Who's Your Daddy?

by Lynda Sandoval

  Instead of doing what needed to be done, I headed up to my bathroom for a stress-relieving minispa treatment. They always help me think and get my head straight. I’d received shipments from both Sephora.com and blissworld.com this week, and I had yet to try out any of my new products. Fun, fun, fun!

  I switched into my favorite flannel pajamas, then started out with “the refining facial” scrub from La Mer, which I’d wanted to order for SO long, but I’d had to save up for it. (Expensive!) It actually has diamond dust and spun-smoothe quartz mixed in fermented sea muds and other kewl scrubby stuff. It made my skin feel absolutely amazing—a magic trick considering I was on the verge of my usual monthly period-induced breakout. My friends accuse me of having perfect skin, but they’re so wrong. I get zits just like everyone else.

  I dotted some Peter Thomas Roth AHA/BHA acneclearing gel on the worst areas, then decided, in light of recent events, that I needed a special treat. I sneaked into my mom’s bathroom and used a little bit of her Z. Bigatti Re-Storation cream, taking great care to put it back exactly where I’d found it. I was SO not allowed to use the stuff, because it cost something like five hundred bucks for eight measly ounces, but I needed the pick-me-up. Surely Mom would understand if she found out, not that she would.

  It’s not like she couldn’t afford more.

  I have to say, there are definitely cool benefits to having a rich dad. I would never flaunt money, but having access to it and being able to buy nice stuff is better than scrounging pennies to buy Noxzema. I’d be a liar if I claimed otherwise.

  A lot of my friends still ride the bus, and I drive a BMW. That’s not to say that my parents are totally indulgent. Believe me, I’m grateful for every luxury I have. I mean, I still shop at Target and stuff. But it is nice knowing I can shop at Saks or Barneys, too, if I want to.

  Ah, but every coin has two sides. Having a famous dad puts me in a very awkward position. Not that guys my age show any interest in me, but if they ever DO, how will I know if they like ME or just think it’s cool to go out with a Grammy-winning musician’s daughter? Other than Lila and Meryl, I never know if people want to be friends with ME, or if they want a friend with so-called status (which is a bogus concept anyway).

  Please. If they only knew, I live exactly the same life they do. My face breaks out, my parents bug me, I experience angst over whether these jeans make my butt look fat, or those sleeves give me wobbly STA (substitute teacher arms).

  I’m NORMAL. Parents are PARENTS. Being a teenager is being a teenager—period.

  I love my dad, but to me he’s JUST Dad. Sure, I love listening to his music and Fm proud of him for all he’s accomplished in his life, but no more proud than Lila is of her dad (well …) or Meryl of hers. I just wish more people would understand that, but then again, I don’t need a huge circle of friends. I’m good with Lila and Meryl.

  Slightly cheered by the way my face looked and felt, I decided to treat my hair, too. I applied some Moltobene Clay Esthe pack and then sucked it up and went downstairs to tackle the cleanup while the treatment worked its wonders on my locks.

  It was weird, though. Just entering the feast room, which was really just our breakfast room all decked out, made me walk more softly and try to be mondo church-like quiet. I glanced around at ALL the food we didn’t get to eat, then took a fork to the Sara Lee cheesecake. It, of all things, I did not want to waste. I sat there eating, wondering WHY things had to go wrong before any of us got the chance for our wishes to come true, and then it hit me. Why couldn’t I just go ahead and bless the ceremony, light the candles, and burn our prayer/wish cards like we’d planned? It couldn’t hurt, I figured. Either it worked or it didn’t, but it wouldn’t even have the chance to work if I didn’t torch those cards. I just didn’t feel right about throwing them in the trash.

  I started out by leaving the room, then reentering it backward, like Meryl had told us to do. I walked over to the spirit chair, laid my hands on the back, and said a quick, silent prayer about Lila’s mom. When I was done, I lit the white votive candle and placed it in front of her place setting.

  From there, I moved from place to place, lighting the black votive candles and setting the little glass cups that held them just at the top of each of our plates. I sat down in my spot and took one bite of each food item. (Okay, I took a few extra bites of cheesecake, I admit it.) By then, the black votive candles were nice and melty, and I got down to business. I burned Lila’s card first, because she really NEEDED something to go right in her life. I added a little prayer that her dad didn’t hammer her too hard for sneaking out. Then I burned Meryl’s, and last I burned mine. I felt exhilarated when they were all gone! I don’t know if it made a difference, but it definitely gave me some closure on the whole screwed-up event.

  I finally felt ready to clean up and move on.

  Once I’d set the room back to order, I rinsed off my hair pack, dried my now luxuriously soft ’do, then carried my journal down to the living room. Whenever things are crazy for me, I spill my guts about whatever’s going wrong in my journal. I get a new journal every Christmas, and each one has been like a best friend. I can be kind of shy, and writing down my thoughts never fails to make me feel better.

  So, I’m sitting there in the red leather chair-and-a-half by the fireplace when all of a sudden, a CD falls off the shelf ACROSS THE ROOM and lands on the Aubusson rug. I half jumped out of my skin. I wasn’t anywhere NEAR that shelf, I swear, and none of the CD cases had been hanging off even slightly.

  Seriously wiggy. I mean, I’m sitting there writing in my journal about how much I wanted our wishes to come true even though the supper failed, and all of a sudden that particular CD comes shooting out of the shelves! Well, I guess it didn’t actually SHOOT out if we’re going to get technical, it just kind a fell. But still. There is no explanation for it. Our housekeeper just cleaned in there today, and she’s sort of obsessive-compulsive about orderliness. She spends at least an hour making sure all the jewel cases line up. (I know, weird. But at least I don’t have to do it.)

  There wasn’t an earthquake or a semi driving into the side of the house or anything, so why did the CD fall???

  I was überwigged, feeling all Stephen Kingish about the house and stuff, but I scrambled out of the chair anyway and sort of approached the CD cautiously like it was a poltergeist or a bomb or a crazy person or something. My parents travel quite a bit, and I’m WAY okay with being home alone, but right then I was SO wishing I wasn’t by myself. YUGGGS, I just managed to totally psych myself out about the whole thing. The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up on end!

  Despite the fact I was so creeped, I picked up the CD and looked at the front, and I was SO shocked. GUESS WHOSE CD IT WAS??? This really ultra-sweatworthy young blues musician named Bobby Slade. I don’t know if that means anything to anyone else, but to me it was like a big whack-a-mole bop on the head from the universe saying, “Wake up, Caressa!”

  Bobby Slade is super wicked hot! He totally recorded his first album at age SIXTEEN!!! He’s a prodigy, according to my dad, and he’s twenty-one now and really successful. There is this one photo of him in the liner notes of the CD—OHMIGOD, SWOON. He’s wearing worn-out jeans, no shirt, no shoes, and holding his guitar all casual-like in front of his muscular chest. He has a tatt on his upper arm of some kind of Chinese symbol. It’s just … wow.

  Anyway, I put the CD away and didn’t make the connection right away, but it finally hit me.

  I burned the wish cards.

  The supper worked!

  I’m almost 100 percent sure that the universe was telling me Bobby Slade is the guy for me! I know what everyone will say when I tell them: CARESSA, YOU’RE NUTS! HE’S A FAMOUS PERSON! But, it all makes sense from my perspective. So many regular guys get all glazed over when they meet my dad, because he’s famous. They want to touch his Grammy statues and hear about his touring days. Whatever. But, Bobby Slade wouldn’t be all starstruck about my dad, because he’s a star hi
mself! He has his own freakin’ Grammy statues!

  Bobby Slade is exactly what I asked for in my prayer/wish, even though I hadn’t realized it until that CD took a digger. Maybe, all along, I needed to find a guy who could hold his own in the fame department in order for my dad’s identity not to be an issue. Maybe THAT is what the dumb supper needed to tell me.

  I started scribbling in my journal about Bobby, brainstorming different ways I could meet him in person. I’m still not sure about how to pull that off, but that’s not what the dumb supper was supposed to help us figure out. It was supposed to point us toward WHO we might date, and it did that swimmingly. I can work out the rest on my own.

  I could totally fall in love with Bobby Slade!!!

  I think I already have!

  I was so freakin’ jazzed, I ran right upstairs to email Lila and Meryl.

  Six

  When I woke up early the next morning, the house was still dim and quiet, thank God. I should’ve been tired, but I was too amped up about my inevitable punishment. I was SO dreading facing my dad, and the stress stuck in my stomach like a congealed clump of elementary school mac and cheese. GLURG. I decided I should take advantage of this time to check in with Caressa and Meryl before the long arm of the law reached out to crush me. I had no idea if my dad would restrict me from the phone, the Internet, the television, or what, but it seemed likely. It also seemed really unfair. I mean, unless you’re on Survivor, who can live without email access?!

  But, I was absolutely dying to know what happened with the rest of the supperus interruptus, so I crept over to my computer and turned my sound volume off, then quickly signed on. Neither Caressa nor Meryl were on yet, but both of them had sent email messages in the middle of the night. MeryPs was first, and I couldn’t wait to read it because she always had a calming effect on me. I double-clicked on it:

  FROM: MerylM@Morgensternfamily.com

  TO: LawBreakR@hipgirlnet.org, Lipstickgrrrrl@hipgirlnet.org

  SUBJECT. The WEIRDEST thing!

  TIME: 1:45:17 A.M., MST

  Lila—

  I hope everything’s okay at home. I’m SO worried about you, and I’m SO sad that the dumb supper got messed up. I promise I won’t say I told you so about getting busted, either. I just hope you’re not grounded until after graduation. :-P Just so you know, we didn’t keep going with the ceremony. We can try it again another solstice or equinox night, assuming you aren’t on house arrest for the rest of your natural-born life. But, here’s the real shocker: despite the problems, I think the purpose of the dumb supper might’ve worked!

  I paused in reading Meryl’s message to stave off a giant surge of nausea. Holy crap. Why hadn’t I seen this coming? If even-keel, logical MERYL thought the dumb supper might’ve worked, I was full-on hosed. HELLO, had she forgotten that the first guy I’d come face to face with was DYLAN freakin’-totally-not-for-moi SEBRING?!?! My throat squeezed, probably with the effort of holding back a panic puke. Dylan Sebring wouldn’t give me the time of day even if it was a direct order from my dad . Not to mention he had a GIRLFRIEND. This was ALL WRONG! Surely the dumb supper had to be OVER for the magic to happen, right? Dylan was NOT the rebel I wanted. He was a whole lot like my brother Luke … not to mention all my other brothers and my—horror of horrors—father.

  If fate thought I was destined to be with a guy like DYLAN, then all I could say was, fate needed to back sloooooowly away from the crack pipe.

  With more than a little effort, I shook off my selfabsorption and went back to Meryl’s email. I scanned it quickly, reading about how she’d gotten a flat tire on the way home, blah blah blah, and the first guy she’d seen was That Bosnian Guy. She wrote:

  His name is Ismet, in case you didn’t know. Ismet Hadziahmetovic, and his sister’s name is Shefka. Her name is pronounced pretty much how it looks, but his is pronounced ISH-met, not IZ-met or ISS-met.

  You guys, he’s SO sweet, and even though I’ve never really thought much about him before, he’s very cute. But the point is, there he was, totally out of the blue with NO explanation for it except the dumb supper. I can’t wait to hear what you both think about that.

  L&K,

  Meryl

  I groaned, feeling truly ill, and fired off a quick response to Meryl:

  FROM: LawBreakR@hipgirlnet.org

  TO: MerylM@Morgensternfamily.com, Lipstickgrrrrl@hipgirlnet.org

  SUBJECT: re: The WEIRDEST thing!

  TIME: 6:45:00 A.M., MST

  Mer—

  This is so cool about Ismet. I’m truly happy for you. But please, please, PLEASE tell me that this could also be a coincidence and not a result of the dumb supper! :-0 HELLO, two words for you: Dylan Sebring. ACKKKKKK! If the dinner DID work, fate is evil and my life rots. But we knew that.

  Update: Dad’s not up yet. I’m awaiting my sentencing. I feel all sick and nervous inside, sort of like Joan of Arc, waiting to be burned at the stake. (Or at least how I imagine she must’ve felt.) I’m afraid he’s going to take away my computer! I mean, I can’t think of a more heinous punishment, so what else? [FRET] Is that even legal anymore? Isn’t Internet access a basic human right?

  www.LilaLivesInHell.com

  www.WishMeLuck.com

  —Lila

  Next, I double-clicked on Caressa’s reply to Meryl, which she’d written hours ago. She hadn’t even left her house, as far as I knew, so she couldn’t have had a dumb supper epiphany. Surely she’d set Meryl straight about the Ismet coincidence.

  FROM: Lipstickgrrrrl@hipgirlnet.org

  TO: LawBreakR@hipgirlnet.org,

  MerylM@Morgensternfamily.com

  SUBJECT: re: The WEIRDEST thing!

  TIME: 2:23:43 A.M., MST

  Meryl!!!!

  A hottie for Mer—that rocks, girl! I, too, had an interesting experience after you left, Lila. (HANG IN THERE! I’m sorry for what happened, too. You have to tell us what your dad does to you ASAP.) My cool thing seems directly connected to the dumb supper, too. I might not have believed it, but now that I read your tale, Meryl, it all makes TOTAL SENSE!!!

  Here’s what happened to me:

  I was getting ready to clean up the rest of the feast room, when all of a sudden I decided, HEY, I might as well bless the supper and burn our prayer/wishes like we’d planned. Why not? I might be able to make things happen. Just call me CHARMED, [g] (Mer, it’s a TV show reference, don’t mind me.)

  So, I placed my hands on the spirit chair, and closed my eyes. Lila, I really felt like your mom was there for us. I said a silent blessing for her and for the meal-that-never-was, never-was, then I went from seat to seat and lit the votive candles. The black ones were really mondo kewwwwwl!

  I let them burn for a few minutes, and then I went from plate to plate and torched our prayer/wish cards. It was so fun and, like, empowering!

  When I was done, I went into the living room to write in my journal about the whole thing. That’s when the weirdness happened. I swear to you guys, I wasn’t anywhere NEAR our CD shelves when *IT* happened …

  It? IT?! I read on, faster and faster, until I got to the really out-there part. A GUY ON A CD?!? I SO could not believe that Caressa truly thought she was destined to fall in love with a (1) famous (2) twenty-one-year-old (3) blues musician (4) whom she had never met. Had she suffered some sort of mental break?

  I stared at the screen for several moments, my jaw sort of hanging open with this totally unattractive mouth-breather expression. The world had definitely gone mad.

  I didn’t want to harsh on her mellow too badly, but I felt I needed to say something to Caressa about this little foray into psycholand. I clicked reply and typed:

  FROM: LawBreakR@hipgirlnet.org

  TO: MerylM@Morgensternfamily.com, Lipstickgrrrrl@hipgirlnet.org

  SUBJECT: re: The WEIRDEST thing!

  TIME: 6:58:32 A.M., MST

  Caressa—

  I love you. You know I do. And, because of this, I feel I must point out a few things to you, for your own g
ood:

  1. Bobby Slade is TWENTY-ONE years old! HELLO!

  2. Bobby Slade is a famous musician whom you have never met.

  3. Bobby Slade is just a guy from a freakin’ photo on some CD liner notes.

  4. I’m no expert, but I don’t think the dumb supper would include guys you saw in photos. DUDE, think about it. If that were the case, what if you’d seen someone creepily old, like the president of the United States on the front page of the paper, or something? YECCCH! Talk about grossity gross gross. Gross-o-rama. HORK! BUT … seeing some guy on a CD is sorta the same, even if Bobby S. is way cuter than the prez ever could be. It’s still a huge-o stretch.

  5. If none of my other arguments make you reconsider this, I must circle back to, BOBBY SLADE IS TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD!!! That alone is enough to guarantee you guys probably aren’t right for each other. I mean, come on. He’s practically from another generation.

  6. This last point is self-serving, but I do not WANT the dumb supper to have worked, because I had the sad misfortune of coming face to face with Dylan Sebring first. ACKKKKKKU!!! I WOULD RATHER DIE A VIRGIN THAN HAVE SOME JOCKO COP WANNABE AS MY DESTINY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  So, anyway, I think the CD must’ve been … I dunno, vibrations from the fridge or something that made it work its way out and you just happened to be there when it fell from the shelf. I DON’T KNOW! But, any other explanation is just too freaky woo woo to make sense.

  I don’t mean to poop in your punchbowl or anything, but we’ve got to keep a realistic perspective on this. You know I love you and Meryl both—like soul sisters. But, come on. Take Ismet … he’s our age, he exists in our world, Meryl had actual contact with the guy, REAL conversation. Ismet, I can see.

  Bobby Slade, though?

  Girlfriend, crushing on Bobby can lead nowhere good. I hate to be the bad-news monger, but you worry me with this one. I only say this because you and Meryl are my BEST friends FOREVER.

  There, I’ve said my piece. I’m off to prepare for my paternal smackdown. I hope you’ll be thinking of me. I think I’m pretty well busted this time, so I’m trying to imagine the most heinous of punishments he can dole out. I have NO idea what Fm in for, but I’ll keep you posted. See you at school.