaking from the cold and/or the phone call and/or total humiliation.
It felt like I cried and shook for an hour, but it was probably only a few minutes. Then I stopped shaking and cried more normally for like a minute, and then I stopped crying but felt really sad. Ally kept hugging me the whole time.
After I stepped back, Ally said, “I’m sorry about your great-aunt.”
I laughed. “She’s dead.”
Ally took a step back.
“Not my great-aunt. I mean, she is dead, but she died before I was born.”
Ally frowned.
“It’s really my dad,” I explained.
“Your dad died?” Ally asked, scrunching her eyebrows.
I wish, I thought for a half second. (Or maybe two or three seconds.)
“I’m so sorry,” Ally said.
I shook my head. “My dad’s alive. He’s fine, I guess. He just called to tell me to stop trying to talk to him. He told me he didn’t want any responsibilities—me and my mom being the responsibilities.”
“Oh, Violet,” Ally said, as though this was even worse than if my dad had died. It wasn’t, not according to my Dad Situations from Bad to Worst list. But it felt like the worst thing ever.
“Hey!” Diego shouted. He hurried toward us, panting as he ran. He was one of those people who may look like they’re in good shape because they’re thin, but really aren’t. I was one of those people too. We had so much in common. We also both had straight brown hair.
Diego reached us quickly. He was breathing hard and his face was red and shiny, but he was still perfect. He panted, “Goldstein. Wants. You. Inside.”
I nodded.
But Ally said, “We need a few minutes.”
“Mr. Goldstein said ASAP.” Diego was breathing better now.
Ally and I didn’t move.
“As soon as possible,” Diego said, like we didn’t know what ASAP meant.
“It’ll be possible later, not now,” Ally said. “Give us a few minutes.”
Diego didn’t move, except to cross his arms.
“Thanks, Diego. B
ye,” Ally said.
“Well, hurry up.” He slowly walked away, glancing back every so often.
“Thanks for staying out here with me, Ally,” I said. “You won’t tell anyone about my dad, will you?”
Ally shook her head.
“It’s so embarrassing,” I muttered to the ground.
Ally cleared her throat as if she was going to talk. But she didn’t. There was only silence. Then she cleared her throat again and said very quietly, “I don’t even know who my dad is.”
“What?” I looked at her, but she was looking away. I said, “Your dad is nice. I met him at your house, remember?”
And then pretty, popular, perfect Ally told me a bunch of stuff.
STUFF ALLY TOLD ME
1. The people I had met at her house were her grandparents.
2. She’d lived with them since she was four, and on and off before that.
3. Her mom claimed she didn’t know who Ally’s dad was, but Ally wasn’t sure whether to believe her. Ally’s mom had told her a lot of lies, like:
a. She was going to take Ally out for her birthday last year.
b. She had given up drugs for good.
c. She wanted Ally and her other daughters to live with her.
i. But according to Ally, she wanted drugs more.
4. Ally was going to track down her dad one day, just to get child support to pay back her grandparents.
a. I wondered if there were other reasons too.
b. I didn’t wonder that out loud.
5. Ally had found out she was 40 percent Mexican because of an online DNA test her grandparents let her do.
6. The little girls I had met were really Ally’s half-sisters.
7. They knew who their dad was, but he was in jail, which was probably worse than not knowing who your dad was.
8. The last time Ally saw her mom, she was “strung out” and her grandparents had to call the police.
