by Anne Dayton
As Zoe tells a story about her brother and a rattlesnake on the ranch, I sit back and study the restaurant. It’s the kind of place I would like to come to on a real date someday, with the white tablecloths, great Italian food, and the sophisticated atmosphere. I try to picture what it would be like in here at night with the lights aglow. I’d be wearing my new cranberry Christmas dress, and he’d be wearing a white collared shirt, his brown hair combed back . . .
Our main courses arrive—I chose fettuccine alfredo, since I can’t think of anything better than noodles with cheese and butter in one dish—and we all dive in. Mr. Lee has a few bites and then regales Zoe and me with a story about the time Christine had to go to the hospital to get an M&M out of her nose when she was a baby. Zoe guffaws and slaps the table, I nearly choke on a noodle while I blink back tears, but Christine stays quiet, like she’s been all day. I stare at her for a moment. It’s clear how much Christine loves her dad, and yet she’s so introverted when he’s around. She blushes but doesn’t laugh at the story.
Mr. Lee asks us about our hobbies and what subjects we like in school, and then listens to our answers as if he really cares about what we have to say. He’s so charming, even Zoe is talking her head off. But Christine just nibbles on her lasagna now and then and doodles on her ticket from the ice skating rink. She’s sketching out teensy-tiny figures. I have to squint to see them. So far she’s got a man and a girl with dark hair and matching straight-lined mouths that make them seem perplexed or lost, or maybe even slightly angry, and she’s working on a third person. Mr. Lee doesn’t seem to notice. I guess Christine doodles so much that it’s easy to tune it out.
Mr. Lee asks about our families, and Zoe stops devouring her eggplant parmesan for a moment and talks about how her grandmother is coming to visit from Arizona. Maybe it’s just me, but she seems a little too excited about seeing her grandmother. I mean, I like my grandma and all, but Zoe’s been practicing a special song to play her on her piccolo, and she goes into excruciating detail as she describes the recipe for oatmeal cookies they always make together. It’s a little strange, if you ask me. I half-listen as I watch Christine put the finishing touch on her drawing: the third figure is a woman with a million perfect details—dark hair, little tiny fingernails, a cute outfit—but she has no face. I get the willies but then lean in for closer look, and Christine freezes. She slowly crumples up the ticket in her hand and excuses herself to the bathroom, crushing it in her clenched fist.
It’s so obvious, seeing them together today, that Mr. Lee loves Christine. But I find myself wishing her dad, charming as he is, spent a little less time in his own world and more time in hers.
29
We’re all in good spirits as we ride back to Half Moon Bay. What a great day. In the past, when I’ve gone to San Francisco with my parents, it’s always been to shop or to see a show, never just to play. Zoe, Christine, and I laugh in the back seat of Mr. Lee’s SUV and talk about school the whole way home. I don’t even notice how quickly we’re getting back until Mr. Lee asks me how to get to my house. My heart sinks when I realize that we’re on Highway 1 again. I sort of meant to borrow Zoe’s phone and give my parents a heads-up that I was on my way home, but now it’s no use. I’ll be home in two minutes. I give him directions to Ocean Colony and relax a little as we turn onto my street. The house is all lit up, and it looks warm and cozy. It’s all going to be fine. I’ll go inside, curl up on the couch with a warm blanket and some hot cocoa, and tell Maria all about this perfect day.
“Chez Dominguez.” Mr. Lee pulls up into the driveway. I open the door and climb out.
“Thanks so much.” I wave at Zoe and Christine in the back seat, then smile at Christine’s dad in the front. He grins and gives a little wave, and I shut the door and jog toward the house. It’s gotten chillier since the sun went down.
I push the front door open and though the lights are all on, something feels dark about the house. It’s too quiet. Where is everybody?
“Hello?” I call as I take my shoes off.
“We’re in here,” a low voice says from the kitchen, and though I recognize it as Papá’s, it doesn’t sound right. I swallow hard and drag myself into the kitchen, knowing the writing is on the wall.
“Papá?” I turn the corner, walk into the kitchen, and freeze. Mom and Papá are sitting at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong?”
“Where have you been?” Papá asks quietly. His shoulders are slumped, and he’s resting his forearms on the table as if he can’t hold himself up on his own.
“Are you okay?” I walk toward him, but he lifts up an arm, as if to hold me at bay. I stop.
“You told us you were going to be at Christine’s,” Mom says in a shrill voice, clasping her hands together on the kitchen table.
“I was,” I say, quickly. “But then I called you. Didn’t you get my messages?”
“You told us you would be there, and you left. We did not give you permission to go anywhere else.” Mom draws her lips into a tight gather.
“But I called you, and no one answered, and her dad was taking us, and I thought—“
“You did not think.” Papá slams his hand onto the table. “That’s the problem. You don’t think. You don’t know what’s best, and you don’t think about the dangers.”
“But I . . .” I want to argue, but I let my voice trail off. I don’t even know what to say. I can tell by the pale tint of Papá’s face that they’re not just a little upset here. This is serious. “I’m sorry,” I say, but I know it’s not enough. I wonder if anything will ever be enough. I’m going to be grounded for life.
“Sorry is a start,” Mom says.
“You lied to us.” I can hear the quiver of worry behind his angry words.
“No, I didn’t!” I look at Mom, hoping for a little support, but she shakes her head. I really didn’t lie, at least not intentionally. I didn’t. Not this time.
“We had no idea where you were,” Papá says. “We went to Christine’s.” He scratches his finger across the table. He dropped me off there this morning, so he knows where she lives. “Some strange woman answered the door. We didn’t know who she was. You told us Christine’s mother was dead, but there she was. We don’t know what to believe from you anymore.”
Tears are trying to fight their way out of my eyes, but I push them back. “Her mother is dead.” My voice falters as tears try to come. I take a deep breath. I have to get this point across. I have to show them that I wasn’t lying. “That was . . .” Any way that I spin this, they’re not going to like it. I decide to go for the truth. “It was her dad’s girlfriend.” I take a deep breath and try to prepare what I will say next.
Papá shakes his head, and Mom sucks in her breath sharply. I can see the wheels in my mother’s head spinning—calculating how long it’s been since the accident, making assumptions about Christine’s family.
“The girlfriend doesn’t live there,” I say, as if that’s going to change Mom’s opinion about anything. Why do I feel the need to defend these people all of a sudden? I don’t even like Candace. I’m sworn to hate her as a friend of Christine’s.
“What kind of man does that?” Papá continues to scratch at the table. I start to get indignant, and I try to remember the verse about casting the first stone, or that one about the plank in the eye so I can quote it at Papá, but as he continues, I realize it’s not Mr. Lee’s love life that has him so riled up. “What kind of man just takes someone else’s child away in his car without even talking to them first? What kind of father has so little respect for another man’s daughter?”
“George.” Mom puts her hand on Papá’s arm, and he stops, but he doesn’t look up.
“I’m sorry,” I squeak. My throat hurts from biting back tears. Papá suddenly seems so old. I look at Mom, and I know, deep in my bones, that I messed up. I hurt them today. It’s going to take a long time to win their trust back. And somehow I don’t even care about the fact that I will never, ever be allowed ou
t of the house again. What bothers me is the ache of knowing that I’ve failed the people who love me most.
“I’m so sorry.” The tears begin to spill out, and I move forward and put my arms around Papá. He slides his arms around me and squeezes, and for an instant I think this all might have been worth it, but then he pulls back and takes a deep breath. I stand up awkwardly, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides, as he composes his face and begins to speak.
“The reason we were trying to find you,” he says, letting a breath of air out slowly, “the reason we came to Christine’s looking for you . . .” He runs his hand through his thinning hair, and I know I don’t want to hear whatever he’s about to say. “Is that Maria is in the hospital. They don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
***
The biggest lie adults tell is everything’s going to be fine. They only say this when everything is obviously not going to be fine. They reserve it for wars, bankruptcy, deaths, and stuff like that. As we drive to San Mateo Hospital, Mom just keeps saying, “Everything’s going to be fine, Ana,” again and again and again. And each time she says it, I get more nervous.
Maria started feeling a cold coming on a week and a half ago. But people get colds, right? It’s not the end of the world. I wasn’t even worried. And then, a week later, when her cough was very deep and sounded like it was rattling around inside her bones, I still didn’t think much beyond “that’s a bad cough.” How was I to know that she was getting pneumonia?
Wikipedia says that pneumonia is serious and that people with “compromised” immune systems can die from pneumonia. You know who has compromised immune systems? Babies, old people . . . and people with diseases like lupus. I had just enough time to figure all of that out while I was waiting for Mom to get off the phone with Maria’s family in Mexico. Her youngest niece is trying to book a flight up here right now.
Of course, Half Moon Bay doesn’t have a hospital, so we have to drive to San Mateo to see her. The dark hills whiz by as Dad speeds along the twisting road, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He tunes the radio to a Christian station, but I don’t pay much attention. I spend my time in the car praying. Well, if you could call it that. It might be more accurately described as giving you-know-who a little taste of what’s-what:
Hey! You! Up there! In case you forgot, I’m Ana. You created me, and now everything’s coming undone. Maria’s in the hospital with pneumonia. Look, I know people die. I get that. But you can’t take Maria. Please?
***
When I see Maria lying weak and pale on the hospital bed, I burst into tears. I’m only allowed in her room for a couple minutes because the doctors say that the thing she needs the most right now is rest, but it still helps me immensely to see that she’s alive, even if she is very weak.
“Anita,” she whispers, and smiles.
I slip my hand into hers and let the tears roll down my face. “You have to get better, Maria.”
She nods slowly.
I put my head on her hand. “I need you to come home soon, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, her voice low and quiet, and smiles again. “Your tiara came in the mail today.”
I look at Maria. This is what she’s thinking about on her deathbed? My stupid tiara? Isn’t she supposed to give me words of wisdom I’ll always remember? Or moving parting words about how important I was to her? She moves her head up and down, just a little, and I sigh.
“Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say.
“It’s going to be so magical,” she sighs, and closes her eyes.
“Yeah. Magical.” She doesn’t hear me, because she’s already asleep.
30
As the singing on the front row nears ear-piercing decibels, I try to stay calm. We’ve still got two more hours before we reach Sky Mountain retreat center, but I’m not sure I can make it that long. I don’t know whose idea it was to put the boys in one van and the girls in the other, but I’m guessing they didn’t know that Kelly Clarkson’s new album had just come out. Even Judy, up in the driver’s seat, seems like she’s a bit tired of it all, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without a smile on her face. It doesn’t help that the Central Valley, which we have to pass through to get to the Sierra Nevada mountains, is flat and boring with nothing to look at but decrepit farms and ugly housing developments. Staring out the window, pretending to be somewhere better, would be a lot easier if there were anywhere better to look at.
Despite the fact that I’m basically grounded for life, I am still allowed to go on the Martin Luther King weekend youth group ski trip, because my parents would never keep me from church. How will I see the error of my ways without church?
I know I’m supposed to be grateful, and I am, a little bit. At least I get to leave the four walls of my room, which have been pressing in on me since the San Francisco trip last weekend. But Zoe, who had been planning to come with me on this ski trip, backed out at the last minute because her grandmother was having so much fun, she decided to extend her stay. I’d never do that for my grandma, so clearly there is something really wrong with me, which I suppose I knew already.
At first, I was going to cancel on the ski trip, too, because Maria is still in the hospital. How can I go off skiing while she’s dying? That’s different than your grandma just having way too much fun. But the doctor told me she’ll be fine. I guess they’re just keeping her for monitoring at this point. But on the other hand, everyone knows you can’t trust what doctors tell you.
And then there’s the issue of my grades. Our report cards arrived in the mail yesterday. I knew it was a close call in math. I broke into a cold sweat when I saw the open envelope sitting on the kitchen table after school. Mom had already seen it. I closed my eyes and prayed they were good, then reached for the envelope. A huge weight fell off my shoulders as I let out a long breath and said a heartfelt prayer of thanks. I was ecstatic. I mean, I technically got an A- in math, but the A+ in English balanced that one out.
It wasn’t until I looked up at the top of the paper that I realized why Mom hadn’t greeted me when I walked in the door that day. She was in her bedroom, giving me the silent treatment. It was just one little number, but I knew—and Mom knew—that it meant so much more than any of the others. Overall Rank in Class: 2.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as I realized that even with straight A’s, I wasn’t the top student in my class. I was second best. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate as I realized that Princeton doesn’t let in second best. I took a series of long, slow breaths and tried to get myself under control. I tried to remember that it didn’t mean anything, that it’s only the first semester of freshman year, that there’s plenty of time to catch up and overtake number one, but none of it helped, because even though the report card didn’t tell me, I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew who was ranked ahead of me. The humiliation of being outsmarted by a cheerleader was almost more than I could bear.
So I’m not exactly psyched to be squashed into a fifteen-passenger van with Miss Perfection right at this moment. My only consolation is that she looks miserable, too. I don’t know what bug got up her butt, but she’s not sitting with the older girls, and her friend Tanya doesn’t seem to be here. Riley’s squished into the back seat, staring out the window with her headphones on. Her eyes are closed, as if she’s sleeping, but the way she twitches every time the girls in the front seat hit a high note makes me think she’s just faking it.
I start to panic when I realize that I’m going to have to spend the weekend alone. No one is going to talk to me. Okay, wait . . . Stay calm, Ana. Who can you be friends with just for this weekend? That quiet sophomore Jamie in the second row seems nice enough. Maybe I can hang out with her. She joins in on the chorus of the current song, though, and I reconsider. My eardrums are about to burst.
Only two more hours.
***
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” we say in unison. I never thought I’d see the day when I agreed wit
h Riley, but now we’ve got a jinx on our hands and are staring at each other in repulsion. I thought God was supposed to be merciful. Now it just appears that he has a warped sense of humor, like my uncle Ernesto, who always tells jokes that make everyone else uncomfortable.
“Since you both had roommates signed up who didn’t make it, you’re both singles now,” Judy says, smiling as if she’s said something amazingly clever. “So we put you together in one room.”
I’m going to kill Zoe. She was supposed to be my roommate. We started dreaming about this months ago. We were going to stay up all night laughing. But apparently, since Riley’s roommate of choice, Tanya, isn’t here, we’re stuck together. Perfect.
Riley glares at me, as if I had something to do with this. I rack my brain for a solution. Doesn’t anyone else on this stupid mountain need a roommate? Maybe I can sleep on the couch in the main lodge?
I have a brilliant idea. What about that sophomore? “Does Jamie—“
“Already has a roommate, kiddo.” Judy knows my thoughts before I even think them. I try not to panic. At least there are two beds in here. If I had to share a queen with Riley, she’d probably kick me all night long and pretend she was asleep.
“Why don’t you two settle in and unpack.” Judy smiles at us and I know that she thinks that this whole thing is like God’s Big Plan for Healing Among the Catty High School Girls. I’m dying to pull Judy aside and tell her exactly how this war began. Riley. It was all Riley.
“Group worship time starts in an hour in the main room. See you then!” Judy turns and bustles out the door. She closes it behind her, and I want to yell after her, “You’ll pay for this!” but she’s already gone and I don’t have the guts anyway. That’s more of a Christine move.
