Signs of You (10 page)

I sigh and lie down in the back, curling into a ball on the seat. I clutch the manuscript to my chest and close my eyes. I can't f igure out how to feel. I try to focus on what I'm sure I want. I want to f ind my mom again; I want to know why I saw her; I want to know where she is. And I want my heart to stop hurting, to stop breaking all over.

But wanting all this, and picturing Jay in there hitting on some strange girl—my heart shatters just a little bit more. If he really doesn't know how I feel about him, then part of me just wants to get up, storm back into Subway and tell him. To just f inally blurt it out and get it over with. On the other hand, if he knows but still f lirts with girls right in front of me,
especially
with everything else that's going on—it's so epically shitty that I can't even believe it.
Who does that?
His typical surprise act of decency that makes everything right better come soon, and it better be momentous.

After an endless couple of minutes, the driver's side door opens.

“No way,” Kate says as Jay gets in. I sit up and open my eyes and see her grab a wadded-up napkin from his hand. Then she hands it to me, and I start to unfold it.

“Is it for the Basque pile or the we-have-no-clue pile?” I ask.

“Neither,” Kate says, sighing.

She's right. It doesn't have Basque words on it. It has a phone number. And a distinctly English word: Crystal.

“You can just throw it away,” Jay says. “And do I look okay to you?” He looks at Kate.

“Are you seriously worried about your looks right now?” she asks.

“No, I mean . . . do I look sick or something? Or pale?”

“Um,” Kate says. She softens. “Well, maybe a little. Why?”

“I just felt so weird for a minute in there. I thought I was going to pass out or something. I didn't even want to talk to her. But I said ‘hey' and then she was handing me her number—”

“Can we
please
just get out of Maryland?” I ask. “We're late; remember?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jay says, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. He holds my eyes for just a minute, and gives me a look I can't decipher. Maybe it's
I'm sorry
, or maybe it's
I swear I like you back,
or maybe it's just
are you okay?
I can't tell, but I also can't stand to look in his eyes right now, so I don't. I look away and curl back into a ball.

Chapter 10

Don't Mess with the Nest.

Soon after we cross the Ohio border, I take the wheel again. The drive feels like it takes forever, but just staring straight ahead at the road calms me down a little. I drop Jay and Kate off at their houses and walk in my front door around midnight. I expect to see the living room dark. But I don't. The lights are all on. The sofa has a few blankets on it, and there are like four plates of half-eaten food on the coffee table. And the whole house smells like baking cinnamon rolls.

He's baking at midnight?

Maybe he knows what a wreck I am. Even though I tried so hard to hide it. He hears me come in and emerges from the kitchen, and I'm so glad to see him that I toss the manuscript on the entryway table and throw my arms around his neck. He grabs onto me and holds me tight, in a classic Serious Dad Hug. A Serious Dad Hug is def initely one of the greatest things on the planet. Even though I'm sixteen, and I'm totally supposed to be annoyed by stuff like this—right now, I love this hug. It feels like—
this idea that you could ever be alone, without someone who loves you—IT'S JUST NOT TRUE.

“You okay?” he asks. “I was starting to worry. But thanks for the text. Hard study session?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” I squeeze him a little tighter, grateful to be out of the car, part of me never wanting to leave this house ever again.

“Whoa,” Dad says, eyeing the manuscript on the table. “What book is that?”

I walk over and pick it back up. “Nothing,” I say. “Just an old book from the library. Um, we're learning how to f ind primary sources. For a project.” I clutch it close to my chest and try to come up with something else to say about it if Dad digs any further, but then a rustling in the kitchen snaps me out of my thoughts.

“Oh,” Dad says, worry clouding his blue eyes. “Some friends came by for a little dinner party and one is still . . .” His voice trails off.

A woman steps into the hallway. A
young
woman. Or at least,
way
younger than my dad. I'm crap at guessing ages, but from the looks of her vitamin-enriched hair, her nearly wrinkleless face, and her no-joke-totally-perfect
boobs (even more perfect than Crystal's), she must be in her late twenties? Thirty at the most.

“Hi,” she says sheepishly. She wipes a little baking f lour off her shirt. “I'm Sammy.”

She has a boy's name.

They're cooking together at midnight? Really?

Dad shifts on his feet, almost as clumsily as he did the day I told him I was growing a penis. “Riley, this is Sammy. Sammy, this is—”

“Riley.” I jut out my hand. I give her a f irm, respectable handshake. I'm no pageant queen, but my mother taught me basic manners, dammit. Plus, this must just be a neighbor I haven't met. Someone's mom. Someone's wife. She probably brought over some noodle salad to share because she had extra. It's what any good neighbor would do. Then she probably just stayed so she could . . . help Dad bake rolls at midnight
.

“Sammy's an ornithologist,” Dad explains, which explains absolutely nothing. “At the Cleveland Zoo. I inspected a house she wants to buy, and then she took me to the local bird club the other day. Such a great place. I never knew birds were so fascinating.”

My dad's voice is so phony right now it's painful. This garbage about how a bird club is a thrill a minute is kind of making me want to upturn a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. And this woman is a real-estate client of his? I want to say something about all of this, I really do, but I don't know what.

And I
can't
say what's actually going through my mind because the only thing that's going through my mind—is my mom.

The last late-night dinner
party my parents ever had, I was thirteen. They decided to host the holiday party for the real-estate company where my dad worked. I helped my mom get our house ready for
weeks
. And decorating with my mom was a slow, laborious process. She'd tell me what decorations to hang where and then ask me to describe how they looked. I must have moved our fake pine garland to f ifty different places in the living room until she was happy.

The f irst half of the party seemed to go well. Our house was
full
of people and they were all babbling about how beautiful everything looked. There were real-estate agents, appraisers, inspectors, and even the owner of the company. My dad trotted me over to her like a prize calf at the state fair and made me shake her hand. But then I noticed that my dad was beaming as he introduced us. And he wasn't beaming in an I'm-so-proud-of-my-daughter kind of way, he was beaming at
her
.

I mean, I have to give it to him; she was pretty. And super stylish. She had on this clingy sweater-dress thing and knee-high boots. And her hair was long and perfectly curled at the ends. But still, I didn't like the look on my dad's face. Something about it wasn't quite right.

Then I caught sight of my mom. And she looked kind of dull, like someone had just turned off a light inside her. I watched as she slipped out of the living room and went upstairs. As soon as I could get away from the big-shot sweater-dress lady, I followed her.

I found her in her bedroom, standing in front of her closet, holding her annual half glass of wine in one hand and gently touching some hanging clothes with the other.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. She pulled a hanger out of the closet that held a shirt and a pair of pants. “These are some of my old nurse scrubs, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said with a big smile, her damaged eyes drifting. “Which ones are they? I can't tell—are these windmills or lollipops?”

They weren't either one. They were covered with plain polka-dots, but I didn't have the heart to tell her.

“Windmills,” I said.

“Some of my favorites,” she said wistfully. “I think I was a really good nurse, you know? I really think I was.”

My mind went blank for a minute as I searched the darkness in my brain for something to say. “I'm not that impressed with that woman,” I blurted out. “I mean, she runs a real-estate off ice.
Big deal.
And she looks pretty cheesy if you ask me.”

“Your father seems to be impressed with her,” Mom said quietly. She felt along in the closet for the place to hang the scrubs up. “I could hear it in his voice. When he introduced her to you.”

I walked over to the closet and helped her guide the hanger into place. “Well,” I said slowly. “You have a career, too. You're a mom.”

My mother reached for me. She was a little off with her aim, so I quickly stepped sideways into her arms. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don't see it that way,” she said as she gave me a gentle squeeze. “It just . . . I don't know—it doesn't seem to count.”

Even at thirteen, I thought to do the quick math in my head.

Give birth + give up your life to raise a kid + get no respect = remind me not to have kids when I grow up.

How unfair is it
that I'm now standing in our living room in the middle of my dad's late-night date with a PhD ornitholo-whatever? Thankfully, before Dad can tell me more about how
fascinating
this bird-woman Sammy apparently is, the oven alarm bings.

“Rolls are ready!” he says in this totally obnoxious sing-songy voice I swear I've never
heard before. He looks grateful for the distraction and runs into the kitchen.

And that's when I see it: the look in Sammy's eyes.

It instantly reminds me of this article I read in
National Geographic
about f ilial cannibalism—when animals eat their young. Turns out there are many reasons why animals do it. Sometimes new female mates don't want the earlier family to survive. The new animal “wife” wants only
her
children to prosper, to be the only carriers of her new “husband's” genes. There were even pictures. In one, a house f inch sat in a nest, eyeing a brood of young birds. In the next, she was attacking one of them. Even though the second picture was the violent one, the f irst was more disturbing. There was something about the way the f inch eyed the baby bird the moment before she attacked. Her eyes were a hard, homicidal black.

And that's exactly how this woman is looking at me.

It's there for only the briefest of moments, but I
swear it's there
. She's eyeing me with that dark, cold look, like she wants to eat me, revise history, stamp out any evidence of my dad's previous partners.

And that's when I know.

This woman is dating my dad.

I want to scream. I want to vomit. But then I want to be silent. I want to be more silent than silent. I want to fade into the wallpaper, become just another paisley bean-shaped dot on a wall of paisley bean-shaped dots. I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that I've been replaced. (Which is kind of sick I know, because it's not like
I'm
my dad's wife or anything.) But still. I'm a representative of the
f irst
administration, the genetic offshoot of the
f irst
family.

A word comes to mind:
ousted.
I've been ousted, a victim of a bloodless coup. I leave the house for one single night, and I come back to f ind the palace ransacked, our f lag burned, a new family crest being painted on the throne.

But in an instant I summon the numbness. I don my I'm-f ine armor as Dad comes back from the kitchen.

“I'm f ine,” I say, nearly shouting the answer to a question no one asked. And then I take off up the stairs. When I reach the top, I look down at the new couple, at their shocked faces, at the how-do-we-handle-this confusion in their eyes. “Totally. And completely. FINE.”

And with that, I go to my room and slam the door.

But the minute I'm alone, it all really hits me. I feel like I did back in the cave; my lungs can't f ill with enough air. I feel abandoned, left behind with my messed-up life as my father takes off to a shiny new future. And I want my mom so badly, I can barely stay standing up. That old, familiar ache f ills my body. I know it's grief. I've lived with it for over two years, and I know it so well. It's like a roommate who never leaves the house, like the brother I never had. Sometimes he's quiet. Sometimes he rages. Sometimes he hides under your bed, silent and scattered like dust. And sometimes, you almost forget he's there.

Almost.

Mom. I need you.

I toss the manuscript on the bed, terrif ied I'll never be able to decipher it. That I'll never see her again, that I'll never get another chance . . .

My dad knocks on my door. My heart pounds almost as loud as he does. I inform him that I am NOT answering, that I am NOT coming out.

“Riley.” Muff led, through the wood. “Please? Can we talk about this?”

“No.”

“How about some beef stew?”

“NO.”

“Late night cinnamon rolls? They're just out of the oven.”

“
NO
.”

So much for the numbness and the armor. I f lop down on my bed and stare at the ceiling, willing away the lump in my throat that manages to make yet another appearance. A few minutes pass, and I hear Dad plod back downstairs. I hear him apologize to Sammy for my behavior. I can't hear Sammy's response, but I bet she's saying all the right kissing-up-to-the-new-boyfriend-who-has-a-teenager things.

It's okay, Ben. This is all so new. And the poor thing lost her mother.

I stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling and at my overhead light, a glowing plastic red and white balloon. And then I glance at the puppy lamp on the bedside table. My heart sinks when I think back to my mom and me making plans to redecorate the room. I remember holding a book of wallpaper samples, trying my best to describe to her what they looked like.

“This one, is, um, little f lowers. With dots below each one. In green,” I said.

“What shade of green?” Mom asked.

“Like, dark green.”

“Pine or hunter?”

There's a difference?
“Pine,” I said, knowing I couldn't tell pine from hunter any more than I could ace a chem test.

Now, I feel sick looking at the childish lamp and the overhead light and at the wallpaper we never changed. And suddenly, I'm overwhelmed with an urge to get rid of it all. To rip everything out, to just let go, move on, grow up from a world of balloon lights to walls of distinguished hunter green.
If Dad is going to move on, shouldn't I?

I eye the overhead balloon light and the rusty screw that holds it in place. And I feel a twinge. I can't locate it; all I know is that it's somewhere deep inside me.
Go ahead. Get rid of it.
I quietly open my bedroom door and make my way to the garage to f ind a screwdriver and a stepladder. I haul them upstairs, being unbelievably stealthy as I pass the kitchen. I make it up to my room undetected and enter it like it's a war zone:
me vs. sentimental attachment to the past
.

I unfold the ladder, click the steps into place and climb up. I look at the screw holding the balloon light together and go at it with an almost violent determination. I work quickly and pull the screw out of its socket. The light cover comes next, and I hold it in my hands like hard-won war booty.

And then I hear another knock at the door.

“Go away, Dad,” I mutter. I squint in the harsh light of the now-exposed light bulb. I hear him mumble something on the other side of the door. “Seriously.
Go away
.”

But he says something again, too quietly. So I grip the balloon light cover and make my way down the stepladder, angrier with every step. I swing the door open, praying that it's just my Dad on the other side and that Sammy isn't standing behind him in all her perfectness.