Invisible Girl (11 page)

No one in our group speaks. Annie looks like a shotgun went off in her face. I’m wildly glad Andrew isn’t here. I hear Matt whisper, “Holy crap,” and Emily looks like he slapped her.

The girls put down their towels. The redhead lies down first on her stomach and unhooks her top. Everyone is silent as the goddess leans over her friend’s back and pours lotion into small white pools. A groan escapes Matt when she starts to rub in the lotion in smooth, round strokes. Her breasts heave with her movement, stunningly attractive even though her suit is plain, boring and cut to cover as much of her body as possible.

When she’s finished, she lies on her back and closes her eyes. Her double Everests settle only slightly at her sides, the majority of their bulk rising up so high that when I squeeze my eyes half shut, I see them blend with the clouds.

Even Annie is awestruck.

CHAPTER TEN

We didn’t stay at the club very long. Annie said she was bored and that it was too cloudy to get any sun anyway. We ended up going shopping. Everyone bought clothes except for me. I just acted like I didn’t like anything, because I didn’t have any money. Now that we’re home, Annie says she’s exhausted and going to take a nap. I hear the TV in her room and her bustling around in front of her door where her mirror is, so I figure she’s trying on all her new outfits.

I’m just glad she didn’t ask me to watch her model them. There’s a bookcase in my room and I really need to read.

I’m lying on the soft carpet, reading the titles on the bottom shelf of the books, when there’s a knock on my door. I sigh, waiting for Annie to blow in with yet another request to discuss the treachery of JKIII. “Ye-ah,” I mutter halfheartedly. The door opens and Uncle Michael walks in stiffly. The briefcase is in his hand.

I sit up straight and swallow hard. His face is tight and closed, not like it was the last time I spoke to him, when we sat on the patio and talked about law.

He closes the door and faces me. I feel very small. Small and bad. Wrong at my core.

He opens up the briefcase and takes out a handful of bumpy, ruined documents. “I want you to tell me,” he barks with no “hello” or anything, “what the hell you were up to.” He is very, very angry, with a stranger’s face. He is not at all Carson Drew.

I open my mouth wanting to be strong and own up to my mistake, but no sound comes out. Like my father, I’m passive in the face of an attack. I just look down, shame burning hotly through me.

My guilt is obvious. A hiss of disgust steams out of his mouth. I pull my knees up to make myself smaller.

“Look,” he says harshly. “I owe a debt to your family and I’m going to honor it. I’ll pay to feed you and clothe you until your father can straighten out the mess he has going on in Boston. But the one thing I won’t tolerate is you stealing from me, or anyone else in this house. Are we clear?”

“Stealing?” I mutter weakly and risk a quick glance at his face. I see him now as he must have always been, before I fastened my pathetic, father-hungry Carson Drew fantasy on him: a rich man living a smug, rich life with his smug, rich family.

I don’t even try to defend myself. I’m just a crumb under the weight of his privileged righteousness. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that he was paying for me to live there. I don’t really even eat that much.

He turns and walks silently out the door.

I lie on my bed staring up at the ceiling. I’m too humiliated to even cry. There’s another knock on my door and I steel myself for any comments he may have forgotten to make the first time.

Annie flies in, talking a mile a minute as usual. “Come on, I’m dying for a cig. And, I have some major new dish on that girl, Amal. Leslie’s sister met her and said she’s like really stupid.”

I’m still lying there frozen. She slaps me in the leg. “Earth to Stephanie. Come. On.”

She turns to go. I stare at her back dumbly. She turns around and glares at me, silent.

Somehow, my body gets up and I follow her downstairs and outside, praying that we won’t run into her father. We don’t run into anyone as we cross the patio and climb down some rocks to a path, about five feet below the yard, that winds around her property. We walk all the way to the back and break through some bushes. There are three big flat rocks in a semicircle totally enshrouded by green.

Annie sits down first and motions for me to sit on the rock next to her. She takes a pack of cigarettes out of the little purse she has over her shoulder. She hits the top of the pack expertly on the back of her hand and three cigarettes pop out ready for smoking. She lights hers first, then throws me one and the pack of matches. I’m still in shock so I just numbly light mine and clamp my teeth over the cough that lunges up from my throat.

Annie inhales deeply and throws her head back to make smoke rings above her head. Part of my brain is spinning, trying to think of how I can secretly call my father and beg him to fly me out tonight; the other part simply watches the way her mouth forms O’s right before the smoke comes out.

She blows another smoke ring, then says, “Jesus, my cramps are killing me.”

Her words hover above my head, mixing with the smoke. I can’t really focus on her because I’m too preoccupied with the stark fear of running into her father later. I keep thinking that I should have said something, should have, at least, told him I wasn’t stealing. But what could I have said—that I was looking for a case to solve? That I thought I could be Nancy Drew?

That I had wanted to make him my father?

Annie is looking at me now with what I recognize as her peevish pout since I haven’t responded to her. I know I’d better say something, or, on top of everything, she’ll know I haven’t gotten my period, and if I still have to stay here, I can’t have her knowing that.

“Midol’s the best” flies out of my lips, and I’m glad I’ve seen the commercial with the concerned mom.

“Yeah, I’m out,” she says, and I feel like I’ve just gotten away with a theft.

I’m about to try to make a smoke ring like she does so I don’t have to talk when Uncle Michael’s voice comes from over our heads. “Isn’t Carmen supposed to keep this clean?” Silently we both press our cigarettes into the ground.

Aunt Sarah says, “I’m sure she did it last Friday.”

“That’s not often enough,” Uncle Michael answers in the new angry voice I heard tonight. The voice of the entitled stranger, used to nothing but the best, forced to deal with the incompetence or dishonesty of lesser beings.

Annie points up but I’ve already figured out that they’re sitting in the gazebo, practically right over our heads.

We hear the tinkle of ice. Annie presses her hand over her mouth not to laugh. If the ugliness hadn’t happened in my room, this would be one of those moments I’ve always dreamed of, girlfriends spying on the adults. Instead, I’m filled with dread.

“I wanted to come out here,” Uncle Michael says, “so the kids wouldn’t hear.”

Annie raises her eyebrows in a face like, tell-us-more. I think I can guess what’s coming. I frantically motion for us to go, but she swats at my arm, like, are-you-out-of-your-mind?

“I think she may be a bad influence on Annie,” Uncle Michael opens.

We both know whom he’s talking about. Annie bites on her hand to keep from laughing, like she can’t be-lieeeeve we’re getting to hear this. I bite on my hand too because I think I’m going to throw up. My eyes feel hot. I want us to get out of here.

“I found something spilled all over the inside of my briefcase when I went in it this morning. It’s never happened before so I knew it had to be her. I think she may have thought I had money in there and gone in to get it.”

Annie looks at me, puzzled. My heart is beating so loud I’m afraid she’ll hear it and know my half smile is the hardest face I’ve ever made.

“That’s absurd,” Aunt Sarah says. “Megan probably wanted to get some paper to draw on.”

I wait with the breath in my mouth turning old and sour from fear. I’m begging silently that somehow they will just drop the discussion and Annie and I can leave now.

Ice tinkles from one of their glasses. A few raindrops fall. That could save me. Maybe now he’ll say, “Jesus we’re in for a storm,” and they’ll both run into the house.

I let my breath out slowly and cross my fingers behind my back so tightly they almost break each other. Uncle Michael sighs heavily like someone with really bad news. “I didn’t tell you the whole story about why she’s here because I was afraid you’d say no and I owe her uncle Sean. His family pretty much raised me when Ma got sick. Even after she came home from the hospital. Hell, I was over there more than at my own house.”

There’s a little murmur from Aunt Sarah as if she’s nodding with recollections of stories told and retold about Uncle Michael in his younger days, hanging out at the O’Hagens’, thick as brothers.

“Anyway, Stephanie’s mother just walked out on her and her father. A total alkie. Ugly as it gets. Liam met her years ago over a couple of shots. Classic bar slut. Shirt down to here, always smashed. He knocked her up and, of course, being the good Catholic, married her. Think that daughter’s going to be just like her. Bad news. Confronted her tonight when I got home about going into my briefcase. Didn’t even deny it.”

A drink tinkles again. My eyes are glued on my dirty bare feet. There are no big words that can shield me from Annie’s stare. I’m stained and filthy and naked. A gray, pulsing mollusk without a shell.

I shift slightly, still keeping my eyes down. I’m so hot inside I think my blood is on fire. There is no position I can move to, no place I can look to take away the even hotter blaze from Annie’s eyes.

I try to swallow but my tongue is twice its normal size. I look into my stomach like I have x-ray vision. My guts are all moving aside to make room for the thick, hissing rattlers who ate all my words. The words that let me pretend I’m better than I really am. Because I really am just like my mother, right? A bar slut in the making. A bad seed getting ready to sprout.

I make another sick half smile. I wonder if I should impress Annie with what I really know. Tell her about my perfect memory for all the mixed drinks my mother makes when she talks about her great days in bartending. The perfect Rob Roy where you have to pour exactly a half ounce each of sweet and dry vermouth. The whiskey sour that is so much better with the mix from the yellow package than the brand with a girl in blue on the front. Maybe I can amaze Annie and all her rich friends with my ability to tell the difference between cheap scotch and twelve-year-old single malt just by the smell.

More rain falls on me. The chili dog I ate at the mall heaves in my stomach.

“Let’s go before we’re soaked,” Annie says, and I see a slice of her face right before I turn around. Bright blue eyes opened wide, perfect eyebrows arching with just the faintest glimmer of superiority.

I’m numb during dinner. There’s a funeral for Nancy Drew in my head. I’ve been stupid, a little kid holding on to fairy tales. Now I envision the beautiful sleuth murdering her famous lawyer father before turning the gun on herself. Hanna Gruen weeps openly beside the double caskets. Nancy’s school chums look stupefied. Ned Nickerson ties and unties the arms of his college sweater over his shoulders, thinking he should have put his hand in Nancy’s pants when he had the chance.

It’s too late. We both need to move on.

I keep my face on my plate. It’s some kind of stuffed noodles that everyone at the table calls
pasta,
like they’re so cool and they know Italian or something. Uncle Michael is telling some stupid-ass story about some client he has who’s opening a boys’ school for troubled teens. Big deal. What does Uncle Michael expect, a medal for knowing him?

I watch Annie’s brothers and they are all pigs slurping at their food. Funny how tonight Annie doesn’t nudge my arm to see if I’m as sickened by their behavior as she is. I pick my eyes off of my plate and steal a look at Uncle Michael and Aunt Sarah. Maybe I should tell them that their precious daughter is into major hook-ups. Maybe I should tell them they’re all a bunch of phonies and maybe they don’t know how good it felt when my mother brushed my hair at night and told me what it would be like for us in the White House.

I don’t even know if they’re going to keep me here, and I hope they send me back to Boston so I can kick my father in the ass and tell him thanks a lot for the cell phone that he never sent me, which I could have at least used in private. He hasn’t called me back since he left me that pathetic “Hey, kiddo” message.

Maybe my father hasn’t called back because he only sees bar slut number two when he thinks about me. I’m not glamorous like my mother is, but I have her skin and her eyes, and some people say she looked like me when she was my age. I’m sure my dad hoped that I’d never be born. My upcoming existence took away his freedom. Maybe that’s all I am to him, a reminder of the biggest mistake of his life. The reason he had to get married and ruin whatever rosy future he saw for himself.

Annie says, “Let’s get out of here” right after dinner, but her face is hard when she looks at me, like having me go anywhere with her is the last thing she wants. As we walk toward the door, it takes everything I have not to rip out Megan’s throat when Aunt Sarah kisses her softly on the head and tells her to pick out her favorite book.