Tell Us Something True (11 page)

Why did I still love Penny?

It was an excellent question.

I still loved Penny because that was how I saw myself, as someone who loved Penny Brockaway, and I didn't know how to be somebody different. I still loved Penny because loving her gave my life purpose. I was really, really good at loving Penny. I still loved Penny because I was afraid not to.

After the bus doors closed behind Daphne, I walked back toward A Second Chance. Mason and Christopher stood out on the sidewalk. Christopher blew a plume of smoke in my direction. “What's up with you two?”

“Nothing.”

It was clear that neither of them believed me.

“She seemed upset.” He grabbed his phone from his sweatshirt pocket and took a few steps away from me. “I'm calling her.”

I watched his sneakers as he walked out of earshot—green and black Nike Dunk lows—feeling a sense of shame I didn't understand. What was Daphne going to say to him?

Mason eyed me, shaking his head. “I knew it. I knew there was something about you, River. Something about you that's not right. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like you. I just think you're a liar.”

Christopher returned. “I left her a message. Told her to call me if she needs to talk.” He glared at me. “Because that's how we do it. Not sure if you got the memo, River, but we come here to help each other through tough times. To listen. Not to try and get laid.”

“Or to slum it with a Mexican girl.”

“Hey.” I took a step closer to Mason. “What's your problem?”

“I throw up my food.”

“That's not what I meant.”

His big plate of a face went soft. His voice came out at half size. “Sorry, River. But for real. Be honest. Are you into Daphne or what?”

I looked down Pico Boulevard and its string of red lights and decided to tell the truth. “I think maybe I am.”

“You can't date her,” Christopher said. “You understand that, right? And don't try sleeping with her either.”

“That's not what this is about.” How to admit to them that after nearly two whole years together Penny and I hadn't ever had sex? Of course I wanted to. But she wasn't ready and that was okay with me. And now she was probably going to have sex with Evan Lockwood, probably already had, and I didn't even know if I cared because nothing made sense anymore.

“What is it about, then?” Mason's tone was gentle.

“I just…really like her.”

“I really like Daphne too.” Christopher stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and returned it to the pack. “I want to help her stop stealing stuff for no reason because one day she'll land herself in jail. That's just truth. It's one of the many things that make us different. If you or I stole stupid shit, nobody would put us in jail. But Daphne? The same rules don't apply. So she's gotta stop. And if you cared about her you'd focus on that. Not on finding your replacement girlfriend.”

“Ugh.” Suddenly I hated A Second Chance. I hated the me who went there each week. I wished I'd never walked through its doors.

“Look, River,” Mason said. “If you really like Daphne, I mean
really
like her, do her a favor and keep those feelings bottled up somewhere deep inside. That's the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do.”

Sunday morning Leonard asked if I wanted to go to the local farmers market with him. What I really wanted to do was stay in my room and do what Penny said I never did—think about things.

We bought tiny carrots and elongated radishes, eggs that had been laid that morning (or so the girl in the flannel shirt said), strawberries, fresh pesto made with arugula and a cinnamon bun for Natalie. All of it an excuse for Leonard to get me alone to talk about one of my least-favorite subjects: my future.

“So…just a few more weeks,” Leonard said, turning an unidentifiable citrus around in his hand.

“A few more weeks until…?”

He studied me, trying to determine if I was calling his bluff. “Until college acceptance letters come.”

“And rejection letters too?”

“River,” he sighed. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning and I'd already exasperated him. “You have to want this. It's far too important, too much work and
way
too expensive to stumble your way through it.”

“What do you care? It's not like it's costing
you
anything.” Damn. Why did I say that?

I tried taking it back. “I'm sorry. I don't mean anything by it. You know I'm really grateful—”

“Stop, River. Please.” He turned his back to the citrus stand and faced me. “I know you didn't mean anything by it and I know it's strange that your biological father is paying for college. If I could tell him to take his money and shove it up his ass, I would, believe me, but I can't, and I'm not going to let pride—yours or mine—get in the way of an amazing opportunity for you. And you never, ever, need to tell me you're grateful or thank me for stepping in and acting like a father to you, because it's been one of the greatest privileges of my life.”

Leonard had the kindest eyes of anyone I knew, and over the years, as more wrinkles appeared at their edges, they just got kinder.

“I'm scared about those letters,” I said. “I've had about as much rejection as I can take.”

“Riv.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You're a great kid. And you've worked hard. You'll have options and you'll choose the place that's right for you. You'll go off to school and you'll continue to work hard and then you'll move back into your bedroom four years later when you can't find a job like all the other college graduates in America.”

I laughed. “I'll look forward to that day.”

Penny and I had applied to two of the same schools and I'd never seriously considered the others on my list because I figured we'd go together, even though when I mentioned this she looked at me like I was suggesting we run off and join the circus. Penny didn't see me in her future, and I'd never noticed, because I was a fool. Now those two schools were at the bottom of my list. I was done following Penny Brockaway around.

Leonard reached into his wallet to pay the guy behind the stand for a bag of oranges, and as the guy counted out his change I noticed a tattoo on his arm of a tree with roots that disappeared up the sleeve of his white T-shirt.

I took out my phone. “Excuse me…would you mind if I took a picture of your tattoo?”

He stuck his arm out and held it patiently as I took several shots using different filters.

Leonard watched me, baffled.

“It's just a hobby,” I said as we walked away. “Don't worry.”

I texted the best of the shots, the one with the bluish retro filter, to Daphne.

Me: U like?

Her:

When we got back home I went to my room and booted up my laptop. After I'd checked out a few websites I stalked for sneaker bargains, my fingers hovered above my keyboard and though I willed them not to, they typed:
Thaddeus Dean.

I didn't want to care what my father looked like. Where he lived and worked. What he'd been doing. What he'd written, what others wrote about him. I wanted to believe that he didn't matter, that I was okay without him, better even. I didn't want to wonder what he'd make of me. Almost eighteen years old. About to go off to college and start a life that he was underwriting.

His face filled my screen.

Still with a close-cropped beard. Still with those square-framed glasses. I don't know what I expected—it hadn't been that long since I'd looked him up—but I always braced for a shock.

I scrolled through some pictures. On a stage giving a speech at South by Southwest. A head shot that appeared in the upper corner of an article he wrote called “Internet Integrity and Expanding Global Reach.” And a black-and-white photograph of him in a suit, standing next to a brick wall, used in a flyer for an upcoming conference on Interconnectedness and Conflict Resolution at the Barton Center in…Santa Monica.

It made no sense that this hit me like a kick to the nuts. Over the years Thaddeus Dean had probably come in and out of town dozens of times. It wasn't like I lived in Omaha. I knew he never tried to see me when he came. I also knew that if he wanted, he could find me in the digital world any day of the year, and he never did.

I closed my laptop and tried to erase the date and time of his appearance from my consciousness, but it was like trying to unsee something you wished you'd never seen, like your parents having sex or something. The more you pretend you didn't see it, the deeper the burn on your memory.

Natalie was off at a birthday party or else I'd have taken her to do something—maybe a pony ride at the Country Mart—even though she was a good year or two past pony rides.

Mom and Leonard were in the kitchen chopping up some of our farmers market haul. There was barely room for the two of them in there, but they'd learned how to keep from bumping up against each other.

“I'm going out,” I said.

“Where are you going, honey?”

I didn't want to say
I don't know
because I knew that would make Mom worry and maybe try to have another talk with me about my feelings so I said, “It's such a gorgeous day, I thought I'd take a walk.”

Mom and Leonard exchanged a smile. “Great. That's just great. Have a great time.”

I waited for the bus heading west. I knew how to get to mid-Pico and back home again, but I'd never ridden the bus in the other direction. After an eternity it finally arrived and I hopped on and slipped the driver my fare.

I stared out the window without paying much attention and before I knew it the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the air smelled of salt. I got off and found a coffee shop with a big patio where lots of guys sat shirtless with girls in bikini tops, dogs tied out front near surfboards and bikes. Since getting sun for me meant turning a shade somewhere on the spectrum between pink and red, I chose a table indoors and ordered an iced latte. The girl who made it for me had a tattoo of a strawberry on one forearm and a pineapple on the other. The guy who took my money had
LUCY
tattooed on his bicep. This was Venice Beach, where not having a tattoo was as good as forgetting to wear pants.

The idea came to me halfway through my latte.

I went back to the guy who'd taken my money. He seemed more than happy to let me snap a picture, though I had to get really close because I wanted separate photos of the
L
and the
C
.

I wandered around the patio and pretty quickly found the other letters I was looking for: an
M
in your typical
MOM
tattoo inside a heart with an arrow and the
A
and the
E
in a long quote that ran between the shoulder blades of a beautiful girl's back.

I sent each photograph of a tattooed letter in a separate text in quick succession.

C-A-L-L-M-E

I sat back and waited, but my phone didn't ring until I was on the bus again, halfway home.

“Cute,” she said when I picked up.

“Cute? I thought you said my work should be shown in a gallery.”

“Why are you talking funny?”

“Because I'm on the bus.”

“Riding the bus. Look who's all grown up.”

“Daphne, I—”

“Wait. Just be quiet for a minute.”

“Okay.” It was easy enough because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. The bus stopped and started, inching its way east in postbeach Sunday traffic.

“I'm sorry I was weird last night.”

“You don't—”

“Will you let me finish? Jeez, River. You're like a girl. You can't stop talking.”

“Sorry.”

“I'm mad at myself. For wanting to do things I know I shouldn't do. Sometimes just keeping from doing those things can be totally exhausting. You must understand, right? Like, it's probably that way with you and weed.”