by Jamie Shaw
Her words don’t bother me. Maybe a couple days ago they would have, but now, they roll off me. Mike’s touch is still on my skin, like a coating that makes me unbreakable.
“You’re such an idiot, Hailey. We’re on a family share phone plan, for God’s sake. I have the password. I know you never stopped talking to him.” Her voice is pouty and mocking when she says, “Poor little Hailey. Sitting by the phone.”
She laughs loudly, and I sit quietly, wondering how slowly a car would need to be driving in order for a person to jump out of it safely.
“I even know he came home last night.” I glance at her, and she grins wickedly. “He’s famous, Hailey. Word spreads fast. But I decided not to break up your little party. Do you know why?”
Silence answers her, but she presses on.
“Because it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. What, do you think you’re going to grow old with him? Let me guess: white picket fence, golden retriever, two-point-five kids?” She snickers, and steel shutters close over my expression.
“I’m not playing this game anymore, Danica.”
“Oh, this isn’t a game, Hailey. This is war.”
“You’ve lost.”
“Have you forgotten who pays your bills?”
My heart drops, because a small part of me—a very small, very naïve part—had hoped that when I told her about Mike after Thanksgiving dinner, she’d try to understand. She’d be hurt, but maybe the time we’d spent together recently would matter to her. Maybe she’d care about how I felt and what I had to say. Maybe she wouldn’t try to ruin me.
Instead, she’s known about us this whole time. She’s been planning this the whole time. And now, her gloves are off.
“What are your parents going to think when they hear you’ve decided to throw away your education for a boy you barely know?” Danica asks, and I imagine the disappointment on their faces. “What about your brother? What kind of example are you setting?
“I’ll make sure my dad never offers to pay for him to go to school, either,” Danica threatens. “No use throwing away money on the same redneck family twice.”
My blood boils, but I bite my tongue. If I respond to her now, there is going to be more than a war in this car—there is going to be a bloodbath. Literally—because there is a psychopath behind the wheel, and I don’t doubt that she’d kill us both just to spite me.
“Is Mike really worth losing everything for?” she asks, and the answer is yes. Yes, he’s worth it.
Of course I want my brother to go to school, but maybe education in this country will be different in six years. Maybe he’ll have more financial aid options. Maybe my parents will win the lottery. There are lots of maybes, and right now I need to worry about myself. For once, I need to put myself first. I can’t go back to being the girl who wears pajamas for three days straight, skips her classes, and cries herself to sleep at night. My heart isn’t whole without Mike, and I’m not breaking myself into pieces again.
I don’t tell Danica any of that, though. Instead, I stare out that passenger side window.
“What’s he going to think of you when he realizes you’re nothing but a gold digger, Hailey?” Danica presses. “Because that’s the plan, right? Live with him, let him pay all the bills. Maybe he’ll even pay for you to go to school.”
I would never let him do that. Never.
“You have nothing to offer him,” Danica says. “Nothing, Hailey. You’re not even pretty. It’s actually kind of embarrassing. It’s why I didn’t want you at my thirteenth birthday party, you know. My friends all made fun of you that night after you fell asleep in your ratty little sleeping bag, and I convinced them you were adopted so they wouldn’t think we were related.”
I think back to that night, and I remember my tattered purple sleeping bag. I remember the girl I was, with her rebellious curls and her gentle heart. I remember sleeping alone in a corner while the other girls stayed up gossiping, because even back then, I knew I wasn’t one of them. And I want to go back in time, hug that little girl, and tell her to stop caring so much. I want to tell her that in ten years, she’ll meet the love of her life, and he’ll think she’s prettier than all of those girls combined.
And I tell myself that now. I hide the smile that grazes my lips as I remember the way Mike kissed me against his truck this morning. Nothing Danica can say can take that from me—can take him from me—so I stare out the window, thinking of him, as she spends the next half hour trying, and failing, to tear me apart.
When we pull into her parents’ driveway, I immediately try to open my door, but Danica hits the child locks. “Look, Hailey . . .” She sighs dramatically. “I’m willing to give you one more chance. I know you didn’t have any friends as a teenager, so maybe this is your rebellious phase or something, I don’t know. But if you call Mike and break things off, if you tell him he belongs with me and not you, I won’t tell my dad about any of this.”
I just stare at her, and she smiles.
“I’m even going to be nice and give you time to think about it.” She unlocks the doors and gives me one last smile before stepping out. “You have until the end of dinner.”
Chapter 50
If my family’s farmhouse in Indiana is a Best Western, Danica’s family’s house is a Ritz-Carlton. Light brick with white shutters and tall, white columns. A circular driveway made of smooth, white stone. More points on the multi-tiered roof than I care to count. A large balcony off to the side, and a two-story arch framing the entry. Perfectly trimmed hedges, and an oversized autumn wreath hanging on the red front door.
I climb the stairs behind Danica, but before either of us can reach the top, my little brother bursts from the house. “HAILEY!” he shouts, practically running Danica over as he bounds down the porch stairs. His lanky arms wrap tightly around me, and I squeeze him back with all my might. He’s grown since I’ve been gone—by summer, I bet we’ll stand eye to eye.
“Did you miss me?” I ask, trying to recover from the hellish ride here, and Luke makes a noise before hastily letting me go.
“No.”
I smile at him, and he cracks a smile back. “Liar.”
Luke gives up the fight and hugs me again, and I hold him tight until he’s ready to let me go. He glances over his shoulder to see that Danica has gone inside. “Mom made me wear khakis,” he complains with his thick brows knitted and his chunky glasses slipping down his nose. I use my pointer finger to push them back up, and the disdain remains on his face.
“If I have to wear a skirt,” I say of the purple knee-length skirt I’m sporting, “you have to wear khakis.”
“Do you think Aunt Tilly has ever worn jeans?” he asks, stoking another smile out of me. She married my uncle Rick before we were born, but she didn’t grow up on a farm like he or my mom or dad did. She and my uncle met in college, while my mom and dad met when they were kids—in the town they grew up in, that their parents grew up in, that I grew up in.
“I don’t know. You should ask her.”
Luke snorts. “You should see the size of the turkey she’s cooking.”
I sigh as we climb the stairs. “How’s Mom?”
“You know,” Luke says, and he doesn’t need to say more. The turkey my family always cooked for Thanksgiving dinner was just enough to feed our extended family of seven, while the turkey my aunt Tilly cooks is enough to feed an entire town. As soon as we enter the house, I can tell how my mom’s day is going by the defeated look on her face.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her as she squeezes me close. My mom stands only a half inch taller than me, with hair just a little straighter and eyes just a little lighter. She’s wearing a floral lavender dress she bought for a friend’s wedding three years ago, and I pull away to admire it. “Is this new?”
My mom smiles like she knows what I’m doing, and then she pulls me back in for another hug and kiss on the cheek, enveloping me in the familiar rose-scented perfume that she only breaks out for special occasions
. It reminds me of a lifetime of Easters, birthdays, and Christmases all at once. “How was the drive here?”
I groan, still feeling battered by the hour I had to spend listening to Danica trash literally every aspect of my life. My body, my clothes, my dreams. She even tried to make me feel bad about volunteering extra time at the shelter. How dare I spend my free time “playing with dogs” while her dad is working hard to pay all of my bills.
Nevermind the fact that he pays all of her bills too, while she spends her time skipping classes, talking on the phone, and wasting his money on purses and shoes. It took everything in me to not tell her so, but Mike is coming home in nine days, and I’d like to still be alive when he gets here.
“You need something to eat,” my mom decides, hooking her arm around my waist and leading me through the high-ceilinged foyer. The sound of her short black heels echoes off the walls, and in the kitchen, I make a beeline to where my dad is sitting.
He pats my arm as I lean down to hug him from behind, the scent of cherry chewing tobacco in his front shirt pocket reminding me of home. “Tell me something good,” he says, a little tradition between him and me, and I struggle for a moment to think of something.
I’m dating a rock star, Dad. Every father’s dream, I know. I’m dropping out of college for him. I’ll probably have to move in with him and wait tables for a few years. He wants to knock me up with ten of his babies.
I clear my throat, and my dad glances at me over his shoulder.
“Uh,” I stammer as I stand back up, “you know that dog I told you about?”
My dad looks around the kitchen for it as I hug my aunt Tilly and then my uncle Rick. “Hailey Marie, if you expect us to take home another dog—”
“I found her a home!” I interrupt, and my mother lets out an audible sigh of relief.
A chuckle escapes me, because they know me too well. If Mike hadn’t come home last night and offered to keep Phoenix, I would have brought her along today and begged my parents to take her home with them. I wasn’t sure she’d ever adjust to life on the farm, since she shuts down around other animals, but I was hoping maybe the dog whisperer gene runs strong in my family, and my brother could coax her out of her shell.
Luckily, Mike came to my rescue, a white knight on a white plane.
“Thank the Lord,” my dad says, melting back into his high-backed chair. He looks so strange wearing khaki pants and a button-down shirt that’s buttoned the whole way up, but it’s a concession he makes for my mother, and it’s one of the reasons I love him so much.
My uncle Rick chuckles beside Danica at the end of the breakfast bar, looking much more comfortable than my father in his own dress pants and fitted blue button-down shirt. Even in his own home, he looks ready for business, tall and confident with not an ash-brown hair on his head out of place. He smiles at me at my dad’s reaction, and I smile back.
Danica glares at me, and my smile disappears.
“Hailey, your mom tells us you volunteer?” my Aunt Tilly asks as she begins carrying dishes to the dinner table in the other room. My mom assists her, and I jump in to help.
“Yeah,” I answer, trying to ignore the daggers that Danica is glaring into the back of my head while I carry two bowls in my hands and another on my arm. When I turn around to retrieve another dish, she’s picking a marshmallow off the sweet potato casserole, helping herself instead of anyone else. “Ten hours a week count toward my internship, but I help out as much as I can,” I say.
“That’s so sweet of you,” my aunt Tilly replies with a genuine smile on her face as she passes me on her way back to the formal dining room. Her dark hair is pulled back into a low bun with stray bits of hair escaping, and she’s in a skirt-and-blouse combo that probably came from a store like the one Danica took me to—one with crystal chandeliers and fringed stools in the fitting rooms. But her voice is kind, and her words are heartfelt. Even though she’s always been a somewhat flighty woman, I’ve liked her. When Danica and I played princesses when we were kids, Aunt Tilly always made sure we looked and felt like real, true princesses. When we played tea party, she let us use actual china teacups.
As we set the table, Aunt Tilly asks me all of the usual questions about working at the shelter—what I do, if I like it, if it’s hard saying goodbye to the animals when they find their forever homes. I tell her all about it, with everyone else jumping into the conversation where they can, and when we finally sit down to dinner, my aunt turns her questions to Danica. “Have you ever thought about volunteering?”
“At the shelter?” Danica asks with an indignant eyebrow raised.
“Hailey,” her dad says, holding out a serving of turkey for me. Years of explaining that I’m a vegetarian has taught me not to bother bringing up that I’m a vegetarian, so I hold my plate out to accept it.
“Thank you,” I say, and he moves on to my brother as Aunt Tilly answers Danica’s question.
“Yeah. It sounds nice. You could go with Hailey.”
“I’m too busy studying,” Danica says from the seat across from me. “I think I’m going to make dean’s list this semester.”
It’s a flat-out lie. I’ve seen the grades on her exams, and frankly, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t fail out of half her courses just from skipping class so often. But my aunt Tilly doesn’t know that, and when her face lights up, Danica smiles at her. “Really?” my aunt asks, and Danica nods happily.
“I think so. I’ve been working really hard.”
She doesn’t even flinch when she says it. No lip biting. No eye twitch. A chill trickles down my spine, and Danica’s white smile turns on me.
“Hailey’s been a really positive influence. She’s helped me study for a lot of my tests.”
I’m paralyzed by that smile. She might as well have grown fangs.
My mom gives me a proud pat on the back, and the laugh lines in Danica’s cheeks deepen when my mother’s touch startles me.
“That’s wonderful,” my aunt Tilly praises, beaming at us both in turn. “Hailey, will you make dean’s list too?”
“Of course she will,” Danica answers for me. “Hailey is super smart. She barely needs to study to ace all of her exams. Her chemistry teacher even asked if she’d want to be a tutor next semester.”
My food sits untouched on my plate as I stare at Danica, wondering what she’s up to. I told her that bit of information a few weeks ago, but she acted like she didn’t even hear me. Why is she complimenting me? Why is she being nice?
“Wow,” her dad admires. “You must have really impressed him.”
“Yeah . . .” I tell Danica’s suspicious smile.
“Are you going to take him up on the offer?”
My eyes swing to my uncle, and I start stammering. “Oh, uh . . . I don’t know . . . I mean, it’s a volunteer position, so . . .”
“It would probably look good on your résumé,” my dad says, and I turn my eyes to his end of the table. He chews a bite of turkey, waiting for me to say something.
“Yeah.”
“Have you started thinking about where you want to do your senior internship yet?” my uncle asks, and my head swings back and forth as I stutter more answers to his and my dad’s questions.
“What about a specialty?” my aunt Tilly asks. “Have you thought about that yet? Like livestock, marine animals, birds . . .”
“Small animals,” my mom offers from beside me. “Isn’t that what you were thinking, Hailey?”
I nod, and Danica’s voice is pure sunshine when she says, “Hailey’s wanted to be a small animal vet since she saved that little kitten at Patoka Lake.”
Everyone at the table chuckles as they remember. I’d found the tiny kitten in some tall grass, and I spent hours searching for its mom before I finally brought it back to our tent with dirt and tears smeared on my face. It wouldn’t stop crying, and I thought for sure it was dying without its mommy. My parents assured me it would be okay, but before I handed it over to the nice people at the
nearest animal shelter, my six-year-old self demanded to talk to the veterinarian on staff, who assured me that the kitten was in good health and would be adopted in no time at all.
“Little Oliver Twist,” my mom recalls with a laugh, remembering the name I gave it, and Aunt Tilly smiles at me.
“You were always such a sweet little girl, Hailey.” She squeezes Danica’s shoulder. “You both were.”
“Hailey’s going to make a great veterinarian,” Danica praises. “It’s what she was born to do.”
Everyone agrees, and guilt creeps into the pit of my stomach. They’re all so proud of me, of the things I’ve done and the things they believe I’ll do. And I’m going to let them down, every single one of them.
I frown at the turkey on my plate, and when I lift my eyes, I realize Danica hasn’t touched her food either. She’s just smiling at me. Smiling brightly, happily, triumphantly—and it dawns on me, what she’s doing.
She’s trying to make me remember how much being a vet means to me, how proud everyone is. She thinks it will make me forget how much I love Mike . . .
She has no idea how determined I am to have both. My dreams are nothing without the warm way he smiled at me in his living room this morning, the scorching way he kissed me against his truck.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” I announce, watching Danica’s eyes flash with warning.
“Hailey—”
“Really?” my mom practically gasps. “Who?”
All eyes are on me—my mom’s, my dad’s, my brother’s, my uncle’s and aunt’s. And Danica’s, burning a hole through me.
I look at my mom and my dad, hoping they can see how much this man they’ve never met means to me. “I’m in love with him.”
“Who is it?” my mom asks again, and this time, I look at my aunt and my uncle before my eyes settle on my seething cousin.