If I'm Being Honest

by Emily Wibberley

  “Oh, hey, Cameron,” she replies brightly, fluffing her hair in the mirror next to the window. “Is it okay if I borrow your dress?”

  I consider asking her to change, but she’ll likely wave away my request with a muttered It’s just a dress, Cameron. It’s not the point anyway. I drop my bag on the kitchen counter and face her. “Where are you going?” I repeat.

  “PTA meeting,” she answers brightly.

  I let out a relieved breath. As long as she’s not going to a work function. I drop down onto the couch and reach for the remote. “Since when do you care about the PTA?”

  “Since Deb texted me that your father is on campus talking to the board.”

  “What?” I twist around. I was on campus an hour ago. It doesn’t seem possible my dad and I were in the same place and I didn’t know.

  Mom checks her phone and stows it in a sparkly gold clutch. The magnitude of her outfit choice hits me. She’s dressed like she’s going to a bar or a high school reunion—somewhere old people try to pretend they’re twenty-five—not a PTA meeting at an elite private school. I know what those parents will be wearing, and they won’t look kindly on my mom for treating our illustrious campus like a singles’ night.

  “There was some donors’ meeting, and now the board is staying to sit in on the PTA meeting,” Mom replies, unaware of whatever expression of horror I’m wearing. She grabs her keys and heads for the door. “I’ll see you later tonight. Maybe,” she adds with a wink I immediately try to obliterate from my memory.

  Dad’s here.

  I’m out of my seat before she’s reached the door. “Wait. I’m coming, too.”

  Mom’s mouth twitches into a frown. “Cameron, I don’t think students are typically invited to these.”

  I level her a dry look. “Are you even a member of the PTA?”

  She meets my gaze, then holds open the door. “Point taken.”

  * * *

  Mom starts collecting raised eyebrows and backward glances before we’re out of the parking lot.

  To her credit, she doesn’t wither. Not even when a group of mothers in pantsuits and perfectly coordinated yoga outfits smirk and whisper as we walk by. I don’t have the mental capacity to worry about it.

  Dad’s here.

  Dad’s here.

  Dad’s here.

  The thought is an eclipse. Everything disappears behind it. We walk through campus, following the PTA signs pointing us toward the library, every step bringing us closer.

  I try to remember when I saw him last. The beginning of summer, I think. He came out for a week, and we had dinner downtown and discussed my future. He mentioned his firm’s internship and told me I’d only be eligible if I took an advanced economics course. I grasped on to the idea. I knew it was the closest I’d ever receive to an invitation to be part of his world.

  He and my mom didn’t get along that trip. I look at her now, how she’s brimming with eagerness at the outside hope of a date with him. She cried for three days when he left in June, and it’s as if all of that’s forgotten, swept aside by something as small as the mention of his name in a text message from Deborah Richmond.

  Then again, the last time he and I spoke he told me I was pathetic, and here I am, stupidly excited to see him again. I guess my mom and I have that in common.

  I don’t expect our relationship will be any different this visit. I can almost guarantee he won’t be kind to my mom in front of the school’s donors. He probably won’t be kind to me, either. Maybe if I get the internship, get into UPenn, maybe then he’ll see me for who I am.

  Still, he’s my dad, and he’s here. I can’t help hurrying my step.

  We walk into the library, packed with parents and teachers.

  I pick him out of the crowd immediately. His hair is immaculately cut, if grayer than I remembered. He’s in a small group with the headmaster and a couple members of Student Government. Brad’s there, to his right. Dad holds himself higher than everybody else. He’s not taller than the rest of them, he just has a way of elevating his posture and squaring his shoulders in his perfectly tailored suit.

  My mom grabs a seat directly in his eyeline. I know her play. She’s going to pretend she’s here for the PTA meeting, just like usual, and running into him—dressed the way she is—is a coincidence.

  I don’t care about her plan. Unhesitating, I walk forward toward where he’s talking with the group. He says something, and everybody laughs, which throws me for a second. There are plenty of things I know him for, but humor’s not one of them.

  I get a couple steps closer, and Brad notices me. “Hey, Cameron,” he says, pleasant surprise comingling with curiosity in his voice. I guess that answers the question of whether he’s giving me the silent treatment like Morgan and Elle.

  Then my dad faces me. I falter for words. He grins, a grin he’s hardly ever given me, warm and intent. It’s incapacitating. The rush of emotions roots me in place. Surprise, well-worn wariness, and an awful, irrepressible strain of exuberance.

  “Cameron!” he says, wrapping me in an unexpected sideways hug. “I’m glad you could make it.” He smiles, and I catch the careful angle of his phrasing. It must sound to everyone else like he’s invited me.

  I can’t help it. I mirror his smile despite the resentment mounting in me and the yearning that he had invited me.

  The headmaster asks Lisa Gramercy a question. I face away from the group and say to my dad under my breath, “How long are you in town?”

  “Not long,” he replies. There’s the terseness I remember. “I leave tomorrow morning.” His eyes sweep the room, and finding my mom, he frowns. He pulls me a couple feet from the group. “What is she doing here? Why is she dressed like we’re in a nightclub?” he demands.

  It stings to hear. Even though I was just thinking something close, it’s inexplicably worse to hear it from him.

  “She’s not going to make a scene, is she? The board’s here. It’s bad enough she’s come dressed like this, but—”

  Brad interrupts him. “Mr. Bright, the meeting’s about to start. I’m sorry, Cameron,” he says to me. “The headmaster said only Student Government can sit in.”

  I nod numbly. Brad cuts me an apologetic glance, and it’s somehow worse that he understands he’s ousting me from a rare opportunity to talk to my dad.

  “Of course, Bradley,” my dad says, and just like that, his generous grin comes back. “Weren’t you interning with Whitestone last summer?” He faces Brad, and I’m cut off from the conversation.

  “I was,” Brad says. I remember him complaining every day over the summer on our group text about having to work with a venture capital firm when he wanted to go into law.

  “Job like that for a kid your age, you’re going places!” Dad claps him on the back. “We’ll get coffee the next time I’m in town, discuss your career.”

  I blink sharply. He’s never this friendly, not ever. I catch the way Brad’s face brightens. He’s only eager because he doesn’t know who my dad really is, I remind myself, fighting down jealousy. I want to tell him it’s fake, every bit of it—my dad’s charm, his camaraderie, his attention to personal detail.

  Or maybe it’s not.

  That’s the thought I really don’t want to be left alone with, to wrestle in the confines of my immaculate bedroom or outrun on the streets outside my house. That he’s not dismissive of and too busy for everyone else. That it’s only me he resents.

  He and Brad head for their seats.

  I grasp on to the one chance I have to remind him I’m worthwhile. “Dad, do you know when your company will tell me whether I got the internship?”

  “I’m not in charge of recruiting, Cameron,” he says distractedly.

  I try one final time. “Well, do you want to get dinner when this is over?”

  “I can’t. I’m only in town for the night,
and I have to get drinks with a couple clients.” He takes his seat without even a backward glance.

  I watch him, disbelieving. He could have pretended. He could have said, “Next time.” I don’t understand how he can invite a boy he hardly knows to coffee while he can’t even fake wanting to have an evening with his own daughter.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom working clumsily through the chairs, trying to get a seat closer to him. I remember the meeting’s going to start in a couple minutes. I have to go, and it’s kind of hard to breathe in here. I leave the library, not about to force myself to watch whatever plays out between the two of them.

  The night is welcomingly cool, but it’s not enough to ease the hurt fury roiling under my skin. I don’t know what I expected. He can come to my school’s board meetings, can chat up Brad and the headmaster, but he can’t even spare me a minute, much less an evening. I wouldn’t have even known he was in town if freaking Deb hadn’t texted my mom. I hope Mom does make a scene. I hope she embarrasses him.

  But it’ll be different when I get into Wharton.

  I recognize the faint voice whispering comfortingly into my ear. I hold on to the words. Unlike the night, they calm the bad blood coursing through me. If I can prove I’m like him—if I can get into UPenn and get a job like Brad’s—my father will see me for who I am.

  He has to.

  Thirty-Four

  I WAIT ON THE CURB IN FRONT of school, hugging my elbows in the November wind. I wish I’d driven myself here and could drive home. Instead, I have to wait, wondering how long my mom’s going to linger in hopes it’ll be different this time and it’ll be a PTA meeting where he’ll finally get down on one knee. She’s imagining a Cinderella story twenty years late, my Homecoming dress for a gown and a library of parents and teachers for a ball.

  I want to text her to ask whether she’s going to leave the meeting early, except I know it’ll be futile. She won’t leave until Dad does. She definitely won’t reply if she’s preoccupied, or if I’m bothering her, or—

  “Need a ride?”

  I glance up from my shoes. In the school’s semicircular driveway, with the engine running, waits a black beaten-up sedan. Paige peers out the open passenger’s window, her neck craned from the driver’s seat.

  “What are you doing at school this late?” I ask.

  Paige shrugs. “Didn’t want to go home. Nobody was at Mordor because Charlie and Abby have chess club.” She nods in my direction, presumably noticing my posture of cold-resistance. “I’m not going to wait here forever, Bright. You want a ride?”

  I give school a backward glance. If I keep waiting I’ll have to contend with whatever versions of my parents come out of there. My mom, flirtatious and triumphant or depressed and diminutive. My dad, cunningly charming or cold and distant.

  I walk purposefully to Paige’s car and open the passenger door.

  “Thanks,” I say, closing the door behind me. Paige pulls out of the parking lot. Neither of us speaks while she drives for a couple minutes on quiet tree-lined streets until she turns east onto Wilshire toward my house. Even though she’s only driven me home once before, the night of Rocky Horror, she doesn’t ask for directions.

  “What were you doing at school this late?” she asks finally.

  I face the window determinedly. I really don’t want to discuss it. Even with Elle, I never went into detail about the particulars of my parents’ relationship. There’s no point. Being vulnerable would only open me up to unwanted pity and false reassurances and force me to wallow in my feelings. It’s like crying—useless.

  “My mom’s at the PTA meeting,” I say. It’s not an answer, and I hope I’ve said it definitively enough Paige knows I don’t want to give one.

  We wait for the light to change, both saying nothing. I move my foot and bump something heavy on the floor. I nudge aside what I realize is a book, America’s History, the junior-year AP US History textbook. There’s a distinct possibility the book is Paige’s and has remained in the passenger seat under the dash for a whole year, but it’s probably Brendan’s.

  For a moment I’m grateful Paige was alone at school tonight and I don’t have to contend with my feelings for Brendan, and then I realize what it means Brendan’s probably up to.

  “Where’s your brother?” I ask masochistically.

  Paige eyes me, on predictably high alert. “SAT tutoring,” she says gingerly, likely planning how she’s going to trap me into a confession of my ardent love for him.

  “I can’t believe your parents have him in tutoring—and on a Friday night—when he has a practically perfect score,” I reply, determined to thwart her efforts. I remember their dad’s expression while he lectured Brendan, his uncompromising demeanor, the way he appeared to believe it was to Brendan’s benefit. I wonder if Paige got the same treatment. I can’t imagine her, with her shaved head and her vampire posters, just going along with her parents’ pressure. “Did you get a perfect score?”

  She laughs derisively. “Of course not. I’m kind of flattered you think I’m that smart, honestly.”

  I furrow my brow. “Why do they have Brendan doing all this tutoring if they didn’t for you?”

  Paige goes quiet, her expression growing stony. I face the window again, understanding I’ve trespassed into territory she doesn’t want to cover. It’s none of my business if she doesn’t want to discuss problems with her parents.

  “Brendan’s always been the gifted one,” she says quietly. I turn back to her, having not expected an answer. Paige watches the road, a distance in her eyes. She goes on. “It was his kindergarten teacher who told my parents Brendan was special. The very next day, my dad decided Brendan was going to go to MIT, and I became the spare. It’s not like he forgot I existed. I just . . . mattered less.”

  I nod. “You couldn’t be enough,” I say, hearing the echo of words that have run through my head a thousand times.

  “Exactly,” Paige says. We come up to a red light. She studies me for a moment, her eyes no longer distant. “I don’t envy Brendan. I know he has it really hard, with my dad breathing down his neck every day while my mom says nothing. But I just wish that my dad would notice me, that he’d pay me a fraction of the attention he does Brendan, even if that attention is only him lecturing me and forcing me to study.”

  The light changes, and Paige returns her eyes to the road. We pass La Brea and Highland, a blur of streetlights and illuminated signs.

  “It’s why I screw off,” Paige continues hollowly. “It’s why I dye my hair, work on costumes until one in the morning, get shitty grades, and come home drunk from a nightclub where I hooked up with a guy I don’t even like. Because I got into the same prep school as Brendan, and it didn’t matter. I could get Brendan’s GPA, Brendan’s test scores, Brendan’s college acceptances, and it wouldn’t fucking matter. I get my parents’ attention the way I have to.”

  I look at Paige, whose eyes remain on the cars crossing the intersection in front of us. I knew what Brendan was going through with his parents, but Paige? I had no idea how much we had in common.

  “Well, that’s dumb,” I say, my voice thick, “because you’re awesome.”

  She laughs, wiping a tear from her cheek, and pulls up to the curb outside my apartment building. I glance up at my dark bedroom window, my hand on the car door. I want to acknowledge what Paige’s confided in me. To tell her I’m touched she’s allowed me to see this side of her and I won’t betray her friendship—a friendship I’m grateful for every day. I open my mouth to thank her for what she’s told me, for giving me more chances than I deserve, for being there for me when I didn’t even know how much I needed her.

  Instead, I say, “My dad showed up at school tonight.”

  Paige blinks, then turns off the engine and gives me her full attention. My heart pounds painfully in my chest. Telling her everything is terrifying, but I’m
going to. It’s the right way to show her she’s important to me. And maybe her bravery has lifted my own. I take my hand off the door.

  “Doesn’t he live in New York or something?” she asks carefully.

  “Philadelphia.” I blow out a breath. “He didn’t even tell me he was coming to town. My mom found out from a friend who saw him.”

  “Shit, Cameron. That’s messed up.” Her eyes are round, her eyebrows raised.

  “It is, right?” I tentatively meet her gaze, genuinely needing her confirmation to believe it.

  “Yes,” she says deliberately. “It is.”

  Her words unlock something in me, and suddenly I can’t get my own out fast enough. “It’s just, he’s not nice to my mom or even to me. But tonight, he was nice to everyone else.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Paige cuts in quickly. “People put on appearances in front of strangers. It has nothing to do with you.”

  I nod, unreasonably relieved to hear her voice what I’d been desperately trying to convince myself was true. I shift in my seat, facing her completely. “I don’t know why, but I still try. I still show up hoping he’ll want to see me. I send him my grades, my test scores—I do everything I can to talk to him. Is there something wrong with me?” My voice is quiet, but I force myself not to hide in the shadows coming through the window. “I know he’s awful. I know it isn’t okay when he calls my mom pathetic, but I still look at him and—and I want to be him. Because he’s successful and he achieves his goals, and my mom . . . doesn’t. It’s why I’m such a bitch, I guess.”

  Paige’s mouth softens with concern. “There’s nothing wrong with you. He’s your dad. Of course you want his approval, no matter what kind of guy he is.” She pauses, and I think she’s said everything she’s going to until her lips curve lightly upward. “And you’re not a bitch, Cameron,” she adds.

  I fix my eyes on the textbook on the floor, unable to meet hers. “But I am. Did you forget what I said to you at Ska¯ra?”