“I don’t get it, Case,” Jessica was saying. She slipped a dollar into the only working machine and waited for her Sunkist to drop into the slot at the bottom. “Don’t you have to stay and cheer at the game?”
“Nope. I told the girls that I couldn’t make it tonight, so one of our alternates, this cute little freshman, is taking my place. She’s been wanting to cheer all year, and she’s got skills, but there just hasn’t been a place for her until now. They’ll be fine without me.”
I was standing right next to them before Jessica spotted me. “There’s Bianca! Let’s get the heck out of here! Woohoo! Girls’ Night In!”
Casey rolled her eyes.
Jessica pushed open the blue door that led to the parking lot, smiling from ear to ear, and said, “You guys are the best. Like, really the best. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Cry into your pillow every single night,” Casey said.
“Think your other friends were ‘really the best,’ ” I offered, returning her smile. There was no fucking way I was going to let Wesley Rush drag me down. No way! This was Girls’ Night In, and it wasn’t going to be screwed up by an asshole like him. “You didn’t forget that ice cream promise, did you, Jessica?”
“I remember. Chocolate swirl.”
We crossed the parking lot and climbed into my car. Instantly, Jessica wrapped herself in the old blanket, and Casey, shivering visibly, glowered at her with envy as she pulled on her seat belt. With a quick stomp on the gas, we zoomed out of the student lot and hit the highway, speeding away from Hamilton High like prisoners running from their cells… which was sort of what we were.
“I can’t believe you weren’t nominated for Homecoming Queen this time, Casey,” Jessica said from the backseat. “I was sure you would be.”
“Nah. I got voted queen at Football Homecoming. There’s a rule about people winning more than once in the same year. I wasn’t eligible to be nominated this time. It’s gonna be Vikki or Angela, I’m sure.”
“Do you think they’ll fight if one of them wins?” Jessica sounded worried.
“Doubt it,” Casey said. “Angela couldn’t care less about that kind of shit. Vikki is the competitive one…. I really was looking forward to seeing the drama tonight, though. Did I tell you that Vikki is thinking of meeting up with Wesley Rush, too?”
“No!” Jessica and I cried in unison.
“Yep,” Casey said, nodding. “I guess she’s really trying to make her boyfriend jealous or something. She’s dating a junior, taking an OHH kid to our dance, and telling everyone she has the hots for Wesley. She claims they fooled around after a party recently—I guess her boyfriend doesn’t know about that yet—and she’s thinking of doing it again. She said it was amazing.”
“He slept with her?” Jessica gasped.
“He sleeps with everyone,” I said, turning the car onto 5th Street. “If it has a vagina, he’ll screw it.”
“Ew! Bianca!” Jessica yelped. “Don’t say the… the V word.”
“Vagina, vagina, vagina,” Casey said flatly. “Get over it, Jess. You have one. You can call it what it is.”
Jessica’s cheeks were the color of tomatoes. “There’s no reason to talk about it. It’s crude and… personal.”
Casey ignored her and said to me, “He might be a player, but he’s pretty damn sexy. Even you have to admit that, B. I bet he’s awesome in bed. I mean, you made out with him. Was he amazing? Can you really blame Vikki for wanting to hook up with him?”
“You made out with Wesley?” Jessica croaked, choking on her own excitement. “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shot a glare at Casey.
“She’s embarrassed,” Casey explained, fluffing the back of her short pixie cut. “Which is dumb because I bet she had a blast kissing him.”
“I did not have a blast,” I said.
“Was he a good kisser?” Jessica asked. “Tell me, tell me, tell me! I really want to know.”
“Yes, if you must know, he was. But that doesn’t make it any less disgusting.”
“But,” Casey interjected, “with your experience, answer my last question. Can you really blame Vikki for wanting to hook up with him?”
“I don’t have to.” I switched on my turn signal. “She’ll blame herself when she gets a venereal disease… or when her boyfriend finds out about it. Whichever comes first.”
“And this is exactly why I wanted to go to the dance,” Casey sighed. “We could have witnessed it all firsthand… like Hamilton’s own episode of Gossip Girl. Vikki’s boyfriend would be getting pissed and plotting revenge as his unfaithful girlfriend screws the hottest guy in school, and Bianca, hiding her secret love for Wesley, would mope and pretend to hate him while silently pining for his super-sexy-hot kiss again.”
My jaw dropped open. “I would not be pining for anything of the sort!”
Jessica snorted with laughter from the backseat, pulling her ponytail in front of her mouth to hide a grin when I scowled at her in the rearview.
“Oh well,” Casey sighed. “I’m sure we’ll hear all about the drama on Monday.”
“Or tomorrow if the story is good enough,” Jessica said. “Angela and Jeanine never keep gossip to themselves. If it gets crazy, you know they’ll call us and tell us what we missed. I’m sure that they will.” She smiled. “I hope they give lots of details. I can’t believe I’m missing my last Homecoming.”
“At least you’re not missing it alone, Jess.”
A few seconds after pulling onto Holbrooke Lane, I turned into the Gaithers’ driveway. Yanking the keys from the ignition, I said, “Let the Girls’ Night In officially begin.”
“Woohoo!” Jessica jumped out of the backseat and practically danced up to her front porch. She pushed open the door, and Casey and I followed her inside, shaking our heads with amusement.
I slid off my jacket and hung it on the hook just inside the door. Jessica lived in a coatrack house—clean, neat, shoes off at the front door… you know the type. Her parents were super-picky about order. Casey did the same and said, “I wish my mom could keep a house this nice. Or she could at least hire a maid or whatever. Our place looks like shit.”
Mine didn’t look that great either. My mom had never been much of a clean freak, and Dad only believed in cleaning once a year, during the spring. Other than laundry, dishes, and the occasional dust-and-vacuum job (usually all my doing), not much housework got done in the Piper home.
“What time will your parents get here, Jessica?” I asked.
“Mom will be home at five-thirty, and Dad should get here a little after six.” She was waiting for us at the foot of the stairs, ready to run up to her bedroom as soon as we joined her. “Dad started seeing a new patient today, though, so he might be a little late.”
Mr. Gaither was a therapist. More than once, Casey had threatened to ask him if he’d take me as a patient for free. See if he’d help work out my “issues.” Not that I had issues. But Casey said my cynicism was the result of some kind of internal struggle. I said it was just me being intelligent. And Jessica… well, Jessica didn’t say anything. Even though it was only ever discussed teasingly, she always got a little awkward when the subject came up. With all the psychobabble she heard from her dad, she probably did think my constant negativity was part of an internal struggle.
Jessica hated negativity. Hated it so much, in fact, that she wouldn’t even say she hated it. That would have been too negative.
“Hurry, hurry! Are you guys ready or what?”
“Let’s get this party started!” Casey whooped, running past Jessica and speeding up the stairs.
Jessica giggled like a maniac as she made an effort to catch up with Casey, but I lagged behind, following them up the stairs at a regular walking pace. Once I reached the landing, I could hear my friends laughing and talking in the bedroom at the end of the hall, but I didn’t follow their voices. Something else caught my attention first.
The door to the
first bedroom, the one on the left, was wide open. My brain told me to walk right past, but my feet weren’t listening. I stood in the open doorway, willing my eyes to look away. My body just didn’t want to cooperate.
Perfectly made bed with the battered, navy blue comforter. Superhero posters covering every inch of wall. Black light over the headboard. The room was almost exactly the way I’d remembered it, only there were no dirty clothes on the floor. The open closet looked empty, and the Spider-Man calendar, which used to hang over the computer desk, had been taken down. But the room still seemed warm, as if he were still there. As if I were still fourteen.
“Jake, I don’t understand. Who was that girl?”
“No one. Don’t worry about it. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“But…”
“Shh…. It’s not a big deal.”
“I love you, Jake. Don’t lie to me, okay?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Promise?”
“Of course. Do you really think I’d hurt you, Bi—”
“Bianca! Where the hell did you go?”
Casey’s voice made me jump. Quickly, I stepped out of the bedroom and shut the door, knowing that I couldn’t walk past it every time I needed to pee that night. “Coming!” I managed to keep my voice normal. “God! Be patient for once in your life.”
Then, with a forced smile, I went to watch a movie with my friends.
7
After thinking about it for a while, I decided that there were a lot of benefits to being the Duff.
Benefit one: no point in worrying about your hair or makeup.
Benefit two: no pressure to act cool—you’re not the one being watched.
Benefit three: no boy drama.
I figured out benefit three while we were watching Atonement in Jessica’s bedroom. In the movie, poor Keira Knightley has to go through all of this damn tragedy with James McAvoy, but if she’d been unattractive, he never would have looked at her. She wouldn’t have gotten her heart broken. After all, everybody knows the “it’s better to have loved and lost…” spiel is a load of crap.
The theory applies to a lot of movies, too. Think about it. If Kate Winslet had been the Duff, Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn’t have been after her in Titanic, and that could have saved all of us a lot of tears. If Nicole Kidman had been ugly in Cold Mountain, she wouldn’t have had to worry about Jude Law when he went off to war. The list goes on forever.
I watched my friends go through boy drama all the time. Usually, the relationships ended with them crying (Jessica) or screaming (Casey). I’d only had my heart broken once, but that was more than enough. So really, watching Atonement with my friends made me realize how thankful I should have been to be the Duff. Pretty screwed up, right?
Unfortunately, being the Duff didn’t save me from experiencing family drama.
I got home at around one-thirty the next afternoon. I was still recovering from the sleepover—where no one slept—and I could barely keep my eyes open. The sight of my house in a state of complete devastation woke me right up, though. Broken glass sparkled on the living room floor, the coffee table was upside down, like it’d been kicked over, and—it took me a minute to register this—beer bottles were scattered around the room. For a second I stood frozen in the door, worried that there’d been a burglary. Then I heard Dad’s heavy snoring in his bedroom down the hall, and I knew the truth was worse.
We didn’t live in a coatrack home, so it was perfectly acceptable to keep your shoes on when you walked on the carpet. Today it was pretty much required. Glass, which I figured out had come from several broken picture frames, crunched under my feet as I made my way to the kitchen to get a trash bag—one would be necessary to clean up this chaos.
I felt oddly numb as I moved through the house. I knew I should be freaking out. I mean, Dad had been sober for almost eighteen years, and the beer bottles made it pretty fucking clear that that sobriety was in danger. But I didn’t feel anything. Maybe because I didn’t know how to feel. What could have been bad enough to knock him off that wagon after so long?
I found the answer on the kitchen table, neatly masked by a manila envelope.
“Divorce papers,” I muttered as I examined the contents of the opened package. “What the fuck?” I stared down at my mother’s loopy signature in a twisted state of shock. I mean, yeah, I’d kind of seen the end coming—when your mom vanishes for more than two months, you just get that feeling—but now? Really? She hadn’t even called to warn me! Or Dad. “Damn it,” I whispered, my fingers shaking. Dad hadn’t seen this coming. God, no wonder he was suddenly boozing it up. How could Mom do this to him? To either of us.
Fuck this. Seriously. Fuck her.
I tossed the envelope aside and went to the cabinet where we kept the cleaning supplies, fighting the tears that stung my eyes. I grabbed a garbage bag and headed into the demolished living room.
It hit me all at once, causing a lump to rise in my throat as I reached for one of the empty beer bottles.
Mom wasn’t coming home. Dad was drinking again. And I was literally picking up the pieces. I gathered the largest shards of glass and the empty bottles and tossed them into the bag, trying not to think about my mom. Trying not to think about how she most likely had a perfect tan. Trying not to think of the cute twenty-two-year-old Latino she was probably screwing. Trying not to think about the perfect signature she’d used on those divorce papers.
I was angry at her. So, so angry. How could she do this? How could she just send divorce papers? Without coming home or warning us. Didn’t she know what it would do to Dad? And she hadn’t even thought of me. Let alone called to prepare me for this.
Right then, while I made my way around the living room, I decided that I hated my mother. Hated her for always being gone. Hated her for shocking us with those papers. Hated her for hurting Dad.
As I carried the trash bag full of destroyed picture frames into the kitchen, I wondered if Dad had managed to break those memories—the ones of him and Mom that the photos had captured. Probably not. That’s why he’d needed the alcohol. When even that hadn’t erased my mother’s face from his mind, he must have thrashed around the room like a drunken madman.
I’d never seen my father drunk, but I knew why he’d quit. I’d overheard him and Mom talking about it a few times when I was little. Apparently Dad had a bad temper when he was smashed. So bad that Mom had gotten scared and begged him to quit. Which I guess explained the overturned coffee table.
But the idea of my father drunk… it just didn’t compute. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine him using a swear word more offensive than damn. But a bad temper? I couldn’t picture it.
I just hoped he hadn’t cut himself on any of the glass. I mean, I didn’t blame him for this. I blamed Mom. She’d done this to him. Leaving, disappearing, not calling, no warning. He never would have relapsed if he hadn’t seen those stupid papers. He would have been fine. Watching TV Land and reading the Hamilton Journal. Not sleeping off a hangover.
I kept telling myself not to cry as I sat the coffee table back up and vacuumed the smaller pieces of glass out of the carpet. I couldn’t cry. If I’d cried, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that my parents were getting divorced. That wasn’t a shocker. It wouldn’t have had anything to do with missing my mother. She’d been gone too long for that. I wouldn’t even have been mourning for the family I’d once had. I was happy with the way life was, just me and Dad. No. If I had cried, it would have been out of anger, out of fear, or something else entirely selfish. I would have been crying because of what it meant for me. I had to be the adult now. I had to take care of Dad. But at that moment, my mother, living like a star in Orange County, was acting selfishly enough for the both of us, so I had to put the tears aside.
I’d just rolled the vacuum back into the laundry room when the cordless phone started ringing.
“Hello?” I said into the receiver.
“Good afternoon, Duffy.”
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Oh, shit. I’d forgotten about working with Wesley on that stupid project. Of all the people to see that day, why did it have to be him? Why did this day have to get worse?
“It’s almost three,” he said. “I’m getting ready to drive over to your place. You told me to call before I left…. I’m just being considerate.”
“You don’t even know what that means.” I glanced down the hall in the direction of my father’s snores. The living room, while no longer a death trap, still looked rough, and there was no telling what kind of mood Dad would be in when he rolled out of bed. I just knew it probably wouldn’t be a good one. I didn’t even know what I would say to him. “Look, on second thought, I’ll come to your house. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
Every town has that one house. You know, the one that is so freaking nice that it just doesn’t fit in. The house that’s so lavish that you almost feel like the owners are rubbing their wealth in your face. Every town in the world has one particular house like that, and in Hamilton that house belonged to the Rush family.
I don’t know if it could technically be called a mansion, but the house was three stories tall and had two balconies. Balconies! I’d gawked at the place a million times as I drove past, but I never thought I’d be going inside. On any other day, I would have been a little excited to see the interior (of course, I never would have told anyone that), but my thoughts were so wrapped around the divorce papers on my kitchen table that I couldn’t feel anything but anxious and miserable.
Wesley met me at the front door, an annoyingly confident grin on his face. He leaned against the door frame, arms folded across his broad chest. He was wearing a dark blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. And of course he’d left the top few buttons undone. “Hello, Duffy.”
Did he know how much that name bothered me? I glanced at the driveway, which was empty except for my Saturn and his Porsche. “Where are your parents?” I asked.
“Gone,” he replied with a wink. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”
I pushed past him and walked into the large foyer, rolling my eyes with disgust. Once my shoes were positioned neatly in the corner, I turned to Wesley, who was watching me with vague interest. “Let’s get this over with.”