The Reece Malcolm List (2 page)

“You being in L.A. full-time?” he asks. “We can cross that bridge if we come to it. I know Reece is . . . well, Reece. And L.A. probably seems overwhelming to you, I get that. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

7. Reece is Reece, which never really describes someone likable.

We’re quiet for a little while. I keep scanning the crowd, even though if she were here I’d know it. Not like I’d get some Mother Detection Spider Sense, just that she’d find Roger Berman.

It’s weird how different people are here. I’ve never really left Missouri (driving over the river to a concert choir showcase in Illinois doesn’t, in my opinion, count), so maybe this kind of thing is obvious once you’ve traveled. But the crowd around the outdoor baggage claim is more tanned, and definitely better dressed, and everyone looks younger. Not like I’m going around asking ages, but it’s the kind of thing you can just tell.

“You a writer, too?” he asks. He’s a very random person for a lawyer. “That kind of thing hereditary?”

“Definitely not. I mean,
I wish
.”

“Don’t we all.” He looks out to the line of cars stopped at the light across from us. “Speaking of.”

I follow his gaze, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for. A black BMW pulls right up to the stretch of curb lined with cars making drop-offs or pickups, and she jumps out of it. I’ve only seen one fuzzy little picture (Reece Malcolm is practically unGoogleable), but there’s no doubt this is her. I tell myself to really suck down this moment, get every detail because I’ll want to remember it forever. So it’s weird that she’s just this person, one out of lots and lots at the airport.

“Thanks, Roger,” she says, no eye contact with me at all. “Sorry I’m—”

“Ten minutes late is practically on-time for you,” he says. “Early, even.” He hands over a folder to her, the one my birth certificate is in. I saw it when we went through security and I had to show ID. “Give me a call if you need anything.”

“I always do,” she says in this voice that’s, somehow, halfway between monotone and perky. I’ve imagined my first conversation with my mother many times, but she never sounded like that in my head.

“Devan, good luck.” He shakes my hand and gives me a warm smile. “L.A.’s not so bad, I promise.”

“Thanks.” I try to return the smile. Really he only had to bring me here, but he’s been nice the whole time.

She sort of barely turns to me as Roger Berman walks away, which is my first chance to actually look at her, even if it’s a lot like staring into the sun. She’s taller than me, though not by much—which I guess I didn’t expect—and her hair’s much better: glossy and chestnut brown, not the mousy shade mine is, hanging to her shoulders. I guess we’re built the same, sort of curvy, thin-not-skinny.

And, very depressingly, she’s wearing faded jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and fairly grungy Converse Chuck Taylors, while I’m in cropped jeans, a red and white shirt with tiny pearly buttons, and white flats. Up until this moment we haven’t been able to share my life, but can’t we at least share a duty to style?

She gestures to my suitcase as well as my backpack that I rested on top of it. “Are those all your bags?”

“Um, yeah, I—”

She grabs them both and deposits them in her car’s trunk. “They take the no-waiting or -parking rule pretty seriously. Come on.”

I get into the car’s passenger side and buckle myself in, wondering if I’m being dumb to expect maybe not a hug but at least a hi?

My mother hops into the driver’s seat and squeals off from the curb. “Sorry I was late. I’m sure Roger filled you in that it’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence.”

“Yeah. Um, thanks,” I manage to squeak out. “For picking me up.”

“Oh.” She adjusts her sunglasses as she merges across a few lanes of traffic. “Yeah, of course.”

I look out the window as L.A.—or Burbank?—flies past us. I expected the palm trees and sunshine, but I thought everything would be blanketed in smog and way more glamorous than a bunch of strip malls and car dealerships.

A cell phone rings as my mother pulls onto the freeway, and she sighs loudly and gestures to her bag, which I realize is at my feet. Also: soft black leather, amazing detailing, very enviable. Immediately I put a lot of hope into that bag.

“Can you grab that?” she asks. “Sorry.”

I reach into her purse tentatively but luckily locate the ringing phone right away. She doesn’t take it when I hold it out, though.

“Who?” she sort of barks. I feel like I might never get used to her tone.

I check the screen:
BRAD CALLING
, and let her know.

She holds out her hand to take the phone, clicks to accept the call, and holds the phone to her ear. “Yes, I got up in time. I can’t imagine you’re calling for any other reason. Yes, she’s here, and— No, I haven’t. Your priorities are very strange.” The last one is the only thing she’s said so far that doesn’t sound rushed and vaguely annoyed. I wonder who Brad is to earn a nice moment from Reece Malcolm. “I’m hanging up, all right? I’m completely breaking the law right now— If I knew where it was I’d be using it. No, don’t—
Brad
. I’ll take care of— Fine, fine. Right, you, too.”

She clicks off the phone and tosses it onto my lap. “I don’t know about the laws in Missouri, but here you can’t hold your phone to your ear while driving,” she says. “Not that I follow it. Are you hungry? Are you even up for food? I hate flying.”

“Flying’s okay,” I say, while I try to gauge if I’m hungry or not. My stomach makes interesting decisions when I’m stressed out. “I guess I’m hungry. If you are.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” she says. “But, yeah. Let’s stop.”

This is beyond weird. Long-lost mother finally sitting next to me, and we’re discussing cell phone laws and lunch.

Once we’re off the freeway, my mother parks behind a hamburger place she claims is both “a
-ma-
zing”
and the closest to her house. I follow her inside, wondering how hamburgers can be a
-ma-
zing, but this place is actually super fancy with red vinyl chairs and shiny chandeliers and a bar displaying—for whatever reason—a stuffed swan. But the only thing I’m trying not to stare at like some kind of stalker is my mother now that she’s taken off her sunglasses. Her eyes are brown, just like mine. I wonder if she already noticed, or if it even means anything to her.

Luckily, once we’re seated, her attention is on her menu, so I can survey her. No jewelry on her hands and no watch, either, but she is wearing tiny diamond earrings that are way too boring for my taste but obviously really nice. The most striking thing about her, though—well, besides the fact that in most ways she looks like an older version of me—is that she’s more like a not-that-much-older version of me. Dad said once that she was young, but he hadn’t made it sound like a big deal. But Reece Malcolm is
young
. And for some reason I never imagined that, either.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” She looks up at me. “We can take this to go, if you’d rather.”

“No, I’m fine, sorry.” I force myself to look at the menu, in case her concern stems from me gawking at her. “Just tired.” It’s sort of a lie, but a plausible one at least.

“I hear that,” she says. “How early did you have to get up?”

“Four thirty.”

“Two thirty my time,” she says. “I wasn’t even in bed yet. God, poor you.”

I can’t think of anything to say to that.

“Though I’d assume you keep more reasonable hours than I do,” she says. “School and all. Mine didn’t get out of hand until after college.”

I nod as a waiter walks up to get our drink order. Two Diet Cokes. I know it’s lame to get excited, but I like having it in common with her. Also, when you’re a self-identifying choir and musical theatre nerd, you pretty much accept that
some
a lot of things that excite you are going to be lame.

“Speaking of school, you can wait a few weeks,” Reece Malcolm says. “I can’t imagine you’re anxious to start.”

“Well,” I say, in no way able to control what’s about to come out of me, “the thing is that it’s already the second week of school—I mean, it was for me in Missouri at least—and the longer you wait, the harder it is to get into the good choirs. Even now it might be hard, but I’ll have a better shot at Honors and Show and whatever else they have if I go right away. Plus depending on when they hold auditions for the Fall show . . . ”

By now she’s staring at me like the freak I am.

“I mean, we used to move a lot.” I decide not to go into how I’d never figured out if Dad was actually convinced a better opportunity was ahead of him or he just got bored with things really easily. “So I just kind of learned that.”

“All right then.” She takes a leather-bound organizer out of her purse and jots something down. “I take it you’re an actor.”

“Well, not really, I’m only sixteen, it’s just been for school, but . . . ”

“You have to start somewhere.” It’s the nicest thing she could say to my geeksplosion. “I’ll make some calls when we get back to the house.”

“If it’s not a big deal or anything.”

“Definitely not.” She shuts her organizer with a slam and tosses it back into her bag. “And, God, I meant to say something sooner. I’m so sorry about your father.”

I shrug, shoving one of my hands into my pocket, clutching my fingers around the key I slipped there this morning. (I had to take it out to walk through security but besides that it hasn’t left me.) Its teeth dig into my fingers and the metal’s warmer than I expected. For a split second, I feel the glow of using it to sneak into the choir room with Justine and take advantage of the acoustics as well as the piano. That had been my first time at breaking the rules, ever.

I’d only hesitated a little when Justine handed over her iPod, but the key? I never thought she’d part with it. If Ms. Stanford realized she’d never asked for it back after granting us access to the choir room the night before state competitions, we would have returned it as if we’d just forgotten. But not voluntarily. To most people a grimy old key to a choir room wouldn’t sound like that big of a deal. But to us it was.

“It’s fine,” I finally say. I figure I should say something. “I mean—now. It’s been . . . a while.” Three months and a day and a couple hours.

“Right,” Reece Malcolm says, though carefully, the way people spoke at Dad’s funeral. I don’t remember much of that day—because I don’t want to—but that tone I can’t get out of my head.

By the time the waiter brings our drinks, I still have no idea what I want, so I just let Reece Malcolm order two things for us to split. You know you’re desperate to bond when fancy hamburgers are your best plan.

It’s quiet again while we wait for the food, and the silence continues once we’re served, outside of Reece Malcolm saying, “See? A
-ma-
zing.”

To be fair, she’s right.

Chapter Two

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

8. She always runs late, even to pick up her long-lost daughter.

9. She is
bizarrely
really enthusiastic about hamburgers.

After lunch I follow Reece Malcolm outside to her car, and she makes a few turns until we end up, just minutes later, on a hilly, winding street where houses jut out from every conceivable angle. She drives up to a big oak house with lots of glass and right angles, kind of modern but in the way I bet people in the past imagined modern would be someday. I’m not sure what I thought houses would be like here—pink and stucco and mansion-sized?—but this is definitely not it.

Since we did move so much, it’s normal to pull up to a place I’ve never seen before with the understanding it would be my home—at least until Dad changed jobs again. With Reece Malcolm’s house I don’t feel that understanding settling in my gut.

Still, even though L.A. is one of the last places I should be—New York has to be where my future is—I do like this house. If it were Dad and Tracie pulling up to it, something in me would click into place, I’m sure of it.

I wait near the door as she takes my bags out of the trunk (she refused my help). “Your house is amazing.”

“Thanks.” She lugs the bags behind her and steps past me to unlock the door. “I apologize for what a mess it is right now. By the time the weekend’s over I promise it’ll be in better shape.”

I walk in and glance around, preparing for a disaster but instead notice a few open boxes in the midst of a huge living room. The floors are dark wood, and all the furniture is sleek and streamlined and shiny shiny shiny leather. The glass everywhere ensures you can see blue skies and green trees from every angle. Bookcases line one wall, and there’s a fireplace where a TV would go in most living rooms. (Why does someone in L.A. need a fireplace?) There’s artwork that looks like original paintings, but no photos at all. Total designer house.

“Oh.” I notice the U-Haul logo on the boxes that don’t exactly disasterize the room. “Did you just move? I’m sorry, this is like the worst timing ever—”

“For your father to die?” She raises an eyebrow. “Anyway, no, I didn’t just move. My, uh, my boyfriend—I guess that’s what I’m calling him—just moved in with me.”

Somehow I know that’s so much worse. Here she is, starting a life with someone, and here I am, messing it up. Not like I know anything about living with boyfriends—or, well, about boyfriends at all—but I’ll guess the best start would not include your long-lost daughter getting dropped in.

Plus now I don’t just have to deal with her, but some guy as well.

“Seriously, I’m so sorry—”

“Why are you apologizing?” She sighs and drops her purse on the little table near the side door. “None of this was within your control.”

That’s so different than something actually being okay.

“No, but—” I cut myself off because I’d definitely start crying otherwise. “I’m sorry anyway.”

“Oh, God, stop apologizing.” She slides my backpack’s straps over her arms and rolls my suitcase toward the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

I follow her up the staircase, down a narrow hallway that overlooks the whole open living room downstairs, and to the very last door. The room’s seriously amazing, not all sleek and scary-modern like downstairs, just a normal room with a huge bed, bookshelves, and an entertainment center with a TV bigger than the one in Dad and Tracie’s living room—just Tracie’s living room now. The rug and bedspread are both striped in shades of blue, and the walls are a nice creamy tan. And, wait— “My room?”