I open my mouth, as if there is something, anything for me to say right now, but Jack turns away toward the stairs.
“Hey, pretty girl,” Seth says, his body cutting between me and Jack, and I scramble for my clothes to pocket the baggie of drugs before Seth knows I have them.
• • •
I sit on the drugs. Hide them in my closet. Then freak out. Move them to my underwear drawer. Then freak out. Move them to the far corner under my bed. I just want to deliver them and get them out of my life, but I can’t get up the nerve to go back to Cornish. So I wait.
Five days after the house party, I get home from a Wednesday dinner shift at the diner and stare at Jack’s house when I pull in. I haven’t seen him at our lockers so far this week. He’s avoiding me. And I think about going next door to talk to him. But what do I say? Everything you saw last Friday was really what you saw? Yes, I’d had sex. Yes, I was holding drugs. Yes, I’m that girl. I feel so disgusted with myself that I abandon any thought of trying to explain.
Mom is gone for some school thing, and I have no idea where Willow is. But when I walk in, I find my stepdad slumped at the kitchen table, completely wasted. His eyes are closed. An open beer bottle sits in front of him.
I tiptoe toward my room but hear him say, “Hey, Tessa. Come sit down a minute.” He’s really slurring. So I’m assessing. Will it be a yellfest? A verbal Tessa takedown? Or is he too far gone? Hitting that place where there is so much alcohol, his anger is replaced by gushing emotion.
I saw it once from him after an uncle of his died. He came home. Drank to the point of punching a hole in the hallway wall and then drank right on into crying. Until he kept telling Mom and me and Willow he loved us so much, it hurt.
“Hey.” I sit across from him. His lids are heavy over his glassy brown eyes, and in his hand is a cracked frame holding a small black-and-white photo of him, about five, standing with his parents. “What’s up?”
He licks his lips slowly, tries to find enough spit to form words. “Do you think I’m a bad dad?”
His question stings with the surprise of it. “Um, why are you asking?”
His fingers twitch over the frame. “I need to know,” he drawls.
A thousand emotions knot in my gut. I think of me on his shoulders when I was a little girl. Then I see the flash of me, legs longer, eyes wider, sitting in a corner as he stands over me, yelling about how stupid I am. My answer needs to be careful. He’s calm right now, and I want to keep it that way.
“You’re kind of my only dad.” I shrug. “I think you’re smart, and you can be friendly and funny. People like you.”
He smiles, his head drooping over the table like a dehydrated flower. With a lot of effort, he lifts it up again. “That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.” I sigh.
“Do you hate me?” He winces, waiting for my response.
Often, I think.
“No,” I answer.
He nods, relieved. His forehead thuds against the tabletop and sticks there. “I loved my dad, but I also hated him.” His words bounce against the wood. I wait for him to tell me more, but he’s on the edge of passing out.
“Why did you hate your dad?” I ask.
His shoulders jerk, but his head remains down on the table. “He hit me. All the time.”
I swallow hard, my emotions locking in to exactly what that must have been like. My stepdad is mean to me, hurtful, his words often feeling like pelted ice balls. But he always keeps his fists in check. “Why’d he hit you?” I ask.
“For all kinds of reasons. I didn’t make my bed right. I talked back when I shouldn’t have. One time I climbed a tree and ripped my pants.”
In my head, I get a snapshot of him young, his face free of hair, with his cleft chin and the sloping tip of his Romanesque nose and smooth, unweathered skin, scaling a maple, hitting the top, and feeling all high and free. But all over his body are deep brown-and-yellow bruises for just being boyish.
“I’m sorry.” And I mean it.
He lifts his head suddenly and looks at me, unfocused. His giant hand grabs mine, the calluses rubbing against my fingers. His cheeks are flamed red from alcohol. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m your dad, Tessa. And I love you.”
It’s so strange coming from him. Even when I was small, he rarely talked about love. I take in his sagging eyelids, the wiry hair shooting wild from his chin and cheeks. Question if what he’s saying is merely a slurred mistake, an inebriated stumble of the mind.
“I’m an asshole,” he continues, “so much like my dad, for not telling you enough that I love you. But I do. And you deserve to hear it more.” His eyes close. He nods and nods. And I sit silent, stunned. Believing he really means it. Melting from it. And for a very surreal, unbelievable moment, feeling full.
“It’s just, your grandmother makes me feel like a failure,” he says slowly, rousing himself. “Because I can’t give you the things you should have. I try.” He fumbles in his jeans pocket and pulls out a small roll of money. “I have this for you. I’ve been saving. Your mom says you need a dress. For homecoming. Soon.” He hands me the bills. “Here. Go get a dress.”
I stare at the cash. It’s our food. Our electricity. Hours of him standing in hand-dug ditches and pits of muddy water and clay. That cash is the shredding skin from his palms, the holes in his jeans, the never-ending moisture in his work boots, the fatigue and weariness that make him like he is right now.
And my tears come.
I hesitate. Afraid to touch the money.
“Take it, Tessa.” He jiggles his fist at me, his whole body quaking as he does. “Please. I want you to have a nice dress.”
I take the money from him as if it were on fire. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” he mutters before laying his head on the table and passing out.
• • •
Because it’s way too Cinderella and I’m afraid it will poof! to nothing any second, I jump right into the buying-a-dress thing, call Juliette ASAP to take me to the mall.
“Be there in ten,” Juliette says, sending shivers of excitement through me. I don’t get to shop for clothes very often.
As I head out to wait for her, some Australian boy band croons with an incoming call on Willow’s cell sitting on the kitchen counter. I glance at it to see the photo of a girl with dark brown hair and creamy beige skin, very Simone-like. And the name that sits in all caps above the photo of the caller makes me wince.
BAKER CHANNING
Willow rushes from her room and sees me looking.
“Quit spying on me, Tessa. God!” Willow’s long dark hair flows around her shoulders. Her skinny jeans and tank top cover the curves she has now that she didn’t have a year ago.
“I wasn’t spying, Will. I was just going to give you your phone.”
“Whatever.” She starts to walk away, but stops. “By the way, Baker’s sister, Simone, says she knows you.”
I try not to flinch. “She does.”
For a really long moment, my sister eyes me in a way she’s never done before. Analyzing me. She looks at me like Simone does. Her glare digging into me, finding dirt in every feature and revulsion with every breath. With Baker Channing as her new friend, I wonder what exactly she’s been told.
• • •
“So, I sort of have a date for homecoming,” Juliette announces. We decided to get a snack before trying on homecoming dresses, and now she’s clutching a diet soda with both hands as we sit in the mall’s food court.
“What?” I squeal, excited and totally curious. As student council president, she goes to every dance, but she usually just hangs with the other council members, walks around to make sure everyone is having fun. She’s been asked out before, but the guys are never very bright, so Juliette declines. She needs an equal, someone who can talk to her on her level, who gets
her. “So who is it?”
“Sam Kearns.” She winces.
My face twists to confused. “You mean the ‘waste-of-space’ Sam Kearns?” I grab a chili-cheese fry from the cardboard bowl between us.
She nods, runs a hand through her dark, sleek hair before smoothing it down again.
“No offense, Jules, but I thought you hated him.”
She reaches for a fry. “He bugs the shit out of me, but he told me we should call a truce. It’s a truce date.”
“A truce date?”
She nods. “The Geneva Convention of dates.”
“Tessa?” someone calls.
Juliette and I both look toward who I instantly recognize as Cornish Drug House Guy—the one who touched my hair.
“I called your name a couple times.” He winks at me. “Are you pretending I don’t exist?” He’s wearing the same Detroit Tigers hat he had on at the house, his dirty brown hair leaking out by his ears. When he smiles, I realize he’s got really straight white teeth for an intense drug user. If I saw him on the street, I’d think he was more clean-cut than he is.
Across the table, Juliette raises an eyebrow. How do I introduce him to her? Juliette, this is the guy I deliver drugs to?
I smile, all tight and polite, at him. “I make it a point of not talking to strange guys at the mall.”
He gives a throaty laugh. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
My cheeks flame. I glance at Juliette, her head now cocked, all curious, as she watches this exchange.
“Listen.” I work to layer anger over my panic, to shift the power from him to me. “I don’t know you very well, and you certainly don’t know me. And my friend and I don’t get a lot of time to sit and chat, so can you please just leave us alone and let us finish our fries?”
The divot in Cornish Drug Guy’s chin twitches. His nostrils flare. “Sure thing, Tessa.” I hate how he uses my name so familiarly.
He starts to walk away, and a tiny bit of relief streaks through me. But then he calls back, “I’ve heard I’ll see you before Saturday night anyway.”
Inside I cringe. My eyes fly to Juliette, who’s looking at me, all probing.
“Why will he see you later?” she asks. “How do you know him?”
For the briefest moment, I think about telling her. Think about laying it all out next to our chili-cheese fries on the sticky food court table. What I do. How I cheat on Seth when he’s not around enough to make me feel wanted and pretty. All the blurry, confusing feelings I feel when I can’t stop myself from hooking up with other guys. How I’ve been backed into a drug-infested corner by Ty to keep it all a secret. But I don’t want Juliette to hate me or think I’m some horrible slut. I can’t lose her.
So instead, I lie. “I know him from my job at Star. He comes into the diner to eat. Guess he’ll be there Saturday.”
“Hmm,” she says. And then is less chatty for the last hour we’re at the mall.
She buys a dress that’s stunning on her, sparkles with blue sequins along the bust, cinches at her waist, billows with satin in an A-line down her legs. I get a fiery cinnamon-candy-colored gown cut low and square in front. It hugs my waist, ends just above my knees, and Juliette dubs it The Male Mind-Blower. I’ve redubbed it The Stepdad Dress, an absolute gift.
In the parking lot, Juliette hugs me. “You know you can talk to me about, like, anything, right?”
“For sure.” I nod and look away from her.
“I mean, even if you don’t come with me to U of M, you can call and visit anytime.”
Her comment reminds me that in just under a year, if I don’t get into U of M, she may not be around to help me. To hold my hand. To prop me up if I need it. The panic is close to overwhelming, so I take a deep breath, give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best.”
“I know,” she says. But her smile is stiff, her suspicion cutting between us.
• • •
As I drive toward Cornish Street on late Saturday morning, the bile rises quickly to my throat, every turn making me more nauseated. I’ve waited until the last second to make this delivery. I have no choice but to get it done now.
At the breakfast shift earlier, I broke two plates. Dropped an omelet in a customer’s lap. My boss was pissed. And to make things worse, tomorrow is my birthday. I turn seventeen. Which means my real father will probably call.
I’m sure Grandma Leighton has already emailed him, demanding that he wish me happy birthday. So he’ll perform his obligatory reaching out. The thought makes me hover on the edge of puking.
It’s the same every birthday. I wait all day. Anxiety rises. I weirdly crave the ring of the phone, for him to tell me he misses me. He loves me. And after several minutes of surfacey conversation—How is school? How are your grades? The weather in D.C. is rainy—he says “love” and my name in the same sentence. But it’s always tinselly and small on his tongue, barely penetrating my brain and certainly not digging deep enough to hit my heart.
My life feels up in the air and in a trillion bits I can’t grab or control. I haven’t really spent time with Seth since last weekend, but I’ve called him a million times just to hear him tell me he misses me. Hear him say, “Friday was awesome. I can’t stop thinking about you.” It’s the next best thing to him being with me, touching me, erasing all this anxiety and awkwardness I feel about everything.
Now I turn my car down Cornish Street and my insides feel tangled and frayed. The drugs are in my glove compartment, safely hidden until I absolutely have to take them out. I think of those movies where someone is stopped for a minor traffic violation and the cop just looks at them and knows. The car is searched. The drugs are found. The jail doors slam as the film cuts quickly to the next scene. And this time, I don’t have Jack in the car in case something happens in that house. This time, I have no safety net except myself.
I startle when my cell clangs on the seat next to me and I see the name.
“Tessa? Sweetheart? It’s your dad,” he says when I answer.
I stop breathing. Veer the car over until the tires bump against the curb and stop.
“Hi.” My voice is small. Like I’m three years old, when I still thought he was coming back.
“I’m calling a little early. I’ll be . . . tied up tomorrow. But happy birthday.” His voice is gentle and kind. I block a sob rolling hard into my throat.
“Thanks.” I dig my fingernail into the side of my thumb where the dried skin there is already torn, feel the pain.
“How is everything going?” he asks.
I glance up. Realize I’m already on Cornish Street. “Good.”
“Good. Excellent.” Silence crawls through the phone. “So are you doing anything fun tomorrow? Or tonight maybe?”
“Not really.” Grandma Leighton has some kind of a socialite gala to attend tomorrow, so we won’t be going out with her. And I can’t tell my real father that my parents have to buy a new stovepipe after it caught fire and almost melted, so they don’t have money left to take me out or buy me much. “It’s a low-key year birthday-wise, I guess.”
“Oh. Okay.”
More silence.
“So, Tess, anything else going on?”
I peer at 557 Cornish Street slumped like a gray pile of shit up ahead. And I have the urge to finally come right out and ask him why. Why isn’t he here? Why doesn’t he care at all? I’m his daughter. He doesn’t know how ripped into I get by my stepdad, how my parents scrimp and save. He doesn’t know how math makes me want to scream. Or my best friend is the student council president or my favorite color is aqua. And he doesn’t even ask. He sends his child support money to Mom and calls it good.
“Okay, well—” He clears his throat. “I have to take Sandra to soccer right now, but I just wanted to touch base.”
I imagine his other daughter, Sandra, five years
younger than me, waiting impatiently behind him, her thick brown hair in a perfect ponytail, a new ball tucked loosely under her arm. My father’s second wife, blond and glowing, grabbing the car keys with a smile, holding their son’s nine-year-old hand, excited to have a lovely afternoon outing with the whole, smiling, fucking lot of them.
“Love you, Tess.” He says it like he’s ordering off a menu. Like he’s reading it on a bathroom wall. The words hit me like a hardball to the head.
“Love you, too,” I say. Half lying. Half heart-wrenchingly meaning it.
And the phone clicks to dead.
I close my eyes and clutch my stomach as if a bullet has entered it and I’m bleeding out. And I breathe. Wait for the sick, twisted, painful feeling he always fills me with to subside just a little.
A knock at my car window surprises me. Cornish Drug Guy is standing there, smiling. He must have walked down from the gray house. Must have been waiting for me to show up.
I roll down the window. “Hey, pretty girl.” His voice is soft, low. Like he really means it. “You don’t look happy. Big Q isn’t home yet, and you won’t get your money until he is. Want to take a quick drive to the corner store with me? I’ll buy you a pop.”
He winks. Eyes me like I’m candy. And he may smell like cigarettes and sour weed, but he’s hot in his own way, and I feel raw, and my real dad’s voice echoes in my head, softer and softer, but I don’t want it to fade, and I really don’t want to be alone right now.
So I step out of my car, lock it. “You drive,” I tell him. He grabs up my loose fingers and leads me down the street to his navy-blue pickup.
• • •
He bought me a beer instead and drinks one next to me as we sit in his truck in the store parking lot. I don’t have much to say, at least not to him, so we just sit, let the slight buzz soak in, watch a dozen people go into the store to buy chips and cigarettes.
Finally, he says, “Mind if I wash the truck before we go back?”
“That’s fine,” I say.
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