Call It What You Want

by Brigid Kemmerer

  I don’t know where I stand with her. I don’t know why it matters, but it suddenly does. Too much. I let myself want something for five minutes, and now it’s like losing everything all over again.

  “My life is a mess,” I say to her. “Let’s keep it to calculus, okay?”

  She blinks. Her eyes are still shining. But then she takes a step back. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

  Then she and her sister move out of the way, and I lock myself into the Jeep, leaving them standing there in the cold.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Maegan

  Last night with my parents was a nightmare. But this dinner with my friends and sister is coming close.

  Especially since Samantha isn’t pulling any punches with Drew.

  “What’s wrong?” she says when we all sit back down. “Another guy at the table made you feel inadequate?”

  He snorts and picks up a taco. “If you’re talking about Rob Lachlan, the last thing he makes me feel is inadequate.”

  Rachel’s eyes are on me. “Two days ago, you were pissed that he was your partner, and now you’re eating dinner together?”

  “I invited him to dinner,” Samantha says. “Not Maegan.”

  “Trust me,” Drew says to my sister. “You can do better.”

  “Funny,” says Samantha. “I said the same thing to Rachel.”

  “Sam!” I snap.

  But Drew laughs. “It’s fine. I can take it. I don’t have to walk away from the table.”

  That’s definitely a dig at Rob. I want to defend him—but I’m not sure how. “Why do you have such a problem with him?”

  “Why do you feel so sorry for him? His dad stole millions of dollars, and the kid still lives in a mansion.” Drew snorts. “If my dad stole something, I guarantee you no one would be all like, ‘Poor little Drew.’ They’d be waiting for me to show up at the gas station in a ski mask.”

  That shuts me up. I’m not sure what to say.

  Drew grabs another taco. “See? You know I’m right. You cheated on the SAT and you didn’t even get suspended. You get to take it again! No questions asked! You think that would’ve happened to a black kid? Hell, my freshman year, some other kid lost his wallet in gym class, and they searched my locker first.”

  I swallow.

  “She didn’t get suspended because it was a first offense,” says Samantha.

  “And she’s a straight-A student,” says Rachel. “She made a mistake.”

  I fix my eyes on my plate. I do not like the turn of this conversation.

  Especially because I know Drew’s right.

  “A mistake.” Drew wipes at his mouth with a napkin. “That’s my point. You guys get to make mistakes. Rob Lachlan looks guilty as hell all the time. There’s no way he didn’t know what his dad was doing, but he’s walking around without an ankle bracelet.” He snorts. “Poor Rob. Give me a break.”

  There are so many things I want to say.

  He didn’t do anything wrong.

  He’s lonely.

  He’s sad.

  He’s living with the mindless body of his father.

  But none of that means that Rob is innocent. He can be sad and guilty. I don’t know anything about investing, or what an internship—if that’s what it was—would entail. If Rob was working for his dad, would he have known? How could he not?

  With the whole school against him, it’s hard to stand up for him. He barely stands up for himself. Drew was right: Rob did walk away from the table. Is that a sign of weakness or guilt? Or is that a boy so beaten down that he can’t take any more?

  Drew’s words weigh all these thoughts down with another: Am I only giving Rob the benefit of the doubt because of the color of his skin?

  “He can’t help that he’s a white kid,” Samantha says. She’s spooned a massive pile of guacamole onto her plate, and she’s now dipping her taco into it.

  “No one says he has to help it,” says Drew. “I’m just saying being white cut him some slack. A lot of slack.”

  This all feels so complicated suddenly. Drew’s not wrong. Consequences seem to fall all over the map. Look at Samantha. Look at Rob.

  Look at me.

  I love Rachel and I like Drew, but I don’t want to be at this dinner table.

  My phone is sitting by my hand. I want to text Rob to see if he’s okay.

  Rachel is watching me. “You like him,” she says quietly.

  “What?” I snap my head up. “No. I don’t.”

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  I’m irritated. “I just said something.”

  “You’re turning red.” I expect her tone to be teasing, but it’s not. She doesn’t like the idea. We’ve never really talked about Rob Lachlan, but I consider how she didn’t say anything when Drew was being so mean.

  “You’re pretty red,” agrees my sister. She loads another taco with guacamole. I wonder what that’s going to look like when it comes up later.

  Drew laughs. “Your dad would lock you up if you tried to date Rob Lachlan.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” I snap. “And I don’t want to date him. He’s my math partner. He ran some drills with Samantha since she was home. The end.”

  My voice is too loud, too tense. Silence falls over the whole table. Rachel and Drew exchange a look.

  Forget this. I stand up. “I’m going to call Mom to come get me.”

  “Maybe you could call Rob,” says Drew. Then he cracks up. “Maybe you two would make the perfect couple.”

  Now that is a dig at me. I storm away from the table.

  The fact that I was considering texting Rob doesn’t make me feel any better.

  The air bites into my skin when I step out of the restaurant. Maybe Rob does deserve to be the senior class social pariah. He wasn’t exactly friendly and all-welcoming when he was popular. I can’t reconcile dude-bro jock Rob Lachlan with the boy who looked ready to cry in the middle of Taco Taco.

  The door to the restaurant bursts open, and feet crunch across the gravel. I expect Rachel to be coming after me, especially when an arm falls across my shoulders, but it’s Samantha.

  “Are you okay?” she says.

  “It’s a weird night.”

  “He was being kind of mean,” she says.

  “No. He’s right.” I pause. “Maybe I am giving Rob a free pass. Maybe he did help to rip off the whole town.”

  Samantha falls quiet for a minute. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I remember when Dad came home that night. When Rob’s dad tried to kill himself. He was really upset.”

  I nod. I remember that, too. We walk in silence for a few minutes.

  “Everyone at school hates him,” I finally say. “Everyone thinks he had to be in on it.”

  “People love finding the weak link that makes them feel superior. I see it in lacrosse all the time. Girl can’t keep up? Cut her down even more. If someone else is weak, it means you’ve got the advantage.”

  Her voice is sad. We should be calling Mom, but we keep going, turning out of the parking lot to walk along the road.

  “Do you think that would happen to you?” I say.

  “Of course.” She kicks at road grit. “Hasn’t it happened to you?”

  I frown. It’s the first time she’s asked me about cheating. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure she was aware of how things have changed for me. “Yeah.” I pause. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

  “Of course I noticed.” She hesitates, then blows out a long stream of steam into the air. “Megs—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  As soon as I say the words, I realize I’m lying. I actually want her to push.

  She doesn’t. The silence swells between us. I need to break it.

  “Do you want to end your pregnancy?” I ask her.

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” She keeps her arm around me, and we keep walking. “You do like Rob, don’t
you?”

  “He’s … interesting.” I look over at her shadowed profile. “Do you think there’s a chance he really didn’t know what his dad was doing?”

  “Do you know everything our dad is doing?”

  “No, but that’s a little different. Dad’s a cop. I’m not doing ride-alongs every night.”

  “Yeah, well, even if you were, do you think Dad would involve you in something illegal?”

  “I doubt it … but Dad wouldn’t do that. He’s too honest. We can’t compare him to some guy who stole millions of dollars.”

  “He was still a dad.”

  The thought is jarring. It rattles me along with Rob’s comment about having to change his father’s diapers. I can’t even imagine. I don’t want to imagine.

  “This is so complicated,” I say.

  “Trust me.” Samantha pats her still-flat stomach. “I know all about complicated.”

  We call Mom from the little strip mall down the street, but she doesn’t come to get us.

  Dad does. In his police cruiser.

  I get in dutifully, but Samantha walks up to the driver’s side window and knocks until he rolls it down.

  She leans on the window ledge. “I called Mom.”

  “Your mother’s in her pajamas.” His voice is much harder with Samantha than it ever is with me. Especially now. “You got me.”

  “I’m not getting in here if you’re going to give me a hard time about playing lacrosse.”

  He sighs. “The last thing I’m worried about is you playing lacrosse.”

  “Are you worried BECAUSE I’M PREGNANT?” She all but yells this, and an elderly couple leaving the dry cleaners next door glances over curiously. Nothing like a teen girl screaming at a police officer to generate a few stares.

  “Get. In. The. Car.” My father’s voice could cut glass.

  “Not until you promise you aren’t going to interrogate me.”

  “I’m about to arrest you. Get in.”

  “YOU’RE GOING TO ARREST A PREGNANT TEENAGER?”

  My father gets out of the car with such speed that Samantha actually blanches and falls back a few steps. His voice is lethally quiet. “You will get in this car or I will drive to that school and question every boy I see until I find the one who did this to you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Samantha snaps. “Go ahead and try.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Can I get out first?” I call.

  It breaks the tension. My father sighs. Raises his hands. “Fine, Samantha. You win. You want your mother? Fine. I’ll tell her to get dressed and come get you.” He pulls a cell phone out of his pocket.

  I expect that to spur Samantha into motion, that she’d climb into the car. She doesn’t. She stands there with her arms folded while he calls. Listens as he explains the situation.

  Poor Mom.

  He only speaks for a few moments—“Yeah, she’s refusing to leave with me. I’m not having a video of me shoving my daughter into a police car showing up on YouTube”—then presses the button to end the call.

  He flings the phone into his cup holder and rolls up the window between him and Samantha.

  I expected her to get in the front—big sister privilege, as she used to call it—so I’m in the back seat, like a prisoner. He’s not on duty, so the radio is turned down, but he always has it on. Codes come across the wire about problems all over the county.

  When he closed the window, I expected him to shift into gear, but he doesn’t move. We sit in the quiet warmth, listening to a report about an alarm going off at a convenience store in Linthicum.

  We sit here long enough that I wonder if I should have gotten out to stand with my sister. Solidarity or something. But I can’t open the door from inside, and she’s still beside the car, arms folded across her chest. Breath streams out of her mouth in a long cloud.

  I want to ask if I can get out and give her my coat, but I don’t want Dad to yell at me. He can see how cold she is.

  “Are we waiting for Mom?” I say softly.

  “Of course.” His voice is gruff. “I’m not leaving your sister in the middle of a parking lot.”

  It’ll take Mom at least ten minutes to get here. And that’s if she were dressed and ready when he called.

  I sit back against the seat and sigh.

  “What are you doing with that boy?” he asks me.

  Uh-oh. “Can I get out and stand with Samantha?”

  “Maegan.”

  “I told you. He’s my math partner. Sam was saying she wanted to run some drills, and he plays lacrosse, so—”

  “Last night, you needed to borrow the car to go to Walgreens. You were meeting with Rob Lachlan?”

  “Yes.” I pause. “Is that a problem?”

  He’s quiet. Thinking.

  “It’s not like he’s some violent criminal,” I say. “We have to calculate dropping a ball from different heights. He’s perfectly polite.”

  “I’m not worried about him being polite.”

  “Then what are you worried about?” After Drew’s attitude, this is almost too much. My voice finds an edge. “Do you think he’s guilty, too?”

  “I don’t know. That wasn’t my investigation.” His voice softens. Mom and Samantha have always been close, but Dad’s always been gentler with me than my sister. “I do know that boy’s had a rough time of it, and it’s not getting any easier anytime soon.” He turns in his seat to look at me through the gridded mesh. “I know you had a rough time of it last year, too, and you need to get yourself back on the straight and narrow.”

  “So you think I should cut him off like everyone else?”

  “I think desperate people do desperate things.” He shrugs a little. “You know what his father did. Growing up with that as a role model … you don’t know what that can do to someone, sweetheart.”

  I don’t know if my dad’s talking about the millions of stolen dollars or the attempted suicide or both—and I’m not sure if it matters. I swallow. “Okay, Daddy.”

  “Do your project. Be kind to him like you always are. But don’t invite him to the house anymore. Okay?”

  “Okay.” My voice is soft. “You think … you think he’d do something wrong?”

  “I don’t want to think so, but he’s lost everything. So has his mother. From what I understand, they’re hanging on by a thread.”

  Rob flinched over a ninety-nine-cent cup of coffee at Wegmans. Tonight, he studied the menu at Taco Taco and then declined dinner, choosing to sip from a glass of water. “I know. I know they are.”

  Headlights flash across the storefronts, then Mom pulls her minivan into the space on the other side of where Samantha is still standing.

  Dad unlocks his door. “When you’ve lost everything,” he says, “sometimes you don’t see anything wrong with taking a little back.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Rob

  Mom is making a chicken Caesar salad. Great.

  There’s nothing wrong with chicken Caesar salad, but it’s kind of depressing when your stomach thought it was getting tacos and guacamole.

  She always cheats and adds bacon, though, which makes it better, and dumps on a ton of generic parmesan cheese. I remember when she’d grate her own, but I know better than to mention that. She’s got some kind of R&B music playing in the kitchen, and she’s singing along while she assembles the food. I want to tell her she’s too old for this kind of music, but it’s rare for the house to feel anything but tense and solemn, so I’m not going to rock the boat.

  Dad’s in the family room, his wheelchair pointed at a rerun of The Daily Show. I don’t pay much attention to politics, but I do know he hated political comedy. I wonder if Mom stuck him in front of it on purpose or if the show changed over while she was cooking.

  I don’t change the channel.

  When I make my way into the kitchen, she’s dancing around, slicing the chicken in rhythm.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I say.

  “Robby!”
She sets the knife to the side, then dances over to me to kiss me on the cheek. “I thought you’d be later. I was going to wrap your salad up.”

  “Nope. I’m here.” She dances her way back to the cutting board.

  Then I notice the glass of red wine on the counter. The half-empty bottle behind it.

  Wow.

  I don’t care if she drinks—hell, I’m surprised she’s not lit every night. I have half a mind to ask if I can join her. But there hasn’t been a drop of alcohol in this house since Dad pulled the trigger. I don’t know if it’s a money thing or if she’s worried about what people would think—or some combination of the two—but she’s always been pretty conservative.

  “Stop at the liquor store?” I say.

  “A client gave my boss a bottle, and he gave it to me.” She’s a little too emphatic on each word, and she goes back to singing along with the music.

  I could go the rest of my life without hearing my mother sing about licking someone’s skin.

  I clear my throat. “You want me to slice that chicken?”

  “Nope, I’ve got it.”

  I watch her anyway, worried she’s going to take off a finger.

  Then she says, “How’s Connor doing?”

  Just when I thought my night couldn’t get any more irritating. “Why the hell would I know how Connor is doing?”

  She glances at me over her shoulder while the knife flies through the food. It takes everything I have to keep from snatching it away from her. “You said you were going to run some drills with a friend. I assumed you were meeting up with Connor.”

  “No, Mom, no.” I grit my teeth. “I know you’re hammered right now, but maybe tomorrow you’ll remember that Connor’s dad is the one who—”

  “Whoa.” She turns and points the knife at me. Not in a threatening way. More to make a point. “First of all, I’m not even a little hammered. Second—”

  I snort. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Second, what Connor’s dad did and what your dad did shouldn’t have any bearing on your friendship. You boys were thick as thieves.”