Faking Perfect Read online

  Normally I would have teased him about being bossy, but I felt too weak and ashamed to put up much of a fight. I sat down and tried a spoonful of the soup. The warm, savory broth felt good on my tender throat.

  He sat down in the chair across from me. “Where’s your mom?”

  I shrugged and ripped the plastic off the top of the Gatorade bottle. “Haven’t seen her since Friday evening. I think she came back for an hour or so yesterday after she got off work, but I didn’t talk to her or anything.”

  “She didn’t check on you to make sure you were okay?” Amber asked from the kitchen sink where she was rinsing out the soup pot. She sounded surprised. She didn’t know my mother like Nolan and I did.

  “She’s probably with her new boyfriend.” I gulped some Gatorade, which felt even better on my throat than the soup. I’d never been so thirsty in my life.

  Amber finished cleaning up and sat down in the chair next to Nolan. They watched me eat for a minute, as if I was a toddler who might flip my bowl over or hide food under a napkin when they weren’t looking. Their vigilance wasn’t necessary; I devoured every drop and crumb, plus the entire bottle of Gatorade and two glasses of water. I felt a million times better, at least physically.

  “Thanks. For the food and . . . just everything.” I couldn’t imagine any of my other friends barging into my room uninvited, threatening me into the shower, changing my foul sheets, and shoving soup and energy drinks down my throat.

  “So what happened the other night?” Nolan fiddled with the salt shaker, sliding it back and forth across the table top. “We heard—”

  “You heard what?” All that liquid sloshed in my stomach.

  He glanced at Amber, who placed her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. Her bracelets slid down her arms, one by one. “My friend Brielle was there. At the party. All she said was you got really drunk and had to be carried out of the house by the student council president.”

  My cheeks blazed. “Is that really all she said?”

  “Yeah. Well, she also mentioned it happened pretty late, after a lot of people had already left or passed out somewhere themselves. So I don’t think many people saw you.”

  A small comfort. I sighed, wishing there was still soup in my bowl so I could drown myself in it. “Yep, that’s pretty much what happened.”

  “Drinking yourself into oblivion at one of Dustin Sweeney’s parties was a dumb move, Lexi,” Nolan said, returning the salt shaker to its rightful place next to the pepper. “It’s like a frat house over there.”

  I didn’t know how he could know, never having been to one of Dustin’s parties. I guess word got around. “My friends were there, too,” I said defensively. And a strong, angry, drug dealing bad boy, skulking in the shadows like a serial killer....

  Nolan made a scoffing sound as if he didn’t trust my friends to take care of a gerbil. “How could they let you get so drunk? And how long were you gone before they even noticed you were missing?”

  “They found me and got me home safe, didn’t they? I don’t need my friends to monitor my alcohol consumption and stay with me at all times. I can take care of myself.”

  He raised an eyebrow as if to say Oh really? “I don’t think getting drunk to the point of passing out and then staying in bed for two days afterward qualifies as taking care of yourself,” he shot back. “It’s not healthy and it’s not normal. You should know that better than anyone.”

  I glared at him and then shot a quick glance at Amber, who was listening with an uneasy expression. No way was I going to discuss my mother in front of her or argue with Nolan about how I wasn’t like my mother even though I may have acted like her sometimes. Besides, Nolan didn’t even know the half of it. I could only imagine what he’d say about my relationship with Tyler, which was the epitome of unhealthy and abnormal. Nolan knew me better than anyone, knew my past and all my faults just like I knew his, but there were some things that needed to stay hidden, even between us.

  “It’s not like I make a regular habit of it,” I said, ignoring his last statement. I’d save my indignation for later, when we were alone. Plus, I couldn’t yell at someone who’d just made me soup. “I was just, you know, letting off some steam after a really hard week.”

  “I know you had a hard week,” he said, calmer now. “But being in denial won’t make everything go away. And it’s not just you who’s having a hard time, you know. My mom’s been inconsolable all week.”

  “Nolan,” I said through gritted teeth. “Can we talk about this later?” I flicked my eyes toward Amber, who bit her lip and shifted in her chair like it literally pained her to be sitting between us.

  “Amber knows. I told her about your father and your fight with my mom and everything. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lex.”

  But it was. Having a father who’d chosen drugs over you and then deliberately ignored you for most of your life was definitely something to be ashamed of, in my opinion. If I could help it, I’d rather people not perceive me as a poor, unwanted little stray.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Amber assured me. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better, my father sucks, too. He cheated on my mom with a woman half his age. I was thirteen when they got divorced and I’ve barely seen him since. Not that I want to. But yeah, I totally understand that punched-in-the-gut feeling.”

  Punched in the gut described it perfectly. I offered her a tiny smile. “Thanks.”

  “You have to face this shit with your dad,” Nolan said, curling the corner of the placemat up and then letting it unroll again. “Have you Googled him yet?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m too . . . I don’t know. Scared of what I might find. Or worried I won’t find anything at all. Or something.” Or maybe he doesn’t want me to find him.

  Nolan caught my gaze and held it. “Would you rather I did it?”

  “I’ll do it, Nolan. Eventually.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for this. Improvising, I said, “Courage?”

  “You’ve always had that.” His words erased any lingering hostility I felt toward him, just like that. He stretched his back and let out a yawn. “Come on, let’s go Google him right now. Amber and I will stand behind you. Literally.”

  Amber nodded in agreement and they both stood up.

  My heart slammed against my rib cage. Whack. “What, right now?”

  Nolan gave the table a slight tap with his fist. “Right now. Got that paper my mom gave you with his info on it?”

  I gazed up at the two of them, trying to soak in a bit of their shining optimism and strength. “Don’t need it,” I told him, and pulled myself to my feet. He was right. It was time to face this head-on. Get it over with. With them behind me, backing me up, maybe I’d finally have the guts to press ENTER and see what came up.

  In the spare room, I sat at the desk and turned on the computer.

  While it booted up, Amber distracted me with a painless, random question. “Why is your room downstairs when there are two bedrooms up here?”

  I gestured around me. “This used to be my room. I moved downstairs when I was fourteen . . . for privacy.” And because my mother’s boyfriend at the time often spent the night and the repulsive noises coming from across the hall made me want to barf, I added silently, not wanting to scare Amber any more than I already had.

  Nolan nudged my shoulder with his forearm and I turned my gaze back to the computer screen, which showed the Google homepage. “Okay. Plug in the deets.”

  I laughed nervously at his choice of words. My hands felt cold and sweaty. I wiped them on my pants and stared down at the keyboard. Okay. I could do this. Nolan and Amber stood on either side of me like supportive bookends, propping me up. I can do this. I think.

  I positioned my fingers on the keys, then lowered them again. “What if his company doesn’t even have a website? What if—”

  “Lexi,” Nolan said, prodding me with his arm again. “Type.”

/>   “Okay, okay.” With stiff, shaking fingers, I typed everything I knew about my father into the search bar. I held my breath and tapped the ENTER key. Almost immediately, a full page of results appeared. For a moment, all I could do was stare at the screen, panicked and overwhelmed.

  Nolan pointed at the third site. “That one. It’s a website.”

  I clicked and he was right. It was a business website. A crappy business website, with scrolling text, blurred pictures of backhoes, and a vivid, seizure-inducing color scheme. It looked like one of those do-it-yourself jobs.

  “It’s a small town practically in the middle of nowhere,” Nolan reminded me.

  Our moms had both talked a lot about growing up in Alton, how sheltered and conservative it was. Even in this modern age, most businesses there probably wouldn’t bother with websites at all. And if they did, they’d balk at anything complicated or fancy. Even the most prosperous Altoners, we’d learned, were modest, simple folk.

  “Click on ABOUT,” Amber suggested.

  The ABOUT page consisted of a short, one-paragraph summary of the company’s history, when it was founded and by whom (in the early seventies by Frank Davis, my grandfather). My breath caught when I glimpsed my father’s name in the next sentence. He had taken over the company in January, just like Teresa said. Here was solid proof of his existence, right before our eyes in a hideous red font.

  “Do we have the right guy?” Amber asked, leaning in to squint at the screen. “Maybe there’s a picture somewhere.”

  I opened up the contact page, revealing words and numbers but no pictures. I let out a shaky breath, wondering if I should feel disappointed or relieved. In my mind, my father was young, slim, with a nice-looking, unlined face. Like in my pictures. Seeing him as he was now, his face likely fuller and creased with age, would be way too weird.

  “It’s him,” I said, my gaze zeroed in on the contact information. Eric Davis, Owner-Operator it said, and underneath that, a phone number. The same phone number that was written on the paper Teresa had given me. All this time, I’d assumed it was his home number or his cell number. Was I supposed to call him at work? Or maybe this was the only number that Josie women was able to dig up. Evidently, Eric Davis liked his privacy, too.

  “There’s an email address,” Nolan pointed out.

  “Yeah.” I’d seen it. In fact, it may as well have been neon and blinking.

  He pressed on. “Are you going to contact him? I mean, I’m sure he’d get whatever email you sent to that address, even if it went through a receptionist or someone first. A bit easier than calling him, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said again.

  “Yeah you’re going to email him or yeah it’s easier?”

  “Nolan,” Amber scolded softly. “Give the girl a minute to digest.”

  “What? I was just—”

  “What are you kids doing in here?”

  The three of us broke out of our huddle and whirled around. My mother stood in the doorway, her face pinched in suspicion. For someone who’d been gone all weekend, doing God knows what, she looked fresh and well-rested in a pair of dark skinny jeans and a loose, gauzy white blouse. Due to the bickering bookends, I hadn’t even heard her come home.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said in a much perkier voice than I usually used, causing her eyes to narrow even farther. My right hand, clutching the computer mouse, refused to obey my brain’s directive to move. “We were just researching, um . . . ”

  “Magnets,” Nolan said, furtively hitting a button on the keyboard and making my father’s website disappear. “Electromagnetism. For our physics homework.”

  My mother shot him her special look, the one she held in reserve just for him. A look of pure contempt. A look that said, You’re one of them, one of those meddlesome Bruces, and I don’t like you. Guilt by association. That look was the reason why Nolan had only been in my house a handful of times in the past five years.

  “Well, how about you research somewhere else,” Mom said, her wary gaze on me now. “I need to catch up on some emails.”

  And some bills too, I hope. I stood up and ushered Nolan and Amber from the room. Hopefully, my mother wasn’t aware that she could track my online activities by hitting Ctrl+H. I highly doubted it; she wasn’t the computer savvy type. Note to self: delete browsing history later.

  “Want to come over?” Nolan asked when we reached the top of the stairs. “We’re doing burgers on the grill later.”

  “Please come,” Amber begged. “It’s always good to have an even male to female ratio.”

  I did want to go over and eat burgers with them, very much, but after last week I wondered if I’d even be welcome.

  Nolan saw the hesitation on my face. “Mom would love to see you.” He lowered his voice, in case my mother was listening. “You really should talk to her, Lex. She has herself convinced you hate her and won’t ever speak to her again, like your mother.”

  Damn it, he always knew precisely how to get to me. I sighed. “Fine. Just give me a few minutes. I have to return some calls first.”

  He nodded and swung open the front door. Sunshine poured into the entryway, along with the unseasonably warm breeze. All the slush and ice and leftover snow from last week had dissolved into water, trickling from rooftops and saturating the dead, parched grass.

  “Hey, Nolan?” I said as he and Amber stepped outside.

  They paused to look at me.

  “Let your mom know I’m coming. And that I don’t hate her. Okay?”

  For the first time since he’d arrived at my house today, he smiled at me. “Okay.”

  In one way, at least, I wouldn’t be like my mother.

  Chapter Ten

  Before school the next morning, it took every ounce of willpower I possessed to not smoke a cigarette. My nerves jangled just thinking about climbing into the backseat of Ben’s car when he came to pick me up for school. When I’d returned Emily’s call the day before, she’d sort of brushed off the whole party incident, even though I could tell she was disappointed in me for losing control of myself like that. But she’d said nothing about Ben’s thoughts on the matter, and I couldn’t ask. She did assure me that I hadn’t said anything embarrassing, which eased my mind somewhat.

  To offset my disgrace, I wore my best outfit, spent a half hour on my makeup, and styled my hair to perfection. I looked normal. Strong. In control. Too bad I didn’t feel it, too.

  Ben’s Acura slid into place against my curb a few minutes later than usual. With my breakfast in my throat, I took my spot next to Emily in the backseat.

  “Good morning,” she said, leaning into me as if she was checking for the aroma of nicotine. Or alcohol. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” I glanced at Ben, who was fiddling with the vents. Once they were all adjusted to his liking, he turned and flashed me a small, tight-lipped smile. My muscles relaxed, but not all the way. Tori, sitting in the passenger seat, didn’t turn around or say anything to me at all. In fact, the vibe I was getting from her was quite frosty. Crap. I guess she didn’t take too kindly to her boyfriend playing Knight in Shining Armor for another girl.

  The atmosphere was even frostier in first period math. Throughout the entire class, I was hyper-aware of Tyler’s presence behind me, sensed him watching me, hating me. I hadn’t heard from him since he’d stormed away from me on Friday night. Three days of no contact wasn’t unusual, but his behavior was. What had gotten into him lately? It wasn’t like either of us stopped seeing other people once we’d started sleeping together. I knew he saw other girls, probably had sex with them even, and he knew I went out on the occasional date. Nothing serious, of course, because I would never become involved with one guy while sleeping with another. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a cheater.

  For some reason, seeing me with Dustin had offended him, even though I hadn’t kissed Dustin and didn’t plan to. This new possessive side of Tyler made me uneasy. The reason I’d picked him in the first place was because of hi
s carefree, no-strings-attached reputation. Our casual relationship had always been enough for him. Or at least it used to be.

  Whatever was eating at him, I wished he’d get over it. We’d only been apart for a few days, but already I missed him in a purely physical way. My body craved his body, just like my heart longed for Ben.

  It would be nice if my heart and my body formed an alliance someday and started working together.

  At lunch, I met up with Shelby and Emily in Ms. Hollis’s classroom.

  “Hey, everyone, it’s the Tequila Queen,” Shelby announced, applauding as I entered the room.

  Being a good sport, I took my requisite bow and said, “I’m here all week.”

  “God, I hope not,” Emily retorted. “Get buzzed, fine, but blacking out is just trashy.”

  I laughed, which wasn’t easy, and sat down in a desk with my lunch. “Don’t worry. I’m never drinking that much again.”

  “Why did you?” Shelby asked as she settled into the teacher’s desk chair. Her stomach looked like it had ballooned another few inches over the weekend. “You never get smashed like that.”

  “Yeah,” Emily agreed. “You were a little off all night. Upset about something.”

  I concentrated on picking a green pepper off my cold pizza slice. If only they knew the truth, I thought. If only I could tell them about my father without the fear of being judged or pitied. If only I could share with them my feelings of confusion and rejection and the tiny spark of excitement that sometimes popped up when I thought of that email address, neatly copied onto the paper in my snake book. For the past two years, I thought my father was gone, dead. Admitting that he’d abandoned me would make me look even worse than I had on Friday night. I could never let myself come across as vulnerable. Not around them. The only person I trusted with the real, raw part of me was Nolan, and only because we’d grown up together, constant bystanders in each other’s lives. He had seen every side of me—the good, the bad, the authentic, the fake, and everything in between—and I’d never once feared losing him as my friend.