The Reece Malcolm List (29 page)

“No,” I say. “He would have had to talk to me more to fight with me, so . . .”

“That sucks,” Sai says. “But I’d take it over getting yelled at every goddamn day.”

“Yeah.” I rub his shoulder with my hand. It feels like the right thing to do and not just an excuse to touch him. “I’m sorry you have to go through it.”

“Dev, thanks.” He looks up at me, leans in kind of close, gets closer. I’m totally no expert on kissing, but it feels a lot like it’s about to happen. I lean in, too, smell his Sai smell (hair product and Altoids). It’s weird. We just pause there with eyes locked like someone hit a button on a remote control.

I know it’s kind of taking advantage, too. He’s emotional and in my room. Okay, fine, I’m not
kind of
taking advantage. I am
totally
taking advantage. Wrapping my hand around the back of his neck, leaning in.

“Hey, uh.” He’s suddenly in motion again. Ducking away from me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it was totally me, I—”

“You know why my parents got divorced?” he asks. “Because my dad was cheating on my mom and I caught him.”

“Did you tell her?”

He nods. “Now she says she can’t look at me without thinking about it. Which is why I’m stuck here with him. Like it’s
my
fault. And of course he hates me for it.”

“You did the right thing,” I say. “Even if they’re being stupid about it.”

He covers his face with his hands. “I just keep thinking it’ll start sucking less. And it doesn’t.”

I think back to living with Dad and Tracie, and how anyone telling me it would be okay wouldn’t have mattered at all. So I stay quiet, just reach over and touch his hair. (It feels as nice as I hoped this whole time.)

I should mention I’m pretty mad at the side of me using Sai’s total meltdown as an excuse to touch his hair and smell him and be sitting so so so close to him. Still, come on, of course that side is winning. That side is frustrated. I owe it something.

He lays his head in my lap. Now it seems practically obligatory to run my fingers through his hair. I try to keep it from wilting completely.

“Do you really think that about Nic?” he asks. “We don’t have anything in common?”

I shrug because now it feels like kicking him while he’s down. “I don’t even really know her. I shouldn’t have said it. It’s just that—”

“Yeah?”

Shut up, Devan, shut up. “N—nothing.”

“No, whatever you’re thinking, say it.”

“Just that—I don’t know. You call me like every night and—I mean, you’re over here now.” With
your
head
in
my
lap.
“And sometimes—”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes the way you act around me . . .” Oh my God, what am I saying? “You know what I mean.”

“We’re
friends
,” he says again, but I believe him less this time. (It still stings.) “I don’t know why you’re saying this shit.”

“Really? You have no idea?”

He jumps up, paces the length of my room a couple more times before walking to the door. “Thanks a lot.”

“Sai, don’t go, I—”

But he’s gone. And then my words echo through me, and I think about accusing him of
liking
me, of me being better for him than Nicole, or a lot of things
of course
I think about all the time. You don’t just
say
that stuff, though.

“Devan?” My mother leans into the room. “Everything all right? Sai took off without saying
awesome, Ms. Malcolm
five times, so . . .”

I burst into tears and shake my head. “I’m so stupid.”

“I doubt that, kid.” She pulls me into her arms, hugs me tightly.
Tell me
, I pray. For all that I don’t want to deal with the changes it’ll bring, at least I’ll feel like someone Reece Malcolm thinks worthy of the truth. “Want to talk?”

“Not really,” I say, and not just because I don’t want some big emotional talk over the thing I can’t say.

She wraps me into another hug, which is kind of weird. “Ooh, let’s go get milkshakes. All of a sudden I’m craving a milkshake. And guy drama always goes well with milkshakes, I’ve found.”

“Okay,” I said, even though I feel all prickly at the mention of a
craving
. “Do you think it’s bad to tell someone the truth, even if maybe you shouldn’t say it out loud?” I mean Sai, but I guess I don’t not mean her, too.

“I don’t know.” She pulls me down the stairs after her. I really hope we’re going to a drive-through, because my face is bright red and tear-stained. “Sometimes honesty is by far the honorable choice, but I believe people lie to protect each other all the time. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that.”

“Then I think I messed up,” I say while wondering if she’s protecting me right now. And if the baby means I need to be protected, is that bad news? Is it everything that eats at me when I stop to think about it for more than a moment?

“We all mess up,” she says as we walk into the garage. “Don’t make it more than it is. I mess up more with the people I care about than anyone else, and luckily they tend to forgive me.”

I bite my lip hard not to say anything.

The garage door opens, and Brad’s Jetta pulls in. (He hasn’t gotten a new—presumably baby-friendlier—car yet.) I know technically Brad isn’t anything to me. Not my stepdad, definitely not my father. But I keep thinking of how he’s going to be
someone’s
dad and that someone is never going to have to wonder if his or her dad will someday forget how to talk to his own kid.

“Hey,” my mother greets him. “We’re getting milkshakes. Are you in?”

Brad glances at me, probably appraising my post-cry face. “We could stay in and I could make milkshakes.”

“No, I want a milkshake I pay for, ordered from a drive-through speaker.” She grins at him and holds out her hand. “Come on.”

They’re always so polite about romantic stuff in front of me but it’s not like I can’t see the way they look at each other. Normally it makes me really happy to see, not just that they’re in love but that love like that is possible.

Right now, though, I just kind of want to throw water on them.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

40. She still hasn’t told me.

41. She’s had chances.

Sai doesn’t speak to me the next day during school, which I guess is expected, but as we gather backstage before the show, he still refuses to make eye contact. Almost all my scenes are with him, but once I’m onstage, I’m not really myself, so it’s a safe time for anything to go wrong in a part of my life that isn’t the show. And—no matter how much I maybe want to—I can’t hate Sai. I can’t even really dislike him. When he sings I still hold my breath hoping he’ll get everything right.

I’m not sure if that makes me mature or pathetic.

If anyone else notices, they don’t mention it. Not even Travis, who seems to follow us like a soap opera. It’s not our best, but it’s still a good show. And so is Friday’s, and so is the Saturday matinee. But I don’t want to close out our whole run with just a good show. I want it bigger and better and so full of energy you’re convinced it might burst. As easy as it is to put everything out of my head during a performance, I don’t want to, especially with the cast party looming afterward. The first cast party I feel completely wanted at. Spending it avoiding Sai sounds more awful than worrying if I should be there or not.

I go home between our matinee and evening shows mainly as an excuse to get Sai advice, but also because my mother offered to order in Thai. She isn’t my favorite person right now, but I can’t deny that she understands boys.

“So, um,” I say while she chomps on a spring roll, “Sai still totally hates me.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I just don’t want to spend another show knowing how mad he is at me—”

“Unfortunately, that’s life,” she says with a little shrug. Not what I want to hear.

“Sai’s not just—” I cut myself off because it takes a moment to figure out how to say it. “He’s not just some boy I want to kiss.”

“I’m running to the bathroom.” She gets up and heads out of the room. “And I know how many spring rolls are left, and I will count when I get back.”

I shoot a glare at her as she walks away. Her acting like spring rolls are more important than something big in my life probably shouldn’t surprise me—considering she’s been pretending something big in hers isn’t going on at all—but it still pisses me off.

Her laptop is lying open on the coffee table, and I swivel it around to see how many of her emails I can get through before she’s back. I lost a lot of chances to investigate thanks to the show—and to thinking things were fine—and, seriously, now is more important than ever.

The most recent emails are from Kate and Vaughn and unimportant, but then I strike gold, because she and Brad apparently never shut up about the baby in their emails these days. I can’t believe I let the hunt get away from me like this. I would have known so much sooner if only I hadn’t gotten so complacent.

“What are you doing?”

My mother is out of the bathroom and practically in the living room. I was way too focused on the screen to realize she was walking up behind me. Crap crap crap.

“What the hell are you doing in my email?” she asks, as I close out of it really really really quickly. “In what world is that all right?”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“You’re
sorry
?” She shakes her head. “I asked you a question. Several, actually. I’d like an answer.”

I try to explain, but nothing comes out.

“This is my fucking house,” she says. “And I’d like to think at least here I have some modicum of privacy. Thanks for absolutely destroying that.”

Somehow, this is worse than anything I could have imagined.

“Is this what you do?” she asks. “Go through my things when I’m not around?”

I don’t know what to say because that is
exactly
what I did. “I’m—I’m really sorry.”

“No, this is the thing,” she says. “There is no fucking way you could have thought going through my private emails was all right. So don’t give me that. Don’t tell me you’re sorry for something that was never, ever acceptable. You know better than that.”

I start to apologize again. I start to say that I guess I did know better. But something dawns on me in a big bright flash: I don’t want to be quiet mousy Devan. The last thing I want to do is apologize over and over. “Not that it’s okay I snooped, but maybe you should have told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That you’re
pregnant
.” I say it like it’s a curse word. “It’s a totally crappy thing to keep secret. Especially from me.”

Saying it aloud somehow makes it feel like that’s even truer than it already was.

“Like, I can’t believe you would totally abandon me my whole life, until they forced you
by law
to take me in, and now that you feel like it, you’re going to be a mom to someone. Just not me.”

“That’s such bullshit,” she says.

“It totally isn’t,” I say, because it’s
not
. And calling out Reece Malcolm feels
good
. “I mean, you don’t tell me
anything
.”

There’s a burst of realization in this moment that I could stop. I don’t have to keep talking. I can apologize again and beg her not to be mad at me. I can go back to not realizing I even feel all of this stuff. But I don’t.

“I still don’t know why I’m here at all, if you didn’t want me why you even had me, if you ever asked Dad about me to make sure I was okay, if you’re totally going to forget about me now that you’re having a baby you actually
want
, why you dedicated your stupid book to me when you could have just been around for me instead.”

It’s the strangest sensation to realize as you’re saying things that you believed them for a really long time. You would think finally letting go would be a weight lifted, but everything is still pulling at me.

“Like, I think you’re a terrible person for that,” I say. “And I hate you for getting a second chance. You totally do not deserve one.”

I’m crying at this point so who knows if any of what I’m saying even sounds like words and not just unintelligible ranting. Who even cares.

“Is that all?” she asks. Utterly emotionless by now. I wonder if I
did
think she was a terrible person all along. I wonder if I hated her as much as I do right in this moment.

“I hate you.” I say it haltingly to test how true it seems on my lips. It doesn’t taste like a lie, but it doesn’t exactly ring true, either. Still, I think I’ve wanted to say it for a long long long time now, way before I even met her or knew who she was. “You couldn’t even come and
get me
. My dad died and you just sent your stupid lawyer. And he shouldn’t have brought me here because you don’t want me anyway.”

She’s staring straight down at the floor by now. I assume she’s hoping I’ll shut up soon so she can get back to everything else. Everything that doesn’t involve me. She finally has an excuse—a few, even—to send me on my way. “Maybe they shouldn’t have.”

“I—I, um.” I point to my wrist even though I’m not wearing a watch. “I should probably— I have my show.”

“Can you get a ride?” She walks down the hallway and slams shut her office door.

I get out my phone to call Travis. He agrees to pick me up, so I wait on the front porch, my heart pounding in my throat and ears and fingertips. Probably it’s dumb to even attempt going to the show tonight, but it’s our final performance, after all. I’ll get through it, and maybe it’ll be the last good thing that happens to me. Theatre has always carried me through before. There is no reason it won’t tonight.

When I get there, I touch up my face with a ton of powder and fake being in a good mood so I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. By the time I’m onstage and singing my part of the first “Merrily We Roll Along,” I’m Mary Flynn and not Devan Mitchell. Definitely not Devan Malcolm. Theatre is saving me yet again.

It’s a good show, too. Sai is totally
on
during “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” and I feel all fiery and barely restrained at the end of Act I. During intermission while we’re dashing around changing into our costumes for “It’s a Hit,” Sai even glances my way and gives me a little nod. “Nice one.”