The Reece Malcolm List (8 page)

“What, like too Disney Channel?” Travis makes a face at the sandwich he just special-ordered. “New Girl, did they mix ours up?”

“No, too Disney,” Mira says. “He looks like Aladdin or something. It freaks me out. I feel like his teeth should sparkle.”

I can’t help laughing at that. “Thanks for letting me sit with you guys.”

“Where else were you gonna sit?” Travis asks. “There’s no other option. There’re choir nerds, that’s not you. There’re kids who think performing a lot’s gonna get them seen by an agent or casting director, that is
definitely
not you. There’re the few who rise to—well, Sai—and then there’s the rest of us. Geeks but, you know, not in a geeky way.”

For some weird reason, that makes me feel a lot better about Sai sitting anywhere but here.

“He spends a lot of time on this,” Mira says. “So don’t think he came up with that on the spot.”

“What?” A red-haired girl sits down next to Mira. She’s wearing a Ramones T-shirt with cuffed jeans, and her pale skin seems impossible in this setting. “Is Travis explaining social order again?”

“Of course.” Mira grins at her, and it’s the nicest she’s seemed since we met.

“This is Devan Malcolm,” Travis says. My heart pounds a little extra at my new name. “Devan, this is Lissa Anderson.”

“Hi,” she says, and smiles at me, and then her smile widens as she looks up beyond us. “Hey.”

A guy who you could probably find in the dictionary under Tall and Handsome and Brooding drops into the seat next to Lissa. He isn’t my type at all, all in black with eyeliner and black nail polish, but I get it. I’m sure he’s Lissa’s type, and the way they glance at each other makes me think they’re either something or they will be soon.

“Hey,” he says, not just to her but to the whole table. For some dumb reason the way he says that one word makes me think he must be nice.

“This is Devan Malcolm.” Travis is back in introducing mode. “This is Elijah Cross.”

“Hi,” he says with a wave. “Nation? I could salute instead.”

I laugh and nod. “Yeah. I mean, to the Nation part. Please don’t salute.”

“We almost got a hot guy for the table,” Travis says to no one in particular. “Laws of nature took him away.”

“Liss thinks we already
have
a hot guy,” Mira says like her whole tone is an eye-roll. If I were Lissa I’d curl up and die with embarrassment, but she laughs Mira off and it’s like it never happened. I’ve never been able to let stuff just go like that.

Travis tells Lissa about the close call regarding Sai and the lunch table, while I wonder if Justine is sitting alone at our old table. I mean, not
alone
alone, but we weren’t exactly the center of attention in the group of other girls from choir we sat with. Back there she’s probably being left out of conversations and here I am meeting people eager to hang out with me. Well, sort of eager at least? Travis seems eager, and no one else looks at me funny.

I walk to English lit with Mira, Lissa, and Elijah. It’s honestly nice to walk into an unknown classroom with a group, especially when Sai drops into the open desk behind me.

“This class is pretty awesome,” he says.

“English lit?” I have no idea what he’s talking about or why he suddenly seems like the hottest nerd in the world, so I just smile and shrug a little.

“We should hang out soon,” he tells me. “Exchange war stories.”

“War?”

He grins at me and I really really really hope I don’t visibly melt. Inside my brain it sounds like
slosh slosh slosh
. “St. Louis, war, whatever. We’ll talk.”

My mother is on time picking me up after school, which shocks me at least a little, and she has a blended mocha waiting for me in the second cup holder. “You don’t look traumatized. I take that as a good sign.”

“It was actually a totally good day. People are really nice,” I say. “How was your day?” It feels polite to ask, though I have no idea if that’s my business or not.

“Good,” she says. “Productive.”

“That’s good,” I say, as if I know what I’m talking about.

“I think Brad’s working late, so we should definitely go out tonight. And isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on first days of school? My mom always took me out.”

Something about her mentioning her mom in the context of us hits me weirdly. Maybe it does for her, too, because she’s quiet until we’re home. I have homework to get through, so I sit down in my room with it until I can’t take it anymore and pull up my email.

Of course, I don’t have a message from Sai waiting for me. What do I expect, that he’ll run home to immediately email me, when there’s now a tall, skinny blonde in the picture? (Honestly, Nicole or no Nicole, who runs home to email anyway?
Besides me.
)

My mother knocks on my doorway a little after six, and waits until I respond to lean into the room. Living with her isn’t like living with Tracie at all. “Dinner?”

“Sure.” I close my laptop and pick up my copy of
Beowulf
like I’ve been reading that and not looking up everyone from school on Facebook. (I don’t add anyone but I change out my last name for my middle name, which is a thing some people do for privacy but I’m doing it so I don’t have to explain to New City people why I’m listed as Mitchell or to Justine why it’s now Malcolm.)

“Oh, God,” she says. “English lit. I suddenly feel incredibly old.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” I say for some idiotic reason. Feast or famine with what comes out of my mouth.

“I guess not, when you include college, too,” she says. “Trust me, it feels like a very long time ago.”

“What was your major in college?” Safe question, which means the filter is working again. Good brain.

“English. I minored in creative writing,” she says. “There were probably programs better-suited for me, but back then I was convinced I’d never leave New York.”

“I can’t believe anyone
would
leave New York,” I say. “Ever.”

“I needed a change,” she says. “L.A. was definitely that.”

I shrug, following her downstairs and out to her car. “I guess.”

“Dubious, I can tell.” She grins at me. “Just wait.”

No idea what to make of that, but I feel safer when she’s smiling.

“So I’m craving sushi tonight,” she says. “And you’re lucky—we live in one of the sushi capitals of L.A.”

“I’ve, um, I’ve never had it.” I restrain from adding that the very thought terrifies me.

“I wouldn’t dare lead you astray.”

I guess I’m dubious about this, too, but I keep it to myself. Plus the restaurant she drives to is beautiful, decorated in dark colors and bamboo, and just dimly lit enough to create ambiance or whatever on a bright day.

“God, sorry.” My mother digs her phone out of her bag and clicks it to answer. “Hey, what? No, Devan and I just got to Teru Sushi. Hang on.” She covers the phone with her hand. “Brad’s out earlier than expected. Should we send his codependent ass on his way or tell him to join us?”

The thing is, I do want one-on-one time with my mother. But the other thing is that one-on-one time is the quietest time ever. At least when Brad’s around, we talk.

“It’s fine if he comes,” I say. “Right?”

“Sure.” She uncovers the receiver. “Hey, yeah, meet us here. Right, I know. Yeah, yeah, you, too.”

She throws the phone back into her purse. “What do you think? Normal that he ends every damn call with
I love you
?”

I shrug because what do I know about that from experience or observation? “It seems nice.”

“It’s like talking to an elderly relative.” She places her hands on her hips and sighs very dramatically. “What about you?”

“What
about
me?”

“I don’t know. Guy back in St. Louis? Guy here, magically, already? Are you one of those people?”

“No way, definitely not. And not in Missouri, either.”

“Yeah, I find dating very much overrated. Despite everything, I kind of liked that Brad was just Instant Boyfriend. Cut right through the crap.” She leans against the wall and fiddles with her hands. “For all that he annoys me, I shouldn’t complain so much. He could be making pancakes for someone much nicer than me.”

I don’t know what to say, because I know exactly what she means.

We’re still waiting for Brad when we’re seated at a back corner booth and opening up our menus. Probably based on my blank stare when my mother asks me a few obviously basic questions, she leans in next to me and nicely explains what the different sections mean and what some of the Japanese words are in English. I’m still fairly terrified of raw fish as well as her, but—weirdly enough—she makes everything sound less worrisome.

Brad shows up a few minutes later, and he slides into the booth next to my mother right before kissing her.

“Not in public,” she says, and I can tell Brad is sort of riding it out to see if she’s kidding or not. “How was work?”

“Fine,” he says in a way that I know it was totally
not
. “How was your day?”

“Productive,” she says. “Devan claims her day wasn’t awful, but I’m not sure that’s even possible on a first day of school.”

“It does seem unlikely.” He grins at me. “That’s great, if it is in fact true. Does everyone sing and dance constantly?”

“Oh, God, I meant to ask that!” My mother laughs as she flags down a waiter to place our drink order. I notice that her arm slips around Brad’s shoulder. It’s weird she has this other side, the one that explains unagi (eel, no way) and tamago (egg, not raw, so not scary), and tries to take away Brad’s less-than-fine day. I can’t connect that with the person she seems to be most of the time.

Plus, seriously, how do either one of those people go sixteen years without bothering with me at all?

After we eat, my mother and Brad bicker over who should pay for dinner. By now I’m used to the way they argue, always two steps or less away from laughing. No, I’m not included in their little routine, but the very fact that it’s routine already is somehow comforting.

“Seriously,” my mother says. “I’m paying. First of all, I’m positive you paid last time we went out, and there’s also the fact that you shouldn’t have to pay for her.”

I’m sitting right here
, I think but do not say.

“Reece—”

Then they whisper back and forth while I focus all my strength on not bursting into tears.

It doesn’t make sense. One minute she could be so kind only to end up here the next. I have to figure it out, because if in her lurks the person who could ignore me for sixteen years, she has to be capable of ignoring me for sixteen more. Right?

And if there’s anything I’m good at—well, besides auditioning and singing and hopefully acting and, okay, shopping (if shopping counts?)—it’s researching Reece Malcolm. Doing it from her house has to be the easiest task yet, right? Life will have to make more sense once she does.

Chapter Six

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

16. She made a possibly not-great college decision based on not leaving a city she’d leave four years later.

17. Sometimes she can actually be a nice person.

My Reece Malcolm investigation starts off pretty small the next day. My mother runs out for errands once I’m back from school, and after at least starting homework for all my classes—and adding Travis on Facebook because he pestered me about it earlier today—I walk downstairs with my notebook.

School was fine, almost just like the day before, though today Sai sat with us at lunch. I don’t think anyone knew what to make of him, so at least I’m not alone there.

I guess right that my mother’s office door won’t be locked, so I slip in and glance around like something huge will be revealed immediately. Okay, it’s just an office. Desk, filing cabinets, shelves, printer, bulletin board. The only thing amazing about this room is that the desk is old and beat-up, the walls are a totally normal white, and the shelves don’t even match one another.

I open the top desk drawer and flip through, even though there are only index cards and tubes of lip balm inside. The next down is just as hopeless: some boxes of ink pens and what looks like a very old bag of chips. The third isn’t nearly as boring. It’s jam-packed with promo stuff for her books, some old review clippings—I guess before the Internet this is what people used—and copies of postcard-sized author photos she obviously never used. (I stare at them for a while, because she’s even younger in them, and there’s a lot of me looking back from the drawer.)

Nothing at all leads me to understand her, though.

Her laptop is just lying there, so I open it and pull up her email. Only one new in her inbox, from Brad. Considering it seems to be a response to more arguing about the TV issue, it isn’t too exciting. (It isn’t exciting at all, really, except that he calls her
a biased snob
,
which makes me giggle aloud.)

But buried in the chain of emails back and forth is a sentence I don’t know how to feel about. Does it make last night better or even worse? Brad wrote,
You need to stop apologizing regarding Devan.
I keep staring at it, but I can’t make myself scroll down farther in the email chain to see the apology in the first place. I click the right buttons so the email will still show up as new before dashing out of the office.