Out with the In Crowd (8 page)

Yes, the time had definitely come for us all to part ways. Our clique, formed freshman year, had become far too incestuous.

Jodi popped a potato chip into her mouth. “It’s good to be health conscious. I probably should be.”

I glanced at Eli, half hoping he wouldn’t take the bait.

But Eli had perfected the art of being a boyfriend. Except when it came to lusting after his girlfriend’s best friend. “What are you talking about?” He pinched Jodi’s skinny side. “What you should do is go back for another bag of chips. You’re
too
skinny.”

Jodi flushed, clearly pleased.

“You’re, like, the perfect size,” Alexis added. Suck-up. “Lisa, on the other hand—”

“Oh, knock it off.” John sounded disgusted. “There’s nothing wrong with the way Lisa looks.”

Alexis’s lips puckered, but of course she’d invited the opportunity for John’s comment.

Ah . . . how nice not to belong to this group, to no longer base my self-worth on their opinions. Good thing too, because judging by Alexis’s cold gaze, she didn’t think much of me.

Lisa slid into the remaining seat beside me and smiled. “Well, look at this. We’re all back together.”

This earned me another glare from Alexis, though this one also seemed to be for Lisa.

Lisa didn’t appear to notice. She’d probably gotten used to it by now. “So, I hate that blonde cashier.”

John laughed. “She’s horrible, isn’t she?”

“I feel sorry for her,” Lisa said, chomping into a carrot. “Putting out such a rotten vibe? She’s gonna have horrible karma.”

John responded with an enthusiastic nod.

Even with Alexis’s rude behavior, I kinda felt sorry for her. Sure, she shouldn’t have dated John in the first place, and yeah, she’d been giving me the evil eye ever since Jodi and I fell apart. But I knew how much it sucked to watch your boyfriend flirt with another girl. Even if he did it unintentionally.

Connor nudged me. “Jodi asked how Abbie’s doing.”

I glanced across the table and found a polite smile pasted on Jodi’s face. “Sorry. She’s doing fine.”

“Connor said she’s having a girl. Is she excited?”

I thought of Abbie scrolling through the adoption website. “It’s hard to say.”

“I bet you’re glad you didn’t plan on going away to college.”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

Jodi took a dainty sip of her juice. “I’d want to stick around if I was about to have a niece. I love babies.”

My throat constricted as I thought of Abbie handing her baby girl over to a strange, faceless couple. I didn’t love babies, but oddly, I already loved
this
one.

But of course it was easy for me to want to keep the baby, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t be me pouring out my life. Abbie would be the one making the sacrifices.

“Speaking of college,” Eli said, “I guess we’ll all be hearing soon.”

“What’s everybody’s top choice?” Connor asked.

And while they listed their schools—Kansas, Kansas, Vanderbilt, UNC, and Kansas—my mind filled with swaying palm trees, azure waters, golden beaches. Connor had been right to say I’d been craving a fresh start. Could I really turn down the one Mom wanted to hand to me?

9

On my way out of the cafeteria, Lisa caught up with me. “Can I talk to you?”

The last time Lisa sought me out for a conversation, she dropped the bomb that Eli and Jodi had gotten back together. Her words made me nervous.

Lisa must’ve noticed this, because she laughed. “It’s nothing bad. I just wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me?” I searched my brain for anything I might have done. “For what?”

“Do you remember back in October when you found Alexis and me fighting about John?”

My face heated at the memory. “Uh, yeah.” It had happened the morning after I discovered Eli had fooled around with Jodi at homecoming. I’d completely lost control with my friends, calling them—if memory served correctly—the most self-absorbed people I’d ever met. What a shining moment. Like the total opposite of what Jesus would’ve done. “Well, I was kinda mad at you at first, but later I thought about what you said. You know, how it was stupid for Alexis and me to be fighting because I wasn’t really in love with John?” Lisa shrugged and popped her gum. “That made a lot of sense to me. And I’ve been watching you. You really are different now.”

I shifted, oddly uncomfortable. “Thanks.”

“I mean, the old you never would have put up with Jodi and Eli getting back together.” Lisa waved at some guy as he passed by and said to him, “You better let me cheat today. I can’t afford another failed test.”

“Then maybe you should study,” he said with a wink.

Lisa laughed, then turned back to me. “Sorry, what were we talking about?”

I smiled. I’d missed Lisa. Sure, she was ditzy, and her clothes often looked like they’d been spray-painted on, but she had a warmth about her. I always felt accepted around Lisa.

“You were saying the old me would’ve been mad about Eli and Jodi. I really don’t like him anymore, so it’s easy.”

“But remember before you guys started dating? You were constantly chasing girls away from him, even though you didn’t want to date him yourself.” Lisa smiled, looking nostalgic. “I used to be like that too with John. But I don’t want to do that anymore.” She took a deep, cleansing breath, like in yoga. “It’s very freeing, you know. Releasing him. Moving on. I stopped feeling sad about school ending. I’m ready for something new. Aren’t you?”

Once again the palm trees in my mind swayed in the tropical breeze.

I’d been thirteen my last time in Hawaii. Grammy and Papa lived in a tiny bungalow in Kapaa, Kauai. I remembered that stepping into that house was like stepping back in time—paneled walls and fringed lamp shades. The whole place smelled like dust and mildew, and I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose when I walked in. Dad had taken me aside and given me a five-minute lecture about respect.

But the house hadn’t mattered much because the only time we spent inside was to sleep. Otherwise Abbie and I were in our bathing suits on the beach. What I wouldn’t give to be there now, away from the frozen, barren land of Kansas, away from the drama. It wasn’t like going to Hawaii meant staying there forever. Maybe I could just go for the summer, get away for a bit.

But Connor . . .

“I’d be ready for something new, except . . .”

Lisa grinned. “Except for a certain baseball player?”

Lisa grinned. “Except for a certain baseball My face warmed. “Something like that.”

“How funny. You spent all of high school hanging out with guys you didn’t care about, and now—last semester— you’ve got Connor.” She pointed down a hallway. “Gotta get going. Just wanted to tell you thanks.”

“See ya,” I said.

As I walked the short distance to study hall, I turned Lisa’s words over in my mind. She was right—I had Connor. How could I seriously consider leaving the one person who supported me when most everyone else mocked?

The answer was simple—I couldn’t.

“You’re quiet,” I observed as I drove Abbie and myself home.

Abbie fiddled with a button on her jacket. “That’s because I’m trying to figure out how to tell you I’m giving the baby up for adoption.”

I stiffened. So she’d decided. Those images I’d indulged— holding my niece for the first time, taking her shopping— wouldn’t happen. It had been stupid anyway, letting myself get attached. Hadn’t I learned my lesson about not getting my hopes up? But something about babies made it impossible to avoid feeling excited.

“Please don’t be mad,” Abbie said, and I realized I’d just been sitting there in silence.

“I’m not mad,” I assured her. “I’m . . . I don’t know what I am.”

Abbie’s cheeks puffed, then she exhaled long and slow. “Yeah, me neither.”

Yeah, me neither.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Abbie fingered her seat belt. “It’s the same stuff we’ve said all along. I’m a sophomore in high school, I don’t want to be with Lance, and the last thing our house needs is a baby. This way I have the baby March 10 and am back at school by the time spring break is over.” She wiped away a tear. “And life goes back to normal.”

It sounded so simple when Abbie stated it like that. Sure, just squirt the kid out and head back to school. Like we could ever forget that somewhere in the world, a little piece of my sister would be running around, and yet she would be a complete stranger to us all. The thought chilled me, and maybe it did Abbie too, because she shivered.

“I have an appointment tomorrow with a counselor at Christian Family Services. They said I should bring an adult. Would you mind coming?”

I didn’t know if I was exactly what they had in mind when they said an adult, but I said, “Whatever you need.”

After the heavy conversation in the car, I hoped Dad had gone to the office so I wouldn’t have to face him. We hadn’t talked since the day before, and I didn’t know how to act around him. He’d cheated on Mom with her best friend and kept it to himself all these years, but it was hard to be too angry with him when at least he was home. These days, Mom seemed eager to cut and run while the rest of us loafed around the house, waiting for her to decide to come home. I no longer knew who deserved my allegiance—the parent who’d screwed up back then, or the one who did now.

I opened the garage door to find Dad standing in the hallway wearing a tight smile. “Hi, girls, how was your day?”

“Fine,” we said.

The three of us stood there in the tiny space, just watching each other. Dad’s smile grew more strained. “Well. Do you have lots of homework?”

Abbie shrugged. I said, “Some.”

He nodded. “I’m ordering takeout, Abbie. You in the mood for anything special?”

“Whatever.”

“Or I could attempt to cook.”

Abbie didn’t smile back. “I’m gonna go lay down.”

“Okay, honey.” Dad ruffled her auburn hair as she passed, then looked at me. “You have a second to talk?”

I nodded, my mouth dry, and followed him through the kitchen into his office. He pulled the French doors closed behind us.

“I can’t get ahold of your mother,” he said, turning to face me.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame. “This is news?”

“I wanted to give her the weekend to cool off.” Dad ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t even try calling her until today.”

“Maybe she needs a little more time. Maybe it’ll take her more than a weekend to get over what you did.”

When he didn’t reprimand me for my lack of respect, I knew he was
really
worried. “Her cell phone isn’t working. The recording says it’s been disconnected.”

“She called me from it yesterday.”

Had she possibly already left for Hawaii? She wouldn’t do that, right? She wanted Abbie and me with her. At the very least, she’d have said good-bye.

Dad perched on the edge of his desk and said in a matter-of-fact way, “I need to know what she said to you over coffee.”

I squirmed. I wanted out of there. “Why?”

“Because I’m trying to put a family back together”—his voice rose with each word—“and I need to know how to reach your mother.”

I looked away from him, at a grade-school picture of Abbie’s. She had braided pigtails and missing teeth. Why hadn’t Dad updated his pictures? Did he prefer to think of us at that age, as little girls who argued with him only when he insisted we go to bed?

“She said I was an accident,” I whispered. Mom had said a lot of things. Why choose to tell him that one?

Dad’s face paled. “Oh, Skylar, honey. You came along earlier than we planned, but I promise, the moment you were born, neither of us saw you as an accident. When I saw you that first time—”

“It’s okay.” I was so not in the mood to hear him say anything that might make me like him again. “I don’t care. Honestly.” Dad’s mouth pressed into a firm line. “Did she say anything else?”

I shook my head. “Can I go start on my homework?”

I shook my head.

He nodded.

I’d nearly closed the door, nearly escaped, when Dad called, “Skylar?”

I hesitated—could he tell I’d held back information?

“Would you . . .” He fiddled with his tie. Even on days he worked from home, he usually wore ties. “When she calls you again, would you please say whatever you can to get her back home?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

How exhausting, to know before my father that he’d be getting divorced. It’s supposed to be a surprise to the kids. Alexis once described her parents’ divorce as the shock of a lifetime. My parents, however, seemed eager to consult me with every step.

Jogging up the stairs, I murmured, “Please, God, forgive me for lying.” I had no intentions of sweet-talking Mom back home. Why bother? She’d settle in, make fancy dinners for a couple weeks, and then leave again at the next bump in the road. I couldn’t keep suffering the pain of losing her. Well,
I
could, but Abbie was a different story. She needed Mom.

Abbie poked her head into my room, wearing a sleeveless shirt despite the frigid January temperatures. “Everything okay?”

She must’ve heard Dad ask to speak to me in private. “Yeah.” I forced a smile. “I think Dad just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m gonna take a nap.”

She rolled her eyes. “ “Okay, sleep well.”

When she left, I collapsed onto my bed. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what life had been like in the little house, when we all shared one and a half baths and two teeny bedrooms. How painful to know those days weren’t what I’d thought. If I were Mom, could I forgive Dad for what he’d done? It was hard enough just being his daughter.

My phone rang. Connor.

My phone “Hello?”

“You sound tired.”

“Because I’m lying down.” I propped myself up. “Better?”

“Much. You miss me on the drive home?”

I chuckled. “It’s a miracle I survived the two-minute drive.”

“I’m sensing sarcasm,” Connor said. “So Jodi tells me you’re coming tomorrow night.”

“To what?”

“Youth group.”

“Oh, right.” I glanced at the closed bathroom door. “I can’t go.”

Connor sighed. “Of course not.”

“Do I really deserve that?” I asked. So, yeah, in the past I’d flaked on youth group, but this time I had a reason. A good one.