A Midsummer's Nightmare

by Kody Keplinger

  Bailey let him drag her onto the floor, giggling the whole way.

  I laughed and turned to smile at Nathan.

  He looked worried.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if I like the idea of every boy in Hamilton chasing my sister,” he said. “I have the sudden urge to lock her in a closet… until she’s twenty-five.”

  “Well, look on the bright side,” I said, squeezing his hand. “There aren’t that many boys in Hamilton. Only about… two hundred or so? You can fight off two hundred, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can,” he scoffed. “See these muscles? I work out, remember? I’d just rather not have to. The closet idea seems easier.”

  I grinned at him, my fingers trailing up his arm. It felt good to be allowed to do this, to touch him without feeling embarrassed or guilty. “You know,” I whispered, leaning in, “you could lock me in your closet. I wouldn’t mind.”

  Nathan’s worried expression turned into a sly smile that matched mine. “Oh, is that so?”

  “Yeah.” I licked my lips, shifting so that my thigh was pressed close against his.

  He looked down at our legs, shaking his head. “You know,” he said, resting a hand on my knee. “That little move? It doesn’t work every time. Not all boys are that easy.”

  “It worked on you once, didn’t it?” I moved in closer so I could kiss him.

  It was innocent. No groping. No hands sliding under my shirt. There wasn’t even tongue, for God’s sake. It was just a kiss.

  But it changed everything.

  Because as his hand moved up my arm to touch my hair and my eyes slid shut, neither of us noticed the camera phone pointed our way. Neither of us had a clue that we were being watched.

  At least, not until Dad slammed his laptop down in front of me while I ate breakfast the next morning, his face beet red and his eyes practically popping out of his skull.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Start talking, Whitley.”

  I glanced at the monitor and realized I was staring at Dad’s Facebook page. At the very top was a new post. Greg Johnson has been tagged in a photo. My eyes found the image, and as I looked it over for a moment, I actually had to think about why he was angry. It was just a picture of Nathan and me. To be honest, it was kind of cute. Well shot. It looked a bit like a screenshot from a romantic movie. One of those perfect kisses.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Damn it, Whitley.” His fist hit the table so hard that my cereal bowl shook.

  I flinched.

  “What the hell are you and Nathan doing? Why are you kissing him?”

  And then I got it.

  Dad didn’t know about Nathan and me yet.

  No one did. Well, except Harrison… and Bailey, if she’d managed to figure it out on her own, which I was sure she had, since we weren’t doing much to hide our relationship now.

  “We’re dating,” I said, picking up my spoon.

  “No, you most certainly are not,” Dad snapped, making me flinch again.

  We were the only ones in the kitchen. Nathan was at the gym. Sylvia had taken Bailey shopping for a new pair of athletic tennis shoes. And I’d only just rolled out of bed at eleven in the morning. I’d been halfway through my breakfast when Dad stormed out of his study, laptop in hand.

  Now I wished I’d gotten up early. Gone shopping with Sylvia and Bailey, or even to the gym with Nathan. Anything to avoid this conversation. Which clearly wasn’t going to go very well.

  “How could you do this?” he asked, still furious.

  “Do what?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I want you to end things with Nathan,” he said. “Whatever is going on with you two, I want you to put a stop to it right now.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t argue with me, young lady.”

  I stood up so fast that my chair toppled over behind me. “No!” I was the angry one now. “We aren’t doing anything wrong. We’re just dating. It’s not like he’s actually my brother, so why should I have to end it?”

  “Because I said so,” he snarled.

  “That’s not a good enough reason.”

  “Don’t talk back to me like that,” he said, his palms smacking the table again. He leaned forward, his eyes burning into mine. “You are my daughter, and this is my house. You will do as I say. You won’t see Nathan. You won’t date him or kiss him or do whatever it is you two are doing. And that is final.”

  He straightened up and turned around, ready to leave the room.

  “No,” I said again.

  He stopped in the doorway to the living room. “Whitley,” he growled.

  “No,” I repeated.

  In a sick way, I was glad we were fighting. Glad he was yelling at me, paying attention to me. But now he was walking away. Not even listening to me. Not even bothering to hear my side of the story. I thought I might do anything to keep him in the room. Even fling myself on the ground and throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. Whatever it took to keep him here. To make him turn around. To make him see me.

  And I thought the way to make him stay was to say something dramatic. Something that would shock him. Only, the words that came to mind happened to be the truth.

  “I’m falling in love with him,” I said. “I’m not going to stop seeing him. I won’t.”

  “Then pack your things.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll have someone fill in for me at the station, and I’ll take you back to your mom’s tomorrow afternoon,” he said, his back still to me. “I won’t deal with this behavior in my home.”

  And he left the room.

  It didn’t sink in at first. I sat down, my eyes on Dad’s laptop. I clicked the picture, read the caption: Whitley seems to have a thing for brotherly love.

  “Fuck them,” I said quietly. “Fuck them. They don’t matter.”

  But Dad did.

  He mattered because he could take them away. Nathan, Bailey, Sylvia, Harrison—he could take away the only people who cared about me. The words sank in slowly. I was basically being kicked out.

  Kicked out of my home.

  At the beginning of the summer, I swore this place would never become my home, but it had. I didn’t realize it until now, until it was being taken away, and yet, somehow, this house felt safer, more real, than my mother’s house in Indiana ever had. The Caulfields had made this my home.

  I didn’t want to leave.

  I ran upstairs, hot tears stinging my eyes and burning the tops of my cheeks. I pushed open the door of the guest room—my room—and threw myself onto the bed—my bed.

  I just lay there for a while, my face in the pillow, trying to calm down. When my heartbeat finally slowed, I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My head hurt. My stomach ached. Dad’s decision to send me back to Mom’s house put me in a serious state of pain. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to leave now. I had a week and a half left here. A week and a half left with Nathan. With the Caulfields. With my family.

  Not anymore.

  The house was eerily empty around me now. Dad was somewhere downstairs, I knew, but the TV was off. And the others hadn’t come back yet.

  I needed to talk to someone. I needed advice.

  I reached over to the nightstand and picked up my cell phone. The screen flashed one missed call from Mom and a voice mail, but I ignored it. She was the last person I wanted to talk to. We hadn’t spoken since our last argument a few days ago, and I was sure she wanted to bitch at me for bitching at her. Whatever. I couldn’t deal with her now.

  I dialed Trace’s house number. L.A. was two hours behind, so I hoped he’d be awake.

  “Hello?” Emily’s voice said when she answered the phone.

  “Um, hey, Em,” I said awkwardly. My voice cracked, still not recovered from the crying.

  “Whitley? Hey, girl. How are you?”

  �
�Not… not good. Can I talk to Trace, please?”

  “Sure. He’s playing with Marie right now. She just started laughing for the first time!”

  “That’s great.”

  “I know. We’re so excited. It’s almost ridiculous, I guess. Okay, here’s Trace.”

  The phone crackled as it was passed to my brother, and a second later Trace said, “Hey, sis. What’s going on?”

  “I have a problem,” I told him. “And I really just need you to listen and tell me what to do.”

  “Oh-kay,” Trace said. “I’ll do my best.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and started talking.

  I told him everything. About Dad. About the Caulfields. About Nathan, the graduation party (in minimal detail), and Facebook. Trace never interrupted. He just listened until I got it all out. Listened while I ranted and nearly started crying again and wallowed in self-pity. He listened and listened until I finally got out the last few words of my story.

  “… and now he wants to send me back to Mom’s, and I don’t want to go. What do I do, Trace?”

  “Wow,” he said. “Seriously—wow. I mean, what are the odds that of all the people Dad might marry, the chick’s son is someone you’ve—”

  “Trace!”

  “Sorry. Okay, advice… hmm.”

  I waited through his thoughtful pause, half expecting him to tell me that the best plan would be to just end things with Nathan. Logically, that probably seemed like the solution, but I couldn’t. And I shouldn’t have to.

  I guess Trace knew that, because he said, “Really, Whitley, all you can do is try to talk to Dad again.”

  “About what?”

  “About how you feel,” Trace said. “You should talk to him and to Mom. You clearly have issues with both of them, and who knows? Maybe just telling them how you feel could fix things. Or at least improve them a little.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate that you’re having to deal with this.”

  “Yeah, it sucks.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Trace said. “Just do whatever will make you happy. That’s what’s important. Don’t forget that, okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  Everyone said that to me. That they wanted me to be happy. That it was the most important thing. But just when I started to figure out what I wanted—what would make me happy—it was squashed.

  Talk about goddamn mixed messages.

  “Hey, don’t ‘whatever’ me,” he said. “I mean it. I’m sorry my advice is unoriginal, but I’ll do whatever I can to help. I could call Dad if you want. Make him listen to me. Or Mom. If you can’t talk to them, I can.”

  “No.” I sighed. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

  There was a short silence before Trace said, “I’m sorry, Whitley. I know you’ve been having a horrible summer, and I haven’t been there for you as much as I should have. I’ve just been so—”

  “Busy,” I said. “I know. It’s fine. You have a family to worry about now.”

  “You are my family,” he said.

  The tears almost started up again. Those four little words meant so much to me—which was stupid, really. They were just words. But they were words I’d been wanting to hear, wanting to believe. You are my family.

  “You sure you don’t want me to call Dad?” Trace asked.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Really. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But call me if you need me. I’ll be here.”

  As I hung up the phone, I tried to comfort myself with that thought. Trace would be there. He wouldn’t judge me or abandon me. Even if I lost Dad. Even if I never fixed things with Mom. Even if my relationship with Nathan didn’t work out and I screwed things up with the Caulfields, I had Trace. He was my family.

  But I wasn’t sure that would be enough.

  29

  Not even a week had passed since I’d finally put my clothes into the drawers of the oak dresser, and here I was, already packing them up again. The thought did cross my mind, how much easier this would’ve been if I’d just left all of my stuff in the duffel bag. If I’d never unpacked. If I’d never let this place become my home.

  Bailey sat at the foot of my bed, watching as I moved sluggishly around the room, my hands clutching one personal belonging or another. She and Sylvia had gotten back home about an hour after my fight with Dad. When Bailey had come upstairs to show me her shoes, she found me still half in tears after my phone call with Trace.

  I told her everything. Well, not everything. I left out the part about my would-be one-night-stand with Nathan earlier this summer. She was too young to hear that shit. So I started by telling her that we were seeing each other, then worked my way up to this morning in the kitchen with Dad.

  She didn’t cry, but I could tell she wanted to.

  “You know,” she said with a weak, forced smile, “I knew there was something going on with you and Nathan.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my laugh sounding strangled and pathetic. “Yeah, you did. Good guess.”

  “I didn’t have to guess,” she mumbled, toying with a loose thread in the comforter. “It was pretty obvious.”

  I shoved a few wrinkled T-shirts into my duffel bag, trying not to think about what I was doing. I focused on Bailey. On what she was saying. On anything but the fact that I was leaving tomorrow afternoon. Because when I thought about how long it might be before I saw her again, it felt like someone was twisting a knife in my gut.

  Would Dad let me come to the wedding next month after all of this?

  Two months ago, I would have done anything to leave this house. Now, I would have done anything to stay.

  The next words Bailey said came out in a half-sobbed whisper: “What about my birthday?”

  The knife plunged deeper.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, Bailey. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have said… Anyway, I’m sure Harrison will take you shopping.”

  Harrison. Christ, I needed to call him. To tell him why I was going to vanish a week and a half early. But the idea of saying good-bye to him made my eyes sting again. Goddamn it, I wasn’t supposed to be a crier, but I’d cried so freaking much this summer.

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  I zipped up my duffel bag.

  “Maybe Mom will talk Greg out of sending you home,” she said.

  “Or maybe she’ll be just as upset as he is about Nathan and me dating.”

  Bailey lowered her head, defeated.

  “Hey, guys…”

  His voice echoed down the hallway, causing a lump to lodge itself in my throat. No, no, no, I thought. Even though I’d be seeing him again soon, at college, telling Nathan I was leaving would be the hardest. Because I knew him. I knew he’d blame himself. And I couldn’t handle that right now.

  “What’s going on?” He poked his head into my room. “Mom and Greg are arguing in their room, and—” He stopped, his eyes scanning my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I opened my mouth, but the words got lost somewhere behind that knife, which was still carving away at my insides. I looked down at my duffel bag, and I felt his eyes slide down my frame and land on it, too.

  “What…?”

  “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Bailey stood up and walked past her brother, edging out the door. She glanced back at me with those sad brown eyes before vanishing into the hallway.

  “Whit,” he said when she’d gone. “What’s going on? Why are you packing again? You don’t leave until—”

  I was already shaking my head. “No,” I said, biting my lip. “I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon. Dad’s having someone fill in for him on the news.”

  “Why?”

  “Have you been on Facebook?”

  “Not today.”

  “Well, we’re famous.” I tried to smi
le. Tried to pretend it was funny. “Nice picture of you and me at the Nest. Dad was admiring the photographer’s handiwork.”

  Nathan’s face went sickly pale. “So… he saw. And he’s making you leave because of me.”

  I shook my head, sinking down onto the bed. “No, it’s my fault. I talked back to him, and I think he basically kicked me out.” I forced myself to smile when I looked at him. “Because I can drink and sleep around all I want, but it’s a mortal sin to kiss the kid whose mom is marrying my dad.”

  “Stepbrother,” he said.

  “You’re not my stepbrother,” I said, exasperated. “Not yet. And don’t say it like you think it’s wrong, too. We aren’t siblings. It isn’t that weird. And Nathan, I really can’t take you blaming yourself or feeling guilty right now, okay?” No tears, no tears. I wouldn’t. I would not cry again. “I don’t want to think that I was wrong, because I know I wasn’t. Dad is being an asshole, and that’s the end of the story. Please, just be on my fucking side!”

  “Hey, hey.” Nathan moved forward and sat down on the bed beside me. “Calm down, all right? I am on your side. I’m always on your side.” He put an arm around me, and I leaned against him, my face buried in his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled into the fabric of his T-shirt. “I just don’t get it! He ignored me for the whole summer, and all of a sudden he gives a damn? But instead of fixing it, he’s sending me back to Mom’s. Why? Why now?”

  “I think you should ask him.”

  I scoffed, pulling away from Nathan. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious, Whit. You two really need to talk.”

  “That’s what Trace said.”

  “Well, he’s right.”

  “I get it!” I yelled, pushing Nathan away and standing up. “But I’ve tried. I have totally tried.”

  “I know you have,” he said. “But right now, you’re the only one who can make things better. You’re the one who has changed this summer. If you want things to change with your dad, you’ll have to be the one to change them.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Whitley,” he said, using that tone that meant he was about to explain something very simple, like I was a five-year-old he had to reason with. “You two will never fix anything if you keep your mouths shut. He’s your dad. He loves you.”