“You what?”
“I joined radio,” she says. She walks over to her dresser, where she pulls out a pair of red patterned tights and pulls them on. Then she takes a pair of shoes off the shoe rack over the back of her closet door and slides into them. “Oh, Devi, please don’t be mad. I just couldn’t take another day of Mr. Ikwang going on and on about the Constitution and juries.”
She couldn’t take another day? She was only in mock trial for one day. Sigh. Although I know what she means. I don’t like mock trial, and my experience with things that you don’t like right away is that they don’t usually get better.
“I’m not mad,” I say.
“You can still join, you know,” Mel says. She abandons the books and comes to sit next to me on the bed. “There’s still room in radio.”
“Ooh, yes, Devi, you totally have to! We’re going to do a school advice show, and it’s going to be airing in the mornings and maybe even during lunch.” She pulls a skirt out of her closet and throws it on the floor. “Ugh, what is that doing in there?”
“You’re getting rid of this?” Mel asks, picking it up. It’s long and pale green, with a silver overlay and beading.
“It’s like three seasons ago,” Lexi says. “You can have it if you want.”
“I wouldn’t have anywhere to wear it,” Mel says, running her fingers over the beads.
“Um, hello? The dance,” I remind her.
“Not going,” Mel says.
“You’re not going to ask Dylan?” I ask. Not that I’m surprised. I figured she wouldn’t. It’s just not her style.
“What?!” Lexi yells. “Mel, this is ridiculous.” She turns to me. “You should see them in radio. They are soo cute together.”
“They are?”
“Yeah, like he’s always asking her advice, and he’s always coming up with dumb excuses to talk to her, like asking her for paper and stuff. That’s totally what Jared used to do with me before he asked me out.”
A lump rises up in my throat. I’m sad Lexi’s the one who gets to see Mel interact with Dylan. I’m not jealous of them being friends. In fact, I want them to be friends, since Mel was my best friend since forever, and Lexi was my friend this summer, and I love the fact that they actually get along now even though they’re so different. But I’m sad that I’m not getting to see this part of Mel’s life. And then I think about how if she goes away to private school, I’m not going to be able to see any part of her life, and I start to feel even sadder.
I mean, here I am, wasting valuable Mel time with mock trial! I throw myself across the bed and feel sorry for myself.
“Call him,” Lexi demands. She picks Mel’s cell up off the bed and hands it to her. “Now.”
“She can’t just call him,” I say, worried in spite of myself. “She doesn’t have his number.”
“Yes, she does,” Lexi says, her eyes gleaming. “He gave it to her yesterday. He said it was for when they need to start talking about programming the station, but that was totally just an excuse.” She rolls her eyes, then disappears back into her closet. “What do we think about stripes with prints?” she asks, appearing with a weird-looking dress.
“No,” I say.
“I’m going to do it!” Mel says suddenly. Lexi and I look at her, shocked.
“You are?”
“Yes!” she declares. “I’m going to do it.” She reaches over, picks up her cell phone, and scrolls through until she finds his number. She pushes the green button before she can stop herself. Ohmigod,
ohmigod, ohmigod.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask. Mel looks a little pale, like she might throw up.
“Too late now,” Lexi says cheerfully. “She’s already dialed. If she hangs up, he’ll know she’s pranking him.”
“Maybe he won’t answer,” I offer to Mel hopefully. But it doesn’t do anything to help the sick look on her face, and she reaches out and grabs my hand. Ow. Mel’s got a killer grip. I can hear the ringing through her phone. One ring, two rings, three rings . . . just when I’m certain it’s about to go to voice mail, a male voice answers. A very deep male voice. Wow. Mel’s definitely going after an eighth grader.
“Hello?” the deep male voice says.
“Hello?” Mel squeaks. Her grip on my hand tightens.
“Ow!” I say.
“Hello?” the voice says again. Mel’s silent. She’s moving her mouth but nothing’s coming out. It’s like something you’d see in a movie, and you’d go, Oh, that would never happen in real life, that girl is freaking out over nothing, but it is happening in real life, right here in Lexi’s bedroom.
I reach over and give Mel a pinch on her shoulder. But she still can’t talk.
“Uh, hello,” I say, leaning over and speaking into the phone. “It’s me, Mel.” Mel’s eyes grow large, and Lexi stifles a giggle. Ohmigod. Now I am pretending to be Mel. He’s definitely going to know. I mean, we sound nothing alike. Do we? What does Mel’s voice sound like? Softer than mine. Kind of . . . breathy.
“Oh, hey, Mel,” Dylan says. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” I say, trying to sound quiet and breathy.
“Are you okay?” he asks, sounding confused. “Are you wheezing?”
“Uh, no,” I say, ditching the breathy and resorting to just sounding a little soft. “I think I’m getting a cold.”
“That sucks,” he says. “I think something’s going around.”
“Yeah.” I look at Mel, but she’s still frozen. And now I’m talking to her crush about being sick, which is definitely not how the conversation was supposed to go. I mean, who wants to be equated with germs and runny roses? “Um, anyway, I was calling to ask you a question.”
Mel looks over at me, and nods.
“Um, well, I wanted to know—”
But before I can get the question out, Mel somehow gets a hold of herself and breaks in. “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the dance with me this weekend.”
There’s a pause where it seems like everything stops. And even though it can’t be more than a second, I think it’s the anticipation of waiting for Dylan’s response coupled with the surprise that Mel took over the phone call that makes it seem like it’s years. And then, finally, through the phone, I hear him say, “I’d love to.”
“Okay,” Mel says. “Cool. So, um, I’ll see you in school tomorrow and we can make plans then, okay, thanks, bye!” She hangs up the phone and looks at me in shock. Okay, not the smoothest way to end the call, but still. Much better than pranking and/or freezing up.
There’s a moment of silence, and then we all start screaming.
When I get home from Lexi’s, my dad’s in the kitchen, whistling and making a pot of chili at the stove.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Turkey chili,” he says cheerfully. He holds the spoon out and I take some. It’s warm and a little spicy, just the way I like it.
“Delish,” I say. “But, um, why isn’t Mom cooking?”
“Do I really have to answer that question?” he asks. He says it like it’s funny, and under normal circumstances, it would be, but not when you’re having an affair. You shouldn’t make fun of your wife’s cooking then. It’s like rubbing salt in the wound. Of course, my dad doesn’t know that I know about him and his little mystery woman, but still.
“So, Dad,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. “You had to work late the other day, huh?”
“Yeah,” he says, adding a little more chili powder to the chili.
“What were you working on so late?” I ask. I get up and wander toward the refrigerator to pour myself a glass of lemonade. But I’m watching him out of the corner of my eye, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that a look of guilt passes across his face. Aha!
“Just work stuff,” he says. “Boring, actually.” He wipes his hand on the kitchen towel that’s slung over his shoulder.
“I like boring.” I sit back down at the table and take a long sip of my drink. “In
fact, I was thinking about having you come in for career day, and I’d like to hear more about what you do.”
“You would, huh?” he says. He sounds like maybe he doesn’t believe me. Good. I hope he knows I’m on to him. I hope he knows that maybe just maybe I saw him at the coffee shop that day, and that there’s no way I’m letting him get away with this. He pulls a chair out across the table from me and sits down. “I think I know what this has to do with.”
“You do?” He does?
“Yes.” He looks at me. Oh, God. My dad is about to confess that he’s having an affair. “You’re upset because I wasn’t here to meet Luke.”
“Oh.” Pfffttt. I feel like a balloon that’s just had all its air let out. “No. I mean, yeah, I wish you could have met him, but you’ll meet him another time I’m sure.”
Honestly, it probably would have been weirder if my dad were here when Luke came to dinner. First, because he probably would have tried to get all fatherly on me and ask Luke a bazillion questions. And second, because I wouldn’t have been able to tell Luke about what was going on with my dad. And it felt nice to let that out.
“I will definitely meet him another time.” He pats my shoulder and then returns to the stove. “Maybe on the night of the dance. Your mother has a whole thing planned, with pictures, the works.”
“She does?” Wow. It didn’t take long for my mom to get on board the dance train. Although I doubt she’s going to let me pre- and post-party at Lexi’s. I wonder if she’s on board the new dress train, too.
“Anyway,” my dad says, turning down the stove. “I’m gonna just let this simmer for a bit, and it’ll be ready for when I get back around dinnertime.”
“Where are you going?” I ask suspiciously.
“The gym,” my dad says, and my stomach drops to my shoes.
I call Luke because I don’t know what else to do.
“Hey,” he says when he answers. “I was just thinking about you.”
“My dad’s at the gym,” I blurt. “O-kaay.” He sounds confused.
“I was at Lexi’s, and we printed out this list and it said that the gym is a VERY BAD SIGN.”
“Devon,” Luke says. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Keep it down in there!” Katie calls from the living room. “Hardball with Chris Matthews is starting on MSNBC!”
Actually, I should probably keep it down. Don’t want my mom or Katie overhearing me.
“Okay,” I say, whispering. “I was at Lexi’s earlier,right? Just trying on clothes and Mel asked Dylan to the dance, and then we went on her computer.”
“What?” Luke says. “I can’t hear you.”
“I was at Lexi’s.” I try to raise my voice a little bit, and stretch the phone as far as it will go into the kitchen, away from Katie. Why oh why do we not have a cordless phone in here? Better yet, why am I not on my cell phone? I consider switching over, but then decide it would be too much effort to go and call Luke back, so I just cover the mouthpiece with my hand and hope for the best.
“You were at Lexi’s,” he says. “Okay, and . . .”
“And we looked up stuff online about the signs of affairs. You know, like how to tell if your husband is having one.” I don’t tell him the part about how I was trying to apply them to our own relationship, and figure out if I should be worried about him and Bailey. This information is being given on a need-to-know basis.
“Oh, Devon,” he says, sighing. “Why would you do that?”
“Um, because I wanted to know if my dad was having an affair?” Isn’t it obvious? Luke’s usually much smarter about this stuff.
“Devon, the way to find out what’s going on with your dad isn’t by looking up stuff on the internet.”
“But the internet is the information superhighway,” I tell him.
“Yes, but that superhighway is also filled with tons of people writing tons of things that make no sense. Anyone can post whatever they want.”
“Oh, well, I know that.” I’ve stretched the phone cord all the way over to the other side of the room now, and I grab a cushion off one of our kitchen chairs and plop it on the floor. Then plop myself down on top of it. “That’s why I made sure that the article was written by someone with a PhD. And it said that one of the signs is working late, and taking more of an interest in one’s appearance, aka, going to the gym, buying new clothes, etc.”
“And because your dad is going to the gym, and you read it in some article, you think that it’s true?”
“Yes.”
“Devon, that’s crazy.”
“It’s not crazy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
Are we really fighting about this?
“Look, you need to ask your dad about it.”
“Yeah,” I say. I feel the tears burning up behind my eyes. “Listen, I gotta go. But I’ll call you later, okay?”
And I hang up before he tries to convince me not to.
chapter eleven
Stephanie. Her name is Stephanie. The woman my dad was meeting that day. I know because after he left for the gym, I looked at his phone. I know, that was very bad and a very big violation of his privacy. But I couldn’t help it. It was just sitting there, on the counter, plugged into the charger. It was almost screaming, Devon, come and look at me, please! So I just very carefully maybe kind of sort of went over and peeked at it. And then I maybe kind of sort of just went over and scrolled through his call log.
I mean, come on! My dad hasn’t been to the gym in, like, forever. I never even heard of him wanting to go jogging or anything. And now all of a sudden he’s all about getting in shape? So now I’m sitting in the kitchen, with the chili on the stove, wondering what I should do next. Tell my mom? I don’t exactly want to be the bearer of that bad news. Plus, what if my imagination is going all crazy? I’ll get everyone all worked up over nothing.
Maybe Stephanie is just a friend. Or maybe she’s his boss or something.
Maybe if I could talk to this ridiculous Stephanie person, I’d know. Like, for example, if I just happened to go over to his phone and maybe dial her number, and I got a voice mail that was like, “Hi, you’ve reached the voice mail of Stephanie, boss of the company” or something. Then I would definitely know it was just a co-worker.
I pick up my dad’s phone and run my fingers over the buttons. I can hear Katie in the other room, talking to the television set. (“That is not an Olympic scandal! That is just a misunderstanding!”) And my mom is running the vacuum upstairs. No one would need to know. I could just call, and hang up. She’s probably used to hang ups. Aren’t people who are having affairs always hanging up on each other?
I scroll through the names until I get to “Stephanie.” I know it’s definitely going too far, even for me, but I can’t help it. I push the call button before I can change my mind. One ring . . . two . . . three . . . Please, please, please let it be a work friend, I say a silent chant in my head.
The sound of the vacuum disappears, which means my mom is done vacuuming. Not good. What if she comes down here and sees me with my dad’s phone to my ear? What if she’s all, “Devon, hand over that phone,” and then she takes it and is like, “Why are you calling a woman named Stephanie” and then I have to confess everything to her? What if—
“Hello?” a woman’s voice says on the other end. And I just know it’s her. She sounds blond. And very sort of throaty, like she has a cold. Or is a smoker. I hope my dad doesn’t plan on marrying her and moving us all into a smoker’s house. I have very sensitive lungs.
“John? I was hoping you’d call, listen, are you able to get away for an hour or so? I have something I’m just dying to show you.”
Well. That settles that. I switch the phone back off. Then I go up to my room, lie down on my bed, and burst into tears.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz. What? Bzzzz. I’m half asleep, in bed, and my phone is vibrating on my nightstand, making a horrible buzzing so
und that sounds loud enough to wake up the whole house. But is, of course, only waking up me.
I check the display. Five new text messages.
Number one:
YOU SHOULD SEE MY OUTFIT FOR MY NEXT ROLE, BABE!
From: Greg/Ryan
Number two:
DO YOU WANT TO GO SHOPPING FOR DRESSES AFTER MEL’S TMR? From: Lexi
Number three:
ANSWER UR PHONE!! I CAN’T BELIEVE I ASKED HIM!
From: Mel
Number four:
WHAT TIME SHOULD I BE THERE TOMORROW? from Greg/Ryan
Number five:
HEY—YOU NEVER CALLED ME BACK. MISS U, SEE YOU IN SCHOOL. From: Luke.
I check the clock next to my bed. Seven a.m. Ugh. I must have fallen asleep, and no one bothered to wake me up—they just let me sleep through the night. Not that I would have been much company, I mean, I am not talking to my dad, and I wouldn’t even know how to act around my mom.
I take a quick shower, tie my hair back, and slip into jeans and a soft pink wool sweater. When I get to school, Luke’s waiting for me at my locker.
“Hey,” he says. He goes to hug me, and I return it halfheartedly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “Except for the fact that my dad is having an affair.” I spin the dial on my combination lock, and I’m so upset, that I go past the right number and have to start over twice.
“Are you still on that?” Luke ask, smiling at me like I’m a child who’s just said something cute. “Really, Devon.”
“Is that all you have to say, is ‘really, Devon’? How would you like to know that it really is true? You probably wouldn’t feel so happy then, would you?”
Luke takes a step back, like I slapped him. “Hey,” he says. “I was just trying to help, you don’t have to go crazy.”
“Crazy? I’m being crazy?” I’m yelling a little bit now, and Luke leans in close.
“Calm down,” he says. “Listen, maybe we should talk about this later.”
“No thanks,” I say. “I don’t really want to talk about it at all.”