She's So Dead To Us

by Kieran Scott

  Chloe hesitated. “I can’t talk about this.”

  “Chloe—”

  “No. It’s my birthday, and I don’t have to talk about this if I don’t want to.”

  At that moment, Chloe’s parents arrived. Chloe looked up at her tall, broad, seriously intimidating father.

  “Can we do the cake now?” she pleaded.

  “Of course! You’re the birthday girl!” he said in a booming voice.

  As her parents whisked her away, Shannen tried to go after them.

  “Shannen, leave it,” I said, standing.

  “What?” Her eyes flashed angrily. “No, Jake, you don’t understand. This is huge.”

  I’ll bet. And I had a feeling that whatever Shannen’s reasons were for wanting to know where Ally’s dad was, she didn’t have Ally’s feelings in mind.

  “But it’s Chloe’s birthday, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Just leave her alone.”

  Shannen hesitated. She looked over her shoulder at the front of the room, where two hotel workers were rolling out a huge pink cake.

  “Whatever. Since when are you all on Chloe’s side?” she groused.

  This wasn’t about Chloe. It was about Ally. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Just relax, all right? It’s a party.”

  “Everyone! Let’s gather around to sing happy birthday!” Mrs. Appleby called out, holding Chloe around the waist tightly as if trying to keep her upright.

  We all moved to the front of the room, Lisa wrapping her arm around me. I held my breath while everyone else sang happy birthday, and I watched Faith and Shannen whisper in a way that could not be good. Not for Ally. Not for Chloe. Not for anyone.

  ally

  “Anyone want anything else?” my mother asked, placing her fork down on her empty plate.

  “No, thank you. I’m stuffed,” Gray Nathanson said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied smile.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Gray’s daughter, Quinn, folded her hands primly in her lap. She had straight blond hair, a smattering of freckles, and the most perfect posture I’d ever seen outside of Chloe’s. I suspected she wasn’t overly happy to be there, since she hadn’t cracked a smile all night and hadn’t said more than three words at a time, but she’d been very polite. “Everything was delicious.”

  “Seriously, Ms. Ryan. I may never eat at home again,” David said.

  And suddenly everyone was looking at me.

  “Yeah. It was great,” I said halfheartedly.

  Really I just wanted to get this dinner over with as quickly as humanly possible. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and Mom had decided to invite over her new boyfriend and his perfectly gorgeous daughter for dinner. Of course, she hadn’t felt the need to share this plan with me until four this afternoon. Until then I hadn’t known about either the dinner or the fact that she considered him her boyfriend. As soon as I heard the word come out of her mouth, I was on the phone with David begging him to join us. Which he had. Because he was the best boyfriend ever.

  “Did you like your stuffed pepper, Ally?” Gray asked me.

  My mother placed her hand on Gray’s arm, which was resting on the table, elbows off, of course. He looked down at her fingers and smiled. Ick. Did people their age really think that the rest of us wanted to be subjected to their PDA?

  “Ally? Gray asked you a question,” my mother said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied, pushing my fork into the grayish mush at the center of the hollowed-out green pepper on my plate—the one thing Gray had contributed to the meal and the only thing I hadn’t eaten. “It’s great.”

  “You haven’t even tasted it,” Quinn said snidely.

  Okay. So much for polite.

  But, then, Quinn was fourteen, a freshman, and a Crestie. I was sure she’d been programmed to hate me by the behavior of, the gossip from, and the general vibe coming off my former friends—older, influential Cresties whom she no doubt worshipped. Also, I had to cut her some slack. She’d lost her mom to cancer a few years ago, while mine was alive and well and awesome.

  “No, I did. I liked it,” I protested. I took a bite and almost gagged. Way too much garlic. Somehow I managed to swallow, then took a huge gulp of soda.

  “She did. I saw her,” David chimed in. “Didn’t you guys hear all the yums and mmms?”

  I shot him a silencing look. That was a little much.

  “It’s okay,” Gray said, smiling at me. “They’re not for everyone.”

  I swear I saw my reflection in those teeth. I forced myself to smile back, remembering that I wanted my mother to be happy and that this doctor man seemed to make her just that. Even if he did have floppy hair that was about twenty years too young for him and was wearing a trendy V-necked T-shirt that exposed his curly gray-and-black chest hair. I mean, really, what did the two of them have in common? Other than the crest, I mean. Was it possible that my mother was dating him solely because he lived up there? Because she thought it would help her get back in with her so-called friends?

  I liked to think my mother was better than that, but reclaiming her old life—however much of it she could reclaim—was still so important to her, just like it had been to me when we’d first moved back here. I guess it was possible that she was unconsciously using this guy to get what she wanted. It would definitely explain her spending so much time with a person who was the polar opposite of my father. It was kind of depressing, actually. Back when my parents were together, I had always been so proud of her independence. She was the only Crestie mother who worked—she was the librarian at the middle school—and she was always doing her own thing. Able to go to parties without my dad when he had to work late and not be all self-conscious about it. Always telling my friends how fulfilling it was to have her own career, knowing their moms expected them to be ladies who lunched and spa-dayed, just like them. But now she was looking at Gray with an almost imperceptible desperation in her eyes. Like he was somehow going to save her. From what? I knew we weren’t rich anymore, but she had a new and awesome job, and we were doing okay. So, what did we need him for?

  “So, Ally, I hear you’re a basketball superstar,” Gray said, sitting back in his chair and taking a sip of his white wine.

  My heart skipped, and I glanced automatically at my mom. So, they’d been talking about me? She shrugged, like, what do you expect? I felt suddenly hot and glanced at the door.

  “I used to play a bit myself,” Gray continued. “Could never get Quinn here interested in it, though.”

  I felt like I was supposed to say something, but I couldn’t think of what.

  “I like basketball,” Quinn said. “I cheer for basketball, don’t I?”

  “That you do,” her father said, giving her a fond smile.

  A cheerleader. Shocker.

  “Were you on the team back in Baltimore, Ally?” Gray asked me.

  “Yep,” I replied.

  There was an odd, uncomfortable feeling rising up inside my chest, and it wasn’t from that one bite of stuffed pepper.

  “They won the regional championship,” my mother put in proudly. “Ally scored twenty points.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know that,” David said, his mouth still full of his second helping. “That’s awesome.”

  “Absolutely awesome,” Gray added. He was trying too hard. Which made me like him even less. “We should shoot around sometime.”

  My heart was pounding like I’d just run a five-minute mile. For some reason, the room was swimming. I really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. And I really didn’t want to shoot around with him.

  “So, are you a forward?”

  “Yep,” I said. I pushed back from the table. “Who wants dessert?”

  “There’s apple pie in the fridge,” my mother said. “But we should clear the table first. . . .”

  “I got it.” I stood up and gathered as many plates as I could, clanging them together noisily and dropping a fork on the floor, where it bounced under the table.

 
“I’ll help,” David offered.

  Even though there was still food on his plate, he grabbed a few glasses and followed me over to the open kitchen area. I set the plates down with a crash and took a deep breath. David turned the water on in the sink full blast and whispered over it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “M’fine.” I rinsed off a plate, my hands still shaking.

  “No, you’re not. You’re step-freaked,” David said.

  “Step-freaked?” I repeated.

  “It’s the particular brand of freaked you get when encountering a potential stepdad,” he whispered, wiping off a dish with a purple sponge.

  “Gray is not a potential stepdad,” I said through my teeth.

  “Every dude they bring home is a potential stepdad. That’s why you get so step-freaked. Believe me, I know. My mom one time brought home this guy from Chadwick’s Pub with forearms wider than my head. I looked exactly like you do right now.”

  “Your parents are divorced?” I asked. Even though we’d been hanging out for the past few months, we did it mostly at school or at Annie’s house, and I realized now that David didn’t talk much about his family. Maybe this was why.

  He nodded as he scraped the contents of a dish into the garbage. “Yeah. They were high school sweethearts, so my mom never dated anyone else. She’s spent the past two years making up for lost time.”

  “Wow. That sucks. I’m sorry,” I said.

  David shrugged and straightened up. “It’s no big deal.”

  But it was. It was a big deal. As David kept cleaning up, I felt as if the walls were crowding in around me. He clearly had it much worse than I did, and he talked about it like it was nothing. Like it was a normal part of life. Was that how I was going to be talking about my mom’s men in a couple of years? The thought made my stomach turn.

  “So? What do you think of Gray?” my mother asked, coming up behind me and placing her hands on my shoulders. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

  I couldn’t respond. Couldn’t talk at all. The lump in my throat was too large.

  “He’s great. Not to mention a culinary genius,” David replied brightly, coming to my rescue. He tugged on a pair of pink dish-washing gloves and snapped the cuffs. My mother and I both stared at him. David paled slightly. “In fact, I think I’ll go ask him for that pepper recipe,” he said, getting the hint and moseying off.

  “You like him, right?” my mother whispered. “I hope you do, because I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of him. He even invited us to the holiday Sunday dinner next month.”

  My eyes instantly prickled over with memories. Sunday dinners. They were an old tradition that normally included just the six families—us, the Applebys, the Moores, the Kirkpatricks, the Rosses, and the Steins. But at Christmas, the dinner was usually held at Chloe’s house, and the rest of the crest families were invited. Finding an in to this particular soiree must have been a dream come true for my mom—a chance to finally get back in with her friends. Didn’t she realize that if they hadn’t tried to hang out with her by now, there must have been a reason? If my friends couldn’t be around me because of what my dad had done, their parents were probably ten times as pissed off.

  “Are you sure you want to go?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I mean, we barely know those people anymore.”

  A flash of uncertainty passed through her eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Oh, hon, they’re my lifelong friends,” she said, giving me a squeeze. “They may be angry now, but they know I didn’t have anything to do with what happened. Once we’re all together again, they’ll realize how silly they’ve been.”

  Yeah, right. Just like my friends have.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice thick.

  “Besides, Gray invited me, and I don’t want to let him down,” she said, smiling across the room at him. “I really like him, Ally.”

  I took a deep breath and silently recited as many NBA basketball teams as I could think of to calm my racing thoughts. My insides felt all hot and gooey. Between thinking about my dad, about Gray, about my possible future as the daughter of either a serial dater or of Gray’s second wife, and about Sunday dinner—which Jake Graydon would most definitely be attending—I was completely overwhelmed.

  “That’s great, Mom,” I said finally “I’m really happy for you.”

  I just wished that I meant it.

  jake

  “Dude, so what are we doing tonight?” Todd asked, turning the sugar canister upside down over his large coffee at Jump, Java, and Wail! on Friday night.

  “I thought we were going into the city,” I said, reaching past him for a napkin.

  “Yeah, but what’re we gonna do in the city?” Trevor asked.

  “I say we hit Rock Center and trip as many people on the ice as we can,” Todd said.

  “The line to get on the ice is, like, three hours,” Hammond said, leaning back against the wall and taking a sip of his drink. “Your balls’ll freeze right off.”

  Trevor covered his balls with both hands and pulled a face. “All right. Not doing that.”

  “Dude. Ally Ryan.” Todd nodded toward the front of the shop.

  My stomach dropped and we all turned to look out the plate glass window. Ally was across the street, outside Scoops Ice Cream, with David Drake. He was trying to attack her with his ice cream cone. She screeched and ran.

  “Dork,” Hammond said, earning a laugh from the Idiot Twins.

  Slowly, not taking our eyes off them, we all walked over to the counter at the window. In the corner, some dude with a beard played acoustic tunes on his guitar. A couple of older people sat in chairs nearby, swaying to the music.

  “Dude, is it just me, or did Ally Ryan get hot?” Trevor asked.

  “She was always hot,” Hammond replied, taking a sip of his coffee as he stared.

  I glanced at him, but he didn’t follow with an insult. Which he totally would have done if Chloe, Shannen, or Faith had been there. I wondered if Chloe really did know where Ally’s father was. And would Ally want to know, if she could?

  “What do you think they’re doing tonight?” Trevor asked, taking a long swig of hot chocolate.

  “Looks like they’re having ice cream,” I said. David went in for a kiss. I looked away.

  “Yeah, but after,” Todd said as he took a seat on one of the stools. “Like, what do Norms do on weekends?”

  Hammond and I exchanged a glance.

  “They have parties and shit, right?” Hammond said.

  “Of course. It’s not like they’re aliens or something,” I said.

  “I wonder what a Norm party’s like,” Trevor said, narrowing his eyes and sticking his chin out. “You think they have chips and dips?”

  “Dude. We should totally crash one,” Todd said.

  “Tonight?” Hammond asked.

  “No. Not tonight. Tonight we are city-bound!” Trevor announced. He and Todd slapped hands above their heads, dumping out half their drinks in the process.

  As we got up to walk out, I glanced back at Ally and David again. They were sitting on a bench in the freezing cold, cuddled against each other, eating their ice cream. I felt a surge of jealousy and suddenly wanted to go over there and pummel Dorkus Drake to within an inch of his life. And just like that, I didn’t want to go into the city. I wanted to crash a Norm party instead. If I could just guarantee that Ally would be there. And that David Drake wouldn’t.

  ally

  “Yes! That’s game!”

  I threw my arms above my head, holding the air hockey paddle aloft. The crowd cheered and lifted their plastic cups. Across the table, David hung his head, shaking it in what could only be wonder at my air hockey prowess.

  “Two out of three?” he asked.

  I laughed and twirled the paddle in my palm. “I don’t know. Are you sure you can take it?”

  David blushed but laughed. One of the best things about him was his ability to take a joke. I loved that I
didn’t have to walk on eggshells with him. A lot of people wouldn’t have enjoyed being trash-talked by their girlfriends in front of a party full of people. But David had a sense of humor.

  “Come on, Ryan. You’ve gotta give the kid a chance to redeem himself,” Marshall Moss said, sliding out of the crowd and slinging one of his long, lanky arms around my shoulder. Marshall was the center of the boys’ basketball team and one of the nicer guys I’d re-met since coming back to Orchard Hill. Not to mention cute with his warm brown eyes, dark skin, and lopsided smile. He lived on the Norm side of town, but in one of the bigger houses near the library.

  “Well, it is your party,” I said, pushing him lightly away with my elbow. “Guess I have to do as you say.” I looked across at David. “Wanna take the first shot?”

  “I think I have that right as the loser,” he replied. He yanked the puck out of the slot and placed it on the table as I clicked my scorekeeper down to zero-zero. “Here we go.”

  I held my paddle on the table, feeling the tickle of the air under my arm. I was totally on my game tonight. David was going down. Poor dude had no idea.

  Behind him I saw a couple of pairs of legs coming down the basement stairs. The second David hit the puck, the first person arrived in the doorway. It was Jake Graydon. What. The eff. Was he doing here?

  “Yes! One nothing!” David shouted.

  Half the crowd cheered. As David turned to high-five with a couple of the guys, I tore my eyes away from Jake. Sure enough, the red puck was sitting in the slot right in front of me. Jake smirked at me. I narrowed my eyes. Thanks a lot, buddy.

  Did he not know that this was a Norm party? Didn’t he have somewhere more Crestie to be? Somewhere fabulous and expensive where he could be surrounded by a hundred drunk hotties to choose from?

  We hadn’t spoken once since our basketball game in the rain, and part of me had started to feel that the Jake chapter of my life—short as it was—was officially over. That I’d only be seeing him from afar for the rest of my life. And I was fine with that. I was. Because I had David. And in the past few weeks we’d been hanging out together a lot. And kissing a lot. And I was even getting used to it. It was . . . nice.