I took my seat in English, Sebastian’s absence next to me so strong, it felt more like a presence in itself. I let the din of phones turning to vibrate mode, textbooks opening, gum snapping wash over me. There was a millisecond of calm and then a sudden epiphany: Because of Sebastian, for the first time in my life, I wanted to know someone else’s deepest darkest thoughts. And I wanted someone to know mine.
CHAPTER THREE
That night when Dad called, I was sitting at the kitchen counter reading blogs on dreadlocks.
Ever since Sebastian had said that I was hiding, covering something up, memories and doubts were seeping into my thoughts all day every day—while I brushed my teeth, hung out with Rebecca or Chris … and forget about sleep. I’d started questioning everything.
Now I was like Pluto, the non-planet. I appeared the same, but I wasn’t the same. Not anymore. Not on the inside. And I didn’t want to look the same anymore either. Dreadlocks were a huge change, not fleeting like dying your hair or piercing your eyebrow. I was going to be the dreadlocked Pluto. I’d bought the hair products, watched the video instructions, gotten Rebecca on board to help, but I didn’t have the courage yet.
While I was watching the video on how to back-comb properly for the twentieth time, the phone rang and Mom picked up.
“Really?” she said. “Another night? You know what tomorrow is, don’t you?”
It only took me a second to realize that it was Dad on the phone, and he was spending yet another night away, which meant no first-day-of-vacation breakfast with him tomorrow.
No matter how busy he was or what state he was in, on our first day of summer vacation, Dad was always home to celebrate with my brother Gavin and me, and Scott before he’d moved to the city. Dad made us chocolate chip waffles with whipped cream and strawberries, played catch or badminton with us, and then headed off to work or to the airport. He’d never missed vacation breakfast before.
I loosened some hair from my ponytail and twirled it around my finger.
Then Mom spoke into the phone in her fake cheerful voice, “Okay, honey. Sounds like you’ve had a long day. You should take an Ambien. Make sure you get some good sleep.”
She hung up and turned to me.
“Dad just got back to the office from San Diego, but he has a client dinner tonight and an early morning meeting, so he’s just going to stay in the city,” she said.
I nodded, not sure how she wanted me to react. Was I supposed to get angry so we could rag on him together? Or did she want me to be all sympathetic that Dad was working so hard? Mom and I didn’t speak the same language. And since Dad was our translator, I was flipping through the Bitch-to-English dictionary as fast as I could in my head. But it was coming up blank.
“What do you want for dinner?” Mom asked.
I shrugged, twirling my hair tighter.
“You know, Macy, would it kill you to just answer a simple question once in a while?” She opened the refrigerator, stood with her back to me, slammed the door shut, and walked out of the kitchen.
A few minutes later, I heard the squeak-squeak of the treadmill in the home gym above the garage. Mom had asked Dad to fix the squeak, but he hadn’t gotten around to it.
It was an unspoken rule in our house that mornings worked best if we all avoided one other. But the next morning, on our first day of summer vacation, Mom broke the rule. And she didn’t just break it—she took out a hammer and bashed it, crumbling its bones into little bits, and then wrung its neck for good measure.
“Guys, I need to tell you about a change in our summer plans,” she announced to Gavin and me, pouring her second cup of coffee. “We can’t go to Nantucket next week.”
My bagel popped up from the toaster. I scorched my finger trying to grab it.
“What?” Gavin said, his mouth open wide in shock.
Poor Gavin had enough to worry about—his skinny geeky self was heading for the big leagues next fall—high school. This kind of “change of plan” was not something Gavin could deal with well. We always rented a house on Nantucket for a month after school ended. Every single summer, every single year of our lives.
Plus, Gavin’s heart had already been broken this morning once he realized that Dad really wasn’t coming home for first-day-of-vacation breakfast.
“You can’t just cancel our trip,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“Scotty has to make up a couple of classes for his degree. We can go when he finishes. Maybe in August,” Mom said. Even though Scott was our cousin, Mom and Dad had been taking care of him since he was a baby, way before I was born. Aunt Judy would drop off Scott with Mom for “just a few hours” and then pick him up three or four days later as though it were nothing. Mom and Dad became his legal guardians when Judy went to live with a freaky cult in Montana.
Maybe because he was abandoned or something, Mom and Dad always gave Scott whatever he wanted. Boarding school when he got kicked out of public school. Backpacking around Europe all summer after boarding school. Dad used connections to get him into Columbia, and now Scott wasn’t even going to graduate with all his credits. And, of course, Mom was making sure the entire universe revolved around him yet again.
“That’s fair?” I yelled. “You’re changing the plans of the entire family because Scott partied too hard to finish his degree?”
“His thesis advisor left midyear,” Mom said. “And he’s been incredibly busy running the nightclub.”
“Mom, he’s like a three percent owner. He’s not running anything.”
“That’s not very supportive, Macy,” she said, shaking her head.
I glared at her. Supportive, my ass. He had all the support he needed from Mom and Dad.
Gavin sank down in his chair at the table and slowly ate his cereal.
“Steven and Tucker won’t be on Nantucket in August,” Gavin said quietly. He hadn’t found his soul mates here like he had there. The summers on Nantucket were Gavin’s time to shine.
I didn’t want to let on to Mom that I was upset too. I’d have to call the T-shirt store on Nantucket to tell them I wasn’t coming at the last minute and then I’d never get a job there again. Why hadn’t Dad warned me about the change of plans? I felt a tug at my heart, like he had betrayed me.
“Come on,” I said to Gavin. “I’m going to Rebecca’s. I’ll drop you off somewhere.”
I ran upstairs to get my dreadlock products.
Gavin and I sat in silence as I drove the few miles to Mount Kisco center.
“We’ll figure something out, Gav,” I said. “Maybe you can go stay with Tucker for a week or something. I bet Mom’ll be cool with that.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
I dropped Gavin and his laptop off at Starbucks and then, fuming at Mom, Scott, and even Dad, I headed to Rebecca’s, hoping she’d be able to entertain me into forgetting.
When I pulled up to her house, she was on the porch, picking up beer bottles.
“You gonna just sit there? Get your butt over here and help!” Rebecca yelled to me.
I started up the porch steps.
“What happened to you last night? You left before Chris,” she said as she dumped a plastic cup full of cigarette butts into the garbage can. Rebecca had hosted the entire junior class for the last day of school blowout the night before. It was the best party of the year, but I’d left early, unable to play fake while images of Sebastian in the psych ward were crowding my brain.
I picked up a bottle, dumped the beer out into the bushes, and then chucked it into the blue bin. While we may not drink responsibly, we do recycle responsibly.
“I was tired,” I said.
She looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Something’s going on with you. You’ve been acting all weird lately. You’re not screwing things up with Chris, are you?”
“No. Chris is fine.”
“You’d better be good to him,” she said. “You still owe him for setting us up.”
&nb
sp; I hadn’t planned on adding another drama freak to my list of friends. Chris and his set-building was plenty of drama for me, but in ninth grade, Chris introduced me to Rebecca, a card-carrying actress, complete with the booming voice, in-depth knowledge of all things Broadway, and the desire to get up on stage. And she was irresistible. We effortlessly turned into the Rebecca-Macy show, and Chris was demoted to understudy. But even though he’d convinced me to make him leading man six months ago, the Rebecca-Macy show would never end its run.
I pulled the bag of dreadlock products out of my bag.
“Can we do it today?” I asked.
“Really? You’re ready?”
“I think so. I know it’s gonna hurt like hell, but I really want them.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it! We’ll finish cleaning up later.”
“I’ll do the front, you do the back,” I said.
We went to the TV room, set up the products, rubber bands, comb, and brush on the coffee table.
“We should get a towel or something,” I said. “It could stain.”
“Look at this couch. Like anyone would notice.”
The couch in their TV room was a brown fuzzy material that had seen too many years of sitting butts. In fact, with Rebecca and her three older brothers, I didn’t even want to know what had happened on it.
“It’s still your mom’s couch,” I said.
“Oh, fine.” She left the room and returned with a thin unraveling Spider-Man towel.
Rebecca spread the towel on the couch, and we got to work sectioning, back-combing, and twisting my hair. We’d been studying it for two weeks already and now it was happening. Mom would freak.
“We’re not going to Nantucket until August now,” I told Rebecca. “Maybe not at all.”
She looked up. “Seriously? Since when?”
“Since this morning when my mom announced it. It’s because of Scott. I don’t want to get into it.” Rebecca was one of the few people who saw through Scott’s charms. It bugged me when she’d go off on one of her rants about him, though. I had that I can complain about my family, but you can’t syndrome. But today, I didn’t have any weapons to defend him with.
“Well, I’m delighted you’ll be here,” she said.
“Did you just say ‘delighted’?”
“I wanted to try it out. See if it could be a new word.”
“No,” I said. “It can’t.”
“Bummer. It sounded so lovely in the script I read last week.”
“Not ‘lovely’ either,” I said, touching the back of my head. Rebecca whacked my hand away.
“What’re you gonna do here?” she asked.
“I guess I’ll find a job. I’m kind of late to the game.”
“I just got an e-mail from Darren at Marwood. One of the counselors dropped out last minute. He’s desperate.”
Rebecca stopped pulling on my hair and looked at me cautiously. She knew my love/hate feelings for Marwood Club. Scott, Gavin, and I were basically raised there. Mom dropped me off at the nursery when I was a baby, sent me there for preschool, camp, swim lessons, everything. It was convenient for her while she worked out, played tennis, got facials, and ate lunch with her girlfriends. Even though I’d grown up there, it was never my place. Marwood Club was Mom’s territory.
“Um, no thanks.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “It’s a great job. It pays well and it’s only eight thirty to twelve.”
“I don’t even like kids.” I tried to ignore the stabs of pain brought on by Rebecca’s rough twisting technique.
“How do you know? Have you ever talked to one?”
“Do they talk? I thought they just cried and shat and snarfed boogers everywhere,” I said.
“We’re going there and you will tell Darren you want the job.”
I rolled my eyes at her but I didn’t say no. At least it would be something to get my mind off my mother and suicidal Sebastian.
“Ouch!” I screamed as she yanked a tangle from the back of my head.
“Sorry.”
I wiped a tear. She tugged the same spot again.
“Ow! Go easy back there, it’s sensitive!” I said. “I need a break. My scalp’s on fire.”
“Okay.” She stood and surveyed our progress. “Looking good. We’re almost done.”
I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The front was done—small, tight, twisty, blond dreadlocks that framed my face. They were short right now, but they’d grow.
“It’s good,” I said to my reflection.
Rebecca had already gone outside to finish cleaning up.
“Oh nasty!” Rebecca screamed. I went out to the porch. She pointed at a bush that was splattered with bits of yellowish puke. I gagged and backed my way toward the front door.
“Animals! No respect,” she yelled as she pulled the hose out from the side of the house. She looked up and pointed at me.
I froze, one foot inside the house, one on the porch.
“Come back here, you traitor! Can’t even stand the sight of a little puke? Come on down here and help me.”
I shook my head no, but I was fighting laughter. I was over the puke already, but now it was just fun to get Rebecca all riled up.
“You get down here or I’m telling everyone that you still sleep with Fozzie Bear.”
She dropped the hose and pulled out her phone.
“Let’s see,” she said, scrolling. “Who has the biggest mouth? Jasmine?”
“Don’t,” I said, trying to stop myself from laughing.
“Do you think Jasmine would find it amusing that badass too-cool-for-school Macy Lyons has to drive ten minutes home to get her Fozzie Bear before spending the night at my house? What do you think, Mace?” She held out her hands like a balance. “Cleaning up puke versus letting out your biggest secret to the world?”
My biggest secret. If only sleeping with Fozzie Bear was my biggest secret. Some things were too big even to share with your best friend.
I gave her the finger, trudged down the steps, grabbed the hose from her, and started spraying the bush. It wouldn’t be my fault if I accidentally soaked her too.
CHAPTER FOUR
I slept at Rebecca’s and the next day, after deliberating the emptiness of the summer that stretched ahead, I drove to Marwood Club with her to find out about the camp counselor position.
“Please will you come with me to Juice Paradise on Monday? Pretty please?” Rebecca gave me her puppy eyes and the pouty lips.
“Fine. But you’re crazy.”
Despite her unquestionable hotness, Rebecca was always on a diet. She had an old-school movie star face with perfectly smooth pinkish skin and huge turquoise-blue eyes that looked fluorescent in certain lights. Her naturally white-blond hair was cut short, framing her high cheekbones and strong chin. And she was curvy in all the right places. Even though she knew her body was sexy, she was certain her curves would prevent her from getting the lead roles in romantic comedies or in musicals on Broadway. Rebecca had plans. So, despite my unheard pleas and protests, I was always checking out diets with her. Juice Paradise was one of those places that claimed if you bought their disgusting green concoctions, you’d lose belly fat fast.
When we pulled into the parking lot of Marwood Club, I saw Mom’s black Porsche Cayenne in front. I parked in the back where there was less chance of running into her.
We entered the Club, the familiar smell of sweat and hand sanitizer hitting me. Not much had changed since I’d last been here—maybe some fresh paint, some new chairs.
“Hey, Macy, haven’t seen you in a while!” Rose, the woman behind the desk, said. “You looking for your mom? I think she’s on Court 5.”
“Nope, just came to talk to Darren,” I said, pointing at the camp director’s office.
Darren was on the phone in his windowless office. Piles of dog-eared camp forms and bags of Goldfish cluttered the floor. He held up a finger to let us know he’d be one more minute a
nd gestured for us to sit in the two chairs across from him.
Darren was starting to look his age now—gray at the temples, reading glasses, some pudge under his chin. But back when I was at camp, he’d been the hottest gay man in town. All the Marwood women swooned over his Superman good looks. They competed for him—who could be seen with him the most. Mom had been one of those women, taking him to plays, going out drinking with him and his friends late into the night. But now that Darren had a husband and two kids, those nights didn’t happen anymore.
He hung up the phone.
“Macy,” he said. “What a sight!” I wondered if he was remembering my last stint at tennis camp, when I’d “accidentally” sent a sharp low backhand to Hilary Clement’s stomach. She deserved it, telling everyone I’d never learned how to smile.
“I love your hair,” Darren said. I had my dreads held back with a long beaded scarf.
“Thanks,” I said. “New look. All good here?”
“You know. Same stuff, different year.”
Rebecca got right to the point. “Macy wants the open counselor job.”
“Seriously? Here?” Darren said, like he’d just heard a suicide bomber was outside the building.
“I know it’s late. I had a job lined up but it fell through at the last minute,” I said.
He nodded and cleared his throat.
“Macy will be awesome at it,” Rebecca said. “She’s really good with kids, and I’ll teach her everything she needs to know.”
“Macy, really? I never thought you … liked it here much,” Darren said.
He wasn’t wrong, though my issue wasn’t with the place itself. I’d really just wanted some privacy and there wasn’t any. I’d tried to tell Mom that once when I was around seven. I’d promised her that if she’d just let me stay home that one summer, I’d read and be quiet and I wouldn’t bother her. That idea didn’t fly.
But even with my history with Marwood, I did want the job. Money would get me some freedom from Mom.
The Fix Page 3
