Ella Unleashed

by Alison Cherry

  xo,

  Linda

  * * *

  To: DrownedInMoonlight

  From: SuperDad_DSC

  Dear Linda,

  Your dog sounds really cute. I’m a huge dog person. Do you know what breed Patti is? Are there any specific dogs on PetFinder that you have your eye on? What are your nieces’ and nephews’ names and ages? Do they live nearby? Do you spend a lot of time with them? What are they interested in? Also, are you a Sox fan? If you’re into the Yankees, we definitely can’t date. Also, are you gluten-free? I make a lot of Italian food. I’ve never tried any of it with gluten-free pasta.

  David

  * * *

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  From: DrownedInMoonlight

  I love gluten, but I’m not into baseball. How about I’ll show you pictures of all the nieces and nephews and dogs when we get together? You don’t need to know everything about me before we meet, do you?

  xo,

  Linda

  * * *

  To: DrownedInMoonlight

  From: SuperDad_DSC

  No, you’re right. Let’s hang out this weekend. Can you meet me at Little Pete’s Italian Kitchen at the mall? It’s on the second floor, by the Sunglass Hut and the Hot Topic. I know it’s not exactly the most romantic place ever, but my daughter will be with me that day, and I thought she could shop while we hang out. Plus they actually have really good garlic bread.

  * * *

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  From: DrownedInMoonlight

  Um . . . okay, I guess?

  * * *

  To: DrownedInMoonlight

  From: SuperDad_DSC

  Cool. And can I ask you one more thing? I still feel kind of strange about this whole online dating thing, so can we not discuss Head Over Heels at all and pretend we’re meeting for the first time that night?

  * * *

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  From: DrownedInMoonlight

  All right, I’ll be honest—that’s kind of weird, after you asked me a million questions. But I guess we all have our quirks. I’ll pretend the best I can. See you there.

  9

  Getting Dad into position for his sneak-attack date with Linda the following Sunday isn’t quite as easy as I expect. I manage to drag him to the mall by convincing him to take me to a movie, but the only show that ends at the right time is this stupid one about a professional skateboarder who fights crime, so I have to pretend I’m excited about that. The movie is way too long and incredibly boring, and I’m half asleep by the time it finally gets out at 6:30. I stumble to the bathroom, splash some freezing-cold water on my face to shock myself into alertness, then use a safety pin I brought to rip a jagged hole in the knee of my jeans. Then I paste an exasperated look on my face—not hard after watching the same skateboard trick four hundred times—and go find Dad.

  “Look what happened when I crouched down to tie my shoe!” I huff.

  “You’re probably growing,” he says. “We’ll have to get you some new clothes soon.”

  “I mean . . . we’re at the mall right now. Do you think maybe I could get some jeans before we go?”

  He checks the time on his phone. “It’s kind of late, kiddo. We’re not going to end up eating for another hour as it is.”

  “But I’m not hungry after all that popcorn. I don’t care if we eat right away.”

  Dad sighs. “Can’t Mom bring you back here sometime next week?”

  I do my best Wonder Woman impression—hands on hips, chin lifted, staring him down. “What are you saying, Dad? That it’s the woman’s job to do the shopping?”

  And that does it, just like I knew it would; Dad’s as much of a feminist as Mom and me. “Fine,” he says. “But try to be quick, okay?”

  “Definitely. You don’t even have to come into the stores with me. Why don’t you give me some money and hang out at Little Pete’s? Get a snack and relax.” I want to say You might even find someone interesting to talk to, but I don’t want him to get suspicious.

  “Hmm,” Dad says. “They do have weirdly good garlic bread.”

  “Yeah, they totally do. Come on, let’s go.” I turn around like it’s all decided, and to my relief, Dad follows me.

  Little Pete’s Italian Kitchen really does have good garlic bread, but I chose it for Dad’s date because of the layout. There’s only one “official” entrance, but since the restaurant is right in the middle of the third floor, between the two rows of stores, it’s possible to enter on either side as long as the staff isn’t paying attention. It’s kind of a weird place—there are giant jugs of olive oil and wine everywhere, red-and-white-checked tablecloths that brush the floor, and candles on every table, even though the flickering shadows are completely washed out by the fluorescent ceiling lights. It’s like someone was on the way to deliver a fancy restaurant to Rome, stopped at the mall for frozen yogurt on the way, and left it there by mistake.

  It’s 6:52 when I leave Dad at the end of the bar, facing the door, checking e-mail on his phone and awaiting a plate of garlic bread. I make sure he watches me leave—I even give him a jaunty wave when I get to the entrance—and walk off down the hall toward Gap. Then I circle around to the back of the restaurant, which has a sign on the gate that says STAFF ENTRANCE ONLY: PLEASE USE DOOR ACROSS FROM SUNGLASS HUT.

  The restaurant isn’t busy, but luckily there’s a family with three kids near the front, and they’re all the distraction I need. It only takes three minutes before one of them knocks over his milk and starts crying, and a bunch of servers swoop in with napkins and new milk and a replacement bread basket. I take the opportunity to push through the staff gate, do an undignified crouch-run across the path to the kitchen, and dive under the empty table right behind my dad. When I use my safety pin to make a tiny tear in the tablecloth and squint through it like I’m using a microscope, I can see what’s happening at the bar.

  I have to say, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. This time I’ve thoroughly vetted my dad’s date, so there won’t be any surprises like there were with Penny. Plus my dad is actually here this time, so I don’t have to feel bad about some poor woman thinking she’s been stood up. As long as Linda doesn’t mention the dating site, she and my dad can get to know each other naturally, and I know they’ll both like what they find. I’ll wait right here until I see them exchange numbers, and then I’ll text my dad, tell him I’m done shopping, and ask him to meet me at the entrance.

  Right on cue, a woman approaches the bar. She’s got dark hair that falls to the middle of her back—I can never get mine that shiny, no matter what shampoo I use—and she’s wearing a red sweater and skinny jeans that are exactly the kind I would want if I were actually shopping for jeans. When she walks up to my dad and slides onto the stool next to his, my heart leaps—it’s totally her! I hadn’t realized it until now, but part of me was terrified she was going to bail. She did not seem excited about Little Pete’s.

  Linda turns so I can see her face. She’s even prettier in person than she was in her picture, and I cross my fingers and hope my dad agrees and falls head over heels for her.

  “I hear this place has really good garlic bread,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. She has an accent that sounds like my Spanish teacher’s, but not as strong.

  My dad looks up from his phone, and even though I can’t see his face, I can picture the polite confusion that must be there. “Yeah, it does,” he says. “I was just saying the same thing to my daughter.”

  “It’s nice to see you in person,” says Linda, and she leans toward him like she’s about to kiss him on the cheek.

  My dad recoils. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot we were doing that. Sorry.” Linda sits back and extends her hand. “I’m Linda.”

  “David,” my dad says, and I’m relieved to see that he takes her hand, even if he seems hesitant.

  “Very nice to meet you for the first time in any context, David,” Linda purrs. Fo
r a second I’m afraid he’s going to turn away like he did that time a homeless guy came up to us in the Public Garden and tried to give us pamphlets about the Great Lizard God, but instead he just says a bewildered, “You too.”

  A server slides a menu across the bar to Linda. “Can I get you a drink to start?” he asks.

  “I’ll have a Malbec, please,” she says. Then she turns to my dad. “Tell me about yourself, David. What do you do for work?” She flips her hair over her shoulder, leans on her elbow, and looks at him like he’s the most interesting person in the world. Total heartthrob move. Nice work, Linda.

  “Um, I work in advertising?” my dad starts. But I don’t hear the rest, because there’s a loud scraping sound right next to my head, then another. I instinctively duck and cover, afraid the table is about to collapse . . . and then I realize that something much worse is happening.

  People are pulling out the chairs on either side of me.

  People are sitting down at my table.

  There wasn’t a lot of room under here to begin with, and now that there are two pairs of legs crowding in on me, I have to pull my knees up to my chest in order to fit. Both pairs of feet look like they belong to women; one is in glittery silver flats, and the other is in red Converse sneakers with rainbow laces. I try to be as small as possible; if one of them discovers me, she’ll probably make a scene, and my dad will notice, and the game will be up. There’s no plausible excuse for me being here besides I was spying on the date you didn’t know you were on.

  Come to think of it, that’s not very plausible either.

  The Converse feet are exactly where I need to sit in order to see through my peephole, and I’m too afraid to tear another hole in case the diners notice me tugging on their tablecloth. I strain my ears and try and pick up what Linda and my dad are saying—I’m able to catch the words “lawyer” and “boss” and “annoying”—but then the women connected to the feet start talking, and it totally drowns them out.

  “Are you seriously breaking up with me at Little Pete’s?” hisses Converse. “This is worse than the time I got dumped at the Cheesecake Factory.”

  Silver sighs. “I mean, we have to talk about this sometime. Does it really matter where? It’s not like there’s a good place to do it.”

  “Pretty much anywhere is better than the mall ! There are a million people listening! Even if you don’t love me anymore, the least you could do is respect my privacy!”

  “This isn’t about whether I love you or not!” says Silver. “It’s about the fact that I’m being transferred to Hong Kong for three years. I’m not saying we’re absolutely one hundred percent done forever. I’m saying maybe we should consider seeing other people while I’m gone.”

  “No, I get it,” says Converse. “You’re saying I’m not good enough to hold your attention unless I’m right in front of you every second.”

  Oh god, this is so, so bad. How is my dad supposed to slip into a romantic mood without realizing it when another couple is breaking up eight feet away?

  “You’re never going to be in front of me,” says Silver. “You won’t even get on a plane long enough to visit my parents in Florida, so how are you going to get to Asia? It’s not like I can hop back to Boston every month. What am I supposed to do?”

  “If you really loved me, you’d make it work,” Converse says.

  “If you really loved me, you’d take a sleeping pill and get on a plane!”

  “You know I can’t!”

  “And I can’t do all the work in this relationship!”

  Converse stretches out her leg and kicks me hard in the hip, and it takes everything I have not to yelp. She pulls her foot back quickly and tucks it under her chair. “Sorry,” she says.

  “I’m sorry too,” says Silver, misunderstanding. “I wish things were different. You know I do. But I can’t turn down this job. I’ve been waiting for this my entire life.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you my entire life,” sniffles Converse.

  And then I hear Linda’s raised voice. “Okay, this make-believe thing is getting ridiculous. I’m impressed with your commitment to the whole ‘Let’s pretend we just met’ bit, but do we seriously have to have every conversation all over again?”

  The women at my table go silent, and Silver’s legs shift to the side—I can tell she’s twisting around in her seat to look at Linda and my dad.

  “I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” my dad says. “Have we met before? I feel like I’d remember that, but I—”

  “I know you feel weird about the website, but you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.” Linda’s voice is getting higher and shriller by the minute. “If you felt that awkward, you shouldn’t have signed up in the first place.”

  “What website?” my dad asks. He sounds completely baffled. Man, I thought I was being so clever with the whole Let’s not talk about Head Over Heels thing.

  Linda says something else, but I don’t catch it because Converse says, “Wow, that couple over there is even more dysfunctional than we are.”

  “I really think you must have me confused for someone else,” my dad is saying.

  “How could I have you confused for someone else?” Linda snaps. “You’re the one who asked me to meet you here!”

  “I didn’t ask anyone to meet me here! I didn’t even know I’d be here until fifteen minutes ago. I’m just waiting for my daughter while she shops for jeans!”

  It’s quiet for a minute—the only sound is Converse whispering, “What is going on over there?”—and when Linda starts talking again, her voice is low and dangerous. “Oh. I see what’s going on here.”

  My heart starts pounding. Linda can’t possibly know I made my dad’s account, can she? If she tells him that, she’s going to ruin absolutely everything.

  But then she says, “You’re one of those jerks who responds to so many women at a time that you literally can’t keep track of them all. You probably didn’t even remember who you were supposed to meet tonight. Do you bring all your dates to Little Pete’s, David? Such a class act.”

  “I don’t . . .,” my dad sputters. “I’ve seriously never— What are you—?”

  Linda cuts him off. “How many women do you reply to at a time? Twenty? Fifty? I read an article about this, how guys send the same message to huge batches of women at once, hoping it’ll raise their odds. Well, I’m not here for that, David. I’m looking for a real relationship with someone who actually cares about me.”

  “Oh snap,” says Converse in a low voice.

  I’m terrified Linda is going to pull out her phone, open the Head Over Heels app, and shove it in my dad’s face to prove that they really did have an e-mail exchange, and when I hear boot heels clicking toward me instead, I almost faint with relief. “You can pay for my wine,” she says as she passes my table. “You owe it to me. This is the tackiest place I’ve ever seen.” Then the heels click past me and out the door.

  It’s quiet for a minute, and I hug my knees and bury my face in them. I desperately want to peek at my dad to see if he’s upset, but he’s probably just totally confused. I’m sure he thinks he spent the last five minutes being yelled at by a crazy stranger. It’s like the lizard gods all over again.

  “Oh man,” says Converse. “Is that what we sounded like a few minutes ago?”

  “God, I hope not,” says Silver. “You were right—Little Pete’s is a terrible place for a breakup.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief—these women are going to leave without even getting drinks, and I’ll finally be able to unfold my limbs.

  And then Silver says, “Let’s get some pasta and talk about other stuff, and we’ll finish this conversation when we get home. Maybe there’s a solution we haven’t thought of. We’ll try to work it out. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Converse says. “Thanks, sweetie.” She extends her leg again, and I manage to scoot backward just in time. Her ankle nestles against Silver’s, who doesn’t pull away,
and it cuts my space under the table by a third. I fold my elbows and knees in as close to my body as I can, afraid to breathe too deeply. One of my feet is starting to fall asleep.

  My phone buzzes, and Converse says, “Is that yours?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Silver says. “I’ll deal with it later.”

  So slowly it’s painful, I manage to inch my phone out of my back pocket. On the screen is a message from my dad.

  Dad: You almost done shopping?

  Me: It might be a while. Everything’s kind of a tight fit.

  10

  I’m still grumpy by the time I get to science class the next morning. I know I need to shake off my disappointment and get back to work—if I want to be a scientist, I have to accept the fact that experiments can fail hundreds of times before you find a method that finally works. But I don’t have time for hundreds of failed trials. I only have five weeks left before the National Dog Show, and I need my dad to turn back into himself by then.

  “Were you really crammed under that table for forty minutes?” Jordan asks.

  “Yes. And they were holding hands right by my face almost the entire time. I kept having to dodge out of the way.”

  “That sounds awful,” Miriam says. “And I’m so sorry it didn’t work out with your dad and Linda.”

  “At least those women didn’t drop a fork and poke your eye out or something,” Jordan says. “Can you imagine if they’d had to call an ambulance? ‘Miss, what were you doing under this table?’ ‘Oh, nothing, doctor, just accidentally spying on this date while trying to spy on that date. . . .”

  That finally gets a laugh out of me, and I’m feeling a little better by the time Ms. McKinnon arrives. Today her hair is up in a bunch of complicated braids wrapped around her head like a crown, and her shirt has two dinosaurs and the words CURSE YOUR SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYAL! I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but I’m sure it’s a reference to something cool. Everything about Ms. McKinnon is a reference to something cool.