The Art of Being Indifferent (The Twisted Family Tree Series)

by Brooke Moss

  “Well, this is going to be fun,” I muttered. I rubbed my eyes and looked at my ex-girlfriend, who appeared ready and able to tear one of the metal lockers off the wall. “Uh… Maddie?”

  “Who does she think she is?” she yelled, kicking the bottom of my locker and making it echo down the hallway. The crowd around us scattered like rats. “When I’m done with her, Drew, she’ll regret ever coming here.”

  I went to touch her arm, but she jerked away. So much for getting back together on the sly. Thanks again, Posey.

  “What the hell are you doing hanging out with her?”

  “It’s not my choice,” I told her. “Mr. Kingston is making me. He says I need help in Lit or he won’t pass me.”

  Maddie’s eyes flashed. “So get help from someone else.”

  “Don’t you think I would if I could?”

  Maddie started petting her long hair like a dog. She always did that when she was freaking out. When I broke up with her, I was afraid her ponytail was going to fall off the side of her head. “Drop your dad’s name, for hell’s sake. Get out of this. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  I looked down at the dingy tile floor. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” She threw her hands out. “If you think that I’m going to be with you while you’re cozying up with that trash, you’re kidding yourself.”

  Anger started to churn in my gut. First I was being forced to hang out with the school freak show, and now my ex-girlfriend was forbidding me to do it? This was out of control, and my headache was cracking my skull into pieces.

  The final bell rang above our heads, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “You know what?” I backed away from Maddie, officially done with the conversation. “You’re not my girlfriend anymore. I don’t need your permission to do a damn thing.”

  Her mouth dropped. “Drew.”

  Turning around, I walked away.

  Chapter Four

  Her.

  Conversations at the Coulters’ dinner table were the equivalent of seven different TV shows running at top volume all at the same time. People laughing, talking, and chewing around a giant farm table, all while glasses clinked and silverware cracked against chipped old plates. The stained glass light fixture above the table swayed as rolls were tossed from person to person, and napkins flailed at the peak of a good story. It was sensory overload.

  My first night here almost put me in tears. Almost.

  I wasn’t much of a crier.

  “Mom, I want to take t ball. Can I take t ball? I like t ball.”

  I watched as Paula reached across the table to wipe spaghetti sauce off her youngest son’s face. She was always so patient, I had no idea how she did it. If I had to spend as much time with these kids as she did, I would climb the walls.

  According to the few conversations I’d had with the Coulters since being moved to their house, I’d managed to piece together their story. It was a doozy. Apparently Paula and John met in college and had one of those whirlwind romances that resulted in a wedding three months later. My mom had done that a few times, too, but with her it ended in restraining orders and divorce court. That wasn’t the case with the Coulters. They’d been married for over twenty years now, and were still very much in love. Freaks. The both of them.

  So once they’d been married for something like four years, they had their first kid, Kyler, who died from leukemia three years later. Paula wasn’t able to get pregnant again after that, so they started doing foster parenting to fill their empty home. One placement led to another, which led to another, and… a decade later, they found themselves with five former foster children they’d adopted and made their own.

  But it didn’t stop there. All of Paula and John’s kids were screwed up in some way. I wasn’t trying to be mean or anything, but they were.

  Tabitha was ten, and deaf in one ear from taking a punch to the side of the head from her biological father’s girlfriend. Lacey was twelve and had fetal alcohol syndrome. Being still was practically impossible for her. Micah was fourteen and spent most of his time in the principal’s office because of his behavioral issues. Paula told me that he’d been found in the bathroom of an abandoned apartment at the age of six. Apparently his mom had locked him in, then turned on all the fans to drown out the crying. Jessa was the first kid Paula and John adopted. She’d been living in a car with their mother for a year before being discovered with two broken legs and put into the foster system.

  And the Coulters still loved them! They still hugged and kissed them, drove them to and from their schools, played with them, loved them. It was completely different from any family I’d ever seen.

  “Yes, you can play t ball,” Paula said, leaning over and pressing a kiss to Cooper’s head. “That sounds fun.”

  Cooper was eight years old, though most of the time he acted four or five. Apparently he was autistic, so he spent most of his time squeaking and squawking to himself in the playroom. Lining up cars, stacking blocks, playing puzzles, crap like that, not really talking very much at all. But occasionally he would open his mouth and speak clearly. And not just clearly, but with brilliance. John was always joking that he would wind up working for Microsoft someday, and though I never said anything, I knew he was right.

  “Would you like me to toss the ball with you in the backyard tonight?” John asked around a mouthful of pasta, a drop of sauce landing on the front of his light blue work shirt. He was a handy man for hire, and the people in Twisted Tree kept him busy enough to pay the bills, but not much more.

  “No.” Cooper didn’t look up from his noodles. He’d already retreated back to his happy place.

  I was jealous of him—I needed a happy place, too. These family dinners every night mentally exhausted me. What happened to the good old days of eating frozen dinners at the counter?

  John and Paula exchanged a smile. John turned his attention to the other side of the table. “Micah, how’s your math grade coming?”

  Micah slouched down in his seat. “I dunno. I hate algebra.”

  “I know you do.” Paula served herself some more salad, then offered me some. I shook my head. “Just bring your homework home, and let Dad and me help you.”

  John clapped his hand down on his son’s shoulder. “We’ll get through it together, son.”

  I nearly dropped my fork. Being around these people all the time was like being in a perpetually running episode of some nameless family sitcom. It was enough to make a girl sick.

  “I heard a rumor today.” Jessa sang from her spot across the table from me. She was still wearing her uniform, complete with a giant bow in her hair. It looked idiotic, but Jessa bounced around like being a cheerleader was the best thing that’d ever happened to her.

  “Oh, yeah?” John smiled and took another slice of bread, splitting it and handing half to Lacey. “Who is it about this time?”

  “My vote is me.” Micah laughed.

  “Whatever,” Paula added with a smile. “It’s me.”

  “Try again.” Lacey took a bite of her food. “Me.”

  Shaking my head, I used my fork to dig a tomato out of my salad. It was no secret that the Coulters stuck out like a sore thumb in the town of Twisted Tree. Between their noisy, multi-racial brood, the dusty minivan they drove, and the chaos that followed them, Paula and John were a topic of conversation everywhere they went. I couldn’t believe that they were so willing to laugh about it.

  Jessa rolled her eyes. “Stop it. It was about—”

  “Me!” blurted Cooper.

  Everyone dissolved into giggles, and I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from joining in. Sometimes their perpetual happiness was contagious. I just didn’t want to play along and give them some sort of hope that they’d cracked through my hard candy shell. Nobody busted through my shell. I had it for a reason.

  “Nope, Cooper. Not you this time.” Jessa tossed a chunk of bread at her little brother, making him smile, then went o
n. “Actually it was about Posey.”

  All eyes at the table focused on me, and my cheeks scalded. Paula rested her chin on her fist and looked at me, blinking. “Looks like you’re becoming a Coulter, Posey. What’s going on?”

  My stomach knotted. I wasn’t a Coulter. I would never be a Coulter. I wasn’t even sure my last name was supposed to be Briggs, if we were getting technical. I looked down at my plate and hid behind my hair. “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” Jessa cried. “Something.”

  John leaned forward so he could see my face. “What’s up, Posey? Everything okay?”

  I glanced up at him through my bangs. His eyebrows were high on his forehead, and he looked hopeful. Great. Now I was about to admit to him that I’d insulted their pastor’s daughter—who really didn’t act like a nice, little church girl, if you asked me—and I was going to wipe that hopeful expression right off his face.

  I swallowed. “Everything’s fine,” I lied.

  “Are you sure, honey?” Paula reached for my hand, but I kept it just out of reach. “Are you getting along with kids at school?”

  How was I supposed to tell her that nobody at school talked to me? Or that when they did, it was usually to tell me to get out of the way. Paula didn’t want to hear that I’d overheard someone at lunch the other day discussing how they’d heard I was heavy into witchcraft.

  I wish I were. At least if I were a witch, I could hocus-pocus my ass out of this town by morning. “Perfectly.”

  She released a sigh. “Oh, good. I’m so glad.”

  Jessa watched me for a moment, her mouth pulled in a line. She’d had cheerleading practice after school, so she’d probably heard that I’d gotten into it with Maddie Mulcahey. I was pretty sure there would be a lynch mob waiting for me when I got to school tomorrow morning.

  “So what did you hear, Jess?” John asked.

  Jessa stopped staring at me. “She got a job.”

  “A job?” Paula tilted her head at me. “I didn’t know you wanted an afterschool job. Where is it at?”

  Paula reached for me, and for a second, I wanted to slide mine under hers. Affection from these people to their kids came so naturally, so easily. But whenever I felt like falling against one of their shoulders for a good cry, or plopping down on the couch next to them to watch a movie, my insides froze. I didn’t know how to be tender to these people. My mom was never tender. The sweetest thing she’d ever done for me was tattooing my name on the side of her neck.

  And as for John? Hell, I didn’t know what to do with one of those “father-figure” types. Every man I’d known before coming into foster care either hated me to the point of knocking me around, or liked me way more than he should have. And if the counseling I’d been forced to participate in since being in the system taught me nothing else, it was that neither of those kinds of relationships were okay. John was just… nice. Nothing more, nothing less. He didn’t cuss me out for breaking a plate while doing dishes, and he didn’t try to stick his hand in my shirt. John simply acted the way I imagined a dad should, and it was weird.

  I shot Jessa a look, hoping she’d get the hint to shut up. “It’s not a job, really.”

  “Oh?” Paula pulled her hand back, and tucked it in her lap. “Want to tell us about it?”

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, before putting down my fork and wrapping my arms around myself. “It’s just extra credit.”

  When I didn’t elaborate, Jessa groaned. “Mr. Kingston asked Posey to tutor someone.”

  Both John and Paula’s faces lit up. They’d read my transcripts, and I don’t think they had high hopes for my academic career. “Really?” John burst. “Posey, that’s great!”

  “I’m so proud of you,” Paula gushed, beaming.

  I looked away. “It’s nothing. He said it would help my grade.”

  “I’m sure it will.” Paula helped Cooper twirl his noodles onto his fork. “At back to school night he said you had great potential. I’m not at all surprised he picked you.”

  “But that’s not the half of it.” Jessa practically vibrated in her chair. Good grief, she reacted to gossip like a damned Chihuahua. “Guess who Posey is tutoring?”

  “The pope?” John joked, at the same time Paula said, “Barack Obama?”

  The kids all laughed at their wittiness. I just sank lower in my chair. Golden Boy Drew Baxter was like royalty around here. They were going to fall all over themselves.

  “Who?” asked Lacey, tearing her bread into pieces.

  Jessa paused, looking around the family dramatically. “Drew Baxter.”

  Micah’s head popped up. “No kidding?”

  John and Paula exchanged a look I couldn’t read. One of his eyebrows was cocked upward, and Paula’s pressed her lips together tightly. After an awkward second or two, John said, “A heck of an athlete, that kid.”

  “Dad, he’s more than a good athlete.” Mica sat up straight. “He’s broken, like, three school records.”

  “He’s talented.” Paula picked her fork back up and started twirling her own noodles. “So you’re going to tutor Drew every day?”

  I nodded, chewing my thumbnail. “Every day after school until fourish. Is… is that okay?”

  Paula’s brown eyes met mine, and she smiled. I could feel her warmth from across the table. It felt good. “That’s just fine. I’ll pick you up afterward.”

  Shaking my head, I hid behind my hair again and forced Paula’s warmth away. “No. I can walk.”

  “Suit yourself.” Paula shrugged and brushed some crumbs off the tabletop. “Call me if you need a ride.”

  I nodded. I didn’t need a ride. I actually liked walking the three miles from TTHS to the Coulter’s house outside town. It was an old farmhouse at the end of a dirt road that ran parallel to the Puget Sound. Whenever I walked home, I didn’t have to listen to all of the kids chatter back and forth about their boring day at school or pretend to engage with anyone. Not that I ever tried that hard. When I walked, I could put in my ear buds and zone out on my music, which is really all I ever wanted to do, anyway.

  I was sure John and Paula thought I was poisoning my brain on hard industrial music, or screamo, or whatever. But I wasn’t. I listened to a lot of classical symphonies. And when the Coulters weren’t looking, I could sing just about any song ever written to utter perfection—anything from Pavarotti to Lady Gaga. I didn’t read music. All it took was hearing the song once, and I could recreate it with my own pipes. The foster mom I had before coming to Twisted Tree caught me once and convinced herself I was some sort of prodigy. I’d tried my hardest to quash that theory by spray-painting the side of her garage later that week. She’d quickly shut up about the music thing after that.

  If I’d not been born into the shit family I’d been born into, and had I not wound up being thrown into the foster system only to be abandoned and left to rot by my mom, I would have learned to play piano. Formally, I mean. In a perfect world, where I wasn’t the dented can of peas in the grocery store, I would grown up to become a music teacher. I would spend my life teaching screwed up kids like me how to sing and play instruments. I’d show them how easy it is to get lost in music, and how music can save you from blowing your brains out when you’re depressed.

  Not that I’ve ever thought about doing that.

  Okay, maybe once. My brothers were rescued from the system by my Aunt Lisa who adopted them. Unfortunately, she said she couldn’t handle me, too, so I’d been left with a foster family who made the Munsters look like the Bradys. Then I’d considered hurting myself. But not since I’d been given my iPod by a social worker who took pity on me.

  Music helped. Music always helped.

  John snapped his fingers, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Hey, we’ve all got to talk about something.”

  Paula’s face split into a grin. “Oh, that’s right. We do, don’t we?”

  Jessa looked between the two of them. “What?”

  “Am I in trouble again?�
� Micah asked.

  Tabitha rolled her eyes and forked a green bean. “You’re always in trouble.”

  “Can it, twerp,” Mica replied, messing up her hair.

  “Shhh,” John said. “We need to discuss plans for Posey’s adoption.”

  Goosebumps covered my skin, and I immediately sank lower in my chair. I didn’t want to talk about this. I mean, sure, it was cool that the Coulters wanted to adopt me and all. When my social worker introduced us and said that they were looking for a teen to adopt, I guess I’d been flattered. I mean, after seven years of being moved from home to home, watching every other damn kid get adopted or returned to their parents except me… it was nice to finally meet some people who wanted me.

  But they didn’t really want me. They didn’t know me. If they knew what was inside of me, down in the darkest corners of my mind, there was no way they’d want to make me a Coulter. I wasn’t pretty and funny and sweet like all the other kids they’d adopted. I was crusty and bitter and ugly on the inside. Years of being ignored by my mom, overlooked by the system, and treated like a late night snack by a handful of different foster dads over the years did that to a person.

  Nobody wanted to adopt a kid like that.

  “Oh, goodie!” Jessa clapped. “You get to plan a party, Posey. Anything you want.”

  “No, thank you,” I said quickly, dropping my napkin on the plate and pushing my chair back. “I have dishes tonight.”

  “Wait,” Lacey cried, grabbing my sweater sleeve. When I looked down at her, he jerked her hand back. “Come on. We all got parties when our adoptions were final. It’s tradition.”

  Paula clasped her hands. “I can’t wait, Posey. I hope you know how excited we are. This is going to be such a magical day.”

  My goose bumps rose to the point of being painful, and I wanted to scratch my way out of my own skin. When I’d met the Coulters and my social worker asked me how I felt about being adopted into what they called a—ahem—forever family, I’d shrugged and told her whatever. I wasn’t stupid. I knew the drill. The state of Washington wasn’t going to grant an adoption until I’d lived with Paula and John for at least six months. And living with them had to be better than my last placement, where I’d slept in a room that smelled like a fart box with three other kids and a damned pit bull that bit the UPS guy.