I figure if he’s doling out normal salutation-type stuff, probably no one is dead or maimed or whatever tragic event would bring him here. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hi, baby.” Mom pops into the front room, right next to Dad, and I try for the ten billionth time to comprehend that they’d ever been married. Photos and my own memories tell me they were, but it still feels like fabricated history, a novel based on actual events and not the nonfiction it is.
It’s a casual day for Dad, which means he’s in shiny black dress shoes and perfectly pressed black slacks, with a gray shirt and a patterned blue tie that pops exactly how all the fashion magazines say a tie is supposed to. It’s a casual day for Mom, too; she’s wearing ragged jeans with a black sweater of Russell’s that features a little skull and crossbones on each shoulder. Since she’s inside, her feet are bare, chipped red manicure showing as well as the black line drawings of flowers tattooed across the tops of both her feet.
“How was your Saturday night?” Mom asks.
“It was fine. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” Dad kisses my cheek, smelling—like always—of coffee and the spearmint gum he chews obsessively since he quit smoking when I was nine. “In fact, I’m on my way out. See you this weekend.”
When I was little, I’d cling to him whenever we said good-bye, but now it’s just life. “Bye, Dad.”
He leaves, which is for the best because I always worry the universe will explode if he spends much time in this house. Well, the universe or Mom’s brain, and I don’t see myself surviving either one of those catastrophes.
“Why was Dad here?”
“It’s nothing,” she says as Finn barrels into the room wearing Mom’s black leather jacket, which hangs past his knees, and a black ski mask covering his face.
“I’m a pirate!” he shouts.
“No, you’re a ninja,” I tell him. Finn always gets those confused. “Also ninjas don’t shout. You have to be super sneaky.”
He nods solemnly before racing up the stairs and letting out some kind of war cry. Well, I tried.
Even Mom says I’m biased, but I’m positive Finn is the cutest kid in the world. I’ve seen hundreds of photos of myself, and I definitely didn’t hold a candle. His hair is sandy brown like Russell’s, he got Mom’s perfect little upturned nose (which genetics conveniently didn’t give to me), and big blue eyes (I’d at least gotten those), and when he smiles he somehow looks just like Mom and Russell at once. Total cute overload.
“What happened to brunch?” I ask Mom as she sorts through the mail on the front table even though nothing new could have come today. Mom might be sort of old—she just turned forty-three—but she’s the kind of lady you totally believe when you hear she’d once been a cheerleader. Still blond, still smiles all the time, still pulls off a high ponytail, still, you know…cheers for things. With Mom, no achievement is too small for hugs and congrats. (And she can still turn a pretty mean cartwheel, if you beg.)
“What? Oh, right, sure. Russell’s out picking something up.” She turns back to the mail like it’s urgent when in reality it piles up there constantly.
I run upstairs and down the hall to Sara’s room, where Finn is jumping on the bed while she’s curled up on one corner of it doing homework. From here it looks like physics, but considering I’m three levels of science behind her, I’m probably not the best judge. Still. Physics on a Sunday morning.
Sara is really good with numbers. Honestly, she’s good at everything, but numbers especially. Normally when people say things like that they just mean someone’s good at math, but the point is that she’s good at something useful. When we moved into the big house down the street from the old house, Sara knew how many boxes each room would take. It probably doesn’t sound that exciting, nothing like knowing how many jelly beans are in a giant jar and then winning a prize, but way more useful.
I’m not good at many things that are useful, a fact Mom delights in telling me. It’s not that she’s disappointed—no, her parents had always told her the same thing, which she bought into for a long time. She says, “Kellie, baby, I bought into that, can you believe it?” and I actually can’t. No matter how many times she tells the story, I can’t believe Mom trained to be a paralegal and went to work every day in a jacket and skirt and the scary flesh-tone pantyhose with tasteful pumps, until the day she realized she was miserable. “I ripped myself free of a nylon hose existence,” she likes to say, which I thought was a figurative saying until the day we were packing to move into the new house and Mom actually found the torn pair of hose. Mom hangs on to the weirdest stuff.
So, anyway, I’ve been carrying on family tradition. Well, Mom traditions, at least. Dad gets this concerned look on his face whenever he sees one of my report cards. He’s a lawyer—that’s how he and Mom met, one billion years ago—and he thinks grades are a window into our futures. “Kellie, you want to get into a good college, don’t you?”
Good colleges all want Sara already, two months into her senior year. I remind Dad of this, that I’m only a junior and therefore who would be courting me yet? Unfortunately, he has a better memory than I do and points out that a year ago Sara was already being wooed by universities from east to west.
Obviously, Sara is Dad’s favorite. And while I really should have had a shot at being Mom’s favorite, she spends loads of time detailing how she loves all of us exactly the same amount. My only hope is that maybe she’s lying to spare Sara’s and Finn’s feelings.
Oh, right, Finn. Since he’s only four, we don’t know if he’s going to make Mom proud by being as unskilled at useful things as me. So far his big interests are zebras, kaleidoscopes, and this stupid singing fish Mom let him pick out at a garage sale, so all signs point to yes.
I haven’t admitted to anyone that the more often I think about Sara away at college with her clear path in front of her, the less delight I take in feeling useless. When I think about how long it took Mom to shift her life into the place she actually wanted—or to even know what she wanted—well, I love Mom, of course, but I don’t want that for me. And that’s some of what I would have said if I’d answered the “Why do you want to join the Ticknor Voice?” essay question a little more honestly.
I sit down next to Sara. “What’s up with Mom?”
She waves an arm at me like I’m a bug to shoo. Not so easy, sister. “Today or in general?”
“Today,” I say. “What’s up with brunch? And why was Dad here?”
“Who knows?” she says. “Do you mind taking Finn? I need some time alone.”
“Come on, ninja.” I catch Finn mid-jump and cart him into the hallway instead of interrogating Sara. Anyway, it would have concerned me more if she wasn’t always needing time alone. (Though, maybe Dad would be less freaked out about my grades if I occasionally did my homework without simultaneously pointing out differences between ninjas and pirates.)
I head back downstairs because if brunch is on the way, I might as well be nearby. Our house isn’t that big compared to the others on our block of Summit Avenue, but the kitchen and dining room probably outsize everyone else’s. When Mom and Russell bought the house, I remember Mom marching Sara and me in here with her hands on our shoulders and declaring this kitchen was going to see the best of us. Mom had been crazy-dreamy-eyed back then, between her engagement and the house purchase, but I think that actually turned out to be true. Even on cloudy days, the golden walls, packed with picture frames painted in every color imaginable holding images of our family, make everything seem sunny.
“Look, look!” Finn runs into the dining room while I’m lining up knives with spoons on the red-topped retro aluminum table. “Kellie, look!”
I finish positioning the knife and turn my head to see that Finn has placed his ski mask over the head of his favorite stuffed zebra. “Oh, awesome, Marvin’s a ninja, too.”
“Yeah, awesome. Can me and Marvin help?”
Helping means that most of the silverware ends
up on the floor. “I’m okay, Finn, you and Marvin can just hang out with me.”
Russell walks into the house with a huge bag I’m pretty sure is from his favorite vegan café in Maplewood. I honestly love eating with my family and I rarely mind getting up early, but there are days when I wish my stepdad would eat just one animal. I understand ethics and all, but animals can be so tasty.
“I got some of those scones you like,” Russell tells me.
I know it’s a bribe so I won’t mind eating vegan, but the scones are delicious, so it works. And I swipe a piece of fake bacon (facon?) as Russell’s putting everything onto the table—okay, also delicious—which prompts a glare from Mom. “What? It’s a tiny piece.”
“We eat as a family, you know that. Finn, sweetie, go get Sara.”
Finn pulls his ski mask back on before bolting upstairs.
Mom walks to the refrigerator to get orange juice and milk, of the real and of the soy varieties. “How was your Saturday night?”
“You asked me that already.”
“Did I?”
Finn leaps back into the room, sliding a few inches across the coppery orange tile in his monkey-print-stocking feet. “Sara’s not hungry.”
Whoa, that never flies. Mom and Russell totally believe that the 1950s-everyone-sitting-down-together family dinner is a cornerstone of a civilized society.
“More for us, then. Kellie, help me carry in the rest of this.”
As if Dad’s presence in the house wasn’t weird enough. Now Sara is allowed to skip brunch like we’re one of those uncaring families Mom likes to lecture us we’ll turn into if we don’t spend enough quality time together? “Mom? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Kell-belle. You know what we should do soon?” Mom asks as the four of us sit down at the table. “Your hair. Yeah?”
“You have some big plan?”
“When don’t I have a big plan?” Mom never has a plan. Mom just has a lot of impulse buys from the beauty supply shop down the street, where they never check to see if she actually has whatever license you’re supposed to be in possession of.
“Hmm, maybe.”
She ruffles my hair and grabs my face in her hands. Her rings are cold on my cheeks. “I love you, Kellie baby.”
We’re a pretty mushy family, but this is a lot even for us. I don’t have that much more time to wonder if something is up, though, because soon Finn is yelling that he loves us, too, and I am really hungry, animal products or not.
I text Kaitlyn after we eat to see if she’s surviving, post-Garrett-making-out-with-Brandy. I’m honestly not really expecting a response, since Kaitlyn likes to sleep in, but my phone beeps almost right away.
Except it’s not Kaitlyn.
It’s a text from him. I don’t know how he got my number (though, I’d bet big money on Dexter, if the source of text messages was the kind of thing people gambled on), but it’s the most obvious thing in the world that it’s from him.
Good seeing you last night. Is the fish still singing?
It sounds dirty, but the day Oliver and I met, he’d brought up those nightmare-inducing dancing and singing Santas, which had directly led into a conversation about Finn’s stupid singing fish and my burning desire to follow its orders and take it to the river. And frigging drown it.
So I know what it means, but I also don’t know what it means.
Sara’s the one I go to for all advice, but I’ve let that stop where guys are concerned. Probably by now I should have cultivated the kind of relationship with her where we talked about sex or dating or at least guys in general, but I’m just about positive the way to start that shouldn’t be, hey, this one time I almost did your boyfriend’s brother.
And Oliver isn’t just her boyfriend’s brother. Oliver is…well, he’s Oliver! He’s in college, and he cares about philosophy, and he isn’t flashy about things like Dexter is, but I know he got great grades in high school, too. Oliver is somebody. I’m still kind of hanging out hoping my somebodyness kicks in soon. So if I admit to Sara what happened all those months ago, how is she going to take that? I’ve had my whole life to get used to being the average to her stellar, but Sara’s the one person who’s never actually called that out. What if me professing my true and completely dorky feelings for Oliver finally brings that out of her? Ugh, I can’t stand thinking it.
Anyway, even if we were incredibly open about guy stuff, like girls in a yogurt commercial, Sara clearly isn’t in Advice-Giving mode if she is in Skipping-Brunch mode. And I might be the younger sister and I might not be the one who’s got it together, but with big, important life stuff, I want to seem like I know what I’m doing.
Especially when I really, really don’t.
So instead of begging for advice, I help Mom with laundry and watch cartoons with Finn and sort of do my homework and pretend—even if maybe something is up with my family—that Oliver’s text isn’t the only actual thing on my mind.
Chapter Three
Ticknor Day School is not exactly an imposing institution of learning. Sara goes to a different, far more normal school across town, and of course even if I’d never been there, I do watch enough TV to know high schools generally look just a couple steps up from, I don’t know, asylums. Just with fewer padded walls. Harsh lighting and bright white walls and forced school spirit.
I, on the other hand, step into a mural-covered corridor every morning. The hallways are organized by color and painted accordingly, up to and including the lockers, and spare wall space is crowded with flyers and posters and announcements galore. It is amazingly current, too. Today I notice the drama club’s announcements (all right, technically the Ticknor Day Thespian Brigade) have been swapped out with bright red and white posters asking anyone over eighteen to donate blood. As I turn out of the orange wing to the blue one, where my locker resides, it looks like the Fourth of July.
Kaitlyn’s waiting for me, like usual. “Sorry I didn’t text you back yesterday. I just slept a lot and tried to forget all boys exist.”
I lean past her into my locker. “All boys? Even Channing Tatum?”
“Duh, no, of course not him. He’s still on my good side.”
“You look fancy,” I say, because she does, a skirt instead of jeans and a lacy cream-colored shirt that looks like the demure version of the top she wore to Saturday night’s party. “Do you have to go somewhere after school?”
“Some of us just care about how we look, you know.”
I figure that might be a comment on my jeans and faux-vintage mod symbol T-shirt, but I let it go. Really I don’t care very much about how I look, at least at school.
For a split second, I think of asking her what I should do about Oliver’s text, but in order to get that advice, I’d have to tell a bunch of truths that are pretty inconvenient. Or at least embarrassing. “Did you get anywhere with your geometry?”
“Here.” She hands me her notebook. “But look at how I did the work, don’t just copy.”
Of course I’m just going to copy, even though I promise her otherwise. “Thanks. So I was thinking this weekend we could—”
“Hey, Kellie.” My English teacher, Jennifer, walks up to us, bearing this huge grin. That’s right, Jennifer. Our hippie school thinks forcing kids to address their teachers by prefix and last name creates an unfair power dynamic, so we’re all on a first-name basis here. Jennifer’s the kind of person who’s always trying way too hard. No one has ever been that happy to see anyone unless it was someone returning to his great love post-wartime. “Do you have a few minutes before class? I’d love to talk to you.”
I assume this has something to do with the paper and my potential as their new op/ed writer. So even though I would rather spend my last minutes of morning freedom talking to Kaitlyn, I follow Jennifer farther down the blue wing to her classroom.
“Kellie, I wanted to congratulate you,” she says, and I feel myself grinning even though I’d told myself not to care about this too much. “We got
a lot of applications, but the editor and I thought yours was one of the most impressive.”
“I’m the new op/ed writer,” I say like I’m telling myself. I still have to figure out the least dorky way to do this thing, after all.
“Well…not exactly.” She laughs and riffles through the stack of papers on her desk. “Your take on cafeteria selections, well, your style is perfect for us. But not for the op/ed column. We actually already chose a new op/ed writer, so we’ve decided we’re going to add a humor column to the Ticknor Voice. It’ll be the same kind of topics explored in the op/ed column, but with a funnier angle. And you are the perfect writer for it.”
“Um, thanks.” I can’t believe I’m getting called something so impressive as a writer based off of a goofy piece about the quality of chicken nuggets and fruit cocktail. I also can’t believe that my life is changing and I’ve actually achieved something, and all I could think to say was um, thanks. I smile just short of maniacally so Jennifer will know my feelings run deeper.
“Our next meeting’s tomorrow, right after school. See you then.”
“I’ll actually see you in five minutes,” I say. “In class. But, yeah, I’ll be here tomorrow.”
I duck out of the room so I can finish getting my stuff out of my locker, and when I head back into Jennifer’s classroom, it hits me that I’m still smiling.
Mom texts me around lunchtime to go straight to the shop after school. According to the Ticknor Day School Guidebook, we aren’t supposed to have our phones on at all during the day, but every time I’ve gotten caught, I showed whatever teacher had spotted me that every single new message was from Mom and were all like, Please pick up Finn on your way home or, Can you please buy vegan hot dogs after school? or even, I love you, Kellie baby!! and then whichever school official would just smile and say something cheesy about The American Family and Its Beauty, and I’d be off the hook.
So once my last class is dismissed (just like colleges, we don’t believe in bells at Ticknor), I drive to South Grand. I love living in Webster, with its storybook houses and hatred of chain stores and the cute college boys bicycling everywhere who I always pray go to the university down the street and not the seminary next to it. But despite Webster’s many charms, it just can’t compete with South Grand.
Ink is Thicker Than Water (Entangled Teen) Page 2
