Faking Perfect (10 page)

In the bathroom, Amber started the shower and hung a fresh towel on the towel rack.

“I’m okay,” I told her, even though the two-second walk to the bathroom had turned my legs to jelly. “I can handle this myself.”

She squeezed my arm and left the room, closing the door behind her. Feeling wobbly and slightly nauseated, I stripped off my wrinkly pajama pants and tank top and soaped myself under the heavenly spray. When the hot water ran out, I stepped out into the steamy air and brushed, flossed, and mouthwashed my nasty mouth. There. Almost human.

Back in my bedroom, Amber was adjusting my quilt over a clean set of sheets.

“Amber,” I said, watching her. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to do that, but it was already done and the thoughtful gesture brought tears to my eyes. No wonder Nolan liked her enough to quit smoking for her.

“Feeling better?” she asked, flicking her bangs out of her eyes. Her streaky hair was loose, hanging smooth and straight to the middle of her back.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“I’ll go up and check on Nolan while you get dressed.” She moved past me to the door. “Meet us in the kitchen when you’re ready?”

I nodded. When she was gone, I threw on a clean pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt and twisted my dripping hair into a messy knot at the back of my head. I checked my cell phone, which I’d turned down the day before when it wouldn’t stop ringing and beeping. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d missed seven calls and twenty-three text messages. All the texts were from my friends, Nolan included, each one asking some variation of
Are you alive?
The missed calls were from Emily and Shelby, likely placed after I didn’t answer their texts. No calls or texts from Tyler or Ben.

Oh God
, I thought as Friday night slammed into me once again.
Ben
. He’d seen me loaded drunk and passed out on the floor like some raging, out of control alcoholic. And unless my listless mind was playing tricks on me, he’d also carried me out to Shelby’s car. What if I’d said something embarrassing? Or worse, what if I’d said out loud the words that flooded my brain whenever I got close enough to him to breathe in his summery scent? I swear, if I’d actually said
Oh Ben you’re so amazing I love you I want to marry you and have your babies
, I’d quit school and move to Bora Bora.

I made a mental note to call Emily later and find out exactly how much of an ass I’d made of myself. My stomach rolled just thinking about it.

Food.
I tossed the phone onto my neatly made bed and went upstairs to the kitchen. A bowl of steaming hot chicken noodle soup rested on one of the placemats, along with a package of crackers and an unopened bottle of red Gatorade. We didn’t buy Gatorade, so Nolan must have gotten it from his house or bought it at the convenience store around the corner.

“You’re probably dehydrated,” he said when he noticed me looking at it. “Drink the whole thing.”

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.