Dr. Feld was a large, red-faced man who looked a bit like Santa Claus without the beard and the suit. He broke into a smile when he walked into the room, and I half-expected him to start ho-ho-ho-ing.
“Look at you three,” he said, with a laugh and a shake of his head. “This is an unexpected surprise. Look at how grown-up you all are. Amazing.”
I hardly thought it was amazing, but I guessed he hadn’t seen us since we were babies. I supposed to him it was like we went from being infants to grown-ups in the blink of an eye.
“How’s your father doing?” Dr. Feld asked. I sucked in a big mouthful of air and I heard Gracie gasp. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard from him.”
Annie looked over at us, a sort of pleading look on her face. I assumed she wanted one of us to deliver the much-belated news of our father’s passing.
“He died,” I explained.
“Oh, God,” Dr. Feld said. “I had no idea. My condolences.”
“It’s okay,” Gracie said. “It was like six years ago.”
“No, it couldn’t be that long,” Dr. Feld said.
“I’m afraid Gracie is correct,” Annie said in a stiff, unnatural voice. The doctor shook his head stubbornly, but his face changed a bit; he became more of a sad Santa as he processed that it had been more than six years since he’d last heard from his friend.
“So I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit?” he asked.
“It’s probably nothing,” Annie said.
“She hasn’t been feeling well for a while,” Gracie said. “Then earlier today, she collapsed.”
“It was because I hadn’t had anything to eat,” Annie said.
“And have you been eating normally lately?” Dr. Feld asked. “I only ask because you do look a bit on the thin side. Well, of course, everyone looks thin to me.” He laughed at this comment, but none of us bothered to join him. “And how old are you now, Annie?”
I noticed the way Annie glanced over at me and Gracie before she answered, “Twenty-six.” Why would she need to look at us to answer such a simple question, unless she was lying? Dr. Feld nodded at her answer as if there was something magical about the number twenty-six—unless perhaps he knew that she was lying, knew why she was lying.
“Well, we always feared something like this might happen,” he said.
Something like what? Had I missed something? Annie cleared her throat quietly and then looked over at me and Gracie again.
“Yes, of course,” Dr. Feld said.
“What?” I asked. There seemed to be a whole silent conversation going on that I wasn’t hearing.
“Ladies, I’m going to ask you to step out while I examine your sister.” It was subtle, but I heard the extra emphasis he placed on the word “sister.” I wanted to just shout that I already knew everything and we could have everything out in the open instead of these weird silent conversations, but now wasn’t the right time. I walked to the door, and Gracie
followed me. She looked back at Annie, who waved us out of the room.
“That was weird,” I said when we were out in the hallway.
“I don’t like that guy,” Gracie said. “What’s with all the smiling and laughing and crap? I swear I’ve never seen that man before in my life.”
“Dad probably sent him Christmas cards or something.”
“And if they were such good friends, how could he not know Dad was dead?”
I shrugged. Dr. Feld didn’t seem like such a bad guy. I wondered if he’d been Annie’s doctor when she was pregnant. They did seem to know each other, and that weird secret, silent conversation they’d had would then make sense. Plus, if you were going to have a secret baby that you raised as your younger sister, you would want someone you could trust—a family friend—involved with all the paperwork, to make sure you could keep your secret safe.
“You know now that we aren’t in there she’s just going to tell him she’s fine, and he’s going to send her on her way without doing anything for her,” Gracie said.
“He did ask her if she was eating,” I pointed out.
“Speaking of which,” Gracie said, “I’m starving. Let’s go see if we can find any grub around here.”
We did some exploring and found a smaller waiting room, with some cushioned chairs and a few different vending machines. We scoured our pockets for money and came up with enough to buy ourselves a feast of chips, a shared candy bar, and a couple of sodas.
“What do you think is wrong with her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Gracie said. “Maybe it’s nothing—a lingering flu or something. Maybe he’ll give her some antibiotics and they’ll knock it right out.”
“She seemed like she was getting better, and then the whole Cameron thing seemed to make her sick all over again.” I’d deliberately avoided saying that this was all Gracie’s fault, but she was still offended.
“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Who I date is my business, so mind your own. It was a long time ago that Annie was with Cameron. She had years to rekindle that romance, and she never even tried. So I don’t feel bad about dating him.” She turned sideways in her seat and refused to look at me, like a spoiled little girl. But wasn’t I the baby of the family? Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to act like a little kid? Unless, of course, I wasn’t.
“Do you ever think it’s weird that you can’t remember Mom at all?” I asked. “I can remember stuff when I was three years old.”
“Like what?” she asked.
I was sure I could remember something from being a little kid, but when I tried to think, all I saw were some vague hazy scenes in my head. I could remember some party … it must have been a birthday party, with a present wrapped in pink polka-dot paper. I remembered sitting in a little plastic wading pool in the backyard. As these different scenes surfaced in my memory, I realized that these were moments that were captured in the photographs in our family album. Maybe I wasn’t really remembering them at all … maybe it was just the picture etched in my brain; not a real memory, just a sort of copy of a memory.
“See?” Gracie said. “You don’t really remember anything from when you were that age.”
Like a spark, a memory—complete, and with only the slightest bit of haziness—arose fully formed in my head.
“Wait!” I yelled, even though Gracie was right next to me. “I can remember a campfire. We caught fish and cooked them on the fire, and then we roasted marshmallows. Dad must have taken us on a family camping trip or something. It was by this lake.” I knew the memory had to be a real one because I hadn’t seen any pictures of it in the album.
“Dad never took us on a camping trip,” Gracie said. “It must have been something you saw in a movie. We never went anywhere with Dad.”
“I can remember the taste of the fish,” I said. “I remember how gooey the marshmallows were.”
“Actually, I think you did go on some sort of camping trip when you were little, but you went with Annie and Cameron’s family. It wasn’t Dad who took you.” As I pictured the scene in my head, I realized I couldn’t actually recall Dad being there, but for some reason I thought he had been. Well, of course I did. My dad, my real dad, was there. Cameron. It all made sense.
“I think you were probably like four or five at the time,” Gracie added. “It was a long time ago, but still, you were older than three, and you can’t even remember it that well.”
“How come you didn’t go with us?” I asked. I knew the real reason Gracie hadn’t gone—she wasn’t part of that family. But I wondered if she knew this.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably I had something else that weekend.” Right. Like at age eight or whatever her social calendar was completely full. Yet I didn’t think she was lying. She probably was too young to remember anything clearly—she had no idea that Annie was really my mother, that Cameron was my father,
that she was really my aunt. But it all fit. It all made sense, and it made the fact that she was dating Cameron even more wrong, somehow.
“About Cameron,” I started.
“We’re not talking about that,” Gracie said.
“No, wait. Listen, I know that you think I’m picking on you, but you don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t understand, Babie. This isn’t some stupid high school romance, okay? What Cameron and I have, this is real.”
“Yeah, but Annie—”
“Forget about Annie. This doesn’t have anything to do with Annie.”
“What doesn’t have anything to do with me?”
We both looked up to see Annie standing there in the entrance to the little waiting room. She still looked pale and ill, and she was holding on to the door frame as if she didn’t have the strength to stand without some sort of support.
“Nothing,” Gracie said. She looked over at me with narrowed eyes. It wasn’t like I was going to say anything in front of Annie; well, not right now anyway.
“You ready to go?” Annie asked. She had a smile on her face, but it looked like she was trying too hard to look happy and relaxed.
“Did the doctor say what was wrong?” I asked.
“I have a prescription,” Annie said.
“Isn’t he going to do any kind of tests or anything?” Gracie asked. “He seems like a quack.”
“He’s not a quack,” Annie said.
“You probably told him you were fine,” Gracie said. “Did you tell him how sick you’ve been?”
“He understands,” Annie said. “The medicine he prescribed should help. Hey, why don’t we stop somewhere for dinner on the way home. When was the last time we all went out together? It’ll be fun.”
Fun? Something told me this would be about as much fun as ripping out my own toenails one by one.
Sixteen
Gracie gave me a ride to school the next morning. It was such an uncharacteristically charitable act that I was on my guard. I sat silent on the ride there, expecting her to ask me to do something in return for her, but she didn’t say a word. That same nervous tension that had hung over us since we’d left the hospital was still there, and when she pulled up to the curb in front of school, I was so eager to get out that I swung the door open before she’d come to a complete stop.
“Relax, you’ve got plenty of time,” Gracie said.
“Well, thanks. Bye,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried into school.
Jenelle and Shawna spotted me as soon as I started down the hallway. With everything that had happened, I had kind of forgotten about my hair again. It was old news now. Except, of course, it wasn’t. Jenelle’s mouth hung open as I walked up to her.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Good morning to you too,” I said.
“You look just like that actress,” Shawna said. “What’s her name? In that movie?”
“She looks like she’s completely lost her mind,” Jenelle said.
I headed past them and to my locker, but they followed at my heels. Shawna couldn’t come up with the name of the actress, and Jenelle made a few more choice remarks about my hair. I ignored both of them while I hung up my coat and grabbed my books.
“Is this what you were doing yesterday?” Jenelle asked.
“No,” I said.
“Where were you then?”
“Annie was sick,” I said. “We had to take her to the hos-
pital.”
“Oh my God,” Shawna said. “Is she all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No. I don’t really know.” I closed my locker and turned around. Zach was walking down the hallway. He didn’t even look in my direction. Was he mad at me for running off yesterday? I stared at him, and there was a fluttery sort of achy feeling in my chest.
“You’re mental, aren’t you?” Jenelle said.
“What?”
“I asked you what was wrong with your sister.”
“Right,” I said. “I don’t really know. She won’t talk about it. The doctor gave her some medicine.”
“No offense,” Jenelle said, “but your family is pretty weird.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. My family was weirder than Jenelle knew, but I wasn’t about to tell her what I’d figured out. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” Jenelle asked, but I didn’t answer her. I needed to talk to Zach. I was pretty sure I would explode if I didn’t talk to him.
His locker was all the way at the end of the hallway. I stood a few yards away, watching him grabbing books from his locker, and for a moment I felt short of breath. God but he was gorgeous. He closed the locker door and I was about to call his name, but I caught myself just in time. He wasn’t alone. Meg stood beside him. She must have been standing on the other side of the locker door, and I saw that they were talking about something. They walked together up the hallway, and I shrunk back against the wall trying to make myself invisible, though neither one of them even glanced in my direction. They were too caught up in each other.
I felt flushed and slightly sick. They were a couple. Of course they were. How could I be so stupid? I knew they’d gone to the dance together, but for some reason I’d assumed that hadn’t meant anything. Why? Just because Zach the snake Faraday had shown up at my front door yesterday? What was wrong with me? Why was I so obsessed with this guy?
I forced myself to stop thinking about Zach and instead spent my day thinking about Annie and Cameron. I tried to piece together my fragmented childhood memories, looking for clues. My father—well, the man who I’d always assumed was my father—had barely spoken to me my entire life, and I realized now that it wasn’t because he’d blamed me for his wife’s death. It was because I made him uncomfortable. He was ashamed of me, of my illegitimate birth. Maybe he was angry that I had completely ruined his daughter’s life, kept
her from going to college and becoming more than yet another girl drowning a slow, sad death in Shallow Pond. I was angry that this secret had been kept from me my whole life. Did they really think this would make my life easier? My whole life had been a lie.
Annie was still asleep when I’d left for school in the morning, and she would probably be asleep when I got home. It wasn’t fair to bug her about this right now, not when she was sick. I needed to know, though. Of course, there was someone else who would know the story, and lucky for me, he was back in town after years of trying to escape his past. I needed to talk to my father. I needed to talk to Cameron Schaeffer.
When I stepped into English class, Zach was already in his seat. As usual, I felt a little weak when I saw him. Why oh why did he have this effect on me?
“Hey,” he said when I sat down. “What happened to you yesterday? Why did you run off?”
“I just remembered something I needed to talk to my sister about,” I said. He nodded slowly, like he didn’t really believe me. Well, it did sound like a lame excuse, but it was also pretty much true. “It’s complicated,” I explained.
“Right, sure,” he said. “Well, hope you got everything worked out.”
“Actually, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. We had to take her to the hospital.” His eyes grew wide, and at first I thought it was because he was surprised by this news, but I think he thought I was making that up too. “She’s fine. I mean, she got some medicine, and she’s home now.”
“Whatever,” Zach said. “You don’t need to explain it to me.” He didn’t believe me.
“Mr. Faraday, Ms. Bunting,” Mrs. Grimes said. “Kindly pay attention, please.” I blushed in embarrassment, but I was also secretly pleased. I liked hearing our names together like that. She hadn’t called me Barbara, but on the other hand she hadn’t called me Gracie or Annie either. Maybe my new hair had done the trick.
I was silent through the rest of the class, but I wasn’t payi
ng attention. That wasn’t going to happen with Zach sitting right next to me. How serious were he and Meg? Did he think I was a complete bitch for running off on him yesterday? Did he hate me for lying to him, even though I hadn’t really lied to him?
When the bell rang I hurried silently out of class without looking in Zach’s direction, but he caught up with me in the hallway and stopped me by grabbing my sleeve.
“Hey, how about a rain check?” he asked.
“Rain check?”
“Well, we didn’t get to talk much yesterday. Maybe we could hang out again.”
“Sure,” I said. I was confused. By “hang out,” did Zach mean as friends? Is that what he saw me as? One of his buddies?
“Great. How about after school? It’s colder today, so we might have to find an indoor place. Maybe the diner?”
“Uh, I can’t today,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be the diner. We can go wherever you want. We could go bowling, go to the mall—you can pick.”
“No, it’s just that today’s not good for me,” I said. “I have something I have to do after school.”
He nodded. He looked hurt. He thought I was blowing him off. I mean, I was sort of blowing him off, but it was because I needed to talk to Cameron.
“It’s something important that I have to do,” I said.
“No, that’s fine,” Zach said. “I’ll catch up with you an-other time.”
He walked away, and that ache that had been gnawing away at me all day suddenly flared up.
“Zach!” I called after him, but he didn’t hear me.
After school, I hadn’t even made it out of the senior hallway when Jenelle and Shawna caught up with me. I’d been hoping to disappear before they noticed, because I knew I couldn’t tell them that I needed to go over to Cameron Schaeffer’s house or why I needed to go there.
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