My Life as the Ugly Stepsister (2 page)

I’d started out with “One Million Reasons Divorce Sucks,” but after two years, it had fallen by the wayside. Just to be thorough, I added a few more to that list. I was up to seven hundred and ten. Then, I spent a few hours on the Internet, trying to distract myself. When it hit me that Mom’s new boyfriend probably had a site, I ran a search.

Donald Waller, Independent Insurance Agent. He had a site all right. I clicked the link and music blared from my speakers when the site loaded. It sounded like an action movie soundtrack, but as the intro started, I realized it must be some kind of superhero music. The intro showed a red cartoon car crashing into a blue one. Bam! The word was surrounded by that funny looking balloon, like in a comic book. Then an animated figure in a cape swooped in. His costume proclaimed him to be “Captain Coverage.”

The intro ended and a picture came up of Captain Coverage. Only this time, he had a cut-out real picture of his face photo-shopped over the cartoon. Donald Waller was a big-time, fifty-something geek.

The rest of the site looked pretty normal. Like an insurance website should, I guess.

I could probably live through Mom leaving me for four months a lot easier than I could do without her forever. This guy looked scary. Internet dating wasn’t safe, was it? And Seattle was forever away. A six-hour plane ride. A four-day drive. Two days by train. Okay, so I’d looked into it.

I shut down my laptop and went in to my mother’s room. She was asleep, and the digital clock next to the bed read 12:30.

“Mom,” I said, creeping around the oversized furniture in the room.

She jumped and opened her eyes. She’d always been a light sleeper. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“No, but I need to talk to you.” She didn’t look so hot without her makeup.

She blinked. “Okay.”

“I just went to Donald’s website,” I said.

“Yes.” She sat up and tugged at the comforter.

“And, um, he doesn’t seem entirely normal.”

Mom nodded wearily. “You know, Ally. We all have our little quirks. He’s a huge comic book fan. He’s really a decent guy though.”

“What if he’s not? What if he’s a serial killer and he chops you into bits?”

Mom winced. “He’s not, Ally. I don’t take my safety lightly. Stacy Barnett was by the office the other day. She’s the private investigator the firm uses.”

I nodded.

The brown smudges under her eyes added years to her appearance. “I had her do a background check. Everything looks fine.”

I crossed my arms. “All that means is that he hasn’t murdered anybody yet.”

“Right. And that’s all he knows about me too. I know it’s rough right now, but it will be okay. We may not really hit it off, but he won’t hurt me.”

Not like my dad did when he cheated on her. She didn’t say it, but I knew she was thinking it. “I’m going to bed now.”

“Good night, Sweetie. I love you.” She held out her arms and I leaned in for a hug. She squeezed extra tight, and for a moment I felt like a well-protected little girl again.

“I love you too,” I said and ambled back to my room. Compared to a brutal murder, a short-term abandonment seemed do-able.

Chapter Two

Your parents control your life absolutely and completely and there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it.

––Ally’s Brutal Teen Truths

Mom wasn’t leaving for two weeks, but she insisted I spend the first week with my dad. “Once you get settled in, you’ll see it’s not as bad as you think.”

Yeah. Right. She probably just wanted to put the house up for sale while I wasn’t paying attention. Okay, she wouldn’t do that after telling me I had four months. She did have some integrity.

Panic gripped my chest as I stalked up the sidewalk rolling my overstuffed suitcase behind me.

Diane’s heavily lipsticked lips curved into a smile as she opened the door and told me we were going to have “lots of fun together.”

I kept my eyes averted from her chest. She liked to wear low-cut tops for some reason. Personally, I thought it was pretty trashy. And gross.

“It’s a shame,” she said, as she gave a fake little wave to Mom out by the curb, “that Caroline isn’t back yet. She should be home by this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” I said, lugging my suitcase, my laptop, and purse, past her and up the stairs. The air was heavily scented with air freshener as usual. Diane’s paintings covered the foyer walls which rose two stories. She was definitely painting for quantity instead of quality. I think I liked the modern art better than the crudely painted floral arrangements. All in all, I’d much rather her spend her time painting than bugging me.

I couldn’t decide if I’d rather have Caroline around or not. She would keep Diane occupied, but I didn’t know if my ego could take interaction on a daily basis with someone that beautiful.

Caroline could model, and actually had modeled some in print ads. Dad had thought it was so fortunate that his new wife had a daughter exactly my age. She was actually a week younger. But the sad thing was that when you all the sudden had a drop-dead gorgeous stepsister and you were average looking but not hideous... Even if you were sort of pretty. And by you, I meant me—having Caroline around delegated me to the role of the ugly stepsister. My hair was medium brown and wavy. Hers was dark chocolate and fashionably straight. Her big, almond-shaped eyes made mine appear smaller and sleepier. My face was roundish. She had cheekbones.

And yet I couldn’t hate her. She was friendly, confident, and popular. She was nice to me, and she had a brain. I was probably a little bit smarter than her, but she planned to go to law school. She’d do really well. Caroline had two older stepbrothers in Atlanta. Boys did not intimidate her one bit. Of course, guys were less threatening when they were drooling all over themselves and falling at your feet. Not that I’d know for sure, but it seemed preferable to the reaction I got from boys. Which was usually no reaction at all.

I tramped up the stairs, through the cloud of Diane’s perfume, straining a little with my burdens. I reached the top and rolled my suitcase down the hall to the room they’d designated as mine when they’d bought the house. Caroline had the bigger room because she lived there full time. But the third bedroom in the split foyer was just fine by me. I’d painted it blue and picked out a bright yellow comforter for the double bed. I wanted to see something cheerful when I first woke up. Not that I spent much time there. There wasn’t room for much else in there besides a desk, but the closet was set up pretty well. I saw that Diane had removed the vacuum cleaner and winter jackets since my last visit. The room was fine for weekends, but I didn’t look forward to spending four straight months in there.

Dad’s house was older than the rancher Mom had gotten in the divorce. I knew Dad didn’t like split foyers, but I also knew that he was paying Mom a lot of alimony for the first five years. Apparently, this was all he and Diane could afford. The house was pretty good size, just not brand-spanking new. Since Diane had quit her part-time job the moment they married to pursue her “love for art,” she’d set up the living room as a studio. The family room downstairs was where I usually hung out. Dad’s television was bigger than my mother’s of course, and he had the place wired with surround sound. He had an office in the bedroom downstairs that he used sometimes. Well, it was really more of a computer museum than an office. Dad worked in network installations and traveled a lot. Since Caroline had the most active social life of any fourteen-year old in America, she wouldn’t be around much. I was going to be spending a lot of time alone with the stepmonster.

I eyed the empty desk. I had my laptop and my iPod. My cell completed the package. The whole portable thing was convenient, but it really made it too easy for people to shove their kids back and forth. My dad had let me just spend occasional weekends with him instead of demanding every other week. I was glad. I didn’t know how those kids made do with a week at one house and a week at the next. Didn’t they get confused when they woke up?

I glanced in Caroline’s room as I went back down the hall. Maybe I should bring my TV from home, and then I’d never have to leave my room.

Diane stopped at the end of the hall and said, “You’re father won’t be home until this evening. I was headed to the pool. You want to join me?”

So, here I was, at the neighborhood pool with my stepmother. It was pretty cool on weekdays in the summer, when just moms and little kids and maybe a couple of teens splashed in the water. Weekends were not so great. On Saturdays, all the beer-guzzling, single businessmen hovered around the pool, stretched out in the lounge chairs. And they didn’t concentrate on reading a nice paperback like the women did. No, they sat there and watched. Their eyes tracked everyone as they moved around the pool.

I didn’t like all those old guys looking at me. It creeped me out.

A bead of sweat trickled down my chest. Sun-worshiping in August was not for the faint of heart. I had my chair all the way flat in an effort to disappear so I wasn’t getting any breeze. At least I didn’t have to watch the guys checking me out.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid seeing Diane. She was sitting next to me, and she was constantly moving and talking. I tried to keep my eyes closed. She wasn’t fat. Actually, she probably weighed exactly what she was supposed to for her height. But she didn’t work out. She was soft. And jiggly. She was like forty-something, and she really didn’t need to be wearing a bikini. I guess things just started to kind of sag at her age. Whatever the reason, it just wasn’t pretty. If she asked me to rub lotion on her back, I’d have to kill myself.

Diane’s arm fat wiggled as she reached down to get a spray bottle. “It’s so hot today.” She misted herself and offered the bottle to me.

“No, thanks. I’m going to get in in a minute.” If only someone else would get in. But the other women didn’t seem interested. A blonde was drinking beer from a can hidden in a koozie, and the older brunette seemed intent on her book. If one of the men got in, no way was I going to.

The sun burned into my skin, and I was pretty sure I could have toasted a grilled cheese sandwich on my leg. No way was I going to mist myself. That was for wimps and divas.

As soon as I got up, dozens of pairs of eyes would be examining me in my bathing suit. Never mind that I’d covered as much as possible with a simple black one-piece.

The women would be picking my body apart, trying to find something to criticize. And the men, some of them would be looking at me with this creepy intensity that really freaked me out. I didn’t want old guys admiring my figure. It was not a compliment. I mean if it’s against the law for you to date me, then don’t look.

Ignoring the stares, or at least trying to, I rose, waited for the black dots to clear from my vision, and crossed the hot concrete. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. And then I dove in. The quickest way to get covered up and less splash than just jumping.

The cool water was a relief. Too bad I had to come back up eventually to breathe.

When I surfaced and shook the water from my eyes, I discovered that Caroline had arrived and I no longer needed to worry about the unwanted attention. With Caroline around, there was never any left over for me.

Her hot pink bikini emphasized her breasts which actually were not any bigger than mine. Caroline was completely comfortable walking around nearly naked. She didn’t crawl into a chair and hide. Instead, she dragged a chair from across the pool over to her mother, scooted it between mine and Diane’s, and took her time getting set up. She didn’t have the little tummy pouch that I had, but otherwise I knew academically that her body wasn’t that much better than mine. But she wasn’t afraid of hers. She was two inches shorter and two sizes smaller than me.

I pulled myself up with the ladder and left a trail of water behind me as I crossed the hot concrete.

“Hey, Ally,” Caroline said. “I hear you’re moving in.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Caroline settled into her chair, which she kept in almost a sitting position. She started lathering sunscreen on her arms. “So your mom’s really moving to Seattle?”

I straddled the seat and sat down. After wiping my face with the corner of my towel, I said, “Apparently.” I wouldn’t have minded discussing it with her, but I didn’t really want to talk about my mom in front of Diane. It seemed disloyal, and if she made any kind of comment, I was afraid I’d lose my temper.

Did I forget to mention that my dad divorced my mom because he was having an affair with Diane? It really isn’t easy to like a home-wrecking ho-bag. Mom and Dad both say they would have split up anyway, but still. Got morals? Anyway, I wasn’t about to say anything about my mother that would make her look bad. And I really wouldn’t tell anything that might make her look, well, pitiful.

“I’ll bet it would be cool to live in Seattle,” Caroline was saying. “Live bands all the time, coffee houses everywhere, and hot guys.”

“Hot guys?” I hadn’t seen that on the Seattle website.

Caroline slathered sunscreen on her toned arms. “My friend went out there last year to ski. You should see the guy she hooked up with. Yummy.”

“There are plenty of hot guys here in Charlotte, Caroline,” Diane said as she reached down for her ever-present bottle of green tea.

“More in Atlanta though,” Caroline said.

It wasn’t like she didn’t always have a boyfriend. She and Diane had lived in Atlanta until two years ago, but Caroline hadn’t seemed to have any trouble adapting. At least she didn’t go to the same school as me. Being the ugly stepsister every other weekend was way better than twenty-four seven.

“You’ve never had any trouble with boys, Caroline,” her mother chided.

Diane prided herself on her daughter’s popularity. That was one of the many things that irked me about her.

“Well, I broke up with Caleb,” Caroline said to me. “Did I tell you?”

“No.” I’d never even met him. “When?”

She shrugged. “Last week.”

She’d have a new boyfriend before school started. I’d bet my bank account on it. And I was saving for a car, so that wasn’t chump change. I’d been putting money away since I was eight, and I’d probably have enough for a car by the time I was thirty.