Tom frowns, and Dad glares at Manny. “Angela,” he says.
“What happened to her?” Manny says it casually, but something in his voice sounds odd.
Dad moves his roller to the back of his head. “High school ended. That was that.”
“Is that right.” Manny makes it a statement more than a question. I wonder why the weirdness. Maybe he’d been into Dad’s girl. Or maybe he was just kind of a dick.
“I keep forgetting you all went to high school together,” I say, hoping to break the tension. I don’t say it’s because Manny looks so much older than my dad, his leathery skin appearing almost cracked in places.
“Yeah, we’ve been running with the same crowd for years,” Tom says. “Baseball, football, then the police academy.”
“Some of the guys went to college first, but not the three of us,” Manny says. “We weren’t college material.” He says it as if he’s joking, but the undertone in his voice is knife sharp. I’d hate to have been the person who told him he wasn’t college material.
“We’ve got street smarts,” Dad says, and that seems to lighten things up.
We finish rolling out and go to the locker room. It was easy not to think about all the questions from the night before while we were busy with the workout, but now the list starts running through my head. What was Dad doing with that ring? Was it for my mother? Did he ever give it to her? Had he lied about their relationship? Like, a real lie, this time? I hate the feeling of doubting him.
It’s early enough that Maddie’s probably still sleeping, and I don’t want to go to the beach yet. I keep thinking about Manny bringing up Dad’s old girlfriend and how annoyed Dad got, and it gives me an idea. I hit Spiro’s for some breakfast and then go to the last place I ever thought I’d want to be during my first week of freedom: Brooksby High. School might be out for seniors, but it’s still open for everyone else, and the library is full of old yearbooks. I can look up pictures of my mother, and after maybe I can use the computers to see if I can find out anything else on the internet. Then I’ll have something to tell Maddie when she’s feeling better.
Most of the spots in the senior lot are empty, and homeroom’s already started, so the halls are quiet. There’s almost no one in the library, either, which is good. I don’t feel like explaining to underclassmen what I’m doing there, and I don’t want anyone thinking I didn’t make the grades to get out of finals. I may not be a brain, but I’m not stupid, and only the most boneheaded seniors are still stuck in the building.
The old yearbooks are stacked up in a dusty corner. I dig through them until I find the two for the years right before my dad graduated; I’m not sure exactly what class my mother was in. The yearbooks are heavy, covered in leather and embossed with a silver eagle, the school mascot. The leather feels almost padded; it dimples when I press on it.
I flip right to the alphabetical photos of graduating seniors, searching for Natalie Russo. There’s no one with that name from the year before Dad graduated, and the only Russo from two years before is someone named Regina. She does have dark hair like me, but Dad didn’t mention Natalie having a sister. Which doesn’t mean much—he didn’t tell me anything about her family, really—but it’s weird not to find Natalie. I go back and get two more yearbooks, going further back in time, but still nothing. How could it be that Dad told me the truth about her name and yet I can’t find her in the yearbooks?
I guess the answer would be obvious to most people, but for me it’s a shock to open the yearbook from Dad’s class and find Natalie Russo’s picture right there, between Nathan Rosenberg and Janine Sanderson. It’s an even bigger shock to see the deep red lipstick Manny described, the lipstick Dad said belonged to some girl named Angela.
What’s going on here?
Natalie—my mother—is dark haired and pretty, exactly as Manny described her, and I put my face up close to the photo so I can take in the details. Do we have the same eyes, nose, hair? The coloring’s the same, for sure. Now I realize why I look nothing like my dad: because I look exactly like my mom.
It hits me that I’ve just uncovered the first official Dad lie: he said Natalie graduated a year or two ahead of him, and yet she was in his class. It’s not the biggest lie in and of itself, but it has big implications: if she’s the girl he brought to the beach after graduation, then he knew her in high school. Went out with her in high school, even. That’s lie number two.
Just to check, I look through all the other pictures to see if there’s somehow a girl named Angela with dark hair and red lips, but there’s only one Angela: Angela Capicelli, a cute blond-haired girl with bright pink lipstick. Definitely not the girl they talked about at the gym. A third lie.
Now I have to wonder how much of the story he told me is true. I’m tempted to text Maddie about it, but then it will be real, and I’m not quite ready for that. I put the yearbooks back and go to a computer carrel, and then I type the name Natalie Russo into the browser to see what I can find. There’s like 11 million entries, so that’s not going to be helpful. I type in her name plus my dad’s, but Joseph Walsh is even more common, and using his nickname, Joe, is even worse—it’s the same as some old rocker from the seventies. So annoying how people always assume the internet has all the answers, but that’s completely untrue when there’s this much information to choose from. I get bored real quick scrolling through websites and decide to get out of there.
I’m not satisfied, though. Apparently I’ve flipped some sort of curiosity switch in myself, and turning it off isn’t easy. I go back to my truck and sit in the parking lot for a while, listening to Chance the Rapper, reading and rereading my mother’s letter. It was so easy to dismiss at first, and even doing some research didn’t feel like such a big deal when I was doing it mostly to satisfy Maddie. But now that I’m having doubts about Dad, I’m starting to have questions about my mother, too. Why did she write to me now? Why doesn’t she want Dad to know? Why doesn’t she want to meet me? What’s the point of any of this anyway?
I don’t have any answers yet. But now I want them.
6
Maddie’s not at the box the next morning, and she’s not answering my texts, either, which isn’t like her. I’m dying to tell her what I found, so after the workout I go straight to her house. She lives on the other side of town from me, where all the houses are new and kind of look the same. Her neighborhood is best known for having been home to a serial killer a few years back, but everyone seems to have agreed that the only way to get people to forget about that is really aggressive landscaping.
Her house is no different. Split-level, vinyl siding, two-car garage, unnaturally green lawn. Her car, a used Honda Civic, sits in the driveway, but I breathe a sigh of relief to see her parents’ cars aren’t there. Not that I don’t like them—they’re nice enough people, it’s just that they’re not too crazy about me. Besides, I want to be alone with Maddie.
Unfortunately, I forgot that she might not be by herself—there’s still the possibility of yet another car in the garage, which I remember only after I ring the bell and Maddie’s older sister opens the door. Ashley was two years ahead of us at school and lives at home while she goes to Middlesex Community College. The plan is for her to transfer after she gets her associate’s degree, but I think the whole Brower family knows that’s never going to happen. Ashley takes afternoon classes and bartends at night, and she likes the party life. I’d lay money on her dropping out of school and picking up more bar shifts over transferring any day. I know she’s the reason Maddie’s so worried about me staying in Brooksby—she doesn’t want me turning out like her sister. I keep telling her there’s no chance of it. “We have nothing in common. You know that.”
“Still. You don’t know what will happen if you leave Brooksby and try someplace new, but you have a pretty good idea of what it will be like if you stay.”
“Exactly.” She doesn’t get it, and I haven’t yet managed to explain it in a way that will make her understand.
Ashley looks pretty wrecked after what I assume is a typical night of working at Local Heroes and then doing the late-night thing. She has wavy brown hair and hazel eyes, just like Maddie, but where Maddie keeps hers just long enough so she can pull it into a ponytail when she works out, Ashley’s hair falls halfway down her back, chopped into a bunch of layers that are either artfully styled to look messy or are really a tangled disaster. Last night’s makeup is smudged around her eyes, and she’s still in what I guess are her pajamas: a ripped-up crop top and pilled leggings.
“She’s still in bed,” Ashley informs me, without even saying hello. “She’s sick. Not sure she’s going to want to see you, or anyone else.”
“Glad to hear you’re doing well,” I say, though sarcasm is lost on her. “It’s nice to see you too. Can you let Maddie know I’m here?”
Ashley makes that awful uch sound that only girls seem to know how to make, complete with an exaggerated eye roll. But she goes upstairs to Maddie’s room, and after a minute Ashley yells for me to come up. That already isn’t a great sign—Maddie usually yells for me herself.
I walk up the stairs and down the hall to Maddie’s room. All the floors are covered in thick, plush beige carpeting, new and squishy and pristine. Maddie’s mom goes on a decorating binge every couple of years. Since that’s her job, she always says her home has to be a proper showcase.
Maddie insists on keeping control of her own room, which is why she’s covered the carpet with a polka-dotted throw rug and the walls with both fake and real motivational posters. The real ones are mostly Nike and Adidas ads ripped from magazines, but the fake ones are hilarious—she found a website that converts calendar slogans to be more realistic and ordered posters. My favorites are “Mistakes: Sometimes the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others” and “Procrastination: Hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now.” They always make me laugh.
As soon as I see Maddie, I know I won’t be doing a lot of laughing today. She’s still in bed, buried under mounds of blankets and her quilted orange comforter so only her face sticks out. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy and her hair is matted to her forehead. “I wasn’t expecting company,” she says, her voice raw and scratchy. “Don’t even think about kissing me—I haven’t brushed my teeth in like two days.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, move her hair off her forehead, and drop a kiss there. “How’s that?”
“Nice gesture, but I don’t want to breathe on you. Go sit at the end of the bed.”
I’d rather stay, but I get it. “Everyone missed you at the beach yesterday. Are you feeling any better? I didn’t hear from you and when you didn’t come to the gym I started to get worried.”
“I’m on the mend. Just extremely dehydrated and super tired.”
“I’m glad,” I say. “I thought maybe you’d run off with Colin.” The minute the words come out of my mouth I wish I could reach into the air and catch them.
“So you’re not here to see if I’m feeling better,” she says. “You’re here to check up on me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say. This would be more convincing if I had thought to bring something, like soup. I’m such an idiot. “I was worried about you. It was just a bad joke is all.”
Maddie pushes aside the covers and props herself up to a sitting position, leaning on her pillows. “Pack, I’m going to lay it out for you one time. Colin is not into me. I am not into Colin. Colin and I are both going to the same school next fall, and neither of us has ever left Brooksby in any meaningful way. We are terrified, so we are trying to help each other. I’m sorry that’s making you all insecure, but you have to get over it.” She sounds really mad. I want to fix it.
“I get it. I’m sorry. I really did come by to see how you are, and to tell you I found more than the birth certificate.” I fill her in on everything—the ring, the conversation between Dad and Tom and Manny at the gym, the yearbooks. “There’s more to the story than what Dad told me, and now I want to know what he left out.”
The angry look leaves her face, replaced by a little smirk. “That feeling you’re having? It’s called curiosity.”
“Funny,” I say. That’s exactly what I thought yesterday, though. “I’m not sure I like it. I really wanted to believe that Dad wasn’t lying to me. But now . . .”
“So what’s the plan?”
“The plan?”
“What are you going to do next? You’ve confirmed the name, you know something’s weird because of the ring and the yearbook. Are you going to research the overdose next? Or do something to try and find her? You have to take initiative here. Obviously your dad isn’t going to clear things up, so it’s on you. This is your life. Act.”
Now she’s back to sounding mad. I don’t get why everything I say and do is making her so angry. I’m just being myself, same as always. I have to prove her wrong. “I am going to act. I just haven’t decided how yet.”
“Well, maybe you should come back when you figure it out,” she says.
Ouch. “Kind of harsh, don’t you think?”
“Look, Pack, I don’t want to fight. I’m just really tired. Can we talk later?”
“Of course.” I get up to kiss her forehead again before I go, but she’s already closed her eyes.
It’s not like Maddie and I never fight. We have little arguments all the time—about where to go when we go out, what movies to watch when we stay in, that sort of thing. She’s always trying to get me to do new stuff, like go into Boston to visit museums, or do nature walks around the North Shore, boring things like that. Sometimes our fights are bigger, about why Maddie lets her mom get to her, or why I’m not more into school, or how Maddie doesn’t exactly get my relationship with Dad. But the fights are always about specific, isolated things.
Something different is happening now. Bigger. This isn’t about Colin, or my mom. It’s about a lot of things we’re not saying.
I don’t know what to do about it, but being at the beach without Maddie isn’t helping. Everyone can tell I’m in a bad mood—I snap at the girls when they ask where Maddie is and have to apologize, and avoiding everyone by going in the water is a stupid move, given that the ocean is way too cold to swim in. There’s no one here I want to talk to about why I’m upset; I only want to talk to Maddie, who clearly doesn’t want to talk to me.
It’s not long before I give up and go home. I have to turn on the heat in my truck to get the bluish tint off my lips, and I left before the grilling started, so I’m starving. It’s not good for me to wait so long to eat—I haven’t had anything since I grabbed a smoothie at the gym, and when I’m this hungry the temptation to make bad choices kicks in. I dig around in the fridge to see what we have to cook, but I’ve been spending all my time at the beach and not at the grocery store, so we’ve got nothing left but some sad, wilted lettuce and a packet of precooked chicken strips. I put together a pathetic-looking salad and sit at the counter, eating and worrying about whether I’ve screwed things up with Maddie for real.
I’ve just finished the salad when Dad staggers out of bed. “Thought you’d still be gone,” he says. “What you got there?”
“A sad excuse for a salad,” I tell him. “I’ll go grocery shopping tonight, I promise.”
He looks at me closely. “Something wrong, bud?”
How does he always know? I do kind of want to tell him about the fight with Maddie, but I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about him lying to me. I don’t come to Dad with Maddie problems very often, but he’s always helpful when I have questions or need advice. I have to be careful about the details, that’s all. “Things kind of suck right now.”
“Problems with Maddie?” It’s like he’s psychic or something. My face must show surprise, because he laughs. “You’re a pretty easygoing guy, Pack. If something’s wrong, it only makes sense it would have to do with Maddie.”
“It’s not anything specific,” I say. It’s not like I can d
escribe our conversation. “It’s just—she’s leaving for college in the fall, and we haven’t really talked about what’s going to happen, and I thought—but now I’m not sure—”
“You thought you’d stay together and everything would be the same, just long distance.” Dad goes over to the coffeemaker and gets a pot started. “I hate to tell you, kid, but even if that was the plan, things are going to change. There’s no stopping progress.”
“How is it progress if we’re not going to be together anymore? That doesn’t feel like progress to me.”
“I just mean both of your lives are about to change a lot, no matter what you want to happen. She’s moving to a new place, and she’s going to make new friends and start thinking about what she wants the rest of her life to look like. You might be staying here for now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about those things too.”
“Why can’t we change together?” I’m still not buying the whole progress thing. “Lots of people meet in high school and spend the rest of their lives together.”
Dad sighs. “Some people do, sure. But more people think that’s how it’s going to happen and then they turn out to be wrong. Thinking that way can hold you back. The world’s a complicated place, and you’re both still young. You don’t have to plan your whole future now. Remember, this is all a lot scarier for Maddie than it is for you. You’re going to have some consistency for a while—you’ll still be living here, and working at the gym, and all that is familiar. The only real change will be not having Maddie around.”
I’m tempted to point out that I also won’t have school, but that will only remind him to bug me about signing up for classes.
“But for her,” he continues, “she’s starting a whole new life, and she has to think about more than just how that will affect you.”
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