Keeping Secrets

by Alyson Noel

I sit up straighter, feeling good about myself in a classroom for the first time in two years. No homework for me! I’ve got plenty more where that came from, a whole drawer full of stories that I’ve written, and they’re not all about Richard Branson either. But it’s just a little hobby of mine. I mean, it’s not serious or anything.

  Christine the Collector raises her hand and asks, “Mr. Sommers what should the story be about?”

  And he goes, “This is a creative exercise. It can be about anything you want. Just use your imagination.”

  She pushes her headband back an invisible inch then looks at Mr. Sommers and goes, “I was wondering if it’s possible to get an alternate assignment?”

  Now the whole class is staring at her and her eyes are all red, and she looks like she’s gonna cry or something.

  He gives her a concerned look and says, “Christine, relax. Just try to have fun with it. Get creative.”

  And then, get this, she says, “But I don’t know how to be creative.”

  And I just look at her and give her the smirk I’ve been holding in for the last two years because that’s the most pathetic statement I’ve ever heard.

  Mr. Sommers just shrugs and says, “Do your best.” Then he hands me my story, and gives everyone else their graded Tolstoy papers.

  And right there, in red ink, in the upper-left-hand corner, is an A. I just stare at it for the longest time. I haven’t received a letter from that far north in the alphabet in like two years. He also wrote a note at the bottom saying something like, even if I didn’t write what was assigned, he’s glad that I chose to write, and to write well.

  And even though that makes me feel really good for a change, it also makes me feel guilty. Like now I seriously have to write that Anna K paper.

  Chapter 12

  On my way home from school I decide to stop in at my dad’s office. I mean, he’s really left me with no choice since he refuses to return my calls. Besides, I’m feeling pretty good about the A I just got, and since good moments in my life tend to be pretty fleeting, I figure I better strike while I’m hot, right?

  I pull into the lot and park right next to a brand new, shiny, black Porsche that I know belongs to my father since he would never allow another mortal to park in his reserved space. And I consider this a good sign because if he can afford a Porsche he can certainly pay my way through college.

  I stare at my reflection in the rearview mirror and try to muster the courage to face him. The last time I came here was over a year ago when I had to beg for my child-support check, and I left empty-handed. I try to summon one good memory, just one decent moment we might have shared when I was a kid, just a little something to get me through this meeting. But the truth is he really wasn’t around much and the few times he was, well, it’s not worth remembering.

  I run my hands through my hair, recheck my lip gloss, and climb out of my car. I may be quaking with fear inside, but I walk with intent and purpose just in case someone is watching from a distant window. And when I push through the double glass doors with the words Sky Investments etched on them, I wonder why he’s always so reluctant to invest in me.

  I stand in front of the modern, steel reception desk waiting to see who it will be this time. Every time I come to his office there’s a new secretary. I mean, he changes them almost as often as he changes girlfriends.

  “Can I help you?” A skinny, Clairol blonde, with an abundant chest walks down the hallway and slides around the other side of the desk. She’s wearing an outfit that would normally be paired with a thick, black bar across the eyes and the word, DON’T! in red capital letters and extreme punctuation overhead.

  “I’m here to see my dad.” I look directly at her and fight the urge to fidget.

  She looks me over, then in a condescending tone asks, “And who might that be?”

  I narrow my eyes and say, “My dad is Brad Sky, the President of Sky Investments. Your boss. Can I see him now?”

  Her expression instantly changes to one of curiosity and caution. “Oh. Okay. And your name please?”

  “Alex.”

  I watch her pick up the phone, push a button, and in an intimate tone that tells me they’ve slept together says, “There’s an Alex here? She says she’s your daughter? I didn’t know you had a daughter. Oh, all right.” Then she looks at me and gestures, “Go right in.”

  When I open the door he’s waiting on the other side. “Alex!” He says, “What a wonderful surprise!”

  He’s acting all happy to see me and tries to give me a big hug. I let him grab hold of me for about half a second, then I duck out of it and settle into the cracked, brown-leather club chair across from his desk.

  “What brings you here?” he asks, his face clad in his deal-closing smile and a pair of trendy titanium glasses that are resting on the bridge of his nose.

  I watch him ease into his executive chair on the other side of the desk, then I look around the office walls, at the framed degrees and certificates, and that stupid Nagel print he bought in the eighties and refuses to take down. College degrees, schlock art, but not one picture of my sister or me. It’s like we’ve ceased to exist in this new, postdivorce world he created for himself.

  I face him and say, “You haven’t returned my calls so I decided to visit.”

  “What? I didn’t know you called.” He runs his hand through his salt-and-pepper Richard Gere-style hair and gestures toward the general vicinity of the reception desk, “Cheri must have forgotten to give me the message.”

  “I called you at home dad.” I look right at him. “Did you say her name was Cherry?” I ask incredulously.

  “So what can I do for you?” he asks, ignoring my question.

  I take a deep breath and clasp my hands in my lap so I won’t fidget, then I look directly at him and just say it. “I need your help.”

  He looks at me with controlled panic, adjusts his pastel, silk tie that color coordinates with his light pink shirt, and charcoal gray pin-striped suit, and nods. “Okay, what kind of help?”

  “Financial help.” I glance down at my lap and see that I’m squeezing my hands together so tightly that my knuckles are white.

  “Okay, okay.” He’s bobbing his head up and down like he does when he’s thinking up a good exit strategy. “What do you need it for? A new prom dress?”

  “A prom dress?” I shake my head. Is he kidding? “What? You think I drove here because of a prom dress? I’m not living in Dawson’s fucking Creek Dad.”

  “Watch your language!” he shouts.

  I roll my eyes and shake my head. I know I shouldn’t have used the f word, but I can’t believe him. He doesn’t even know me! I try to center myself, and calm down, because getting mad never works with him. So I take a deep breath and start over. “Dad, no, I’m not going to the prom, okay? My life isn’t really like that anymore. I need money for my future, you know? So I can have one?”

  He locks eyes with me for a second, then reaches into his desk drawer for his checkbook, and his big, important, Montblanc pen. Then he writes out a check for five hundred dollars. “Will this help?” he asks, holding it up so I can see it.

  I look at the money he’s offering and I can’t believe it. That barely covers one month’s child support. I lean back in my chair and say, “Are you joking?”

  He drops the check on the desk between us and says, “Well, how much are we talking here Alex?”

  “I need to know if you’re going to pay for college.” I wipe my sweaty palms onto my jeans.

  “Have you applied?”

  “Yes.” I look directly at him and hold his gaze.

  “And were you accepted?”

  “Yes. Into one.” He doesn’t need to know it was on a contingent basis.

  I watch him rock back in his chair and regard me from over the top of his trendy glasses. “Have you asked your mother for help?”

  “Are you kidding? She works like a dog just to pay the mortgage you stuck her with!”

  He take
s on a smug expression and says, “She should have sold while the market was hot. I told her.”

  Five years later and he’s still judging her. I just can’t take it anymore. “And you should have paid your alimony and child support like the judge ordered!” I shout. “Look, she won’t go after you, and this is not easy for me either, but I really need your help. Please. I’m not kidding. This is my life. It’s not a joke.” I look across the desk at him and I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe I’m begging.

  He looks at me completely unaffected and says, “Now is not a good time.”

  “What?” I say. “Not a good time? I saw your new Porsche outside! That’s four years at a state school just sitting in your parking space!”

  He shakes his head and gestures to a stack of papers on his desk, “It’s not like you think. You see this? All bills. The Porsche? It’s leased. I just can’t help you right now.”

  I look at the check lying on the desk between us and then I lock eyes with him. When he’s the first to look away, I stand up. I grab the door handle then turn back and look at his stupid pink shirt, his crappy art, and his greedy face. I don’t know why I expected anything different.

  When I open the door Cheri is standing right there but I don’t start crying until I’m safely inside my car.

  Chapter 13

  When I get home my mom has set the table for two, which is kind of surprising since we rarely eat together and I’m guessing this must be because of the conference at school the other day. I look at her tentatively since I don’t know what to expect. I mean, I know she hasn’t been too pleased with me lately.

  “Hi,” she says, pouring a big pot full of pasta into one of those draining bowls with all the holes. “I’m glad you’re home, I made spaghetti.”

  I walk over to where she stands and check out the steaming noodles. “You made spaghetti? Really?” I throw my stuff on the counter and sit at the table and let her serve me a plate full of pasta. “What’s the occasion?” I ask.

  “I just thought maybe we could spend some time together. We haven’t had a chance to really talk since our meeting with Mrs. Gross. So how’ve you been?” She passes me the grated Parmesan cheese and looks at me expectantly.

  “Fine,” I lie. She doesn’t need to know about my dad.

  She nods her head then says, “I saw M’s mother in the grocery store the other day.”

  “M’s mom goes to the grocery store?” I ask, taking a bite of my pasta.

  My mom covers her mouth and says, “No, I don’t think she does. She made it clear she was just on her way home from yoga and needed a bottle of water.”

  “Did you tell her that you were just on your way home from work and needed a week’s worth of groceries?”

  She just shrugs. “We didn’t talk long.” And then she looks at me and her eyes grow darker when she asks, “So how’s school going Alex? Do you need any help? Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No, I’m doing better,” I say, and I’m surprised to realize that it’s actually true, well for today anyway. “My English teacher liked a short story I wrote and he read it out loud to the class.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and he gave me an A too.” I break off a piece of garlic bread and drag it along the top of my pasta, caking it with red sauce.

  “I used to do a little writing,” she says. “But one day your father made fun of one of my stories so I stopped.”

  She cuts a meatball in half with her fork and looks at me closely, and all I can think is, Here-we-go. I take a drink of my water and look down at my plate, waiting for the retelling of her favorite story, the one about how he wrecked her life.

  But instead she says, “So you’re studying creative writing?”

  I look at her surprised, but I just say, “Not really, We just finished reading Anna Karenina. Have you read it?”

  She nods. “Years ago, when I was your age. She gets hit by a train or something, right?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Do you have to write a paper on it?”

  She’s looking right at me and I hate lying to her so I just go, “Um, yeah, I do.” And then the phone rings and I practically jump through a hoop of fire to get it.

  It’s my sister calling from New York. She moved there right after she graduated college, and she has this totally cool job as an editor with a major fashion magazine. They don’t pay as much as you’d think and New York is like a totally expensive place to live, but I really do admire her. Her whole life just seems really glamorous. She has a studio apartment in a place called SoHo which stands for something I can’t remember, but it’s supposed to be really hip. And she has this boyfriend that she showed me a picture of once and he looked really cute. His eyes were sort of squinted closed, but she said that’s because it was taken in the sun at the beach in the Hamptons. That’s supposed to be some chichi place in the East.

  “Hey, Alex, how are you?” she asks.

  “Okay, how’s New York?”

  “Bad weather, very crowded, terribly exciting. I still love it here.”

  “Yeah, I still love it here too.”

  “I’ll bet.” She laughs. “So what’s new?”

  And even though I promised myself I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened today, I just can’t keep it in, so I go, “Dad just leased a new Porsche, has a girlfriend named Cherry, and he’s not paying for me to go to college.”

  “What?” she asks, all the way from Manhattan. “Are you serious?”

  I look at my mother who is staring at me, straining to hear both sides of the conversation, and suddenly I feel bad about mentioning his stupid girlfriend. I didn’t mean to make my mom feel bad. I turn and face the wall and even though she can still hear me I say, “Well, he wouldn’t return my calls so I ambushed him at his office. He says he’s broke and can’t do it. But I don’t believe him.”

  “I don’t believe him either. Oh Alex, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I say.

  “Can I help in any way?”

  “No, but I’ll let you know how it all turns out.” I look at my mom. She’s practically falling out of her chair. “I think Mom wants to talk to you.”

  I hand the phone to my mother and start clearing my plate. I wished I hadn’t said anything, and just kept it to myself because my mom is going to ask me all the details now and I don’t feel like talking about it anymore. It is what it is and there’s nothing I can do about it. I mean, I can’t force him to care about me.

  Sure enough, she hangs up the phone and says, “What was that I heard about you going to your father’s office today?”

  I pour some dish soap onto a damp sponge and say, “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  She turns in her chair until she’s facing me and says, “Well I am worried about it because it obviously upset you and I’d like to know what happened.”

  “Really?” I look at her. The wet, soapy plate I’m holding is dripping onto the floor. “Do you really want to know about it because it upset me? Or because you just want to know about him?” It’s a terrible thing to say, especially when I saw her eyes right after I said it. But it’s out there now and I can’t take it back.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I finish rinsing the plate and say, “Plenty of things upset me, Mom, but you never want to know about them unless it involves Dad.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “It is true. You never ask me how I am.”

  “How can you say that? I even went to your school!”

  “You showed up only because Mrs. Gross called you at work and guilted you into it. And then you kept looking at your watch, the whole time. You have no idea what it’s like for me, and you never bother to ask.” I shake my head and reach for a dish towel.

  “Well maybe you have no idea what it’s like for me.”

  “How could I not know?” I’m yelling now, but I just don’t care. “You remind me every ch
ance you get! It’s been five solid years of living in the past. He’s gone Mom, and you’ve still got a drawer full of his stuff in your bedroom. He doesn’t pay alimony, he doesn’t pay child support, but you don’t do a damn thing about it because you’d rather just sit back and suffer and talk about how it’s all his fault.”

  “He let me down!” She looks a little shaky when she says it and I know I’ve really upset her, but I’m a little upset too.

  “Yeah, well, he let me down too! He was my only shot at college but he won’t pay for it, so now I can’t go. He left both of us, Mom, not just you.” I throw the dish towel on the counter and face her.

  She gives me a long look and I know I’ve gone too far, so I turn around and busy myself at the sink. I’ve got my back to her when I hear her say, “I had dreams too you know.”

  “Whatever.” I roll my eyes and shake my head and put the dry plate in the cupboard overhead.

  “If I had it to do over again—”

  There’s no way I’m going to listen to the rest of that. What, so I can hear her say she wouldn’t have had me if she had it to do over again? No thanks. Being ditched by one parent is enough for today. So I turn around and face her and put my hand in the air and say, “Just stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  She looks at me and shakes her head and says, “I don’t know why you thought you could count on him. I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

  I grab my backpack and sling it over my shoulder and look at her and say, “I guess I just wanted to believe that he really did care about me. But don’t worry. Now I know better.” Then I leave the kitchen before she can say anything else.

  Chapter 14

  The next day at school I see M walking across the quad talking on her cell phone. When she sees me she runs over and goes, “Say hi to Trevor!” I grab the phone she’s thrusting in my face and go, “Hi Trevor,” then I hand it back and walk toward my locker.

  I’m standing in front of it, trying to remember the combination, when M comes over and goes, “Oh my god! Did you see Tiffany’s sling? What a faker! Did you see it?”