A Midsummer's Nightmare (18 page)

Dad moved to the counter and started sorting through a stack of mail piled there. I watched him for a moment. I hadn’t seen him in days, since before he’d ditched me for Nathan and Trace had told me the truth about the divorce. It felt a little like looking at a different person. Not only had Dad changed since getting engaged to Sylvia, but he hadn’t even been the man I thought he was to begin with.

He was the one responsible for our family falling apart. He’d cheated on Mom. He hadn’t wanted to be with us anymore.

But he was still my dad… right? He was still the man who’d taught me how to play poker with pennies, the man who’d bought me my first Joan Jett CD, the man who’d made me watch
Animal House
and
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
and all those other R-rated classics Mom hated. He was still in there somewhere, wasn’t he?

“What’s up, munchkin?” he asked.

I realized I’d been standing behind him, just staring, for too long. “I, um… I was wondering if I’m grounded?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, Sylvia didn’t tell me either way, so I thought I’d ask.”

“Right,” he said, still flipping through the mail, not even glancing my way. “I think we can let it slide this time.” He picked up an envelope and tucked it under his arm. “I’m off to get some work done. Have a phone call with the station manager in half an hour. He wants me to pitch in the network softball game against 97.5—that Top 40 radio network. Might be fun. Anyway.” He turned and kissed me on the top of my head. “See you at dinner.”

He walked out of the kitchen, clapping Nathan on the shoulder as he passed through the dining room.

“Hey, Greg.”

“Working hard, Nate?”

“Of course not.”

Dad laughed. “Oh, to be eighteen again.”

I stood in the kitchen for a long moment after he’d gone. I’d been waiting for him to come upstairs, waiting for him to talk to me about those pictures. Sylvia had, but Dad had just ignored them.

All summer I’d thought Dad’s distance from me was a new thing, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’d just been making excuses for him. For why he never called, why he could only see me once a year.

Trace said Dad hadn’t reconciled the marriage because he wanted to be single, because he didn’t want a family. I remembered being fourteen, begging him to let me live with him. Mom was always either yelling or sleeping, and I didn’t have friends. I was miserable and I needed him. It dawned on
me just then that he hadn’t said no because he cared for Mom. He’d said no because he didn’t want me.

A few minutes later, when I was back in the guest room, I pulled out the bottle of Margaritaville. I stared at it for a long moment, thinking of finishing off the last little bit. It would be nice to get buzzed right now. It would make me laugh and smile. Like Nathan said, I was fun when I was drunk.

I thought of Bailey, of how I hadn’t protected her. I thought of Nathan’s hand reaching across the table at the diner, his fingers covering mine. I cared about Bailey and Nathan cared about me. This wouldn’t make things with Dad any better. This wouldn’t make me forget. It would just hurt them. And I didn’t want to hurt them. Not more than I already had.

I carried the bottle into the bathroom, checking to make sure the hallway was clear first. I poured out the last few drops of tequila, watching as the only thing that had made me happy over the past few years trickled down the drain. Going, going… gone.

I didn’t leave the house at all over the next week.
I spent most of my time locked in the guest room or watching Bailey practice her cheers. Occasionally, Harrison would come over and hang out, but we never went to the Nest or to parties or anything after the Fourth of July.

But that didn’t stop people from posting on the Facebook page.

Nathan usually wouldn’t let me look on his computer, but sometimes I’d sneak into his room when he had run downstairs. He had a bad habit of leaving his computer on, and he was always logged on to Facebook.

Pictures from Harrison’s party; speculations of what I’d do next; insults about my clothes, my hair, the size of my ass. Everything. And Dad was tagged in so much of it. Tagged
one day, untagged the next. And still not a word to me. Not that I expected it anymore.

Every time I saw him in the house, every time he asked me to pass the rolls at dinner, every time he called during a break at work to ask Nathan to pick something up at the grocery store and I answered the phone—I wanted to scream every time. To throw things. To ask him why he loved them more than me. But I held it in. I didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

He must have been counting down the days until I left, until it could just be him and his perfect family and he could go back to pretending I didn’t exist.

As angry as I was, part of me didn’t blame him.

I stood in the living room and watched them through the screen door. Sherri was visiting for the afternoon. She and Sylvia sat in lawn chairs, drinking lemonade while Dad and Nathan played one-on-one basketball in the driveway. Bailey was doing back handsprings in the grass, as if she were a cheerleader at a big game.

Sherri and Sylvia clapped and laughed as Nathan threw the ball into the hoop above the garage, sinking it perfectly. Dad’s lips were moving quickly, clearly arguing that, somehow, that shot hadn’t been fair.

I felt like I was watching a home movie. A good one. It was like you could
see
the joy and the love. They were palpable.

Nathan saw me standing in the doorway. He raised a hand and waved, gesturing for me to join them.

But I shook my head.

I ran upstairs before anyone else could turn around and see me.

Later, after dinner, Nathan followed me into the guest room. “Why didn’t you come outside earlier?”

I sighed and sat down on my bed. “I had a stomachache.”

He frowned at me. “Really, Whit?”

“Whitley,” I corrected automatically.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “About the stomachache.”

“I just didn’t want to, okay?”

That wasn’t entirely a lie.

The truth was that I hadn’t wanted to ruin it. Dad and the Caulfields were perfect together. They were a family. A beautiful family. More of a family than Mom, Dad, Trace, and I had been, even before the divorce. Nathan and Bailey had both tried to make me feel welcome, but I still didn’t belong. I was the puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

Nathan watched me for a long moment. Then he sat down on the bed next to me, one arm curving around my shoulders. I couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to be platonic or romantic. I couldn’t tell which I wanted it to be.

“Well, I hate for you to miss out on all the fun,” he said. “So why don’t you join Bailey and me for movies tonight?”

“Nathan…”

“I want you to,” he said firmly. “And so will she.”

I forced a smile. “Okay. But I’m not watching
Bring It On
again.”

“Damn. I am just so heartbroken by that,” he joked.

I tried to call Trace after Nathan had gone, but I only got his voice mail.

Trace had a family now, too. A gorgeous wife and daughter. A family of his own. One I wasn’t part of.

And no matter whose fault it was, Mom and I hadn’t been a family in a long time.

I didn’t know who I was without the parties or drinking or boys that had been my life for the past four years. I had nothing. No one. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore.

“You have one unheard message…. First unheard message.
”

“Whitley, it’s your mom. I haven’t heard from you in a while, and I just wanted to check in. Trace says he’s talked to you a few times, but I haven’t, so… give me a call? I miss you, honey. I hope you’re having fun…. But listen, if anything’s going on with your father, you can let me know and—”

“Message deleted.”

“Physics?”

“No. No science.”

“Politics?”

“No.”

“Psychology?”

“I’m too screwed up to be a psychologist.”

“Oh, what about Russian? Russian could be cool.”

I looked at Harrison over the top of my sunglasses. We were lying in lawn chairs by the pool. The UK course catalog was in Harrison’s lap, and he’d flipped to the list of majors.

“
Russian
? Really, Harrison?”

“I took Russian in high school,” Nathan said, climbing out of the pool. He’d decided to swim laps that afternoon instead of going to the gym.

“Did you?” Harrison asked, grinning at him.

“Yeah.” Nathan grabbed his towel from the little patio table and began dabbing at his face. “But the only thing I remember is,
Mozhno li kopirovat vashi domashnie zodaneeye?
”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You just asked me where the bathroom is, right?”

“No.” He scoffed, flicking his wet towel at me. “I was beyond that basic stuff. I took two years of it. Give me some credit.”

“Then what does it mean?” I asked.

“It means, ‘Can I copy your homework?’ ”

Harrison laughed, as if this were the funniest thing in the world. I just smiled and shook my head. “Did you say that a lot?” I asked Nathan.

“Every morning before class started.” He grinned at me before slinging the towel over his shoulder. “All right. I’m heading inside. You two have a good time.”

“Have a nice night, Nathan!” Harrison called out. We both watched him go, and when the screen door closed, Harrison added quietly, “Now, I would major in
that
.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying.” He looked down at the catalog again. “We’re almost at the end of the list, Whitley. Unless you want to look in the Engineering school—but I’m assuming you don’t.”

“Definitely not.”

“You like music,” he said. “Ever thought of majoring in it?”

I cringed. Theo was a music major. That night, I’d even said I might consider it. Now I knew I never would.

“I don’t play anything,” I told Harrison. “Besides, I don’t think you study Nirvana or Blondie or the Ramones in college. I’d get bored with all the classical shit.”

“Fashion?”

“UK doesn’t have a fashion school.”

“Come out to L.A. with me, then,” he said. “Be my roommate, and I’ll dress you every day. You know you want to.”

That actually didn’t sound too bad. Trace was in Los Angeles. And the whole reason I’d picked UK was because it was Dad’s alma mater. I always thought I wanted to be like him. Not so much anymore.

“I can’t. UK’s already been paid.”

Harrison sighed. “Then I don’t know what to tell you. Any ideas what you want to do after college? What makes you happy?”

That was the million-dollar question. Because I honestly had no idea. Drinking had made me happy, but there wasn’t a major in alcoholism, to the best of my knowledge.

When I didn’t answer, Harrison changed the subject. “Hey, I’m going out with Wesley and Bianca tonight. Want to join us so I don’t have to be a third wheel?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think his girlfriend likes me too much,” I said.

“Bianca? Why do you think that?”

“Because the first time she met me I was trying to seduce her boyfriend. Pretty sure that pissed her off a little.”

Harrison laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first. But she’ll get over it. Come out with us. Dinner, a movie, maybe a little happy hour at my place afterward? No extra guests this time. Just the four of us.”

“No, I… I think I’d rather stay in.”

“Whitley,” he said, frowning. “You’ve stayed in every night since the party at my place. Have you even left the house? Been to the grocery store? Anything?”

I didn’t answer.

“What happened with Theo isn’t going to happen again,” he said quietly. “I promise. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

“It’s not that… not
just
that. Look, I don’t want to go out, okay? I’m sorry.”

He studied me for a while longer, his green eyes narrowing, dark eyebrows pulled together just a little. Then, finally, he nodded. “Fine. Okay, let’s see what other majors are listed here…. Oh, sociology?”

“No.”

Sylvia had to work the day Gwyneth’s Bridal Boutique called to say I needed to come in and try on my bridesmaid dress.
Bailey’s had been done for a while; now it was my turn. It was the first time I’d left the house in two weeks. You’d think I would have been getting cabin fever, but this was a trip I wasn’t looking forward to. Especially once I found out Harrison wasn’t working that day—which meant I’d have to deal with Sexy Lexie. If my dress wasn’t enough to make me self-conscious, having Lexie around certainly did the trick.

“Come out, Whit.”

“No.”

“Whit.”

“No.”

Like I said, Sylvia was at work, and Dad had some sort
of meeting at the station that afternoon, so Nathan drove me to the fitting.

“I won’t laugh,” he assured me from outside the dressing room. “I promise.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I really don’t have all day,” I heard Lexie say with exasperation. “There are two others coming in for fittings today.”

I gritted my teeth, trying to convince myself that my annoyance with her was due to her pushiness and was completely unrelated to the way she’d been flirting with Nathan since the moment we walked into the store. No, I didn’t like her because she was being bossy—that was the only reason.

I took a deep breath and ran my hands over the dress, smoothing a few tiny wrinkles in the front. There was no mirror behind the curtain, so I could only guess how it looked. The sleeves had already been cut and the hem shortened to knee-length, but nothing could be done to fix the color. I could not
believe
I would be forced to wear this thing in front of a large crowd in, like, a month and a half.

Maybe I just wouldn’t show up to the wedding. It wasn’t like I’d be missed.

“Whit,” Nathan called again teasingly. “You heard the girl. We don’t have all day. Come out.”

“Fine!” I shouted. “Goddamn it.”

I shoved open the curtain and stepped into the room where Nathan and Lexie waited. Both their gazes fell upon me. I could feel them examining every inch of the dress, of my frame. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see their reactions.