I flinch. His voice is cold. So cold. “I shouldn’t have looked.”
“Is that what you’re here for? Is that what you’ve been wanting to talk about? You want to judge me because you saw my little side business is still up and running?”
“No, no that’s not it.”
“That’s sure what it looks like, Pi. You want to know why I’m selling grades and fixing tardies? You really want to know?”
“I thought… the surgery for your dad.”
“You thought you had it all figured out, right? Did you figure out that he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t get that surgery? Early retirement is what they’re calling it. This isn’t about a couple thousand dollars. It’s about us surviving, period.”
I feel punched. Breathless.
“Manny.” His name breaks on my lips. I want to fix it. I want to tell him everything else, but I can’t. The rest of it feels small and stupid. If his dad loses his job…“I want to help. Let me do something.”
“You can start by trusting me to handle my own life.”
“Trusting you won’t fix this.”
“Trust fixes lots of things, Pi. I don’t count on this world for anything anymore,” Manny says. “I can’t afford to. But I’ve always trusted you. For once, I’m asking for your trust.”
I can’t find anything to say, so Manny leaves. I just stand there, watching him walk away, feeling like I’m knee-deep in quicksand.
The warning bell rings and my phone buzzes with a message that I know after a glance I don’t want to open. It’s from him. There’s an image attached.
9 tonight. Or I Send This.
The photograph loads. And my heart dissolves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I roll over in bed and close my eyes, but it doesn’t matter. The image is burned into the backs of my eyes like it has been all day. I’m pretty sure it’s there to stay. It’s not a particularly good photograph, but it conveys the intended message with three simple facts.
Fact 1: My father is leaning into an unfamiliar car window.
Fact 2: He is smiling, hand cupped on the driver’s face.
Fact 3: The driver is not my mother.
I can’t tell much more than that. Long, blond hair. A slim arm. Not my mom. Definitely not my mom.
That’s pretty much as far as I can get before I have to look away.
A knock at my door jars me from my thinking. It cracks open before my answer, revealing my mother’s face. I shove the phone under my leg, feeling like everything is folding and bunching together.
“Oh, you are awake. I was worried you were getting sick again.”
“No. Just tired.”
She smiles, slipping in the room and sitting down on my bed.
I flush and sweat like I’ve been hiding the picture for ages, like I’ve known all along that my father’s been stroking nameless not-my-mom women through open car windows.
I feel like I’ve swallowed fistfuls of mulch. But I force some words out anyway. “How was your flight home?”
“Fine. Honey, you look pale.”
“I’m okay.”
“Do you want me to call you out of school tomorrow?”
“No, no. I’m good.”
She ignores that, which is probably because she can tell it’s a lie. I feel the press of her hand to my forehead, cool and assessing.
Does she know about the woman? Is that what all the silent fighting is about? Is this even the first time? My limbs go heavy and numb with the questions.
The answers might be more than I can take. They might tell me how my family will end. Suddenly I feel very young and small. I don’t want my mom and dad to not live together.
“How do you really feel?” she asks.
I feel like my universe is being grated. Like cheese. I don’t say that. I close my eyes and will myself not to cry. “Gritty. The Tacey thing…lots of things are hard right now.”
“We could go out to dinner if you want. You could tell me all the things that are new.”
What’s new is that I’m a liar. And a crappy person. And that I know things that would break your heart.
I have to talk to her. I can’t not tell her what I know.
“Mom?”
Her phone rings and she glances down at the screen, her brows knitting together. “Shoot. This is one of my families. I probably need to grab this. Can we talk in a bit?”
I wave at her, more grateful than I should be for the reprieve. I close my eyes again and will the image away. It’s hard forcing sleep to come, but eventually I win. Maybe because I know, when I wake up, my world will be different. I want to hold on to what I know a little longer.
• • •
I have to find Nick because I’m too paranoid to text this and he didn’t pick up this morning. It’s that ungodly rush before first period, twelve billion people in the halls, shoving and laughing, shouting over one another as if the whole of their future depends on being heard in this craziness. I see a group of guys that might be Nick’s friends standing at the end of the hallway. Tall boys in athletic gear, the ones who know their place is secure in the social stratosphere.
Someone steps on my foot, but I ignore it, dragging my way through the hall. The clock on the wall sends a panicked flutter through me. Three minutes. I have three minutes or I won’t see him for four periods, and I don’t want to text this, because it feels like a big deal.
Today everything feels like a big deal.
I speed up, dodging around someone with a trombone case and then skirting to the right to avoid a couple holding hands.
“Excuse you!” the girl gripes as I bump her.
I throw an apology over my shoulder, but I don’t stop, because Nick is in that group at the corner flanked by Tate and a couple other guys I recognize from the baseball team.
There are lots of people around—Aimee and Ming and, God, Marlow could be in here for all I know, but I can’t let that matter. What matters is telling Nick about tonight.
He turns just before I get to him. I snag his sleeve to pull him back. I’m panting when he spots me, and I don’t want to look out of breath and frantic, but I know I do. I need to find something to say, and there’s so much that I don’t know where to start.
“Will you come with me to the basketball game tonight?” I practically sputter it.
He laughs, stroking his hands through my hair. “Yes. But you didn’t need to—wait, I can’t. I work. I’m off at seven though. I can get there a little after halftime?”
“Perfect.” I kiss him, right there in the hallway. It’s just a brief mashing of lips, but he practically glows he’s so pleased. “I’ll need a ride to a certain place tonight.”
His smile falters, which is why I didn’t want to text. I don’t have to say police station in person. He can tell just by looking at me.
“Are you sure?”
I reach up, feigning a hug, but mostly so I can drop my voice to a whisper. “I know the secret. My dad’s having an affair. He sent me a picture.”
Nick’s arms move around me. I feel the side of his face pressed against my neck. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m talking to my mom today and then Manny at the game. We can go straight to the station from there.”
I lay it out like a list of errands, as if I might as well be picking up pizza and a movie on the way home. In truth, I’m terrified out of my mind. I’m a million things, really, in that fraction of a second before he touches me. And then his palm is against my face, warm and true. Nothing in my world is better, but I feel anchored.
The bell rings and my world snaps back into orbit. I blink in the brightness and noise of the hallway, like I’m seeing it for the first time. Nick steps back, nods.
“I’ll be there. I’ll do whatever you need.”
I leave
school at lunch to get everything done. It’s the first time I’ve skipped school like this in my life, but I need the time. All of my ducks need to be lined up before I pull this trigger. I order the picture of my dad and that woman at the drugstore. While I wait for it to print, I buy a blank card and write Tacey a letter.
Telling her in person would be better, but there isn’t time and Tacey might like the control a letter will give her. After tonight, it’s all going to come out and spin into wildness. I want her to know beforehand, even if the information will rip us apart. I leave the letter at her house and head home to wait for my mom.
It feels like preparing for last rites. I slide the notebook out, my fingers drifting over the title. My pictures are tucked in the pocket with Harrison’s now, my glittery script over his spidery black print.
This is the last thing I can’t figure out. Part of me wants to burn it, but is that because I’m a coward? Would a stronger person turn it in? Or maybe show it to any person who’ll look? I don’t know. I just don’t.
Giving it to the police feels like what I deserve. Because they’re allowed to make the hard judgments about what’s dangerous and what’s not. They’re trained, authorized, and paid to do it. And I’m not.
I flip to the back, past my pictures of Kristen. I add in a couple from Harrison, but my pen pauses underneath. Listing out his crimes feels redundant. The spray-painted car sums up everything that needs to be said.
Well, maybe not everything.
I press my pen to the page and write one quick sentence.
This is when it stopped feeling right.
I hesitate then, feeling like the work is unfinished. It needs one more thing. Just one more. I rummage through my desk to find a picture that will work.
Dark hair, dark eyes, a hand-beaded bracelet on a suntanned wrist. It’s a picture from last summer. A picture of me.
I don’t write anything below that picture. I close the book and tuck it into my bag. In a few hours, it will be in someone else’s hands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
My mom comes in when I’m sitting at my vanity, her hair limp and her attaché stuffed with paperwork.
“Piper, I’m so sorry. This day has been crazy.”
“It’s okay.” And it’s about to get crazier.
“You look lovely,” she says, slipping out of her heels and coming over to me. She runs a hand over my hair and smiles at me in the mirror. “Dinner with Nick?”
“Basketball game, actually.”
Technically, it’s true. Most of what I tell her is true. I just leave out some really big pieces. Like my creepy vigilante side job. And the woman my father might be sleeping with.
I’m giving Mom the yearbook version of her daughter’s life. I’m sitting here in my gauzy shirt and cute boots, pretending that the biggest thing going on in my world is the wonder of a Friday night basketball game with Nick Patterson.
I look away from the mirror. I can’t stand to look at myself for another second. And there she is at my shoulder. Mom. Her smile—the one that tells me exactly what mine will look like in twenty-five years—beams down at me.
“I don’t think I have to tell you how pretty you are.”
“It’s not exactly prom,” I say, trying to a force a light tone that won’t quite come.
“Let me gush. You never let me gush.” She touches my face, grins at me in the mirror.
I try to return it, but all I can think about is my dad’s hand in that car window. On that strange woman’s face. I finally plaster a smile on my lips. I’m not quick enough. Mom’s dark eyes shift. She frowns and moves forward, worry shadowing her features.
“Piper?”
“I’m fine. Sorry, I was spacing out.”
“You’ve been spacing out a lot. You’re starting to worry me.”
She presses the back of her hand to my forehead and cheeks again, and I think of the times I had croup when I was little. She sat with me all night in the bathroom, the shower steaming hot and thick until it was like sitting in a cloud. Sticky as it was, she never complained. She just rocked me and rocked me, telling me everything would be okay.
“Not sick.” I barely get the words out—they are a strangled mess on my tongue.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” she says, and I turn around to face her. Same no-fuss hair. Same warm eyes. The same hands that have brought me a postcard from every trip since forever. “Do you need to talk to me about something?”
I can’t see this happen to her. I can’t watch her look at that picture. And I can’t not watch her either. I’m paralyzed by all of it.
Mom misreads it, of course. “Hey, if you don’t want to do this, you call him and it’s done. It doesn’t matter if we like this boy—”
“It’s not Nick. Nick’s great. Better than great.”
“But it’s something.”
The fact that I don’t deny it is answer enough.
“Tell me?” she asks, always so careful about these things. I can see how badly she wants to know, wants to help.
I let her pull me in and hug me, and then I reach for my vanity, taking the plain white envelope. The one I sealed the picture inside. I offer it over, feeling my eyes swim with tears.
“I have to give you this. It’s a picture.”
“Like our postcards?”
The words cut hard and deep. I shake my head and steady my voice. “No. Not like that. This picture will be really hard for you to see.”
Her cheeks go pale, the lines around her eyes drawing deeper with her frown. “Piper? You’re scaring me.”
“It’s not about me. I’m going to be all right. I promise I am. I’ll explain everything with me soon enough, but this—” I cut myself off, choked by the ugliness of this truth. My voice emerges small and dry. “This is about Dad.”
Her face freezes like a snapshot, eyes not quite narrowed, mouth not quite agape. It’s some awful mix of shock and resignation. Some part of her already suspects what’s hiding in this envelope. She knows. Maybe not everything, maybe not details—but enough.
All the things that hold me together snap at once. The tears come fast and hard, hiccoughing out of me in ugly sobs. I can’t stop them from coming. I can’t even slow them down.
My mom shifts into action like she’s been injected with adrenaline. I see her push her own pain to some deep recess of her heart. Her face goes soft and her hands move to my hair.
“Piper. Piper, look at me.” She strokes my face just like she did those nights so long ago when I coughed and coughed until I could barely breathe. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’ll all be okay.”
I look up at her, feeling seventeen years of steamy bathrooms and postcards and things that make her wonderful and annoying and Mom. I can’t speak. There’s no chance of that, so I try to put it all into my eyes, all of the apologies that I’ll soon have to say.
“Whatever this is, I am ready for it,” she says, looking at the envelope she dropped reaching for me. “I don’t want this to upset you. I need you to trust that I can handle this.”
“Aren’t you going to look at it?”
A sigh. “No. I’ll look at it later. You need to understand this is not the great surprise you think it is, okay?”
She knows. It’s written all over her face that some part of her isn’t even a little afraid of that envelope. How on earth did I miss that too?
I nod even though there’s lots more to say. Things I can’t say yet, but I will.
At the police station, probably. It’s not fair, but even saying this much has taken everything I have. If I confess to her, she might try to smooth this over. She’ll want to protect me because she’s my mother. And I can’t be protected anymore.
I pull myself together through sheer force of will. Mom helps me brush my hair and touch up my eye makeup. We patch me together until I’ve been
glossed within an inch of my life, and more importantly, Mom is confident that I’m settled down.
At six o’clock, my dad strolls in and if my mom tenses, she hides it fast. He grins at me. “I filled your tank so you wouldn’t have to get stinky in your girly clothes.”
My heart sinks like lead. I still can’t combine my goofy, gas-tank-filling dad with a guy who cheats. Maybe I should hate him. I don’t like him very much right now, but he’s still my dad. I kiss my mom’s cheek, then cross the room to hug my dad. I pick up my camera bag and backpack and make my way toward the front door with both of them following. I check my phone, shifting my bags on my shoulders.
The next time I see them, they’ll have talked. Maybe fought. And then there will be facing everything with me—the lies, the vigilante stuff. It’s ugly.
The world I’ve lived in for seventeen years is going to end tonight, and I don’t know what comes after. I turn around, looking back at them. They’re watching me go. Certainly not arms linked and murmuring sweet parental nothings. But they are side by side and they are smiling. Proud of me.
“Let’s get a picture,” I say, the need sudden and consuming.
I sling my bag on the floor, the notebook thunking when it hits, and set my camera up on the third plank in our living room bookshelf. It’s not our first rodeo with the home self-portrait, but my parents look awkward and shifty-eyed as I shoo them toward the staircase.
“Piper, I’ve barely dragged a brush through my hair today,” Mom says, obviously reluctant.
“But I’m all dressed up. I want proof.”
“We can get pictures of you,” Dad offers.
“Just smile,” I say, the command brittle on my tongue.
The camera beeps faster and we slide into our traditional Woods Family Photo pose—Dad on my left, Mom on my right, heads all tilted together just so. My mom’s arm is stiff and cool, but my dad leans against me, all easy warmth.
I squeeze them both as the flash fires, freezing us this one last time as the family we already aren’t.
• • •
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