A Midsummer's Nightmare (17 page)

“You were right, though. About me being a whore. If I hadn’t acted like such a… If I’d been different, Theo wouldn’t have—”

“Stop it,” he said. “I don’t care how you acted. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault.”

“You weren’t there.”

“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your fault, Whitley. And you’re
not
a whore.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at Nathan’s hand on mine for a long moment. I’d done to him essentially the same thing that senior boy had done to me when I was fifteen. I’d used him and abandoned him and taken something from him. But instead of regressing like I had, falling into the habits and giving up on people and happiness and anything good, Nathan had worked to turn himself around, to change everything, no matter what people thought.

If he were a drug addict, I would have been his rock bottom.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For trying not to hate me.”

Sylvia knocked on the guest room door the next morning.
For once, she didn’t wake me up. I hadn’t been able to sleep much that night, between the coffee and the terrifying memories of Theo. And staying up all night had only made the hangover worse. This one was on par with the one I’d had the morning after graduation.

“We need to have a talk,” Sylvia said as soon as I pulled open the door.

“Okay,” I said, letting her inside.

I wasn’t wearing skimpy pajamas this time. After what had happened last night, I’d felt the need to be fully covered. I was wearing baggy sweats and an ancient T-shirt, and it still didn’t feel like enough.

“I heard Nathan leave last night,” she said, folding her
arms over her chest. “To pick you up at three
AM
. I thought you were staying over at Harrison’s.”

“I was supposed to.”

I eased myself back onto the bed. Pain shot through my head, and I winced.

“Change of plans?”

“You could say that.”

“Whitley,” Sylvia groaned, running her hands through her hair. “Look, I don’t want to be the wicked stepmother. I know what it’s like to have a stepmom you hate—my stepmother treated my sister and me like we were juvenile delinquents. I don’t want to be like that, but now you’ve clearly got a hangover, and you had Nathan out early in the morning—”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I just can’t go through this again,” she went on. At first I didn’t know what she meant, but then I remembered Nathan’s confession. He’d said he made her crazy for years. “I don’t want you to hate me, but I can’t do this. I can’t let my daughter be around this kind of behavior.”

“I know. Like I said, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, okay?”

“My question is why you had Nathan bring you home,” she said. “You were loud in the hallway this morning. If you were going to get drunk, why didn’t you stay at Harrison’s? You knew I’d be upset if I noticed.”

My body tensed, feeling Theo’s ghost fingers on my skin when she asked. I let out a breath, wrapping my arms around
myself. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her. “Are you going to punish me?”

She frowned. “Whitley, did something happen last night at Harrison’s?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I knew my voice had risen a little too high, that my words were cracking a little too much. But I couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t admit what had happened with Theo. I was too angry with myself, too sure it was my fault. For drinking too much, for following him, for letting everyone think I was a slut, even if I hadn’t done as much as people wanted to believe. I’d set myself up for what happened last night.

“Okay,” she said. “If you change your mind… Well, anyway, there’s something else I want to talk to you about. Nathan showed me the Facebook page last night while you were out.”

“God,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands. “It’s not… The stuff they’re saying on there—I didn’t do most of it. I mean, I’m not sleeping with all those—”

“I believe you,” she said. “I’m not here to call you out on it. I’m just making sure you’re okay.”

“Yeah. Sure, I’m fine.”

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you right now,” she said. “Or with that web page. But if this… Do you think this is cyber-bullying?”

I rolled my eyes. “Christ, no. It’s just stupid rumors.”
Cyber-bullying
. The word felt so dramatic, like the kind of thing you might see on
Oprah
or
Dateline
or something. I
wasn’t one of those crying girls who’d been tortured by my classmates. I didn’t even know these people.

“Are you sure?” She was dead serious about this. “Whitley, if this is getting to you, I need you to tell me. There’s legal action we can take. Cyber-bullying can be very damaging.”

Damaging.
I wondered if Theo would have touched me if he hadn’t seen that page, those pictures. I hugged myself tighter.

“It’s nothing. I mean, I don’t even use Facebook, so what do I care? Just leave it alone, okay? My dad’s a local celebrity. People are always going to talk, right?”

She sighed. “Okay—if you’re sure. But if this gets worse, if you feel like it turns into bullying at any time—”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you.”

“Okay.” She started to stand up.

“Um, Sylvia?” I hesitated. “Has Dad said anything about it? The Facebook page?”

“I’m not even sure if he knows,” she said. “Maybe it was wrong of me, but I didn’t show him. I didn’t know if you’d want him to see.”

When the photos first came out, I hadn’t wanted him to see them. But he had to have. I tried to tell myself that he’d untagged himself only yesterday, that he didn’t check Facebook often, that if Sylvia cared enough to talk to me, surely he’d be up here in a few hours, too.

So I waited. After Sylvia left, repeatedly telling me that I could come to her if I needed to, I sat in my room and waited for Dad to come. I watched from the window as his car
pulled into the driveway after work, heard the front door shut when he came in. I thought he’d come up soon.

Trace called me that afternoon while I was still upstairs, hoping Dad would come.

“Have you talked to Mom lately?”

“No.”

“You should call her,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because she’s your mother,” he said, exasperated. “But also because she called me the other day and told me how much she misses you right now.”

“She misses having someone to bitch to.” I snorted. “Not me.”

Trace sighed. “You’re too hard on her. I mean… Okay, I don’t live with her. I know that. I know she fucked up a lot. But she loves you, and it just kills me to see you putting Dad up on a pedestal when he’s just as bad as she is.”

“He is not,” I argued. “At least Dad’s fun to be around.”
Not that he’s around often anymore.

“He uses you as a drinking buddy, Whitley,” Trace said. “You grill burgers with him, and you drink together and hang out on the beach and drink together and, oh yeah, drink together. Whatever; I’m fine with a parent allowing his kid to drink at home, but the way you talk about your summers together, it sounds like he’s more of your brother than your dad.”

“Well, Trace, you’ve been gone for a long time. Maybe I need someone to act like my brother.”

There was a long pause.

“Sorry,” I said. “That was me being defensive. I’m kind of hungover and bitchy.”

“I can tell.”

“Look, no matter how Dad screws up, it’s still better than Mom’s bullshit. At least he didn’t tear the family apart.”

“Yes, he did.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “Mom’s the one who left him. Mom’s the one who moved to another state. It’s her fault, Trace.”

I heard him let out a long breath. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” he said, “but you’re eighteen years old, and that’s old enough to know, and, God, I’m just sick of hearing the way you worship him. Whitley, Mom left because Dad cheated.”

“He… what?”

“A few times,” Trace said. “You were too young to know, but I figured it out. Mom asked me not to tell you then, but… Look, I know she bitches about Dad a lot and has told you things she shouldn’t have, but she didn’t want you to hate him, even if she does—even if he deserves it.”

I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, stunned.

“Mom left, but she wanted to reconcile,” he continued. “Dad said no, that he’d rather be single for a while, anyway. She got pissed and moved far away. Which was wrong, I know, but… This was Dad’s fault, Whitley.”

Still, I couldn’t say a word.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have told you that. Don’t tell Mom. She never wanted you to find out. She’d kill me.”

“I… I have to go.”

“Whitley?”

“I’ll call you later, okay?”

I hung up the phone before he could answer. I just sat there for a long time, staring at the blank wall. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. Trace wouldn’t lie to me, I knew that, but as the clock ticked the hours past and Dad still didn’t come up the stairs to see me, I really wished that I didn’t know the truth.

I didn’t leave the guest room until two o’clock the next afternoon, when I finally decided waiting on Dad wasn’t doing any good—and I was hungry.
When I came downstairs, I found Nathan sitting at the dining room table, hair still wet from the shower, working on his laptop. My stomach tightened.

“Are there more pictures?” I asked him from the doorway.

He looked up at me. “What?”

“On the Facebook page—are there pictures from Harrison’s party?”

He sighed. “A few, but nothing too bad.”

“But I bet the comments—”

“Whitley,” he said, cutting me off. “Don’t. Don’t think about them, okay?
Fuck
those people and whatever they have to say.”

“You agreed with them,” I reminded him. “A few days ago, you called me a whore, too.”

He looked down, staring at his lap for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “I was an asshole.”

“No, you weren’t.” I walked over to the table and sat beside him. “You were worried about your little sister. I get that now. After last night… Christ, I’d hate myself if something like that happened to her. I hate myself as it is for what little did happen to her that night. Maybe I’m not as slutty as those comments make me out to be, but…”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m still pissed at you for not watching her that night. You screwed up. But that doesn’t give these idiots the right to say the shit they’re saying. I mean, seriously? How lonely and pathetic do you have to be to waste time gossiping about some girl you probably haven’t met? That’s pretty lame.”

I smiled a little. “I guess.”

“It’s the truth.” He paused. “So, are you okay? After what happened the other night? Harrison filled me in, but do you want to…?”

“I want to forget it ever happened,” I said. “I know I won’t, but I just need to think about something else for a while.”

He nodded and cleared his throat, leaning back a little and clicking a few buttons on his laptop. “So, I’m looking at UK’s course catalog online—checking out some classes I might want to take.”

“I should do that soon,” I said. “And pick a major.”

“You don’t have one yet?” he asked, surprised.

I shook my head. “Nope. What about you?”

“Yeah. I’m going into computer science—hoping to focus in web development.”

“Oh… that’s cool.”

He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “You’re not going to make fun of me? Call me a nerd or anything?”

“No. Why?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like something you’d do.”

I laughed and stood up, walking into the kitchen. “Yeah, well, I probably would normally.” I opened the fridge and pulled out an apple. “But I’ve decided to try this new thing and be nice to you.”

He grinned at me when I sat down next to him again. “Is this because you feel guilty after what I told you at the diner?”

“Mostly,” I said, chewing on my apple.

“Wow. Pity kindness. I’m flattered.”

Nathan nudged my arm playfully, but the truth was that I really did feel guilty. I knew what it was like to give up something that intimate and have the person completely abandon you. I knew how shameful and hurtful it could be.

“Can I ask you something?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

I took another bite of my apple and swallowed before asking, “Why did you sleep with me graduation night?”

“Because I was
really
drunk.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

He chuckled, scratching his head for a moment. “I told
you I was waiting for someone special, someone I really liked, right? Well, believe it or not, you’re incredibly charming when you’re drunk.”

“Only on tequila,” I said. “I learned the other night that vodka makes me a little bit of a bitch.”

“Well, you were charming that night,” he said. “You were friendly and funny and… and gorgeous.”

I blushed.

“Then, when we were talking about that Van Morrison song and you told me all the songs about blue eyes… I don’t know.” He looked at me, our eyes meeting as he spoke. “I loved that you knew the old songs and that, even hammered, you could put me in my place. A lot of girls act ditzy when they’re drunk, and I guess some guys think that’s cute, but I don’t. And you weren’t like that—you seemed… real. We laughed a lot that night. And when you led me back to the bedroom and I knew what you wanted to do, I just remember thinking,
If this girl isn’t perfect for me, no one is.
So, I guess the short answer is, I liked you. A lot.”

We were still staring at each other, his brown eyes steady on mine. Suddenly, I was aware of just how close we were sitting. Our arms were almost brushing. My knee was just inches from his. I opened my mouth to say something—I had no idea what.

“Hey, kids.”

I jumped and turned to look as Dad walked through the dining room. When I glanced at Nathan, I thought I saw him blushing a little. But he was back to work on his laptop, as if we hadn’t been talking at all.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“How are you this afternoon, munchkin?” he asked as he headed through the kitchen archway.

“I’m… okay. I guess.” I stood up and followed him, leaving Nathan at the dining room table.