“It must have been a power surge or something,” my dad says that morning as he hands me a granola bar. “I’m not sure what time the power went out, so we probably shouldn’t eat anything in the fridge.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Probably not.” I open the granola bar and take a bite, wishing it was French toast, or at least cereal. But of course we can’t use the milk. I know exactly what time the power went out—3:12 a.m. But to tell my dad that would be admitting that I know something about it.
Once Mrs. Dunham finished her big show, she disappeared. I crept out of my room and down the hall, to check in on my dad. He was sleeping soundly, although the whole house was dark.
I slid back into my bed and lay awake, listening to my iPod pretty much all night. I was too afraid to go back to sleep. I debated whether or not I should wake up my dad, but I didn’t want to deal with all the questions. I was afraid I’d break down and maybe tell him something that would make him think I was crazy.
So I just waited until he woke up at six. He went into the bathroom and tried the light switch, and then I heard him say, “Huh.”
I’ve been pretending like I don’t know anything about what happened. Which isn’t a total lie. I mean, I don’t know exactly what Mrs. Dunham did to our electricity. I’m not an electrician. And any information I tell my dad isn’t going to help him anyway. I’m sure whoever he hires to come over and fix it isn’t going to be like, Oh, a ghost did this? Why didn’t you tell me? It would have saved me a lot of diagnostic work.
“Well, I’ll have to take the morning off from work,” my dad says. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get someone to come out and look at it right away.”
He’s over at the kitchen table now, typing away on his laptop, looking for an electrician to come over and look at things. I chew on my granola bar slowly, thinking about how serious this situation is becoming.
I mean, blowing out the electricity in my house? What if she’d started a fire or something? What could be so bad that Mrs. Dunham is that determined to keep me away from Brandon? And then I remember the picture of her in the yearbook. The one of her with my mom.
Could my mom have anything to do with this? Part of me really doesn’t want to know. But the other part of me realizes that it might be time to find out exactly what’s going on with Brandon’s mom. Up until now I guess I’ve kind of been avoiding it. Mostly because I’m afraid to find out.
“So, Dad,” I say nonchalantly as I take a sip out of the glass of water he set in front of me. “You knew Mom in high school, right?”
He frowns and glances up from his laptop. “Yes,” he says. “Although we didn’t start dating until later. She was a couple of years behind me.”
I nod. “What was she like in school?”
“What was she like?”
“Yeah, you know, did she have a lot of friends?”
“She was popular, yeah,” my dad says distractedly. He’s still typing away on the computer. Jeez. I mean, I know he really wants to get this whole us-having-no-electricity thing taken care of, but this is the first time I’ve asked about my mom in, like, years. You’d think that maybe he’d want to pay a little more attention. I’m obviously crying out for help.
“Who was her best friend?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says vaguely. “She had a lot of friends.”
“Really?” I peel the wrapper farther off my granola bar. I take a bite, chew, and then swallow. “Because I was looking at some old yearbook pictures of her, and it seemed like maybe she spent a lot of time with this girl named Julie.”
I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I feel like I see a certain look flicker over my dad’s face. It’s the kind of look you get when someone has brought something up that you really don’t want to talk about but you know you can’t just say you don’t want to talk about it, because if you do, the other person will get suspicious.
“Huh,” my dad says. “Yeah, Julie. I remember her. Mm-hmm, Julie. She was one of your mother’s, ah . . . I mean, yes, they were friends.”
Wow. He’s getting all stumbly. I take a sip of my water. “Julie Collier, right?”
“Yup, mm-hmm.” He shakes his head sadly. “I think she passed away a few years ago.”
“Were she and Mom still friends?”
I see that same look pass across my dad’s face again, only this time it’s a little more brief. “When she died?” he asks.
“Yeah. That must have been really hard on Mom.”
My dad clears his throat. “Yes, well, Julie died after your mother had already, ah, left, so I’m not sure if they were still friends or not.”
“But there’s a chance they weren’t?”
My dad doesn’t say anything for a second, just picks up a pen and copies a phone number he’s found onto a piece of paper.
“The reason I’m so curious,” I forge on, “is because Julie’s Brandon’s mom,” I say.
My dad glances up sharply. He opens his mouth, and for a second I think he’s going to pretend to be surprised. But then he just shakes his head and sighs. “Yes,” he says, “I know.”
“You knew?” I take the last bite of my granola bar. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know.” My dad takes a deep breath. “I suppose I didn’t think it was that important.” What he means is, not important enough to talk about, because in order to do that, he’d have to bring up my mom. I stay quiet, waiting for him to say something else. And after a moment he does. “You two were born right around the same time.”
“Us two who?” I ask.
“You and Brandon. Your mom and Julie were still good friends during the time when your mom was pregnant with you. They met in high school and did everything together. In fact, they tried to plan getting pregnant around the same time so that their kids could grow up together.”
“And then what happened?” A feeling of dread is rising in my stomach. First of all, I don’t like thinking that there could be something to Mrs. Dunham’s crazy threats. It was much more fun when I could just pretend she was an insane ghost. And second, I don’t like thinking about anything that has to do with my mom. My mom left. I don’t want to spend time getting all upset about it, or wishing I had a mom, or wondering why she did it.
She left. That was her choice, and it had nothing to do with me. It’s worked well for me to not think about it. And it makes me angry when any information about her comes up in my life. It’s like she doesn’t have the right. She left, so I don’t want her to be able to influence or affect me in any way. Some people would call this denial. I call it being smart.
“Hmm?” my dad asks. He’s busy looking down at his paper full of phone numbers.
“What happened? Why weren’t they friends anymore?”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m not exactly sure, honey. All this happened right around the time you were born, right before your mom moved out. All I know is that the two of them got into some kind of fight, and they decided not to be friends anymore.”
“Who decided?” I ask. “Mom or Julie?”
He shrugs. “I think it was mutual.”
I sigh. This is one of those times when having just a dad can be totally frustrating. Doesn’t he realize that a breakup, even of just a friendship, is never mutual? Something happened between those two, and it was probably something horrible. It had to be. Otherwise, why would Mrs. Dunham want me to stay away from her son?
I get up and toss my granola bar wrapper into the trash, then turn around to ask my dad another question, but he’s on the phone with an electrician. Great. Not only does it seem like this discussion is closed, but now I have the super-fun task of doing my hair without any electricity. This day just keeps getting better and better.
Lyra accosts me during lunch. “So did you find anything else out?” she demands.
I just stare at her. First of all, she just told me something last night and she expects me to already have a plan? God, the youth of today think they are
so entitled. Not to mention that she’s asked me a question in front of everyone at my lunch table, when she knows full well I’m not going to be able to answer it.
There really should be someone who explains the rules of ghost etiquette to the ghosts before they get sent to me. Like some kind of ghost mediator or something. And then I could grade the ghosts and mark them off if they were being compliant or not. Kind of like a progress report, or an evaluation.
I’d use a red pen (or maybe purple), and all the ghosts would be scared of me and would be all, What are you writing about me, Kendall? and Please don’t put down bad things about me, Kendall. Then I would actually have some power over them.
“I’m going to get a juice,” Brandon declares, standing up from the table. “Anyone else want anything?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
Kyle and Ellie shake their heads. We’re sitting at our normal table in the middle of the cafeteria. It’s the perfect table for us, because it’s one of those round ones with only four chairs. We snagged it last week and made it our own. And it’s cool because we can talk about whatever we want without having to worry about other people listening.
Not that Kyle’s talking to me right now. He’s still mad, I guess, even though Brandon explained to him what happened and told him that we’re now officially a couple.
“You want some Oreos, Kyle?” I ask. I packed a bunch of extra ones this morning because I know they’re his favorite. Everything in the fridge was off-limits, but I did manage to find an unopened jar of peanut butter in the pantry. So I have a peanut butter sandwich, chips, an orange, and tons of Oreos.
“No, thank you,” he says. But I can see him eyeing the cookies.
“You sure?” I say. “They’re Double Stuf. You can lick out the frosting if you want and throw the cookie part away. I don’t mind.”
“That’s wasting,” Ellie reports. But I shoot her a look to let her know that it’s not about wasting, that Kyle can waste whatever he wants as long as he forgives me. I can’t have Brandon’s best friend being mad at me. It’s not good.
“Well, okay,” Kyle says, reaching across the table. I meant for him to share the cookies with me, but instead he grabs the whole baggie and gets to work eating out the icing.
Whatever. It’s probably not good for me to have too much sugar, anyway. I’m already on edge as it is, not to mention the two coffees I had this morning in the English office.
“Are those Double Stuf Oreos?” a sickly sweet voice behind me says. I turn around to see Madison Baker standing there.
She’s wearing a short poofy hot pink skirt and a soft-looking white sweater that’s so tight, she must have bought it in a size smaller than she needs. A pink headband pulls her hair back from her face, and her makeup is perfect—soft and smoky eye shadow, a slick of seashell-pink gloss, and a swipe of blush. Her skin is flawless—no pimples, no red marks, not even a freckle. I’m torn between really hating her and wanting to ask her what kind of makeup she uses.
I decide on hating her. Not because she’s so pretty (but, let’s face it, that doesn’t help), but because she told my boyfriend I was flirting with another guy.
“Yeah,” Kyle says. He holds a cookie out to her. “You want one?”
Ugh. Why would he offer her a cookie? I just want her to go away. And judging from the look on Ellie’s face, she wants her to go away too.
“Where does that girl get her makeup?” Lyra asks, peering at Madison. God, I almost forgot Lyra was there. It’s actually a little depressing, thinking about a girl who likes your boyfriend having such perfect makeup that even ghosts want to know how she does it.
“No, I don’t want any Oreos,” Madison says. “They’re filled with tons of bad things, like high-fructose corn syrup and trans fat. Anyone who eats those things is just ingesting poison.”
Kyle shrugs, and I see Ellie visibly relax. No way Kyle is going to be interested in a girl who talks down about things like trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, no matter how amazing her cosmetics are.
Then Madison sits down in the seat next to me. The seat where Brandon was just sitting. What? Why? If she doesn’t want any Oreos, then why is she sitting down? Actually, why is she here at all?
“Someone’s sitting there,” I say helpfully.
“Oh, I know,” she says. She drums her perfectly painted nails on the table. Obviously, she redid her manicure after the trip to Lyra’s mom’s salon. No way they did that good a job. “I was just coming over to ask Brandon about the math homework.”
“Brandon’s not here,” I say, reaching into my bag and pulling out my assignment book. “But I can give you the assignment.”
“Oh, I know the assignment,” she says. She pulls her headband off and shakes her hair out. Soft blond waves cascade down around her shoulders. She looks like a Disney princess. Or a Barbie doll. One of those really annoying fashion ones, not the cool doctor Barbies or anything like that. “I had a question about one of the problems.”
“I can help you,” I say. The faster I can get her out of here the better. The last thing I want is Brandon coming back to the table and finding Madison here. Although if he does, she’ll have to leave, since there will be no place for her to sit.
“I kind of want someone who’s good at math,” she says. “No offense.” She gives me a sweet smile. Ugh. Everyone knows that whenever you say “no offense” to someone, it really means that you’re saying something mean and you just want to make it seem like you’re not being mean when you totally are.
Madison reaches into her bag and pulls out a Diet Coke. She pops open the top and takes a dainty sip.
“You’re not supposed to have soda at school,” Kyle says. “Just so you know.”
Madison rolls her eyes, like she can’t believe how ridiculous that rule is. Then she takes another sip of her soda, not even trying to hide it.
Ellie and I lock eyes over the table, and she shrugs. We all just sit there for a minute or so, not saying anything. It’s actually getting awkward, if you want to know the truth.
“Wow,” Madison says, “I didn’t know I was sitting at the party table. You guys are just so talkative. How do you ever get any eating done?”
Then she picks up Brandon’s yogurt, pulls the spoon out of his lunch bag, and starts eating it!
“That’s Brandon’s yogurt,” Kyle says, and I shoot him a grateful smile.
“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Madison says wickedly. She licks the spoon, and I’m pretty sure it’s not my imagination that she glances at me out of the corner of her eye with a smarmy look.
“Wow,” Lyra says. She sits down on the table pretty much on top of Brandon’s lunch. “That girl is eating your boyfriend’s yogurt. Talk about being aggressive.” She gets really close to her and peers at her face. “How does she get her skin to look like that?”
Brandon returns to the table before I can figure out what to do.
“Hey,” he says, “what’s going on?” I wait for him to say something about Madison eating his yogurt, but she’s put the carton back down on the table, like she hasn’t just been stealing someone else’s lunch. I meet Brandon’s eye and throw a pointed glance at his yogurt, hoping he’ll look at it and be all, Who was eating my yogurt without permission? But he doesn’t get the hint.
“I just needed some help with my math,” Madison says.
“Oh,” Brandon says. “Well, you can always stay after and get someone in the math lab to help you. They’re there pretty much every day after the bell rings.”
“There’s just this one problem on the homework that’s been giving me trouble,” Madison says, ignoring his comment about the math lab. “And I really need to get a good grade. Otherwise Mr. Jacobi is going to kill me.”
I reach into my baggie to take out a chip, and then find that I’ve crumbled it in my hand. I wait for Brandon to tell her he can’t help her.
Instead he says, “Do you have your textbook?”
“It’s in my locker,” she
says, and smiles up at him. “Will you come with me to get it? Then we can go over the problem.”
“I don’t know,” Brandon says doubtfully. “I’m eating lunch with Kendall.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. Yay! Score one for me and Brandon!
“Oh, I’m sure Kendall doesn’t mind,” Madison says, looking at me and giving me another sickly sweet smile. “Do you, Kendall?”
Great. Now if I say I do mind, I’m the jealous, insecure girlfriend. And if I say I don’t, Brandon is going to waltz out of here with Madison. “I don’t mind,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound too strangled.
“Are you sure?” Brandon asks. “Because I don’t have to.” He’s looking at me with concern, and I know he’s thinking about how upset I was about Madison calling him. Well, this is my chance to prove that I’m a confident and secure girlfriend.
“I’m sure,” I say. Not.
Brandon balls up his lunch bag and then dumps all his garbage into the trash can against the wall. He comes back to the table and gives me a quick kiss. “I’ll be right back, okay? Maybe the three of us can go over the problem together.”
“Sure.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, even though my heart is beating fast in my chest and I have a lump in my throat. Why is he leaving with her? Why couldn’t she go get the book by herself ? And besides, doesn’t he realize that she made up a big lie about me and Micah? Why is he still talking to her?
I watch as Brandon and Madison approach the lunch monitor and Madison starts explaining the situation. We’re not allowed to leave the caf during lunch unless we have permission. A second later the lunch monitor nods, and Madison and Brandon slip out into the hallway.
“You okay?” Ellie asks once Brandon’s gone.
“I’m fine,” I say, giving her a smile. “They’ll be right back anyway.”
But they’re not right back. In fact, by the time the bell rings, signaling the end of the period, Brandon and Madison haven’t returned.
I don’t see Brandon for the rest of the day, and by the time the bus drops me off in front of my house, I’m really annoyed. I mean, yes, he did send me a text saying that Madison had left her book in Mr. Jacobi’s room, and by the time they went up to get it, the lunch period was over. But still.
The Harder the Fall Page 9
