“No, no, no,” she replied, soft and soothing. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You left,” I said. And there was a long pause before she answered.
“I didn’t leave. I’m at Dulce’s—just for right now.”
“Dad went after you. Did he find you? Did you talk to him? Mom, he didn’t know. He—”
“We’re going to talk about all of this, okay? I promise.” And I heard a sound like a muffled sob, like she’d turned away from the phone. “But not right now. Are you okay?”
I tried to sound okay even as my voice shook. “I’m fine.”
“Because I will come get you—”
“Mom, it’s okay. I’ve got school in the morning.” Aunt Dulce was the only one of Mom’s sisters who lived in Arizona, but her apartment was two hours away, and her guest room consisted of a sofa bed in the middle of the living room. But the real reason I turned down Mom’s offer was I didn’t think I could handle watching her cry. It was bad enough listening to her try to hide it from me over the phone.
“No, you’re right, and it’s late. I’m going to stay here tonight, but I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” she said. “Always.”
I still don’t know how I said it back, but I did, and eventually, I stopped crying. I got up off the floor and washed my face and, like a robot, cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. When I came back inside after throwing away the birthday cake no one would ever touch, I made it to the top of the stairs, saw the open and empty bedrooms on either side and sank right back to the floor again. I was still sitting there on the top step hours later when Dad came home.
I jerked to my feet at the top of the stairs, watching him lock the front door, then turn, his movements slow to the point of being painful.
I had never seen him cry before, not once.
He’d caught a fastball to the face at a practice a few years ago, and it had hit him with enough force to leave stitch imprints on his forehead for a week, not to mention the close-to-baseball-sized lump that had formed right between his eyebrows. Mom had cried buckets just looking at him, but Dad’s eyes hadn’t even watered.
Then there’d been the late-night phone call right after Selena’s high school graduation telling us that she’d been in a car accident. Turned out she’d been only banged up a little, but Dad could have been driving to get a haircut instead of to the hospital for all the emotion he’d shown.
Dad was the one who’d had to drive Slammer to the vet when the doctor told us he’d become more cancer than dog and it was time to put him down. Slammer couldn’t even stand then, so Dad had scooped up the once-hulking-but-by-then-skeletal ridgeback and carried him to the car. There hadn’t been a single tear even when Slammer, the dog Dad had gotten as a puppy before he’d even met Mom, had tried to lick his cheek.
So seeing his tearstained face when he looked up at me was so horrifying that I couldn’t breathe. He stepped forward and rested his hand on the banister, but that was it. Actually ascending the stairs seemed beyond him.
“Mom is—”
“Staying at Aunt Dulce’s,” I said, unable to blink away from his face even as my eyes welled up. “She called.”
Dad’s head lifted and his hand slid higher on the banister, tightening as it did. “She called? When?”
I told him, then I inhaled in a half gasp, half sob. “I think I know, but, Dad...” My eyes squeezed shut. He couldn’t have faked the devastating shock that had brought him to his knees earlier. But I wanted to hear it. “Please tell me you didn’t know about him.”
“I would never have left my child,” Dad said, ascending the first step. Emotion flickered across his face, pinching his brows and forcing him to swallow. “Does he know? Did she tell him?”
My chin quivered. “He didn’t until I found him. She died right after he was born.”
Dad’s eyes fell shut. “I’m sorry to hear that, but his mother was not—It was never—”
“No, stop.” My back bumped against the wall and my eyes squeezed shut. Either way, his answer would be unbearable. Either he regretted losing Brandon’s mother, or he’d betrayed Mom for something he didn’t even care about. Dad’s foot stopped on the second step.
When my eyes reopened, Dad was too close, only a couple steps below me. His eyes were red, and he looked like someone who’d just witnessed a horrible accident but hadn’t processed it yet. Looking at him and seeing tears in his eyes for the first time, I felt like I’d been in that accident and was bleeding out before him.
“I was going to tell you about Brandon, but not like this. I didn’t want Mom and Sel to leave. Dad, I didn’t.”
Dad blinked rapidly at the sound of his son’s name. “Brandon,” he repeated. “And he’s here, in Arizona. All this time, he’s been here.”
I started to tell him about his son, I did, but how could I tell him what little I’d learned when it wouldn’t come close to making up for all that he’d missed? The words wouldn’t come, but the tears did, mine and his.
Chapter 42
Mom continued to stay at her sister’s, and Dad was...I didn’t know. I couldn’t talk to him, though every time I entered or left the house, I knew he wanted to ask questions about Brandon that I wasn’t ready to answer. Our conversations consisted of the same sentences repeated each day when I got home and he was no longer in coach mode:
“School okay?” he’d ask.
“Fine,” I’d say. “Did you talk to Mom?”
He’d shake his head, and I’d turn right back to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“A friend’s.” I’d already be shutting the door as I answered. Only I never went to a friend’s house. I would have gone to Jessalyn’s, but now that things were open with her and Nick, she was more than happy to pick up extra shifts at the café with him. And even though Nick and I had had our first non-excruciatingly-painful Biology class in weeks, he was still a little uncomfortable around me, though from lingering embarrassment rather than unrequited love. It was better, though, and each day I saw more and more of the sweet friend returning. I had gotten the chance to tell both him and Jess what had happened with my family, but they could do even less to help than I could, and that was nothing.
Mom was hours away at her sister’s. She called every day, asking me if I was okay and assuring me that she loved me. I couldn’t blame her for staying away, but I’d always ask, “When are you coming home?” And her answer was always a variation of the same: “I don’t know, Dana.”
I presumed she talked to Selena too, but if that door had been shut before, it was bolted and chained now. I even tried calling Gavin, but he said only that he’d tell Selena I’d called and then, in a quieter voice that made me think Selena was nearby, said he was sure that if I just gave her some time, she’d reach out to me on her own.
And Brandon. I’d made my promise to him that he’d never have to see me again, and I had to keep it even if it killed me, even if I thought about him every time I looked at Dad or talked to Mom or my calls went unanswered by Selena. And when I thought about Brandon, I also thought about Chase.
So that’s where I was four days after Dad’s birthday, parked under a massive mesquite tree at dusk, waiting for a glimpse of the person who had the most reason to detest me. I really did just want to look at him. I’d had no intention of getting out of my car and calling out to him as he was getting into his, or walking right up to him until he was forced to look at me. But that’s what I did the second I saw him leave his house.
“Chase?” I didn’t call out loudly, but he heard me. His head turned in my direction. The expression on his face should have sent me back to my car, but my legs were intent on bringing me closer until we stood just a few feet away from each other.
“
Dana.” He half lowered his head, shaking it. “You can’t come here anymore.” He held my gaze with his, not in anger, but resigned and unmoving. As if he shouldn’t have needed to say it. That was the only hint of reproof in his voice.
“I know,” I said. Because I did know, I did. “I’m so sorry.”
“Okay,” he said, but not like he was accepting my apology, just acknowledging that I’d said it and dismissing it as easily. He was so distant, and I was crumbling more and more by the second.
“I just want you to know that I—”
“Hey, Dana?” He cut me off without any vehemence or even needing to raise his voice. Like the rest of him, it was steady and aloof. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Something fluttered in my chest. “I don’t?” I took a step closer, needing to be nearer to him and to let that flutter grow.
“Not to me.”
The flutter weakened, slowed and stopped, halting my heart along with it. I didn’t need to say anything, because there was nothing I could say. That was what he meant. Not that my words to him were unnecessary, but that they were impotent.
“You should go home or wherever, but don’t come here, okay?” He still didn’t yell or sneer. Nothing in what he said or how he said it held anger in it, just indifference, and it hurt so much more for the lack. Anger I could meet head-on, but I wasn’t even worth his antipathy.
It shouldn’t have hurt that much. I shouldn’t have had any room left for hurt over him on top of Dad and Brandon, Mom and Selena. But I did, and the pain was no less sharp for the company.
I’d crossed a line with Chase from the very beginning. Whatever evolving rationale I’d used to keep seeing him felt so flimsy in hindsight. It had never been okay to fall for him, and worse, let him fall even a little for me.
Chase waited for me to say okay or nod or show some sign of acquiescence to his request that I go. I don’t know which I gave him, but I must have done something, because he got in his car. He looked at me one last time before driving off. The look was less guarded, less controlled. I’d hurt him, badly, maybe even more than I’d hurt myself. And as I watched him leave, even the shreds of my heart shriveled into dust and blew away.
Chapter 43
I had another softball game, our last before a weeklong break and then the state finals—if we won. Mom came. I saw her in the stands, but she looked awful, half–dead inside. I already knew I wouldn’t play well, a fact that more than a few of my teammates commented on during warm-ups.
“Dana, you okay?”
“Are you sick?”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
I felt slow and sluggish, like I was playing underwater. I was more aware of my parents, separated by dozens of people and a dugout yet closer than they’d been in days, than I was of anything happening on the field. My coach’s comments to me were perfunctory. He was watching Mom too.
“At least she came, right?” Jessalyn nudged me with her shoulder as we made our way back to the dugout before the game started. She’d been awesome since I unloaded my family situation on her; Nick too. Neither one of them let me mope, but they were there, they understood. Whenever I fell silent for too long at school, one of them would shake me out of it. Sometimes literally, in Jessalyn’s case.
“Yeah,” I said, but my funk lingered throughout the game. I started with a pathetic dribbler to the pitcher and didn’t get much better. I wouldn’t have been nearly as kind to me as some of my teammates were, Jessalyn especially.
She clapped a hand on my shoulder, saying, “We all suck out sometimes. Shake it off.”
Only I couldn’t, not until the last inning. We were down by two runs with runners on first and second. Fortunately for our team, I wasn’t up; Ivy was.
We all had our fingers curled through the chain-link fence around our dugout, and every one of us had our rally caps on—our hats turned inside out—screaming for all we were worth as Ivy lifted her bat and twisted her toe into the dirt in anticipation. She whiffed on her first swing, but on the second she hit a frozen rope deep in the left-center-field gap. Sadie took off like a bullet from first, rounded second and nearly reached home on top of Ainsley in front of her. They turned as one to catch Ivy tearing around third. We held our breath as she raced down the line and dived headfirst into home, just as the throw hit the catcher’s mitt.
Cheers erupted from our dugout when the umpire said, “Safe!”
We clogged the entrance getting onto the field. It was a momentary high, winning the game. We were going to the finals. The first thing I did was look into the stands, searching for Selena’s face, forgetting that she hadn’t come. My winning high plummeted, dragging my heart down with it.
Hands clapped my shoulders. It was Jessalyn. She shook me until a smile was forced to my lips.
“That’s right,” she said. “We are going to state!”
It was a good feeling, one I focused on to carry me through rounds of hugs with my teammates and shore me up as I texted my sister, even knowing she wouldn’t respond.
Me: We won the game 8 to 7. Mom came. Have you seen her?
Nothing.
I caught a ride home with Jessalyn and Nick, not wanting to further infect Dad’s sadness by adding my own to the confines of his car. The drive to the game had been depressing enough.
We piled into Jessalyn’s Fiat, and she glanced at me once we left the parking lot. “Should we go out for ice cream or something to celebrate? Ooh, we could go to Mostly Bread and get some of the red velvet cupcakes we have right now.” Her eyes rolled rapturously into the back of her head. “They are the second best thing to ever touch my lips.”
I turned my head to look at Nick, who’d insisted on cramming himself into the back seat so that I could ride shotgun. “And what’s the first?”
Nick turned his version of crimson, but he held Jessalyn’s gaze in the rearview mirror and he couldn’t hide his smile.
Never having kissed Nick, I thought the cupcakes were the best thing to ever touch my lips, but after another hour with no response from Selena, I had trouble finishing mine.
“I don’t get why she’s this mad at you.” Jessalyn licked the cream cheese frosting from her empty cupcake wrapper. “I mean, yeah, okay, you did lie to her a bunch, and your timing for springing Brandon on her sucked monkey balls, but that was an accident. And your dad’s birthday disaster wasn’t your fault at all. If it was me, I’d go to her work or wherever and I wouldn’t leave until she talked to me.”
“Her boyfriend thinks I should give her some time.”
“Yeah, but it’s been a week, right?”
I glanced at Nick over my half-eaten cupcake. I hadn’t expected him to jump to my side, especially since he knew firsthand what it felt like to be lied to by me.
“More than a week since her open mic night.”
“I would go find her,” Jessalyn said, eyeing my cupcake and then grinning when I slid it toward her.
“Might help,” Nick said, looking at me with his old, totally unromantic tenderness. My heart lifted from that sight alone, and it rose even higher when he went on, “She’s hurting too, right? I’m sure it’s easier for her to be mad at you than to deal with finding out she has a brother, but she still does have a brother, and you’re the only one who can tell her anything about him.”
Chapter 44
After practice the next day I parked in front of Lava Java next to Selena’s car, got out and sat cross-legged on her hood, ready to sit and wait for however many hours it took for her to get off work. She saw me, of course, during her shift, but after the first startled glimpse, she ignored me. That was fine. I had nowhere else to go, and she couldn’t stay inside forever. At least knowing I was waiting for her would give her time to resign herself to seeing me. And in a public space, she wouldn’t scream in my face
again.
Her arms were crossed when she finally came out. She didn’t try to ignore me, which was good because I had a spare set of keys to her car and was fully prepared to let myself in the passenger side if she tried to take off. The surprise was that she was the first to speak.
“All my coworkers think you’re unhinged.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That you’re unhinged.”
Smiling felt like the wrong response but I did it anyway. “Thanks for coming out.”
“You’re sitting on my car, Dana. What choice do I have?”
I wasn’t sure if she’d even looked at my text the night before, so I told her again. “We won. State finals next week.”
An unguarded light came to Selena’s eyes. “Dana! That’s—” the light dimmed “—good.”
“Mom came,” I said. “Have you been talking to her?”
“Yes.” That was it, a single-syllable response.
“And?” I said.
“And what?”
“How is she?”
“You’re talking to her too. Ask her yourself.”
I scooted forward, sliding off the hood until I was leaning against the front bumper. “I’ve tried. She’s not ready to talk about it.”
Selena shook her head, looking down at her feet. “I don’t think I’m ready to talk to you either.”
That stung, much more in person than my unanswered texts. “Don’t do this again. However upset you are with me, I know you don’t believe this is all my fault.” Or, I thought I knew. At my words, Selena bit both her lips, a telltale sign from when we were kids that she wanted to hit me. I would have backed away if the car hadn’t been at my back.
“You were the one who had the brilliant idea to test Dad’s DNA. I told you over and over again not to do it, that it wasn’t worth finding out something horrible that we would have gone on happily not knowing.”
The First to Know Page 21
