by Kieran Scott
“All right. That’s enough.”
I froze. The room—the tables, the balloons, the waiters—everything in front of me tilted. That was Jake’s voice. And it was coming through the speakers. Slowly, I turned around to look at the screen. The camera whirled, and there he was, clear as day. Jake reached out, took the camera, and the screen went black.
My whole body started to shake. He had been there. Jake was there. He’d seen my father. He’d seen him doing a minimum-wage job in a dirty apron getting humiliated by a bunch of kids. Everyone in the video had been wearing winter coats, which meant it was taken over the winter. Jake was there. He’d known for weeks and weeks where my father was. And he hadn’t told me.
The lights came up. Every single set of eyes in the room was trained on me. I looked down at Jake. He looked like he wanted to die.
“You knew?” I said, my voice trembling. “You knew?”
“Ally, I—”
“Don’t attack him,” Shannen said, crossing the dance floor. “He was just along for the ride.”
“Shannen!” her mother hissed.
Shannen ignored her and kept coming. She had this evil look on her face. So self-satisfied. So happy.
“How could you do this?” Chloe asked, standing up from the table.
“She deserves it, Chloe, trust me,” Shannen said.
I took a step back, but my legs were so weak I almost went down. I caught myself on the back of someone’s chair. Jake got up and reached for me, but I batted his arm away. My vision was blurred by tears. I didn’t know what to do, who to yell at, which way to go. All I knew was, I’d just seen my dad for the first time in two years. He was alive. He was working somewhere nearby. Yet he’d never bothered to contact us.
And everyone I knew had this information months ago.
“No. No. There was no reason for you to do this,” Chloe said, shaking her head. She turned to me. “Ally, I’m so sorry. We—”
“She hooked up with Hammond,” Shannen said.
I closed my eyes. Gasps everywhere. I couldn’t take much more of this. My heart and brain were still trying to process seeing my dad—being betrayed by Jake—and now this? Why? Why was she doing this to me?
“What?” Chloe said.
“The night she moved away,” Shannen said.
Hammond looked queasy. “How did you—”
“I walked in on you guys. I saw everything,” Shannen said. Then she turned to Chloe again. “She’s been lying to you all this time. They both have.”
Chloe’s shoulders curled. “Hammond? You didn’t.”
“It was nothing, Chlo,” he said, getting up. “It was a million years ago. We just—”
“Stop.” Tears sprang to Chloe’s eyes. She turned and shakily started for the door. I automatically went after her.
“Chloe. Wait. Let me—”
She whirled around.
“Don’t,” she said quietly through her teeth. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me.” She looked away for a moment, her chin trembling. “And all this time I’ve been defending you. . . .”
“Chloe, please.”
She took a deep breath and looked around, taking in the rapt audience. Chloe hated scenes, and here she was, smack in the middle of a huge one.
“I have to go,” she said, drawing herself up straight. “Do not follow me.”
And she was gone. Watching her retreat, my fingers curled into fists. As I turned to face the dance floor, I knew that everyone at all twenty tables was now focused, again, on me. What were they thinking? Did they feel sorry for me because of the video, or did they think I’d gotten what I deserved? Did they think Shannen was nuts for making a spectacle out of her birthday party, or were they just loving the drama? I looked around my table, where my former friends all sat, every last one of them except Shannen and Jake avoiding my gaze. He looked tortured. She looked devilishly happy.
And something inside me snapped. She was waiting for me to turn on my Payless heels and run, but she was about to be disappointed. I was not weak. I was not the girl who crawled away from scandal in the dead of night. That was not me. Not anymore.
“Ally, honey.” It was my mom, standing just behind me. “I think it’s time to go.”
“No,” I said firmly. “No. Shannen got to say what she wanted to say. Now it’s my turn.”
I looked Shannen in the eye and smiled through my tears.
“Wow. You really showed me, didn’t you?” I said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “But guess what? I’ll get over this stupid prank.” It wasn’t just a prank. It was way more than that. And at the moment, it didn’t feel like I would ever get over it, but she didn’t need to know that. “The person you really just hurt was Chloe.”
There was a flicker of doubt in Shannen’s triumphant eyes, but it passed. “I didn’t do anything. I just told her the truth.”
“The truth. Interesting,” I said. “I’ve got a piece of truth I could share right now, too, right?” I glanced past her at her parents for good measure. “Actually, there are a few interesting facts I could spill right now if I wanted to.”
Shannen’s face drained of color. She was terrified. Well, let her be. After everything she’d done to me this year, she deserved to feel like shit for two-point-five seconds. And then the two-point-five seconds were over.
“But I won’t,” I said, “because even though I’m a Norm now, I’m a better person than you’ll ever be.”
Shannen swallowed and looked away, probably still seeing her life flash before her eyes. I turned to face Jake. He stared back at me, a million emotions in his eyes, but all I could think about was how he’d betrayed me. He’d known all along where my father was. All those times we’d talked about it, all the sob stories I’d told about how my dad hadn’t called, about how I didn’t know where he was, and Jake knew. I’d trusted him, and he’d kept this huge, life-altering secret from me. I felt so stupid all of a sudden I wanted to cry.
“Ally—”
The very sound of his voice brought a sob into my throat. “No,” I croaked. “You don’t get to talk to me.” I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “Have a nice summer, Jake.”
I turned around and looked at my mother. Her eyes were sad, confused, but I could tell she was determined to hold it together. I took a deep breath and swallowed back all my emotion.
“Come on, Mom,” I said clearly. “Let’s get out of here.”
jake
The DJ started up the music again. I guess he was trying to distract everyone from what had just happened. But for a long moment, no one moved. Except Shannen. Her mom dragged her out onto the patio, closed the door, and went ballistic. Then Hammond got up and went after Chloe. And soon, people started to file onto the dance floor.
“Are you okay?” Faith asked me, standing up.
I blinked. “What the hell just happened?”
“For whatever it’s worth . . . I didn’t know Shannen was going to do that,” Faith said. She sighed and looked toward the door where Ally had disappeared. “She must hate Ally even more than I knew.”
I swallowed hard. Shannen came in from the patio and stormed toward the lobby. I felt a surge of rage so fierce I had to move.
“I’ll be right back.” I went after Shannen. I caught up with her in the lobby as she was about to shove her way into the bathroom.
“Shannen!”
She stopped and turned around slowly. Her whole body was tense with anger.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I blurted, barely containing my fury.
Shannen laughed and looked away, shaking her head. She crossed the marble floor until she was standing right in front of me. She didn’t look guilty at all. Or sorry. She looked defiant. “I did what I had to do.”
“What? What does that even mean?” I spat. “Why did you even invite her here? Just so you could humiliate her?”
“Kind of, yeah,” she said matter-of-factly.
My eyes narrowed in disgust.
“Who the hell are you? That was brutal, Shannen, even for you.”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been lying to me for the past six months, I wouldn’t have felt the need to be so brutal,” she snapped.
“Lying to you? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I saw you, okay?” Shannen blurted. “I saw you and Ally kissing on your birthday.”
I shook my head, trying to process how that was even possible. How it mattered at all right now. “What are you talking about?”
“On your birthday!” she said, throwing her hands up. “You get your dream car, and instead of coming to pick me up—your best friend—you drive over to the Nathansons’ house, pick up Ally Ryan—a person you claim to not even like—and spend half an hour grinding on her in the parking lot.”
I felt like I was going to hurl. “How did you—”
“I followed you!” she spat. “I wanted to know what you had to do that was so important you’d diss me, so I took my mom’s car and I followed you. I was parked on the other side of the parking lot the entire time you guys were fogging up your windows.”
I took a couple of steps back and sat down on one of the velvet couches near the wall, feeling weak. My brain struggled to make sense of what she was saying, but it couldn’t. “So that’s why you did all this? Because I ditched you on my birthday? Because I lied?”
Shannen laughed bitterly and looked across the room toward the door. “I tried everything to keep you away from her,” she said, almost like she was talking to herself. “But none of it worked. Not asking nicely, not freezing her out with those stupid practical jokes, not telling you about her and Hammond, not telling you we couldn’t trust her.” She looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “No matter what, you still wanted her. You still had to be with her.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. My brain was so fogged over I could hardly see. “If you’re mad at me for being a bad friend or whatever, get mad at me. What did Ally Ryan ever do to you? And don’t give me that line about her dad or this stuff about Chloe and Hammond. That’s bullshit, and you know it. What did Ally do to you?”
Tears suddenly sprang to Shannen’s eyes, shining along her lashes. Instantly, my heart stopped. Shannen never cried. Ever.
She looked me in the eye and spoke. “Don’t you get it, Jake? She went after you.”
ally
How could he do this to us? How could he just leave us and not let us know where he was? How could he be so close that my old friends could find him and yet never even try to come see us?
I sat in the backseat of Gray’s silver Land Rover as we wound our way down the lane leading away from the country club, staring out the window at the thick trees. For months I had tried not to think about my father too much or for too long. Because I knew that if I did, I would sink into this black tar pit of self-pity and sorrow and anger. But now there was no keeping my head above the surface. I was sinking, and sinking fast.
He’d left us to go work at a deli. For Chloe’s dad. Chloe and her father and mother had known all along where he was. Every time I thought about it, a wave of embarrassed heat crashed over my body. They knew. They all knew. Everyone but me knew everything about my life.
Even Jake. Jake, who never knew my dad before. Never knew us. Didn’t really know the history, could never really understand how it felt. Jake Graydon had met my father without my even knowing. And to him, he was just some deadbeat dad working in a deli with a smear of mayonnaise across his dingy apron.
I bit my lip and tried not to cry. It would be way too obvious in the dead silence that currently reigned inside the car. Neither my mother nor Gray had said a word since leaving the club. Not that I could blame them. What were you supposed to say when you’d just seen a horrifying video of your girlfriend’s not-ex husband?
“Where was that?” Gray said suddenly, quietly. His tone was pondering, as if he’d been brainstorming this whole time. “That deli. Was it in the city?”
“Gray, I don’t think we should talk about this right now,” my mother said firmly.
“But don’t you want to find him, confront him?” Gray said, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at my mother. “You finally have a lead.”
My mother shot him a silencing look, and that was it. Gray focused again on the road. As much as I had started to like Gray, I felt like he shouldn’t be there right then. I couldn’t wait to get back to the condo so my mother and I could be alone and, I don’t know . . . throw things, talk, cry, whatever. Mom took a deep breath.
“You know what? I think it’s good that we’re getting away this summer,” she said, in a voice that was slightly too loud and chipper. She turned in her seat and looked at me. “You’ll get a job down the shore, make new friends, take up surfing again. You can put all this drama behind you and just have some fun. I think we all need a fresh start.”
I just stared back at her. What was she going to do? Ignore the fact that we’d just seen my dad? That we, with one phone call to Mr. Appleby, could find out exactly where he was? Was she just going to try to go ahead with our lives as if nothing had happened? Besides, the very idea of living down at the shore with pretty much every Crestie family who’d just seen me utterly humiliated made me want to jump out of the car and run for the nearest airport.
Plus, there was that whole revelation about me and Hammond. Sooner or later, she was going to have to ask me about that. Which was, let’s face it, the very last thing I ever wanted to talk about with my mother.
Shannen had really overachieved on this one.
“I don’t want to go anymore,” I said, my voice low.
“What?” my mother said.
“I don’t want to go,” I repeated. “Do you really want to spend the summer with those people?”
“We don’t have to spend any time with them if we don’t want to,” my mother said naively.
“Right.” I leaned forward between their two seats. “Hey, Gray, where’s your house again?”
“Between the Schwartz’s and the Ross’s,” he said, shooting my mother an apologetic look. “But we have a whole acre between houses—”
“Yeah.” I slumped back again. “I’m out.”
“Ally, we are not going to let your father ruin our summer plans,” my mother said. “When he left, I made a promise to both of us that I would not make my life decisions based on him anymore, and we haven’t. We’re not going to start now.”
I bit down on my tongue. Didn’t she get it? This wasn’t about him. It was about them. The Cresties. Shannen and Faith and Chloe and Hammond and the Idiot Twins . . . and Jake.
Just an hour ago, I had thought everything was perfect. I had thought I could trust him with everything. But it had all been a lie. He’d kept this huge secret from me—him and all his Crestie pals. They’d all been laughing at me behind my back this entire time. It was clear now that if he had to choose between them and me, he would choose them. He already had, just by not telling me. By letting them keep this secret. By letting them think they were better than me.
I thought back to how hopeful I’d been when I’d agreed to go to the shore—all the things I’d imagined me and Jake doing together—and felt like a total idiot. Had he known then? On his birthday, when we’d first kissed? Had he already been lying to me? Tears of shame and misery and self-loathing stung my eyes. If I could go back, if I could rewind to the beginning of the year, I would have changed everything. Every. Last. Thing.
Gray turned into the entrance to the OVC, his headlights flashing on the elaborate wooden signage. I felt a practically primal need to be home right then. To be inside, in my sweats, under the covers, curled into a ball. To shut off my brain and be left alone for days and days and days.
“It’s gonna be okay, Al,” my mom said. “We’re gonna figure this out.”
Gray turned onto our street, his headlights flashing on the identical steps leading up to the identical doors of the identical condos. My heart caught when I saw that someone
was sitting on the bottom step in front of ours. Had Jake made it here before us somehow? What could he possibly think he could say that was going to make this better?
“Oh my God,” my mother said, her voice strained.
And that was when I realized that the person on the stairs was not wearing a suit and tie. He was not tall and lean and square shouldered. He was not a person I ever would have expected to see right there, right then.
It was my father.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost I’d like to thank Emily Meehan for believing in this project from the beginning, and for believing in me for me. I’d also like to thank Sarah Burnes, who has been the most consistent supportive voice in my work life for the past six years. I seriously don’t know where I’d be without you, Sarah. Wait. Yes, I do. Scary picture.
Huge thanks to Allison Cohen and Julia Maguire, who were the first to read the manuscript and tell me how much they loved it (much needed positivity at the time); to Justin Chanda, for seeing my vision for whatever it’s worth and running with it; to Courtney Bongiolatti, who has always been so psyched about my stuff; and to Courtney Gatewood, whose gushing e-mails were a complete joy. I’d also like to thank Paul Crichton and Lucille Rettino, for believing in my work way back when, and for making me feel like my books will always be well cared for; Liesa Abrams, who said, “Why not talk to Emily?” and Krista Vossen, for the most gorgeous cover ever.
A special thanks goes out to my teachers throughout high school and college, some of who played a huge role in making me a writer. Jane Conboy, Thomas Harrington, Suzanne Montagne, Susan Gillow, Frank Cherichello, Cheryl Wall, Steve Miller, and Alan Michael Parker. Without all of you, I wouldn’t be writing this acknowledgments page right now. And to any of my readers who might be skimming this: Appreciate your teachers. They are selfless and wise and can take you places you’d never imagine you could go. Use them. They like it when you do.
