Connor sighed and closed my door, giving Abbie and me a brief moment of privacy while the boys circled to their side.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not crazy. She wants him.”
“Connor’s being an idiot,” Abbie said. “I could see it from where I was sitting.”
And that was all we had time for.
Connor started the engine and backed out of the parking spot. We waited for a break in traffic to turn onto 75th Street, and he reached for me. When he patted my leg, I met his gaze.
“Sorry,” he mouthed.
I smiled and shrugged, feeling my muscles relax. Connor wasn’t just my boyfriend, he was my best friend. That made it twice as bad when we fought because I had no one to call and gripe to. Except Abbie, but our closeness still felt fragile. Learning we could rely on each other was one nice by-product of her pregnancy. Which reminded me . . .
“Hey.” I twisted in my seat to face her. “Did you get ahold of Mom or Dad?”
She shook her head. “I tried every number I could think of.”
“Me too.” I frowned. “Maybe counseling went long.”
“I hope that’s all it is.” She rubbed her belly, frowning.
I offered Abbie what I hoped was a convincing smile. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
When we pulled down our street, Connor spotted it first.
“Um . . .” He tapped my leg and pointed at my house.
“O God,” I said, the only prayer I could eke out.
Abbie gasped.
Connor slowed the car to a crawl.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from the yard. Dad stood amid the mess, bent over. He righted himself as we approached.
As we pulled into the driveway, I realized all the stuff belonged to Dad. His shirts, his shoes, everything from his side of the closet littered the lawn.
“I guess it didn’t go well today,” Connor said.
“I guess it didn’t go well today,” Connor I gripped his hand. “I guess it didn’t.”
4
“Daddy, what happened?” I asked as Abbie and I ran toward him.
Dad waved at the guys as they pulled away from the house. “What time is it?”
“A little after five. What happened?” I stepped around a pile of white undershirts. “Did you guys fight or something?”
He looked past me, to Abbie. “I’m so sorry we weren’t there, honey. How’d everything go?”
She tromped over the undershirts I’d so carefully avoided. “Fine. What happened?”
Fine. What happened?”
“The baby’s healthy? You’re healthy?”
Abbie crossed her arms over her chest and settled them on her belly. “Everyone’s healthy. It’s a girl. What happened?”
Amazing. For weeks, those questions had plagued all our minds—the baby’s gender and health. Now, with our lawn full of dress shirts and loafers, they’d taken a backseat.
“A girl?” Dad beamed as he wrapped his arms around Abbie. “I can’t wait to have a little girl around again. Congratulations, honey.”
With all the activity, he’d apparently forgotten we might not be raising her.
Abbie pushed him away. “Why is all your stuff out here?”
“Oh, this.” Dad surveyed the lawn. “This looks worse than it is.”
As if we stood there discussing crabgrass or a busted sprinkler system.
I looked up into the bare branches of the sycamore. “Dad. Your underwear is hanging in the trees.”
He followed my gaze and blinked at it. “Yeah . . .” But he didn’t seem interested in filling us in on why.
“Did something happen at counseling?” Abbie sounded like a teacher trying to prompt a student for the correct answer.
“Nothing we can’t overcome.” Dad turned a big smile on us, the one I’d seen him use with clients at their annual Christmas party. “You know what we should do? Go to Ruth’s Chris for dinner. It’s been ages since we ate there.” If possible, his smile grew bigger. “What do you say, girls? Get dressed up? Do a little shopping?”
“What for?” Abbie asked.
“To celebrate the baby, of course!” Dad’s laugh sounded forced—har-har-har.
If I hadn’t been so dumbfounded by his over-the-top gesture, I’d have grabbed his shoulders and shaken him until he fessed up. But why did his suggestion of a nice dinner and shopping surprise me? My parents had always used money to avoid problems, though usually it didn’t feel so obvious. Standing in a pool of pleated slacks and tube socks made it clear the correct answer wasn’t a nice steak and a new handbag.
“We could look for an outfit to bring her home in, if you like,” Dad continued. “Your mom had the best time doing that for you girls.”
He looked from one of us to the other, his smile still big and phony as he waited for a reaction.
“I’m gonna go lay down,” Abbie said. She slinked away, a necktie caught on one of her dragging feet.
“Does 6:30 sound okay to you, honey?” Dad called after her.
She answered with a wave over her shoulder, then closed herself inside the house.
Dad gave me a questioning look. “She okay?”
“You and Mom missed her sonogram, then we come home to find the yard looking like your closet threw up on it. What do you think?”
Dad sighed and pulled his hands through his thick gray hair. “Will you help me clean this stuff up?”
Not long ago, I’d have expected this shifty, dodgy behavior from Dad. For most of my high school life, he’d been a mere shadow. Most nights he barely made it home for dinner, and even if he was home, I was often out with friends. He didn’t get his act together until last fall when Mom left. That’s when he’d invested himself in our lives, and we in his. Only to shut us out now.
But I couldn’t just leave him out there alone with his underwear strung up in a tree.
I crouched and gathered an armful of clothes. “Where do you want this stuff?”
“I’m just putting it inside the door. Thanks, honey.”
My knees cracked as I stood. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s out.” His voice sounded casual. Too casual.
“She’s out.” His voice sounded casual.
“Will she be having dinner with us?”
“Will she be having dinner “I wouldn’t count on it.”
So it seemed very little had changed in the last few months. Mom and Abbie fled, Dad denied, and that stuck me with clean-up duty.
When I returned for more clothes, I found Dad on his cell phone, making dinner reservations.
“You might want to take it easy on the whole celebrating thing,” I said when he’d hung up.
He stopped his sock collecting to look at me. “Skylar, I know your sister’s situation is far from desirable, but we should make the most of it.”
“It’s not that. It’s . . .” I hesitated. Did he seriously not know this? “Abbie might not keep the baby.”
From the look on Dad’s face, I’d guess that no, he didn’t. “Why not?”
I heard myself laughing. Why was I laughing? This wasn’t funny. “Because she’s fifteen. Because things were over with Lance long before she even found out about the baby. Lots of reasons.”
Dad’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he stared into the pile of socks he’d paired. “She’d really give it up? Give her up?”
My throat constricted. The idea of Abbie putting the baby up for adoption made me emotional too, but still I argued. “Keeping the baby closes so many doors for her. Abbie’d graduate high school with a two-year-old. If she graduated.”
Dad muttered something unintelligible and returned to rolling socks.
“What happened with Mom?” I asked, fear stiffening my spine.
“Nothing you should concern yourself with, Skylar.” His voice was silky smooth. “Everything will be fine.”
I was coming to believe this less and less.
After dinner’s stuffy atmosphere and stilted conversation,
I headed to Connor’s house. His nine-year-old brother, Cameron, flung open the front door and pointed a Nerf Blaster at me. He fired a round into my chest. “Gotcha!” Then he raced off, the dog chasing him.
Much better. I smiled and entered the house.
As I shrugged out of my coat, Amy came into the foyer, her fuzzy slippers whispering against the tile. “Cameron’s hospitality needs some work.”
“Clearly we’re past the days of me intimidating him.”
Initially, Cameron had had a crush on me and would bury himself in the couch pillows whenever I came over. That stopped even before I became Connor’s girlfriend.
Amy glanced at my dress, black and strappy with a short, billowy skirt. “You look beautiful.” Her eyes widened and her mouth formed an O. “Was there a dance tonight? Did my son make you go alone?”
I laughed. “No. Dad forced us into a celebration dinner. Abbie’s having a girl.”
Only after the words came out did I think enough to cringe. When Amy first met us, she’d said she would have named her daughter Abigail Amelia but wound up with four boys. Maybe it would sadden her to hear of Abbie having a girl.
Amy’s face showed no hints of regret. Instead, she clapped her hands together. “A girl! How wonderful.” She glanced at the staircase, I assumed because it led to Chris’s bedroom. “How’s Abbie doing?”
“I can’t tell. She slept until we left for dinner and was pretty quiet at the restaurant. But I don’t know if it’s because of the baby or because . . .” I didn’t know how to explain because I didn’t know what had happened. Dad remained tight-lipped about the events of their counseling session. Amy rescued me.
“Connor said it looked like your parents had a fight.”
“To put it lightly.” I lowered my gaze to the floor tiles, suddenly ashamed. “Dad’s stuff was all over the lawn, and we still haven’t heard from Mom.”
Amy opened her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by five-year-old Curtis. “Mom! Cameron’s getting ice cream!” “Excuse me,” Amy said, rushing toward the kitchen. “Cameron Michael, what did I tell you about ice cream?” As they hashed it out, I jogged upstairs. Chris’s bedroom door was closed, but I found Connor’s open. He sat at his old, scarred desk, chewing on the end of his pen as he read from his American History textbook.
“You’re doing homework on a Friday night?”
Connor startled, then released the breath he’d sucked in. “Walk louder in the future.” He swiveled his desk chair to face me. “And yes, I’m doing homework. My girlfriend had plans.”
I sagged against the door frame. “She’d have rather been with you.”
“Would she?”
“Yeah. She had a lousy night.”
Connor cocked his head. “Let’s stop talking about her in the third person.”
“You started it.” I settled onto the carpet, and he sank onto the floor beside me, touching his knee to mine. “My parents are fighting again.”
“I assumed.”
“Dad won’t say what about, but it’s gotta be something big.” Emotion choked my voice. “Mom isn’t answering her cell.”
“It’ll be okay.” Connor smoothed my hair, and I remembered being a little girl, Daddy doing the same thing.
I squeezed my eyes shut and wished for those days, when we lived in the little blue house in a less fashionable area of town. Dad’s construction company hadn’t yet taken off, and Mom spent her days saving money rather than spending it. Did they fight back then? If they did, I couldn’t remember.
The general chaos of downstairs reached our ears—Curtis’s giggles and Connor’s dad hollering at the dog, “Down! Cevin, down!”
Cevin’s tags jingled as he trotted up the stairs. I adored Cevin, despite his stupid name. It was pronounced “Kevin,” but the younger boys wanted to spell it with a C so he wouldn’t feel left out.
“It’s always so loud at your house.” I nestled closer to Connor, wanting to bask in his warmth. “I love it.”
Cevin burst into the room, bringing his big personality with him. With his perky ears and floppy tongue, he seemed to be saying, “Here I am!” like he just knew Connor and I had wondered.
Connor watched me rub Cevin’s ears. “You need a dog.”
“I’d love one, but my mom would have a fit. Can you imagine dog hair all over her white furniture?”
“I hate that furniture.” Connor scratched Cevin under his chin. “I don’t even feel like I can sit on it.”
“It’s nice furniture.” Where did that come from, this sudden need to defend Mom’s impractical decision?
Connor blinked at me. “I didn’t say it wasn’t nice.”
Connor blinked at me. “I Silence seized the room.
I looked away from him. What was going on with us? We’d had almost three great—dare I say perfect?—months, but now we suddenly bickered over nothing. I didn’t want to add “boyfriend problems” to the ever-growing list of things currently wrong with my life.
Cevin’s ears perked at something only he could hear, and he dashed out of the room, leaving Connor and me alone with this awkward silence.
I plucked white dog hairs off the skirt of my dress. “How’s Chris doing?”
Connor shrugged. “He’s been in his room since we got home. I went in there and tried to get him to talk about stuff, but he didn’t seem interested.”
Guilt gnawed at me, though it was a little difficult to pinpoint what I felt responsible for. Driving Abbie to Lance’s over the summer? Being too self-involved to notice what my little sister was doing? “You think it’d help if I tried talking to him?”
Connor shrugged. “Go ahead.” But I could see the skepticism in his face.
“I don’t think I can fix it, but maybe he’ll feel more comfortable opening up to me.”
He frowned. “Chris and I talk about a lot of stuff.”
“I know you do, I just . . .” And here it was again, my inability to communicate. Why did expressing myself feel like such a struggle these days? “I want to try.”
He gestured to the wall his bedroom shared with Chris’s. “Then try.”
“That’s all the encouragement I get? I’d find it adorable if you wanted to talk to Abbie about all this.”
Connor batted his long eyelashes. “Don’t you always find me adorable?”
I didn’t want to smile—I wanted to hang on to my frustration— but couldn’t keep the corners of my mouth from popping up.
The ice between us thawed, and Connor reached for my hand. “It’s sweet that you want to talk to Chris. Just don’t get your hopes up. He’s not real chatty even under normal circumstances.”
“You forget,” I said with a coy smile, “that I’m an expert at chatting up guys.”
I meant it to be flip, flirtatious, but I could tell it didn’t resonate well with Connor. “I try to not think about that,” he said.
“I was just joking.” My heart hammered—why had I even made reference to my past? “I didn’t really mean—”
“Skylar.” Connor cupped my face and smacked a loud kiss on my forehead. “Go talk to my brother.”
“But—”
“Now.” He smiled (did it really look strained, or did I imagine it?) and gave me a good-natured push. “Go impart your wisdom.”
Doubt wiggled around in my brain as I knocked on Chris’s door. What exactly did it mean, that sour expression on Connor’s face when I’d alluded to the old Skylar? Sure, I’d partied hard in the past, but that was all forgotten and forgiven when I turned my life over to God. Although people, in my experience, didn’t forgive and forget as quickly as he did.
“Come in,” Chris said.
I’d been focused on Connor. Now what did I plan on saying to Chris?
I nudged open the door to find Chris sprawled across his bed, belly down. He didn’t look at me, just kept reading his graphic novel.
“Hey.”
Then he looked. “Oh, hi. I thought you were my mom.”
“Nope. Just me.” I glanced at his desk chair. “Mind if I sit down?”
He shrugged and I sat. I looked about. His room hadn’t changed since my last time in there a couple months back— clean, organized. Maybe it seemed this way because I’d just come from Connor’s dump of a room, but Chris’s belongings appeared to be arranged purposefully. A few car posters were hung on the wall, but they’d been framed, not just tacked up with silly putty. The books on his shelf were alphabetized and placed so all the spines lined up in a perfect row. The pictures on his dresser—three of family, one of Abbie—were arranged at a slight angle, toward the door.
I studied the picture of Abbie as best I could from across the room. I didn’t recognize it. Her hair was in braids and she wore a sleeveless shirt, so it must have been taken early in the fall. When I looked closer, I realized she had on my shirt. Okay, I did not remember loaning that to her.
“She gave that to me awhile ago, when we were dating.” I looked at Chris and found him studying Abbie’s picture as well. “I guess I should take it down now, but I just haven’t.”
“It’s a good picture of her,” I said.
Chris nodded and continued to stare at it.
It touched my heart seeing how he valued her. How he’d let my messy, outspoken sister invade his organized, quiet life.
Abbie had been pregnant the whole time Chris knew her. She liked him too much to date him, wanting to keep him at arm’s length so he wouldn’t get caught up in what was already a complicated situation. But Chris relentlessly pursued her. I thought he’d run for the hills when he learned her last boyfriend got her pregnant. Instead, he’d been desperate to help in any way she allowed. Chris was sweet. Naive, maybe, but sweet.
“So, did you want something, or . . . ?”
I’d been staring at him. How embarrassing. “Not really. I just wanted to see how you are.”
He shrugged.
“Well, I wanted to say how much I appreciate the friend you are to Abbie. It means a lot to her. And to me.”
Chris snorted and scooted to the edge of the bed. “I’m a horrible friend. I do stuff hoping it’ll convince her to drop Lance.”
Out with the In Crowd Page 3