Leading Lines

by Chantel Guertin

  Why is David calling Mom? Is this a random one-off or are they talking now? “Was that my phone?” Mom calls down the stairs. A creak escapes my lips when I open my mouth. I clear my throat, wondering what to say. My heart’s pounding. But then I march up the stairs. She’s in her room, sorting through her closet.

  I toss her phone on the bed.

  “It was David Westerly. You’re talking to David Westerly?” I practically spit out the words.

  She turns, holding a dark purple sweater. She glances at the phone and then back to me. “Why are you using that tone?”

  “So yes?”

  She sighs. “Yes.”

  “Were you going to tell me?”

  “It wasn’t a secret,” she says slowly. “You and I haven’t exactly been chatty lately. And he’s been friends with your father for years.”

  “Mom, you can stop the charade now. He’s my birth father, and you pretended you never liked him. You didn’t talk to him for my entire life and now you are? Or have you been talking to him all these years and I just didn’t know?”

  “No, of course not. David was your father’s friend. We made the decision that that would be the relationship to uphold. Pippa, after what he did, I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  “So why now?”

  “He called after your father died, and every once in a while he calls to check on me. While you were in New York, he let me know how you were doing a few times.”

  “If you wanted to know how I was doing you could’ve just asked me.”

  “Sweetie, why are you so upset? I haven’t told him that you know he’s your father.”

  “He’s not my father. I don’t want David in my life. I don’t need David in my life. And as far as I can tell, you’ve been doing fine without him all this time. I don’t get why you need to talk to him now.” Only, as soon as I say it, it dawns on me. This isn’t even about me. What if this is about her? What if now that Dad is gone, she’s thinking, What if? What if she wants to sub in David for Dad?

  She sits down on the bed and pats a spot on the floral comforter beside her but I shake my head. It’s not the only thing shaking.

  “Have you given any more thought to telling him?” she asks. “I think he has a right not to be the only one left in the dark.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t believe you’re still going on about this. I knew I never should’ve told you.”

  She looks like I’ve slapped her. “You wouldn’t have kept that from me.”

  “You kept it from me.” I cross my arms over my chest, then mumble, “I wish I had.”

  She stands. “Pippa, you don’t mean that.” Her voice is annoyingly calm, but she looks like she might cry, and it makes me crazy—I’m the one who gets to be upset here.

  I throw my hands up. “Are you kidding? Of course I do. If I’d never told you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We could just go on like we were.”

  “Pretending.”

  “Exactly. Pretending like you did for 16 years.” Our eyes lock. “Lying to me.”

  “I—we—did it to protect you. And to protect your relationship with your father.”

  “You lied to me.” I move toward the door and grip the round handle. “David doesn’t care if I know he’s my father. He doesn’t want to be my father. Also he’s a total womanizing man-whore. I can’t believe you ever fell for him.”

  “Pippa, stop it. You know he said—”

  “I don’t want to know what he said.”

  “You have a choice: either you can tell him or I—”

  “That’s not a choice, it’s an ultimatum.” I storm out of her room, slamming the door behind me.

  Worst Saturday night ever.

  CHAPTER 8

  Later in the week, Principal Forsythe announces to the school that because the alumni events fall on the same weekend as Valentine’s Day, there’ll be only one dance—for everybody. Most people think it’s a terrible idea—old people like my mom at the same dance as us?—but it means that Dylan will be at the dance. Our first school dance together as BF-GF. The other part of his announcement: alumni bands are invited to play a three-song set onstage in the gym.

  “I think there are limited spots, so you should sign RFBR up soon,” I tell Dylan, referring to his old band Rules for Breaking the Rules. We’re sitting on the basement couch watching TV after school. Mom is upstairs in the kitchen. We’ve barely said two words to each other all week.

  Dylan shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe.”

  I once read if you say “Yes” but you shake your head no, subconsciously you’re saying no. It’s as though you can lie, but your body language tells the truth.

  He flicks the remote.

  “Maybe?” I press.

  “Those guys don’t want to play some dumb high school dance.”

  “It’s not a high school dance, it’s an alumni reunion. They’re saying everyone who ever went to Spalding will be coming back for it. It’s a big deal.”

  “You know what’s a big deal?” He grins at me. “My parents are away this weekend …”

  “They are?”

  “Yes. They leave Saturday morning.” He puts a hand on my knee and raises his eyebrows. I glance toward the stairs, then shimmy a little closer to him.

  “So … ?” I whisper in his ear.

  “So.” He runs his hand up my leg, then turns his face toward me and our lips meet. Tingles run up my leg and I feel warm all over. His kisses get me right in the stomach. Eventually we break apart. “Hmm, what were we watching?” he asks, nodding at the TV. A car commercial is playing.

  “No clue.”

  “Ha. Want something to drink?”

  “Sure, water.”

  As soon as he’s out of the room, I grab my phone and text Dace.

  Me: Dylan’s parents=away this wknd.

  Dace: FAREWELL VIRGINIA TOUR!

  Dace is obsessed with calling my virginity “Virginia.”

  Me: Can I get free pass on Sleepover Saturday this wk?

  I feel guilty as I wait for her response.

  Dace: OK. But aren’t we doing Luis’s party?

  I’d actually forgotten all about the party. Then it hits me why Dace has remembered—and why she wants to go.

  Me: Ohhhh … how did I not see this one coming?

  Dace: Yeah yeah, so obvs.

  Dace has this rule about dating guys: they must be older than her and not go to our school. Which means Luis is a perfect fit.

  Dylan comes back down the stairs with two glasses of water and a bag of chips in his mouth. “Your mom knows the way to a boyfriend’s heart,” he says when he’s dropped the chips in my lap.

  I take a sip of water and put the glass on the coffee table. “Luis Juarez’s party is Saturday. Dace wants to go, and if I’m going to bail on Sleepover Saturday, I should go too. But we could go for a bit, right? It’ll be fun to go to a party together.”

  “Fun?” He raises his eyebrows and opens the bag of salt ’n’ vinegar chips. He pops a couple of chips in his mouth as his phone dings. He grabs it, laughs and texts something back. When he looks up, his eyes meet mine.

  “Sorry.” He puts his phone—face down—on the table.

  I raise my eyebrows. “What’s so funny?”

  “There was this super fan at a show, and Muse and I keep saying this thing he said. It’s not even funny—it’s dumb.”

  It may be dumb, it may not be funny, but it feels important. He has inside jokes with her. My face falls and I bite my lip.

  “Hey, remember when you used to text me?” I try to keep my tone light, but I can’t keep out the edge.

  “My love for you runs deeper than a meaningless text. And besides, you were just texting Dace.”

  Ugh, boyfriends. Texting your best friend and texting some hot girl
(even if she has a BF) are not the same thing. Dylan pulls me close and then tilts my face toward his and kisses me, square on the lips. And even though I close my eyes, all I can picture is Dylan smiling at his phone. The way I always thought he smiled when he got a text from me. Does he smile that same way when anyone texts? Do his eyes dance that way for everyone? Or is there something about Muse?

  Dylan must sense me stiffening up because he pulls away and looks at me.

  “Sorry,” I say, but I’m not sorry, not really.

  “What’s up with you? You’re not being your normal lovable self.”

  “Nothing.” I sigh. “I guess I’m just grumpy.” I lower my voice. “Maybe it’s Mom stuff.”

  “Why? She seems fine,” he says. As though giving him chips makes everything in my life right again? I want him to put his arms around me and tell me he’ll squeeze the bad mood out of me, but instead, he says, “Wanna call it a night?”

  “Sure,” I say, when what I want to say is “No, don’t go.”

  He kisses me on the top of the head. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow or something, when your Mom’s not at the top of the stairs. Love you, Pip.”

  “Love you too,” I say, feeling dejected. I sit on the couch until I hear the front door close, and then I go upstairs.

  “Dylan left early,” Mom calls from the kitchen.

  “Mm-hmm,” I say from the hallway, my hand on the banister.

  “Everything OK?”

  I can see Mom standing at the mixer. We used to always bake together after school, back when Dad was still alive and Mom was home all the time. It felt so easy to talk about what was bugging me. I want to ask her what she’s baking, if I can help. But I can’t bring myself to. It feels like giving in.

  “I’m going to edit,” I say, heading up the stairs. I slump on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

  I’m still so angry with her. It sucks, because through everything—Ben stealing my photos, my panic attacks, Dad dying, Dad being sick, having Reggie Stevenson dump me, failing my swimming lesson, peeing my pants in the second grade Christmas concert—Mom has been there. On my side. Always the one I turned to. And now, it feels like there’s this awful divide between us. It feels like if I lean on her at all, I’m giving in on the David thing. Just because someone is technically your biological father doesn’t make him your dad. I turn on my side to look at my custom wallpaper, focusing in on a pic of my dad and me when I was a baby. What if I give in and she takes that as my blessing?

  I get up and go to my desk, flip open my laptop and open Photoshop. After going through all my possible options for this week’s photo club and narrowing the group down to a select few, I grab my phone to text Dylan.

  Me: Sorry about tonight.

  I pause, waiting to see if he’s going to respond. When he doesn’t, I decide to give myself an at-home spa treatment as a distraction—a reason to ignore my phone for 20 minutes. I turn on the old baseboard heater in the bathroom, which makes the small room toasty in minutes, and run the water in the tub. I slather my face with a mud mask and my hair with a double dose of conditioner and then soak until my toes are raisin-like. After quenching my skin in vanilla body butter, I rewrap myself in my towel to go into the hall. The glow of Mom’s bedside light peeks out from under her door, but I go back to my room, put on my favorite pajamas and crawl into bed.

  My phone dings.

  Ben: You awake?

  Me: Yeah.

  Ben: Check out Spalding Facebook page. I posted asking alumni for fave memories and there’s got to be at least 100 already.

  Me: Wow, great idea.

  Ben: Yeah, occasionally I get a good one. Hey also! Check out the moon. It’s a supermoon.

  The blinds are covering my window, and I pull them aside. The moon looks like someone put a sepia effect on it.

  Me: It’s hard to text back wonderment.

  Ben: Incredible isn’t it? It’s called perigee-syzygy.

  Me: How do u know that?

  Ben: Magic of Wikipedia. Anyway, g’nite.

  Me: Night.

  I grab my camera from my desk, then fiddle with the aperture. I set my camera on the windowsill so it’s steady. Crouching down, I look through the viewfinder at the moon, then aim and start snapping photos. It’s hard to get the shot right, especially since I still can’t help but listen for my phone to ding, wondering when Dylan will text back, and my heart’s only half in it.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Whose house is the party at again?” Mom asks as I come down the stairs. She’s stretched out on the couch doing a crossword puzzle. I tell her. “OK. And you’re sleeping at Dace’s?”

  I could say yes and she’d never know any different. But instead, I open up a big can of boyfriend worms.

  “Dylan’s parents are away, actually. We’re gonna go to the party together, then he wants me to sleep over.”

  She puts the crossword down on the coffee table and swings her legs around so she’s sitting up. She studies me.

  “So I’ll probably do that.” My heart’s pounding as I grab my coat out of the front hall closet. After pulling it on, I sit down on the bottom step of the stairs to put my boots on, which drives my mom crazy because it gets muck on the carpet. But she doesn’t say anything about it this time.

  She comes over, is about to say something, stops, then exhales loudly. “I’m glad you told me the truth.”

  I bite my lip and nod. “Yeah. Well.”

  She sits beside me on the bottom stair. My shoulders feel weighed down by my coat.

  “I knew we’d talk about this at some point. I just didn’t …” She trails off. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

  I nod. “I’m ready, and I’m ready,” I say, standing and grabbing my hat, scarf and mitts out of my bag and pulling them on. She knows I’ve been on the pill for more than a year now because it helps with my cramps and acne, but we’ve also talked about how the pill is not enough and condoms are the only way to protect against diseases. She usually makes some sort of corny joke that mildly mortifies me, but she doesn’t joke now.

  Mom puts her hands on her knees. “Sex can be a lot of pressure. In any relationship.”

  I nod.

  “Just … don’t feel like you can’t change your mind, even if you set out thinking tonight’s the night, that you have to go through with it. You can always change your mind. There’ll be other nights.”

  “I should go.”

  “I love you.”

  “I’ll text you when I get back to Dylan’s.” I stand and sling my bag over my shoulder.

  She stands too and follows me to the door. I pull it open, then turn to her. Despite everything, I feel like I can’t continue to walk out the door without telling Mom I love her. Not with Dad gone. Not that Mom’s even going anywhere, but … you just never know. “I love you too, Mom.”

  I walk down the snowy driveway, staring up at the starry sky. It’s one of those calm winter nights. It’s not that cold, there’s no wind, and I’ve got time, so I walk slowly, taking the ravine route. The path is just lightly dusted with snow, like icing sugar on a chocolate cake. I pull my camera out of my bag, to capture this night on film and calm my nerves at the same time. The path winds, leading me into the scene through the lens, and then, every so often, the path forks, creating a V, one route heading back to an easement between the houses and then out to the street. I pause at the fifth fork and crouch down, then pull my camera up to my face, focusing on the lines of the path, leading from the bottom of the photo up to the two top corners of the viewfinder. Then I head out the easement onto Dylan’s street.

  Dylan’s house is dark when I get there, and when he opens the door I can just see a flicker of light coming from the living room behind him. My toes tingle; he’s probably made the space super romantic, with candles.

  “Hey,” he says, opening the door wi
der. He’s wearing a plaid button-down and jeans, and just looking at him makes me nervous, like it’s our first date or something, and I wonder if he feels the same way. The sound of cheers escapes the living room and I realize there’s no dreamy candlelit scene happening, but the TV turned to a sports channel.

  Still, when he leans in to kiss me, I feel like, Yes, this is it. We are on track. He pulls away and grabs my hands in his. “Wanna go upstairs?”

  Right down to business, I think. I kick off my boots, then follow him upstairs, my heart racing.

  His room is dark, but everything’s different from a few days ago when I was here. He’s moved his bed over to underneath his window, and all his basketball and baseball trophies that were on his shelves are gone. In fact, the shelves are gone too. Instead, that wall is filled with band posters and a signed Cherry Blasters T-shirt. Which he must’ve gotten on the road. I used to think of Cherry Blasters as our band, since it was our first concert together, but now, it sort of feels like his two-week tour with the band has trumped that; it’s his thing now.

  “You moved things around,” I say, noticing his guitar in the corner, foot pedals lining one wall. It truly looks like a musician’s room now. It’s cool, for sure, but it feels like a bit less of the Dylan I knew, who once brought me into his room and showed me the space he’d had since he was seven. It was a glimpse into who he was and what made him who he is now. The guy not everyone else gets to see. But this, this feels like exactly the Dylan he’s portraying out there in the world. There’s no secret left for me.

  “Yeah, just got rid of all that babyish stuff, you know.”

  Dylan fiddles with his laptop and music comes out through the speakers on his desk. And then he moves toward me and pulls me in, kissing me. He smells like soap, in the best possible way.

  I put my hands on his hips and close my eyes, trying to lose myself in the moment. His hands move to the bottom of my striped shirt, and he slips them under, lifting my shirt over my head. My shirt drops to the ground and he fiddles with my zipper. I push my jeans down around my ankles and sit on the bed to remove them, as he undoes his pants.

  He doesn’t say anything about my matching underwear, which feels a little discouraging. But who cares if my underwear match? Except that I spent a week’s worth of Scoops wages I’d been saving from last summer for college on the black and coral set, which Dace helped me pick out over the holidays. In preparation.