Avery wandered into the kitchen to find a pen and paper to write a note to Chase. We checked the door to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind us, since Lizzie had taken the key with her, and we headed downstairs. Larry tipped his hat again when he saw us, and held open the door.
We hadn’t turned on any of the lights in the apartment. The sun had been streaming through the blinds, so it hadn’t felt like we had been sitting in the dark, but when we got outside, the sun was blinding and I had to squint. Avery pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “I love this time of year, don’t you?” she asked. She held out her arms and twirled around. I thought her sunglasses would fall off, but they didn’t. “It almost still feels like summer, but not as humid. What’s that called again?”
“I think it’s called Indian summer,” I told her.
“Right,” she said. She spun around again. “I feel like dancing, don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “Not here in the middle of the street.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” I said, “people could see us, for one thing.”
“Oh, Leah,” Avery said. “Don’t be so uptight. You can’t spend your time worrying about what other people think. I never do.” I wondered if that meant I shouldn’t have worried about whether everyone thought I was a baby for calling Mom, or if I shouldn’t have cared if Mom was worried about me. Avery grabbed my hand and spun herself around me. From down the block I heard Larry whistle. Avery took a bow and turned back to me. “You see?” she said. “It’s no big deal.” I noticed that Avery said that a lot.
We found a deli a couple blocks away and bought chips and soda. Avery said she thought if we kept walking west, we’d hit Central Park. I didn’t know which way was east and which was west. Mom had said she didn’t want me wandering around Manhattan. I followed Avery since she seemed to know where to go, even though I remembered hearing that Central Park could be dangerous. I had heard of people getting attacked or kidnapped in the park. I pictured a man in a dark coat and a ski mask. I pictured his arms reaching out from behind a tree and pulling us into the woods. Maybe he would have a car parked back there. He would shove us into the car and drive us away, and no one would know where to look for us. Our parents thought we were at a play, and we hadn’t even told Chase we were going to Central Park.
Avery was skipping down the block. “Come on, Leah,” she called. I felt stupid for worrying about things that I knew probably weren’t going to happen, but maybe if you worry about them, you can make sure they don’t come true. Sort of like jinxing it. I thought to myself, Please don’t let us be kidnapped, and then I raced to catch up with Avery.
chapter five
We didn’t meet up with any kidnappers in Central Park. Instead we picnicked on the grass next to a huge building that Avery said was a famous museum. Later on we headed back to the apartment. Avery and I flopped onto the couch. Chase and Lizzie were still nowhere to be seen. “We were gone for so long,” I said. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Making out or making up or something,” Avery said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “They weren’t fighting.”
“In the car,” she explained. “Chase said something about Yale and Lizzie got upset.”
“She didn’t seem to be upset for too long,” I said.
“I know,” Avery said. “But this is why my dad’s so worried about Yale. Chase always feels guilty about maybe having to leave Lizzie behind next year. He barely thinks about anything else. It’s like Lizzie is the only person in the world.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Anyway, I’m bored,” Avery said. “I saw a computer down the hall. Let’s go check e-mail.”
Mom has always been protective of her computer. She gets nervous that someone will press the wrong button and then whatever book she’s working on will disappear. When she’s on a deadline, no one is allowed to go near her computer, not even Simon. Mom even got me my own computer so I wouldn’t have to use hers. I didn’t think we should use Lizzie’s aunt’s computer in case Lizzie’s aunt was like Mom, but I didn’t say anything to Avery. It’s confusing not to worry about what people are thinking—should you not worry about saying anything, or not worry about the thing you were going to say to begin with?
Avery logged into her e-mail. “Hey, look,” she said. “Brenna e-mailed me new ringtones from America’s Next Rock Star. Do you watch that show?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not really into the reality shows.”
“I know. They’re awful,” Avery said. “Chase hates them too. He says they’re a way for the networks to make a lot of money without having to pay all the actors or come up with anything creative. It probably means I’m stupid, but I love them anyway. I wish I’d brought my cell phone.”
“I have mine,” I said. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to Avery.
“But you don’t watch it,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “If I hate them, I’ll just switch it back.”
“You won’t hate them,” Avery said. “I swear. Some of the singers are really good.” Avery flipped my phone open and dialed into the ringtones. “I’m going to program in my number, and Brenna’s and Callie’s numbers. Then I can program this to play different songs depending on which one of us is calling. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh, this is so cool,” Avery said. “They have this song that Luci Williams sang last week. It was her farewell song, actually, because she was voted off, which was totally unfair, by the way. She is so, so talented. I was practically crying when she sang!”
Avery downloaded the song by Luci Williams, and then she downloaded a couple of other songs to play when Brenna and Callie called. We called Brenna and Callie so they could call us back and make sure it worked. By the time we’d finished, Chase and Lizzie had come back out. “Are you guys ready?” Chase asked.
“For what?” Avery asked.
“Dinner,” Chase said. “Some kids who graduated last year are in the city, and we’re going to meet up. Come on.”
We had to drive to another part of Manhattan to get to the restaurant. When we got into the car, I saw the clock on the dashboard said 7:03. If we’d gone to the play, we would probably already have been at a restaurant eating. Maybe we would’ve even been waiting for the check and getting ready to head back to Riverdale.
“How far away is the restaurant?” I asked.
“Uptown, near Columbia,” Chase said. “I guess about fifteen minutes.”
I calculated in my head—fifteen minutes to get there and thirty minutes to drive back to Riverdale. That left us nearly an hour and forty-five minutes to eat and get back to Riverdale by nine thirty.
The restaurant was called Nacho Mama’s. We drove around and around again looking for a parking place nearby, but we couldn’t find one. Finally Chase pulled into a lot. Chase’s friends had already gotten a table.
“Hey, man,” Chase said. One of the guys sitting at the table stood up and gave Chase a sort of half hug, half pat on the back.
“Chase, man,” the guy said. “What’ll it be?” The guy held up a pitcher of beer. I wondered how come they had beer on the table—I didn’t think they were twenty-one. Maybe they had fake IDs. Mom would kill me if she knew.
“No thanks, man, nothing for me,” Chase said. “I’m driving.”
Avery leaned over to me. “They all call each other ‘man.’ We should start counting because I’ll bet they’ll say ‘man,’ like, a thousand times in the next couple of hours.”
The waiter dropped off menus for the four of us. Lizzie asked Chase’s friend to pour her a drink. She sat up against Chase and he put his arm around her. Chase’s friend offered Avery and me beer too.
“No way, man,” Chase said. “It’s my little sister. She’s, like, twelve.”
“I’m thirteen,” Avery said.
“Whatever,” Chase said.
“Sorry, man,” the guy said.
/> “See what I mean,” Avery whispered to me.
It took a while for everyone to decide what to get, but we finally ordered our food. Avery and I decided to split a plate of nachos and a quesadilla. The guy who had offered us the beer turned out to be named Ryan. Chase knew him because they had both played on the tennis team the year before.
“Come to Columbia, man,” Ryan said. “We could use someone with your backhand.”
“I don’t know,” Chase said. “It’s a little too close to home. Besides, I haven’t been playing as much this year.”
“Oh no, Chase, it’s perfect,” Lizzie said. “I could apply to NYU. I bet I’d get in, and then we’d only be a subway ride away from each other.”
Chase shrugged. “I’ll think about it, man. Definitely,” he said.
I looked across the table at Lizzie. She was still squeezed up against Chase, and she picked up her beer and took a long sip. She held her glass to her mouth for so long that I wondered if she was actually drinking or just staring into it. I sort of felt sorry for her. I watched her hand as she finally moved the glass from her lips back to the table, her fingers gripped tightly around the handle. Chase rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “Hey, guys,” Ryan said. “Chin up. The food’s here.”
The food was great. Avery and I devoured the nachos and most of the quesadilla, but it seemed to take everyone else a really long time to finish eating. Maybe because they were all talking and drinking, too. I had no idea how late it was. I tried to count backward and figure out how much time it had taken to drive to Columbia and park the car and walk to the restaurant and order the food and eat. Probably more than the time I had allotted for it. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open to see the time. 9:42. “I’ll be right back,” I told Avery. “I’m just gonna run to the bathroom.”
The waiter pointed me to the back of the restaurant. I walked in and dialed home. I leaned up against one of the sinks and listened to the phone ring.
Mom answered. “Leah?” she said.
“Yes, it’s me,” I told her. “I’m sorry to be calling so late.”
“Where are you?” Mom asked.
“I’m with Avery,” I said. “You said it was all right to stay out past nine thirty as long as we were back in Riverdale.”
“Yes, yes,” Mom said. “That’s fine. So, where are you?”
“At Avery’s,” I said as my phone beeped.
“What?” Mom asked.
“I’m at Avery’s house, but I think my phone’s about to die,” I said. I guess downloading all those ringtones had used up most of the battery.
“I’ll call you back at Avery’s,” Mom said.
“Um, I don’t know the number,” I said. “And Avery is in the other room.”
“I have it,” Mom said. “It’s in the school directory.”
“You can’t call,” I said. My phone beeped again. It was about to disconnect me.
“Why not?” I didn’t answer. “Leah,” Mom said, “where are you?”
I took a deep breath. There wasn’t enough time to make something up.
“Leah, where are you?” she said again. This time it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like an accusation.
“We’re in Manhattan,” I said.
I heard Mom breathe in, about to say something. Then the line went dead. I snapped my phone shut and shoved it back into my pocket. Even though I was alone in the bathroom, my cheeks flushed the way they did when people were watching me. I looked into the mirror and waited for them to turn back to their normal color.
“Everything okay?” Chase asked when I got back to the table.
Of course it wasn’t okay. My mother was probably planning how long she would ground me. I wished we were home, and I felt like a baby. No matter what Avery said, I wasn’t very good about not worrying what other people thought of me. I couldn’t help it. Anyway, it was easy for Avery to say. She had a normal family; she was popular; she had parents who let her and her brother go into Manhattan on their own. If I told Chase what had happened, he would think I was a baby too. “Everything’s fine,” I said.
We finally left the restaurant and walked back to the parking lot to get the car. It didn’t take long to get home from Columbia. Avery asked me if I wanted to sleep over, and I seriously considered it. I would be in trouble no matter what, so why not delay it until the morning? But then I had visions of Mom and Simon calling the police and reporting me as a missing person, lost somewhere in Manhattan. “No,” I said. “I should just go home.”
Simon and Mom were sitting at the dining room table when I walked in the door. “Leah,” Mom said. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry? Are you kidding me?” Simon asked. “We’ve been trying to call you back for over an hour. We were worried sick.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “My phone died.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up to show them.
“Your phone has nothing to do with your being in Manhattan until eleven o’clock,” Mom said.
“What did you want me to do? We were at dinner, and the food took a really long time. I called you as soon as I saw how late it was.”
“And then you lied,” she said.
“I didn’t want you to be upset,” I said.
“Well, that turned out really well for you, didn’t it?” she said.
“It’s not like I did anything unsafe,” I told them. “I was with Avery and her brother the whole time. We were at a restaurant. We weren’t wandering around.”
“I don’t care where you were,” Mom said. “You weren’t where you promised you would be.” She looked over at Simon.
“That’s right,” he said. “But from now on you’re going to be exactly where we tell you to be.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re grounded,” Simon said. “Until further notice. That means you come straight home after school. You do your homework. And no cell phone calls unless they’re to Mom or me.”
Even though I knew it was coming, it still felt like they’d kicked me in the stomach. I was just starting to make new friends. But Avery already had Brenna and Callie. If I couldn’t hang out with her, she would probably forget all about me. “Please,” I said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. You’re going to make me lose my friends.”
“You should have thought of that before,” Mom said.
“But I did,” I said. “I really was thinking about you guys the whole time. I wanted to come home, but we were stuck in a restaurant. It’s not my fault!”
“Keep your voice down,” Mom said.
“Chase and Avery don’t have a curfew,” I said.
“Maybe these aren’t the kinds of friends you should be hanging out with anyway. They seem a bit wild. Letting your kids drive into Manhattan by themselves without a curfew is crazy to me.”
“You don’t know them at all,” I said. “You’re the one who’s crazy!”
“Mommy!” Charlie called.
“Oh, Leah,” Mom said. “Now you woke your brother.”
“I don’t care,” I said as Mom got up from the table to head upstairs. I heard Charlie calling her again.
“I’m coming,” Mom called.
“What’s gotten into you, Leah?” Simon said. “All you had to do was call. If you couldn’t get home, we could have figured something out. I would have come to get you. We made it so easy on you.”
“Easy on me?” I said. “You have no idea how hard it is to be me. You don’t even care about me.”
“I’m your father,” Simon said.
“You’re not my real father,” I said. My voice caught and I was afraid I was going to cry. I turned toward the stairs. Simon called after me and I turned back around. “You don’t know anything at all!” I told him. I felt the tears start, and I stomped upstairs. There was always something about me that was different. First I didn’t have normal parents, and now the ones I had w
ere ruining my life. I just wanted to be like everyone else.
I slammed my bedroom door shut. It’s not like I had to worry about waking up Charlie. I knew Mom was sitting with him, probably telling him another bedtime story. She’s really good at making them up. When I was little, I liked going to bed because it meant she would sit there with me and tell me story after story until I fell asleep. “This is the one about Princess Leah,” Mom would say, pronouncing my name just like the princess in Star Wars. It all seemed like a really long time ago. Now I felt too angry to go to bed. I flicked the switch to turn my computer on, and then I clicked on the button for the Internet. I knew exactly what website I wanted to go to. I typed in the address and watched it open up on the screen. Across the top in blue block printing were the words “Lyon’s Reproductive Services.” I had found the website a few months before. I never told anyone about it, not even Mom. I just wanted to see where I’d come from. This time there was a link at the bottom that I’d never noticed before. It almost felt like alarms should have sounded when I saw it. But aside from my breaths and my heart pounding in my ears, the room was silent. Sometimes you know you’re about to change your life with just one little movement, like the last time I turned off the light in my bedroo m at the pink house, or when I saw Mom slip a ring onto Simon’s finger on their wedding day. That’s how I felt when I clicked the link to “Lyon’s Sibling Registry.” I moved the mouse so the cursor was over the words and I pressed my finger down.
chapter six
That first night, when I clicked on the words, an online registration form popped up, with spaces where you had to fill in your credit card information. I realized that you had to pay in order to use the website, and I thought of the credit card in my wallet—the “emergency only” credit card that Mom and Simon had given me the year before. It’s not really my credit card—it has my name on the front, but it’s connected to their credit card account, and the bills go to them. I’d used it only a few times, and always with permission. If only you could send cash through the computer. I could use the money left over from what Simon had given me, or some that I’d saved from babysitting, and then Mom and Simon would never find out. But the Lyon’s Sibling Registry accepted credit cards only. My eyes moved back and forth between the screen and my backpack. My wallet was in the front pocket, the credit card inside of it. I began to reach for it, but then I heard Simon’s and Mom’s voices in the hall, and turned to shut down my computer in case they were about to come in and yell at me some more.
My So-Called Family Page 4