by Amanda Grace
I nod, perhaps too enthusiastically, wanting desperately for this whole thing to just … be over.
“Mossyrock is an idyllic community, Miss Marshall, and I won’t have you disrupt that.”
I nod again, vigorously, desperate for him to shut up.
“Very well. You may go. But one more problem … even the tiniest of problems, and I expect to see you sitting in that chair again.”
“No problems. I promise,” I say, darting for the door. “Thanks, Mr. Paulson.”
I let go of the breath I’m holding as I bound down the halls, feeling like an escaped jailbird. That was close. Really, really close.
I just have to get through one more day of school. But the principal knows enough to realize something is off. Does everyone else know, too? Do they realize I’ve lied to them all this time?
I shake my head. That’s stupid. They believe me, not Carter. They believe the rumor, not Carter. Two more days and I’m scot-free. Two more days and we graduate, and Carter goes off to California, and it’s all over.
Two more days, and the lie won’t matter anymore.
Back home after school, dressed in sweats, I’m eating cereal hunched over on a chair so I can rest my chin on my knees, when Dad walks in through the door wearing his full police garb. My breath catches. I’d hoped he wouldn’t be home until I was in bed. I don’t want to talk to him.
“Hey Dad,” I say, slurping milk from my spoon, eyeballing him as discreetly as possible. He doesn’t look irate, so he still must not have seen the vandalism on my car door.
“Cereal for dinner?”
I shrug. “It sounded good.”
He holds up the mail. “You got something.”
A tingle goes down my spine as I recognize the purple emblem on the corner of the envelope. The thick envelope. Good God, why didn’t I think to check the mail?
“Care to tell me anything?”
My mouth goes dry, and I shrug as if there’s nothing weird about getting a thick, eight-by-eleven envelope from a college he doesn’t think I’m attending. “No.”
I try to take another spoonful of Froot Loops–flavored milk, but my hand shakes and the milk spills off.
I evade his looks and try again, until I hear rippp and I realize he’s opening up the envelope. I shove my chair back but I’m not there before he’s reading the letter.
“Enclosed please find our student survey,” he reads. “This is necessary to assign you an appropriate roommate in the dormitory. We are asking that you return the survey by June 31st.”
When he lowers the letter and looks at me, his eyes
are blazing.
“Dorm room assignments?”
I swallow and just stare.
“Go get the rest of it.”
“The rest of what?”
“The paperwork. If they’re assigning a dorm, that means you’re registered. So get me the paperwork. Now,” he spits out, his chest beginning to heave with anger.
Fear surges through me, but I refuse to give it away. I cross my arms at my chest and raise my chin a notch. “We never agreed on anything,” I say. “I chose UW.”
“I’m not paying for you to attend UW. It’s in Seattle. It’s not safe, it’s too far, and too expensive.”
“I don’t need your money. I have financial aid.”
He snorts, strides away from me, and stares out the window for a long, dark moment. “You can’t have received financial aid. I would have had to give you my information—social security number, income, everything.”
I purse my lips. “You did. Last year, when I filled out the FAFSA, remember?”
He whirls around, his face turning red. Oh God, he’s getting angry. Seriously angry. My stomach flops over.
“That was for community college,” he grinds out.
I shrug, hope he doesn’t see the cracks in my façade. “I added UW.”
He slams the envelope down on the table. “You lied
to me!”
Desperation chokes me. “I tried to tell you, but you never want to talk to me!”
“Because you’re not going!” he roars.
“Yes I am!” I say, my voice raspy, pathetic. He can’t do this. He can’t take it away from me. If Nick leaves and all
I do is stay here, I’m clinching my fate as a nobody, a dead-ender, forever.
“You can’t put yourself through college just on financial aid. You’re going to need cash. Living expenses.”
I nod. “I have enough saved to get me through the first quarter, and I’ll get a job … ”
He steps forward, staring down at me, and I shrink back a step. “You are not going to UW. End of story. You will attend CCC, as discussed.” He rips up the student survey as I feel my eyes moisten, watch everything I’ve ever wanted shred before my eyes. “If you push me on this, you will regret it.”
He stomps on the pedal to the garbage can, and when the lid snaps up, he drops the shreds into it and it clangs shut.
“Give me the rest of it,” he says, his voice hard.
“Dad—”
“Now!”
Tears trickle down my cheeks. “Why do you have to be like this?”
“Like what? I’m being practical, and I’m protecting you, but you’re too young to see it. Now go get me the paperwork.”
“I hate you,” I whisper, then twist around and race up the steps, slamming my door behind me and locking it. I find my paperwork and rush to the closet, shoving it under some clothes in the back where he won’t find it.
Then I throw myself on the bed and cry.
A half hour later, I watch my dad back his blue police cruiser out of our driveway. He must have been on break or something. He would take his personal car if he wasn’t going back to work.
I wait five minutes, then I slip out the front door, crossing the lawn in mere seconds.
The grass at Nick’s house hasn’t been maintained by the perfect lawn sculpting crew, like ours, and thus has a few weeds sprouting. I hop up onto his cedar front porch and don’t bother ringing the bell. At Nick’s house, you just walk in.
I push the door open and turn left, toward the stairs, which I take two-by-two. Downstairs, I can hear his mom and dad talking while his mom cooks, probably something homey like a pasta salad or ham sandwiches or something.
For the thousandth time, I wish I lived here. It’s a dull ache that grows in my chest, a little more every day. I’ll never know what it’s like to grow up somewhere like this. That chance is over. Crushed. My dad doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Doesn’t anything. Someday I’ll finally move away, and then what? Then I have no one.
I tap twice on Nick’s door before shoving it open. Nick is on his computer, leaning back in his black desk chair. It’s not much different than the image he must have seen when he walked into my room last weekend. Before everything went to hell.
It’s nice being so close. Repeating history. Understanding each other. But now there’s a secret between us and I still hope it doesn’t tear the whole thing apart.
“Hey,” I say, falling onto his bed. He turns around. I contemplate tossing a pillow at him to incite another wrestling match. If I thought it would go that route, I might do it. But everything is so complicated now.
“What’s up?” He twists around, pulling his feet up onto his chair and giving me a look. A look that says he wants to know how I’m doing, how I’m processing it all.
Because he thinks I was raped last weekend.
“Not much.” I shrug, lean back against the mound of pillows on his bed. “I’m just glad to be done with finals.” I sink back, wish I could just pull a blanket over my head and cuddle in deeper.
“Yeah? Me too.”
I let out a long, slow sigh. “Are you ready to move on from all this?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m dying for Yale.”
I frown. “Why? Is this town so bad? Are you so eager to leave … ” My voice trails off and I wave my hands around. “This?”
Why am I even a
sking him this? I’m eager to leave it too. But Nick’s going to Yale and I’m going … to UW. I think. God, after today, I don’t even know any more. I told myself I’d go no matter what he said, swore it didn’t matter how he reacted, I still would go. But now I don’t know if I can do it. Be all on my own like that, my dad royally pissed. Nick across the country. A stranger for a roommate. The closer it gets, the more implausible it seems.
Some part of me is desperate for Nick to tell me to skip UW. For him to beg me to follow him.
I’d do it, if only he’d ask.
“Leave you? Not so much. Everything else? Sure.”
“But why? You have it good. You have everything,” I say, my voice a touch too envious. “What’s so bad about all this?”
He shrugs, and for a second it’s like this whole convo bores him. “I just want more. I want to see the rest of the country. I want to be challenged. I want … more,”
he repeats.
It deflates me. Even without all the lies that will soon push us apart, I know I could never be enough for him.
“You can’t tell me an old logging town is really enough for you,” he says. “Aren’t you pumped to go to UW?”
“My dad says I’m not going,” I say.
“Why?”
I sit up. “He wants me to go to community college and live at home, so he can keep an eye on me.”
“Why is he like that? You’ve never gotten in any kind of trouble. Does he think he can bubble-wrap the world in the next two years while keeping you at home?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You are going to follow through with it, right? Just like you always said?”
I worry my bottom lip. “I … ”
“Sam! Promise me you’re not going to cave in again.”
“What do you mean, again?”
Nick gives me an exasperated look. “In sixth grade, he didn’t want you to go to camp, so you stayed home. In eighth, you skipped the class trip to Olympia because he didn’t think it had sufficient chaperones. You didn’t get your license until you were seventeen, even though you had saved enough to buy a car. You didn’t participate in Senior Skip Day because you were afraid he’d catch you. You’re going to UW. You’re not giving this up for him.”
“Easy for you to say,” I grumble.
“What?”
I throw my hands up in the air. “You go over there and tell him that! You go live in my room and I’ll live in yours and you see how long you can be so cavalier about your decisions!”
Nick has the audacity to look exasperated. “Why do you let him have so much power?”
Argh! “Because he has it! That’s why!”
“No one can make you feel—”
“Inferior without your consent. Yeah, I know, Mr. Wiseguy. But it’s not as easy as you think,” I say, my voice
dripping with desperation. “Do you remember that summer I wore sneakers to the beach?”
He raises a brow.
“It’s because we went sandal shopping and I insisted on these jelly sandals because they were cute and glittery, but he told me they’d break. He only relented because I begged and people were watching. They broke in two days but he refused to buy me any sandals because I was supposed to live with my choice. It seems so stupid and trivial, but it’s how he does everything. He wants to control what I do, and when he can’t, he punishes me. If I don’t go where he wants me to go, he’ll figure out how to make my life hell.”
Nick shakes his head, and he has the gall to look like he feels sorry for me. “It’s not all about him, Sam.”
“How is it not about him?” I ask, my fingers digging into my palms.
“You always take the easiest path. You make your choices by default.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You let people decide everything for you. I mean God, we became best friends because I live next door and
I was available. You could have made other friends, but you didn’t.”
“Don’t throw that at me,” I say, anger and defeat swirling inside me. He’s right, I know he’s right, but I desperately want to keep the anger.
“Why not? And even right now, are you with me because you want to be, or because I was the first person around when things with Carter went wrong?”
My jaw drops. I snap it shut, grinding my teeth. Then I stand up and whirl on him.
“I went after Carter to make you jealous because I couldn’t tell you how I felt, okay?” I yell. “Does that make you feel better? I went into his room because I thought it was the easiest way to get you to finally see me as something other than a best friend.”
His face goes white, and he blinks. Once, twice, three times. When he reaches for me, I pull away.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“I’ll see you at school,” I say, spinning around and leaving his room.
“Sam! I’m sorry!”
I pause in the door, feeling tears shimmer. “No, you’re not. You’re right. I can’t seem to do anything for myself, and I sure as hell can’t seem to get anything right.”
Then I twist around and stumble down the stairs, rushing across the lawn and back to my house. My cell phone is already vibrating in my pocket, but I ignore it.
Fifteen
T he last day of class. The fifth day of my lie. Or the seventh, if you count the days I didn’t even know about it and everyone else did.
I’m only halfway down our carpeted stairs, my hand sliding along the golden-oak railing, when my dad appears at the foot of the steps, staring up at me.
“Anything you’d like to tell me about?” he asks.
There are about a hundred things going on, none of which I’d like to tell you, I think.
“Um … no?”
“So you weren’t planning to tell me you damaged your car?”
Oh. “I didn’t think it was a big deal—”
“When will you ever become a responsible person?”
he barks. “What did you do? Smash into a pole or a tree
or something?
“What? I am responsible!” I am, right? I get decent grades even though I’m not naturally gifted. I do my chores and keep my nose clean. Mostly. I push past him and grab my sneakers, sitting down at the dining room table and jamming my feet into them, anger boiling.
“This just proves my point. You think you can go gallivant off to college and you can’t even be responsible for your car when you’re still at home.”
“I’m not going to gallivant—”
“Exactly. You’re going to—”
I stand, then swipe my notebooks off the table and let them slam to the ground. And then I all but scream. “Dad!”
My chest heaving, we just stand there, staring at each other. “I am going to leave. Whether you like it or not.”
I whirl around and leave him standing there, my books and papers cluttering the floor around him.
Someday he’ll understand. If he doesn’t break me first.
But it’s not today. On either account.
At school, I wait impatiently between Tracey and Macy as the line in the cafeteria inches forward. I wish Nick was around right now. I need to talk to him, need to apologize for totally freaking out last night. But as class president, he has something to do. Related to graduation or the senior party or something.
“Seriously, you’d think they’d come up with a better method for distributing yearbooks than this. It’s pathetic,” Tracey says.
I nod. The cafeteria is crowded, and I can’t stop scanning faces for familiar ones that belong to the jocks. To Carter’s friends. At least this is the last day I’ll need to creep around like some criminal. Which I suppose is ironic, since everyone thinks Carter is the criminal.
Macy is chewing on a straw. “My parents paid for one of those ads in the back, where they put in a baby photo. But they refused to say which one it was, and I’m going to scream if it’s that mud-pie one they have on the mantle.”
I snort, and Macy cracks a smile.
“I bet they added things like My little girl, all grown up,” Macy says in this fake sappy voice. “With, like, hearts and daisies all over the border.”
“God, my mom already showed me what she did. It’s my ballet photo from second grade, with some poem about pursuing your dreams or some crap.” Tracey crosses her arms. “What’d yours do?”
I cough. “Uh, nothing. I haven’t seen my mom in years.”
Tracey and Macy freeze. “Oh, God—”
“I’m so sorry—”
I shrug away their simultaneous apologies. “Totally not a big deal. I mean, she left a long time ago.”
I try to picture my dad submitting some baby photo of me for the back of the yearbook, but I can’t see it.
I hardly even have any baby photos. The ones I do have were almost entirely taken by other people. If he put any kind of phrase or statement with my photo, it would be something like “buck up” or “you’re too old to cry.”
Jesus, when I started my period he gave me ten dollars and told me to ride my bike to the corner store.
The line inches forward and we’re finally standing in front of the table. We give our names to the faculty volunteers, and they cross our names off the list before handing us the books. I clutch mine to my chest and follow Tracey and Macy to the opposite end of the cafeteria. On the last day of school every year, the seniors have all this free time for “School Spirit Activities,” which really translates to absolutely nada other than yearbook-signing time and a lame end-of-year assembly.
I probably should have skipped.
I sit down at a round table with my back to the windows, across from the girls, and set my backpack on the floor. I open up the yearbook and quickly flip to the senior section, my lip curling when I see my picture staring back at me. Ugh. Dad had refused to shell out for the fancy photos most of the seniors get “when a perfectly good photographer comes to the school and takes your yearbook photo for free.” God, I look horrible. My curls are all lopsided, hanging down further on one side than the other, and I have a big breakout on my chin. Yick.
I flip back a few pages and see Nick’s perfect face
staring back at me. And sure enough, just like they all predicted, Most likely to be President of the United States is right under his photo.