“You mean he hasn’t let you in yet,” Danyella corrects, lifting up a single finger for emphasis. “Not yet. Give it time.”
I sigh and help her gather the costumes into a pile, dreading the idea of leaving the theater. Parrish is acting even colder than usual—didn’t think it was possible, but the guy’s a pro—and anyway, the only time we’ve had together is in the car on the way to school with Kimber present. There’s nothing I can say around her. Somehow, I know that if she finds out that her brother and I were making out, she’ll kick sibling convention out the window and go running to Tess to blab.
There’s that, and then there’s Chasm.
Chasm.
He was smiling and laughing with a group of friends in the hallway today—most of them girls. Parrish is that cold, rich, King Sloth dickhead that everyone secretly lusts after. Chasm is the smarty-pants sweetheart that everyone’s openly in love with. The longer I’m here, the more I see it. That slouchy bad boy thing is all an act. He’s like, aggressively good-natured.
And, I made out with Parrish and he saw. He saw his best friend touching my boob.
Danyella picks up the box with a sigh, and I reach out to fix her glasses for her. They fall off her nose about thirty times a day, and she just pops the lenses back in place. It drives me insane. I think she’s too in her head to care about smudged or broken glasses.
“You’re blushing again,” she says, and I look down at the few undone buttons at the top of my shirt. It’s quite clear that my boobs are red again. “Is this about the Parrish thing?”
“It just happened yesterday,” I murmur, just before Lumen breaks into the theatre like she’s in a teen movie from the early 2000s. The whole world should slow down and “Yoo Hoo” by Imperial Teen should be playing. I’m a Y2K expert, thanks to Saffron. The only mother-daughter things she really liked to do with me and Maxine—on the rare occasions she did anything with us—was watch old movies and shop.
Which, you know, is better than Tess even with minimal effort.
“What are you up to, my bitches?” Lumen asks, collapsing into one of the theater chairs and crossing her legs at the ankle. Her other friends look around the place like they’ve never seen it before—and that they think that’s a good thing. They seem to be as afraid of Lumen as Kimber is of Parrish, though, and keep their mouths shut.
“Using bitches as a companionable term doesn’t erases decades of its use as a misogynistic insult. I’m sorry, but I don’t support the repurposing of hate-filled words.” Danyella sets the box down on the table at the front of the room, but as usual, Lumen ignores her.
“Come to our Young Republicans meeting today,” she begs, and Danyella throws her a dark look. “Not you, obviously. I know you’re a left-wing nut.”
“And you’re a right-wing nut, what’s the difference?” Danyella retorts, labelling the box Useful Scraps with a Sharpie. I’m officially in the drama club now, with the title of ‘extra hand’. That is, someone with absolutely zero skills but who’s allowed to participate anyway. Thank god for that: this is the only activity Tess will allow me to do after school and only because she reluctantly agreed that extracurriculars look good on college apps. “And you know Dakota falls about dead center. She doesn’t want to come with you.”
“I hear you nearly fucked Parrish again yesterday,” Lumen blurts, eyes glittering as she leans forward. Her girlfriends—there are too many, and they’re like a revolving door anyway, coming and going so I don’t know their names—titter and gossip behind their hands.
With a groan, I sink down in one of the theater chairs and let my head fall back, eyes closed. As soon as I walked into the building today, everyone was staring at me like it was my first day all over again. I got a lot of high fives though, and some serious nods, acknowledgements of my newfound clout. How this happened, I’m not sure. I guess telling a bunch of people to fuck off on a live feed, and then demanding a famous novelist eat a bag of dicks will do that to a person.
“Is that what I said when I texted you?” I grumble, wishing she’d keep this to herself. Unfortunately, everything of interest that happens is something Lumen believes should be shared with the world. “I said that Chasm walked in on Parrish and me making out.”
“Should I be jealous?” Lumen asks, standing up and then moving over to sit on my lap. For the life of me I can’t decide if she actually has a crush on me or is just using me. She throws her arms around my neck and leans in close. “Parrish doesn’t stand a chance if I turn my full charm on.”
“Is that so?” a voice asks from behind me, and I let out an embarrassing shriek. Lumen smirks at the newcomer; clearly she could see him come in the theater through the back door.
“Hello Parrish,” she drawls, leaning close and nuzzling her cheek against mine. “Did you come to see what my girlfriend and I were up to?”
“Doesn’t daddy hate lesbians?” he asks, but Lumen just laughs.
“The whole world hates lesbians—they’re the only group on the planet that doesn’t need, want, or care about dick. Unfortunately for me, I’m bisexual. If I could choose my sexuality, I guarantee you that I’d have picked ‘lesbian’. Besides, what my dad doesn’t know, doesn’t hurt him.” She presses a sweet-smelling kiss to my cheek before standing up.
What Parrish is doing in the theater today is beyond me. Did he come looking for me?
I turn around to glance at him, but he may as well be in a lecture hall listening to the mating habits of banana slugs. That’s how bored he is right now.
“Hey, have you heard that song by Ashnikko? “Slumber Party?”” Lumen asks innocently, and then she makes a V with her fingers and sings the line about … well, it’s about giving someone else’s girlfriend cunnilingus on her couch.
This, at least, gives Parrish a slight tightening of the face that tells me he does care at least a little.
“Are you here to apologize to Dakota for abandoning her yesterday?” Danyella asks blatantly, and my face pales. Parrish turns slowly to look at her, like she’s something small that needs to be squashed. To be fair, he looks at most people that way. He must decide that arguing with Danyella is too much, reverting back to his lazy sloth behavior as he turns back to me.
“Your boxes arrived. Tess wants you to come home early today to deal with it.” He looks at me like he didn’t say all sorts of confusing things to me, about Chasm, about Lumen … I snatch my book bag off the ground, knocking loose the metal heart pin. With a sigh, I pick it up and hook it back to the strap. Considering the way Tess has been acting, I should just throw it out.
Too bad I’m not that sort of person.
“You’re such a coward,” Danyella murmurs, but Parrish pretends not to hear her.
“Since you’re grounded again, I guess I won’t see at my house on Friday?” Lumen calls out, but I just turn around and toss her an overexaggerated grin.
“Don’t count on that—there’s always a chance for escape.” I salute her and then, because I know Parrish is watching, blow her a kiss.
“Is it really okay to pretend to be a lesbian now?” he snaps coldly as I join him on his way out the theater doors. I cast a look his direction, hefting my bag up my shoulder.
“Did I say I was a lesbian? I’m bisexual. About a two on the Kinsey scale, you colossal dickhead.”
He grits his teeth and ignores me, but when I reach out to grab hold of his arm—I just want to talk—he reacts like I’ve gut punched him. Parrish tears his arm away from me and stumbles back, breathing so hard he looks like he’s on the tail end of a marathon run.
“Don’t touch me,” he chokes out, dropping his bag to the ground to rub at his arm. You’d think I just backhanded him or something.
“Why not?” I demand, stepping forward. Parrish moves away from me until it’s his back that’s pressed into a bank of lockers. In an echo of what he did to me the night of the sleepover, I slam my palms against the metal on either side of him. Luckily, this part of the school empties quick af
ter classes get out. There’s no one around to see us. “Look at me.”
The words aren’t a suggestion, more of a demand. Instead of following it however, Parrish tries to duck under my arm and escape.
I step in closer, until our bodies are pressed tightly together. Pish. You should see the way this boy shudders, like I’ve dumped a jar of spiders on his head.
“Let go of me.”
Another demand, but from him this time.
“Why should I?” I counter, pressing harder against him. My breasts squish against the front of his chest as I rise up on my tiptoes and try to get him to look me in the eye. “Aren’t you the king of the school? You sure act like you are. Well, tough guy, why do you keep giving me this hot-cold act?”
He turns his beautiful eyes down to mine, and I’m struck once again by the color. Toasted coconut flecked with gold, a swirl of copper and chocolate and espresso. And that hair of his … why does it have to look so soft, like it’s begging to be tousled and touched and tugged on?
“Why?” he echoes, like I am the crazy person here. “Why?” Parrish grabs my arms from the outside, yanking on them and trying to get me to drop them by my sides. Only, he doesn’t have an exceptionally good grip in that position, and I’m much stronger than I look. “Are you insane? Why do you think?”
“Because of the stepbrother thing?” I clarify, and he laughs at me.
“Yeah, because of the stepsister thing.” He gives another last-ditch effort to shove my arms down, and I bend my elbows suddenly. What happens then is that he’s able to push my arms down, but also that we end up violently slamming even closer together.
“Why did you ask me to forget about Chasm?” I whisper, feeling this nauseous twisting in my belly at the mention of Chas’ name. Somehow, someway, I can’t stop thinking about Chasm. Or Parrish. Chasm and Parrish. “Why did you ask me to stop dating Lumen?”
This time, Parrish clenches his jaw and looks away. I have the strongest urge to grab his tie and yank his face down to mine. I can feel my heart thundering—no surprise—but I can also feel his heartbeat through his shirt. It, too, is racing like a herd of galloping horses. See, I told you: we are into each other.
“Are you really into her? Her personality is basically the opposite of yours, but I think you’d be a good match anyway. You should marry Lumen and inherit her empire with her.” Parrish keeps his gaze turned away from me, and I want to just goddamn scream.
“That’s how you feel, huh?” I ask, releasing him and stepping back from the lockers. “Fine then. I’ll keep dating Lumen. Since you don’t give a single fuck anyway. You’re probably right: we make a good pair, an opposites attract sort of thing. I can keep her grounded; she can break me out of my shell.”
I shove off of him and storm down the hallway toward the parking garage. Kimber’s waiting just outside, scowling and tapping her foot.
“Seriously? Mom’s bringing my new phone home today. I need to get back and check my messages.”
I ignore her, storming past and pretending like I don’t know she was on her iPad all night, checking those very same messages. As if she’s missed out on anything by not having a phone for three seconds. I wonder what she told Tess about the last phone? The one that Parrish smashed the same way he seems intent on smashing my heart into pieces …
Anyway, I don’t care. My furniture is here, my clothes, my things. It’ll be a much-needed dose of home.
Even if home was always a lie.
Even if.
My furniture is waiting for me in the space pod that Tess calls my room. My boxes, too. The movers she hired kept everything padded during shipping, and stripped it down for me before I even got home. They stacked my boxes neatly in the walk-in closet that I haven’t yet taken advantage of yet.
It’ll be interesting, seeing all my plain, hand-me-down clothes hanging in it.
“How was school?” a voice asks from behind me. I don’t need to turn to know that it’s Tess.
Tess.
The last person in the world I want to see right now.
She doesn’t seem to know that she should take my silence as a hint, moving into the room to look at the mix of antique and handmade furniture from my grandma. The hideous bed, dresser, and nightstand that were in here before are gone. Thank the fucking universe.
Tess sits down on the edge of my bed, and when I glance back, I see that she’s in her ‘messy author’ uniform, the one that I like so much better than the Prada heels and the Armani suit jackets. She looks human right now, which makes all of her bullshit easier to swallow somehow.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me right now,” she hazards, picking up a picture frame from my wooden nightstand. It’s a family photo from last year, one with Saffron, Maxine, my grandparents, and me in it. Her face twitches, and I can see that it’s taking a real effort on her part not to say anything. “But I wanted to give you your new phone.”
I see a white box sitting on the bed beside her, but how can I get excited about that? A new phone with a new number and all sorts of tracking devices and parent spy software? Gross.
“Thanks.” I notice that the box contains an iPhone. Ugh. Why do pretentious rich people always love Apple products so much? My last phone was a Fairphone, the most ethical and responsibility created smartphone that Maxine could find. Oh well. In the scope of things, it isn’t such a huge deal, is it?
No, the phone isn’t a big deal, but the way Tess trashed it? That was. Incredibly disrespectful and selfish. So, here I am, without a phone or a TV or a PlayStation or a laptop. All I have is my academy-issued iPad which is locked down like San Quentin. I tried to look up a red-footed booby (this is a bird, by the way) to help Benjamin with his science report last night, and it gave me an inappropriate content warning for the word ‘booby’.
“Dakota,” Tess begins, and I pause, holding a stack of clothes in my hands. When I first walked in here after school, I could smell home. And oh my god, oh my god, I can’t even begin to describe how much I missed it. There was the scent of pine mixed with the gardenia laundry detergent that my grandpa likes, a hint of sawdust and just a whiff of Nevaeh’s body spray. I won’t lie: I cried. I went into my bathroom, and I sat on the toilet, and I just cried for about thirty minutes straight.
“It’s Dakota now?” I ask, which really does sound bitchy as hell, but I can’t seem to help it.
There’s a long moment of silence as I carry the clothes over to the dresser and put them in one of the center drawers. My stuff looks so weird in here, a total disconnect from the space-age light fixtures, the wall of windows, and the cold white walls. But at least I feel like I’ve gotten a small part of myself back.
“I’m happy to call you Dakota, so long as you behave in an appropriate manner.”
I grit my teeth against the grating nature of her comment. Behave in an appropriate manner? You mean, just sit there and listen to her call my grandparents monsters on live TV? Or thank her for smashing my phone to pieces in the sink?
I promised I would try here. I promised. I fucking promised. To be quite honest, that’s the only reason I’m still here, that I’m putting in any effort at all. Because my family asked me to, because I might put my grandparents and Saffron at risk if I don’t appease Tess somewhat.
Because I am still a petty teenager sometimes, I unwrap a large, framed photo, grab a nail and hammer from my toolbox (my grandma always preached that it was important for women to learn to fix things themselves) and purposely head over to the pristine bit of white wall between my dresser and the windows.
“Dakota,” Tess starts, and I’m not sure what, exactly, she’s going to say, because I start hammering the nail into the perfect wall. I can practically feel her cringing behind me as I check the stability of it, and then hang the photo of me, Maxine, and Saffron right there in plain view.
“Yes?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder innocently.
Tess sighs, reaching up to adjust her glasses. Her hair is in a messy bun,
tendrils hanging loosely around her face. One thing I’ve noticed about authors is how one minute, they act like they own the world. The next, they’re crying and talking about how their work is garbage and everyone hates them. At least, that’s what I heard when I sneaked down to the kitchen last night for a snack, Tess crying to Paul with her office door cracked. She looks like she’s still in the second mode right now, the crying one.
“That’s a beautiful photo,” she says, surprising me. I accidentally drop the hammer on the floor I’m so startled, leaving a dent in the bamboo. Tess blanches slightly, reaching up to tug on the neckline of her sweater with a single finger. The logo on the front of the sweater is from some author event in Australia; I remember following her on Insta, just so I wouldn’t miss the photos she was posting.
Feels like a million years ago, to be honest.
“Thanks,” I reply belatedly, moving onto a box of books and pulling them out in fat stacks to line the bookshelf I got at an antique show.
“We could get you a Kindle, if you don’t like reading on your phone,” Tess suggests gently which is nice, but also shows how little she knows me.
“I enjoy print,” I tell her, looking up and then feeling my cheeks blush a bit. “Also, these were Saffron’s books when she was a kid. I found them in the attic, and she said I could have them.”
“Maybe that was before … all of this?” Tess suggests gently as I narrow my eyes. “If they’re keepsakes, she might want them back now.”
“Because she had no idea I wasn’t her bio daughter until recently?” I quip, continuing to unpack the books. There’s an entire set of first edition Harry Potter paperbacks in here, and I smile, touching the spines. Millennials fucking love Harry Potter, don’t they? I have fond memories of Saffron reading these to me as a kid during this rare two-month stint where she lived with us. “She gave these to me, knowing what she’d done. Besides, a gift is something you give without asking for anything in return.”
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