Devon Delaney Should Totally Know Better

by Lauren Barnholdt

  I open my eyes to find Katie sitting on my floor, the TV turned to MSNBC.

  “What are you doing in here?” I ask.

  “Watching the news,” she says. “Today is the big day!” She gets up off the floor and twirls around in a circle. She’s still wearing her pajamas, light blue with pink dogs printed all over them.

  “What big day?” I ask.

  “The day they decide about the big Olympic scandal, Devon. Don’t you watch the news?”

  “Not really,” I say, pulling the covers back over my head. “I have my own problems. Why aren’t you watching it downstairs, like a normal person?”

  “Because Mommy and Daddy are down there, talking about very important grown-up things.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll bet they are.”

  “But they are not,” Katie reports, “using harsh tones.” She does another little twirl. Poor, deluded little Katie. She has no idea that even though my parents aren’t using harsh tones, they are in very big trouble. Maybe they’ll send me to live with my grandma again. That actually wouldn’t be so bad. I could start school out there. I would even know Greg/Ryan. How ironic would that be? If I ended up becoming BFF with the guy who basically ruined my life?

  “Are you waking up now?” Katie asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “You seem like you’re awake,” Katie insists.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not,” I say. “A lot of things seem to be what they’re really not.”

  Katie wrinkles up her nose. “I don’t like that,” she says. “It seems like a riddle.”

  My cell phone rings from the nightstand next to me, and for a second, my heart hopes that it’s Luke. But it’s not. It’s Mel.

  “Devon!” she says. “Oh, thank God, I’ve been so worried!”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Didn’t you get my text?” Last night after I was safely in my room, I texted Mel and Lexi to let them know what happened, that I’d gone home with my dad, and that I was okay.

  “Yes,” she says. “But I was still worried. What happened?”

  “Nothing I really want to talk about,” I say. I get down under the covers so that Katie won’t hear me. “But Luke and I broke up, and I confronted my dad on his affair.”

  Mel gasps from the other line. “What happened?!” she asks.

  “Nothing.” I say. “Yet.” I snuggle down deeper into the covers. I wonder if I can just stay here forever. Probably not. Especially since I can feel Katie down at the bottom of the bed, sticking her hands under the covers and grabbing my toes. I curl my legs further up into the bed.

  “What do you mean, ‘yet’?”Mel asks.

  “They’re downstairs, probably just waiting to have some big talk with me.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club. My mom is about to have some big talk with me, too, about how I’m off to private school.” She sighs, and I feel guilty for a second. All this stuff going on with Luke and my dad, and I totally forgot about Mel being shipped off to private school.

  And then I have an idea. “Hey,” I say, sitting up in bed. “What are you doing this afternoon? Can I come over before my mock trial thing?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Although it’s not really that fun around here right now, what with my mom being mad at me and all.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “That’s actually good. And what about Dylan? What happened last night?”

  “Wellll,” Mel says slowly. “It was a little bit awkward at first, you know, because I didn’t exactly know what I should talk to him about.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “But then I just started talking to him about radio, and then we started talking about school stuff, and I told him about how my mom wants to send me to a private school, and he was sooo understanding.” There’s a long pause. “And then, um, you know, we went back to Lexi’s after, and I could swear he was going to kiss me, but then my mom showed up to pick me up, so I don’t know.”

  “Mel, that’s amazing!” I say. “Do you think—”

  “Devon!” my mom calls from downstairs. “Could you come down here?”

  Of course the moment Mel gets to the good part, my mom has to call me down for a conversation which I definitely do not want to have. I sigh and tell Mel I have to go.

  “Can I stay in here?” Katie asks. She’s sitting cross-legged on my floor.

  “Yes,” I say. “Just don’t mess anything up.”

  Katie jumps into my bed and into the covers, and I head downstairs. My mom and dad are sitting at the table, looking serious. Ugh. I really wish we did not have to have this conversation. In fact, I wish everything that happened last night didn’t happen.

  “Good morning,” my mom says, smiling at me. How can she be smiling at a time like this? “Would you like a waffle?” I notice a big plate of waffles on the table. They actually look delish.

  “No thanks,” I say, sitting down on the chair across from her. The floor is cold under my feet, and I realize I’m only wearing one sock. How did that happen? I pull it off so that one foot isn’t colder than the other.

  “So, your father says you know about Stephanie,” my mom says. She takes a sip of her orange juice, and suddenly, my throat feels dry.

  “Yes,” I say. I reach across the table for the juice and pour some into my glass.

  “I want to ask how you found out, but something tells me I might not like what you have to say,” my dad says. Obviously he thinks I did it by spying and treachery, which is pretty much true. But is he upset that I spied, or is he upset that he got found out?

  “I agree,” my mom says. And there’s a silence in which I realize they want me to tell them. It’s like one of those leading questions—they’re saying they’re afraid to know the answer, therefore giving me a chance to prove them wrong by telling them I found out by some innocent maneuvers. Whatev. I don’t have anything to hide. If anyone should be upset, it’s my dad.

  “I saw you with her at the coffee shop.” I sip my juice. “You were having coffee with her or something, right before Mom was going to pick up me and Lexi.” I shoot him a look, as if to say, See how close you came to being caught, not so smart, are you?

  “Oh, yeah,” my dad says. He turns to my mom. “We were having a coffee between appointments.” Aha! So he does work with her! I can’t believe he’s rubbing it in my mom’s face! They were having a coffee between appointments? Does my mom really need to know that stuff? I glare at my dad. But my mom doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seems totally unbothered by it.

  “But how,” my mom says to me, “did you know her name was Stephanie?”

  Oh. Right.

  “I looked in Dad’s phone,” I announce, almost proudly. Take that! You can’t get away with anything on my watch!

  “Devon, you shouldn’t have done that,” my mom says. “You can’t go around looking in people’s phones. I wouldn’t have looked in your phone.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have lied to me,” I say to my dad.

  “I didn’t lie to you,” my dad says. “I just didn’t tell you something.”

  “Didn’t you say lying by omission is just as horrible as really lying?” I ask my mom. She did, too. That day I was upset that Luke hadn’t told me about how he used to date Bailey. And look how that turned out. She was right. Luke totally still likes Bailey.

  “Well.” She looks nervously at my dad and takes another sip of her juice. “Yes, I did, but in this case, it’s a little different.”

  “Honey, the reason we didn’t tell you is because we didn’t want you to get all worked up over nothing. We wanted to make sure everything worked out before we told you and Katie, so that you wouldn’t get upset and start asking all sorts of questions,” my dad says.

  I almost choke on my juice. “You knew about this?” I ask my mom incredulously. Ohmigod. How ridiculous is this! My mom and dad wanted to make sure it worked out with my dad and Stephanie before telling us? So that it wouldn’t upset us? How crazy are they?

  “Of co
urse,” my mom says. She reaches for the plate in the middle of the table and drops a waffle onto her plate. “Your father wouldn’t buy a house without consulting with me first. Really, Devon.” She forks off a piece of waffle and drags it through some syrup before popping it into her mouth.

  “Wait, what?” I ask. “Buy a house?” What are they talking about?

  “Yes,” my dad says. “I wouldn’t have started consulting with a realtor without your mom knowing about it. In fact, your mom is the one who brought up the whole moving thing in the first place.”

  “Stephanie’s a realtor?” I exclaim.

  “Well, yeah,” my mom says. “What did you think she was?”

  “Oh, um . . .” I trail off, not sure if I should tell them. What would I say? I thought you were having an affair with some woman named Stephanie? “Uh, I wasn’t exactly sure.”

  But my mom and dad know what I was thinking without me even needing to say anything. “Oh, Devon,” my dad says. “Is that why you ran out of the car like that last night? Because you thought . . .” My dad and mom exchange a glance and then burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny,” I protest. “It was very psychologically taxing, thinking that your father was having an affair!”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?” my dad wants to know.

  “Because,” I say, “I didn’t know how to bring it up.” Suddenly, I’m starving. Now that I know everything’s okay between my parents, my appetite is back full force. I take three waffles off of the plate and put them on my own. Mmm. I slather them with butter and syrup, and then eat a piece. Wow. I wonder how my mom was able to pull these off. They taste amazing, all buttery and rich. I’m so consumed with the buttery goodness of the waffles that for a second, I forget that my parents have just dropped another bombshell.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I say. “What do you mean, we’re moving?” I put my fork down next to my plate.

  “We’re thinking of getting a bigger house,” my mom explains. She gets up and takes her plate to the sink. “Now that I’m making a bit more money off of my web design business, we’re at the point where we can finally afford it.” She returns to the table and reaches out and grabs my dad’s hand.

  “So now we’re moving?” This is ridiculous! I’m going to have to leave all my friends, Mel will already be going to private school, and if I move away, I’m never going to be able to see her. Not to mention I’ll lose Lexi.

  “Don’t worry,” my dad says. He drains the rest of his coffee and picks a piece of bacon off his plate and pops it into his mouth. “We made sure that the only houses we look at will be in the school district, so that you don’t have to change schools.”

  Oh. I relax a little. Good. Although now that it’s no longer a possibility, I think about how cool it might have been to change schools. Where no one would know who I was, and I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing Luke and Bailey together every single day.

  My stomach does a flop, and suddenly, I’m not hungry anymore. I push my plate away from me and head upstairs to start working on the plan I’ve come up with to keep Mel out of private school.

  chapter fifteen

  “What’s this?” Mel asks when she opens the door to her house later.

  “This!” I announce happily, brushing by her and into the front hall. “Is my plan to save your life!”

  I take off my coat and hang it on the coat rack in the hall.

  “A computer?” Mel asks, looking skeptically at the laptop I’m holding.

  “It’s my dad’s,” I tell her. My dad let me borrow it when I explained my plan to him. Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that I think he was feeling a little bit guilty that I thought he was having an affair for so long. Otherwise he might not have let me borrow it. “Your dad’s computer is going to save my life?” Mel asks dubiously.

  “Not the computer exactly,” I say. “Me and the computer!” I’m triumphant. And this better work. I’ve been slaving away on it all morning.

  “How?”

  “Well,” I say. “I made up a whole PowerPoint presentation on how you can get just as good of an education at a public school as you can at a private school. My dad helped me with it,” I admit.

  “Devon!” Mel squeals. She jumps up and down in the hallway.

  “Well, calm down, you don’t have to jump and down, you’re going to step on my foot.” But I’m excited that she’s so excited. “Is your mom home?”

  “Yeah,” Mel says. “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “Great,” I say.

  “What’s in the bag?” Mel asks, looking at the garment bag I’m holding. I took it out of my dad’s closet— it’s what all his suits are in when they come back from the dry cleaners. It looks very professional. “My outfit,” I say. “Come on.”

  We head into Mel’s room, where I pull out what I have in the bag. Black skirt, chunky gray sweater with a cowl neck, black patterned tights, and black high-heeled shoes. Taken from my mom’s closet, with her permission of course.

  “You’re dressing up like a secretary?” Mel asks.

  “These are not frumpy secretary clothes!” I protest. “This skirt is Hermes!”

  “It is?”

  “Well, no. But it’s from H&M, and I saw one almost exactly the same online at Hermes, so . . .” I love H&M. Really, all the bargains can be found there.

  “Wait, so what am I supposed to wear? And what happened with your parents?”

  I lead Mel to her closet, where I flip through her things, trying to find something that looks professional yet stylish, and fill her in on what happened at breakfast.

  “So basically,” I say. “Everything’s fine.”

  “So basically,” Mel says. “You should have just asked your dad about it, and then maybe this whole thing could have been avoided.”

  Geez. She doesn’t have to rub it in. I mean, yes, I could have asked my dad about it, but then I would have been obsessing over the whole them finding a house thing.

  “Well, yeah,” I say. “But then I would have no bright side today, on the day when Luke and I are broken up. So at least I can say to myself, ‘Well, Devon, at least your parents are fine.”

  Mel looks at me and smiles, and I reach into her closet and pull out a slate gray dress with a cool cut out pattern all around the collar. “How about this?” I ask. “You can wear it with—” And then I notice Mel’s face is getting all scrunchy, and her cheeks are getting a little bit blotchy, and the next thing I know, Mel sits down on the floor of her closet and starts to cry.

  “Um,” I say, not quite sure what this is about. “It’s okay, you don’t have to wear the dress. Honestly, you don’t have to get dressed up at all if you don’t want to, it’s fine.”

  “No, no, it’s just . . .” Mel sniffs and moves an ice skate out of the way and pats the floor next to her, like she wants me to sit. Hmm. I’m not too sure about this. It’s not a walk-in closet or anything, in fact, it’s kind of on the small side as closets go, and I’m not sure there’s room for Mel, much less the both of us.

  “Um, I’m not sure there’s room for me in there,” I say. “Why don’t you come out and we can—”

  “SIT!” Mel commands. Yikes. Okay, then.

  I scooch in next to her and pull my knees up to my chin. Well, I guess there are worse places to be. Like a coffin.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask Mel.

  “It’s just . . . everything’s changing,” Mel says. She sniffs again.

  “But we will always be friends,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. “Always. No matter who lives where or what school we go to or who we’re dating or whatever. Always. No matter what.”

  “Do you promise?” Mel asks.

  “I promise.” And then I give her a hug, and get ready to save Mel from private school.

  I do look pretty cute. I’m just saying. Like, if I were to be going on a job interview right now for some fancy job, I would totally get it. Not that thirteen-year-olds can really get
that many fancy jobs, but if we could, I’d be hired. Actually, I could probably get a job that older people could get. I think I look at least sixteen in this outfit. And can’t sixteen-year-olds be assistants or something? I think there are a couple of people in my dad’s office who work there over the summer who are sixteen. I could definitely get one of those jobs.

  “Now,” I say to Mel, “do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” Mel says, squaring her shoulders. “I trust you.”

  “First rule,” I say, grabbing the laptop case off the bed. “No matter what, we don’t get upset. No matter what your mom says. We have to show her we’re mature.”

  “Right,” Mel says. She’s wearing her gray dress, and even though she has a nervous look on her face, she looks really pretty.

  We march downstairs to where Mel’s mom is sitting at the kitchen table. Mel told her we were going to be doing a special presentation for her. And then she made her up a cheese and crackers plate to snack on while we changed into our secretary clothes.

  “Good afternoon,” I say. “And welcome to our presentation.”

  I open my dad’s computer, and boot it up. “This afternoon, I will be presenting you with reasons why it doesn’t make sense to send Mel to a private school.” I flip open the computer, and double click on the PowerPoint presentation icon on the desktop. Navy blue fills the screen, and white letters show the words “Private School vs. Public School.” Then, in small letters underneath, it says, “What they don’t want you to know.” My dad thought that was taking it a little bit too far, but I thought it had to have some kind of hook, you know, like a Dateline special or something. Otherwise it just doesn’t have the same impact.

  “‘What they don’t want you to know?’” Mel’s mom asks uncertainly.

  “Yes,” I say seriously. “‘They’ being the private schools.” I try to make my voice sounds just a touch ominous, since this is a very serious situation going on here.

  “Let’s please turn our attention to slide number one,” I say, “which shows us that in a recent study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, children who went to private schools only outperformed children in public schools in eighth grade reading. That’s a comprehensive study of every child in every grade, in every subject.” I pause. “And as we all know, Mel is ahead of her grade level in reading, and has been since, like, kindergarten. So she wouldn’t benefit from this.” I clear my throat and remind myself that serious researchers probably don’t say “like.” Although they totally should. Some of this data is pretty boring, and it could probably use a little bit of lightening up.