Taking Flight (19 page)

“Of course not,” Fiona waved the air away with a shake of her head. “That doesn’t matter. People have their stuff and you’ve just gotta accept them for who they are. Like you. I bet you have plenty of stuff going on in your life, since you came all the way from Los Angeles to stay with the Marshalls. I mean, the thing with your mom, like…”

She shook her head disbelievingly, and I raised my head to stare at her, my gaze suddenly sharp. Then she realized what she’d said, and gasped, raising a hand to cover her mouth. When she removed it, she apologized, “I’m
so
sorry, Lauren. I really didn’t plan on ever mentioning it unless you did first. I haven’t even said anything to Nate.”

“You know about my mom?” I asked, dumbfounded. “How?”

“My mom loved her show. The one she was on as a kid. She was actually a really big fan; she was really upset when… well, I mean, not like you were, but…” She bit her lip, and continued, “I guess I told her at one point that I’d made a friend from Los Angeles named Lauren who’d been flown all the way here to stay with the Marshalls, and she told me that if your last name was Lennox, you might be Nicole Erikson’s daughter. So after you told me your last name… I just figured you were. It made sense. You kind of dress like you have money, and you’re here for a reason, you know?”

I looked away from her and put my face in my hands again. This was too much for one night.

“I’m sorry, Lauren.” She sounded so sincere that for a moment I thought she might start crying. “Please, are you okay? What can I do?”

I let out a shaky breath. Fiona wasn’t going to start crying, I realized.
I
was. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Maddie had said. “I think I’m a bad person,” I admitted.

“No, you’re not,” she told me. “Nate and I really like you.” She hesitated, and then added, “No matter how close you and Maddie are. Or were.” I raised my head to look at her, wiping away the tears blurring my vision. She smiled at me, and asked, “Do you want to go inside? We can find Cammie, then find Nate and leave. It’s almost eleven-thirty anyway, and I don’t know about you, but Nate and I
have to be back by midnight.”

“Me too,” I murmured, and she nodded and took my hand, helping me get to my feet. Together, we made our way to the door, and Fiona giggled a little when we both had some trouble making it.

“We need Nate,” she joked.

“Yeah,” I said.

We spent ten minutes searching for Cammie without any success, and I decided eventually that she’d probably be heading home soon anyway, so instead we found Nate and then walked out to his car together.

“So these parties aren’t really worth all the hype,” Nate decided as we drove away. “You guys drank, we danced, and we left.”

“That’s kind of the gist of it,” I admitted. “Only if you’re lucky, you meet someone during the party and go home with them afterward.”

Nate laughed at that. “You must be the first girl I’ve ever heard talk like that. Do people even
do
one-night-stands in high school? Isn’t it usually assumed that if someone’s talking to you they’re interested in more than a hookup? Or am I just being optimistic?”

I slunk back in my seat, feeling lower than dirt again. “I don’t know.”

We got back to the Marshalls’ farm with five minutes to spare. Nate and Fiona dropped me off in a hurry, already late to get back to their own homes, and I gathered myself quickly and tried to practice walking straight. I’d sobered up a lot since my talk with Fiona, but I couldn’t tell if it was enough to get me past David. Still, I had to try.

I was halfway to the steps of the front porch when I noticed Cammie waiting for me on the porch swing. I started to wave and call out to her, but she raised a finger to her lips, motioning for me to be quiet, and then beckoned me forward. I took in her appearance. “Disheveled” was putting it lightly. Her hair and the makeup I’d worked so meticulously on were now a mess, and her clothes had so many wrinkles I wasn’t sure even an iron would fix them.

“Jesus,” I murmured as I reached her. “Who the hell did you hook up with tonight?”

“Just Peter,” she sighed. “Look, I can’t let my parents see me like this. Can you fix it?”

“I can try.” I shook my head, marveling at her. “What did you do before me?”

“Tiffany, when I looked like this,” she admitted. “But I only just got back a few minutes ago; she didn’t have time.”

“Okay.” I rummaged through my purse for a moment, then went to work on her makeup first.

With just inches between our faces, she looked back at me with sudden concern. “Hey,” she said, quietly, “your mascara ran a little. Have you been crying?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, a little. Dramatic night.”

“What happened?”

“Got in a fight with Maddie; Fiona knows about my mom now. The usual.”

“What? How?”

“How did I get into a fight with Maddie or how does Fiona know about my mom?”

“Both.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about Maddie, and Fiona’s mom was a fan of my mom.”

She pulled a face. “A fan? What does that mean?”

I froze, realizing I’d slipped up. Then I shook my head and went back to her makeup, murmuring, “Goddammit.”

“Hey.” She caught my eye and then reached up to rub some of my mascara away. Her hand was gentle on my cheek as she told me, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want me to know.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at her, genuinely grateful.

“You’ve done the same when it comes to my secrets,” she said. I knew she was talking about her cheating on Peter, and I was surprised to learn that she considered the rest of that story a secret. I’d thought it was simple: She didn’t like Peter and she’d liked someone else for a little while. But maybe there was more to it than that.

“You shouldn’t let him do this to you,” I told her eventually, “if you don’t enjoy it.” I frowned at her. “You look like a chewed up rag doll.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Thanks.”

“But still somehow beautiful,” I added somewhat nervously, and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She stared at me for a moment, and I saw her swallow visibly. Then, so quickly I’d later convince myself I’d imagined it, her gaze flickered down to my lips.

The front door opened, and she and I moved away from each other quickly as David stared out at us. I knew without looking in a mirror that both Cammie and I almost certainly looked like we hadn’t just been to a tame high school dance. His eyes narrowed. “Come on in, girls.”

David was alone, thankfully; Wendy’d apparently elected to go to bed in preparation for all of the farm work we’d be doing tomorrow. My heart sank at the thought of waking up early.

We were directed to sit on the couch, and David leaned in close to Cammie’s face, arms crossed, and demanded, “Exhale.”

She breathed out into his face and he sniffed at her. “Mints. Very nice.” She bit her lip guiltily and sat back as he focused his attention to me. “Your turn.”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head, wary. I’d never gone through anything like this before. So
this
was having parents. Huh.

“Lauren,” he demanded, his voice stern. “I won’t ask again.”

With a roll of my eyes, I leaned forward and exhaled. He sighed, no doubt at the alcohol on my breath, and then, to my surprise, shifted his attention to Cammie.

“Cammie, I expected this from Lauren, but not from you. Who gave the two of you alcohol?”

“Just some guy at the dance,” Cammie mumbled. I hid an impressed look; she was playing the part of a regretful daughter with ease even as she continued to lie to her dad.

“Who? Was it your idea to accept it from him?” He let out a sigh. “Cammie, I’ve told you and Scott about how dangerous underaged drinking is. You don’t know where those drinks have come from or where they’ve been. Especially given that I trusted you and asked you to make sure Lauren stayed out of trouble after the game, I can’t believe this is what you went and did tonight.”

“It wasn’t her idea,” I cut in swiftly, sick of watching him berate her. Even if she wasn’t as perfect as David thought she was, I knew she deserved a punishment less than I did. Everyone deserved to let loose once in a while, and besides, David would go easier on me than he would on her.

Cammie, who’d bowed her head as her dad was laying into her, now stared at me with surprise as David’s gaze shifted to me instead. “I saw some guys with flasks and asked if I could have some. Cammie said it was a bad idea, but I talked her into it.” I arched a defiant eyebrow. “Try everything once, right?”

David seemed conflicted, and spent a long moment looking between the two of us. Then, at last, he shook his head and stood up straight. “Alright. Up the stairs, both of you. You’ll need a lot of sleep tonight because you’re doing double the work tomorrow.”

I heard Cammie let out a sigh ahead of me as we both got off of the couch and made our way upstairs. David watched us from the bottom until we were in Cammie’s room and the door was shut behind us.

She turned around to face me as soon as we were alone. “You didn’t have to do that, you know. I’d have gotten a few weeks of grounding. He’ll never trust you again, now, and you won’t be able to go anywhere without me.”

I shrugged my shoulders and moved to my suitcase to find pajamas for the night. I knew she was right, but it wasn’t like I could change my story now, even if I’d wanted to. “I’m used to spending a lot of time with you by now, anyway,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. I straightened up with clothes in my hands to see that she’d moved to her bed. The light of the lamp on her nightstand caught her neck, and I stared at the red circle on her skin as she told me, sincerely, “Thank you.”

“Did Peter do that?” I asked, and she followed my gaze, then raised a hand to her neck and flushed. “Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I think your dad was too caught up on the alcohol thing to notice it. Seriously, though… is that
enjoyable
? He seems pretty aggressive. It’s gonna take a lot of makeup to cover it up.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I don’t really know. It’s okay, I guess.”

“Okay, but… is that a ‘yes’? A ‘no’?” I asked her. “I mean, do you look forward to hooking up with him? I know for a fact that you can still enjoy sex without being in love, so do you?”

She just shrugged her shoulders again and didn’t answer. I decided to cut her some slack, and went into her closet to change my clothes. She changed after me, and then, together, we settled into our respective beds. Cammie turned off her lamp, sending us into complete darkness.

I shifted around for a moment in my bed, and then rolled onto my side, thinking of my fight with Maddie again.

“Cammie?” I asked, when I heard rustling from her bed and was sure she was still awake.

“Hmm?”

“The guys you’ve slept with… did you think, going in, that any of them meant anything? Like, that they were going to be the love of your life and they were just this perfect guy that you’d dreamed about dating and couldn’t wait to… you know,
be
with? After Trevor, I mean?”

She was quiet for a long while; for so long that I was sure she’d fallen asleep. But then her answer came. “That’s a loaded question. Why?”

“I’m just… trying to figure something out,” I mumbled.

“Well… I think that I started off with high expectations back when I was first starting to date. But if you sleep with enough people that don’t think you matter, maybe it starts to hurt a little less when they turn out to just be another jerk. Eventually, you can see it coming, I guess. Eventually you realize that as much as you hope a frog could be a prince, it’s probably actually just a frog.”

“How do you avoid getting hurt if you
are
the frog?” I asked.

There was a long pause. And, eventually, she murmured, “The frogs don’t get hurt, Lauren. You can’t break a heart that doesn’t exist.”

That, I think, stung more than anything Maddie could’ve said to me in a million lifetimes.

Chapter Thirteen

I didn’t sleep well that night.

Instead, I tossed and turned until sunrise, caught in a strange and horrifying dream where I was watching a fictional retelling of Cammie’s first time with Trevor. He spent the entire lead-up whispering sweet nothings into her ear, and then, at some point, his hair grew out and the tone of his voice climbed higher until it was me in bed with Cammie, spouting bullshit to get her to sleep with me. Then I blinked and Cammie had turned into Maddie.

The nine o’clock alarm saved me from the rest of the dream, and I stared up at the ceiling as Cammie got out of bed, wondering what on earth was in store for me today.

Cammie couldn’t look at her mother throughout breakfast. A tension had filled the house overnight that left everyone on edge, with the exception of Scott, who seemed to find this whole thing hilarious. I was almost relieved to find out I’d be spending most of the time on cow duty with him rather than my usual horse job with Cammie. She, meanwhile, was ordered to help her dad out while Wendy took care of Aerosmith.

Scott led me out to the barn after breakfast, and almost immediately shot me a knowing grin as he pulled its front doors open. “So why’d you take the heat for Cammie?”

I took a moment to respond. There was a cow waiting for us in the barn, standing upright on the straw floor, and I knew instantly that I wasn’t going to like whatever Scott was about to make me do. Finally, I looked to him, still slightly distracted. “Um… who says I took any heat I didn’t deserve?”

“Dad told me your alcohol story,” Scott said. “I used to play football for Collinsville, remember? I went to Alex Parker’s parties every year too, you know.”

“Right.” I followed Scott to the cow, keeping a safe distance, and he brought out a pail and set it under the cow’s stomach. My own stomach dropped.
Oh no
. “Do I have to?” I asked him, and he grinned.

“If I want my parents to trust me, yeah. You’ve just gotta learn and get a decent bit of it done, and then I’ll take over.” He set a stool down next to the cow and then patted the top of it. “C’mon.”

“Can I at least get some gloves?” I asked. He laughed and nodded, moving to rummage through a nearby set of cabinets for a pair. “Anyway,” I continued as he searched, “I covered for Cammie because your parents are kind of harsh on you guys and I knew your dad would cut me some slack. He expects
me
to screw up, not her.”

“Huh. You’re more observant than I thought,” he admitted, and, at last, found me a pair of gloves to wear. “Yeah, Dad gets pretty into his job.”

“He puts a lot of pressure on you two.”

Scott shrugged his shoulders. “We’re used to it. I mean, it’s definitely frustrating at times, but Cammie and I have grown up with it. We know there are expectations we have to meet.”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

He motioned for me to take a seat, and I grudgingly complied even as he kept talking. “I mean, take me and Jill. Of course, my mom really likes her, which I’m happy about because I like her too. But I’m not in a hurry to get married and have kids, you know? I’m only twenty. But I’m also mature enough to know that what I want isn’t necessarily what’s best. And I trust their judgment.”

“You don’t want kids?” I asked, and he laughed.

“Uh… I didn’t exactly say that, but not really, I guess. I mean, I’ll have them because I know it’d kill my mom and Jill if I didn’t, but if it was up to just me I probably wouldn’t. Anyway, stop trying to put off milking the cow.”

“It’s gross.” I wrinkled my nose even as Scott kneeled down beside me and reached for an udder. “Ew.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes verbally going over technique with Scott, and the next ten working up the courage to actually touch one of the udders. When I did, I gagged, and Scott grinned at me.

“C’mon, it’s not that bad. Just squeeze.”

“Gross gross gross,” I murmured, reaching out and gripping the udder again. I followed Scott’s instructions, half-ready to vomit all the while, and milk shot out of the udder and into the bucket.

“Nice! You’re a natural,” Scott told me, but I shook my head and stood abruptly, already moving to pull my gloves off.

“No way. Uh uh. I am
not
doing that again. That is so gross.”

“We haven’t gotten nearly enough, you know,” he said, but I just shook my head again.

“I said I’d milk the cow, and I did. Mission accomplished.”

He smiled over at me again, then wordlessly took a seat on the stool and began to milk it himself. I let out a sigh of relief and thanked him.

“Yeah, just don’t let my dad find out I did this for you,” he replied. “And the kid thing stays between us.”

“Deal.”

We worked into the afternoon, all five of us. I got off easy with milking the cows, which took a while because there were more than just one, and spent most of my time in the barn, chatting with Scott and watching the field for signs of any of the other Marshalls. In the time I’d been here, I hadn’t really gotten to know Scott, so it was nice to finally get a chance to talk to him alone.

At two o’clock, we finally stopped and came inside for lunch. Things were still tense, but considering Cammie looked like she was going to pass out at any moment after what were evidently several hours of hard labor, her parents were a little nicer to her this time. I couldn’t really look at her; every time I did, I felt guilty that I hadn’t really gotten a punishment.

After lunch, she was set free at last, and so was Scott, who immediately grabbed his keys and left to go pay Jill a visit. Wendy cleared the table by herself, and David asked me to come join him outside again. I grew nervous as I followed him, realizing that he probably had some sort of special punishment prepared for me given that I’d taken the blame for last night. I tried to brace myself for cleaning up animal poop or lifting heavy bales of hay.

But that didn’t come. Instead, he motioned for me to sit down on the grass with him just outside of the house, and told me, “I thought now might be a good time to talk.”

“About what?” I asked dumbly. Of course
he wanted to talk about last night.

“I know my kids very well,” he said. “I know their hobbies, their friends, their favorite colors… and despite that, I’m a little baffled by what you and Cammie did last night. She’s a good kid.”

“Well, you straightened her out,” I said, a hint of sarcasm in my tone. “She learned her lesson. A whole extra two hours of work in the sun.”

His jaw tensed, but he didn’t otherwise react to my comment. Instead, he said, “I’d really hoped you were improving. I put my trust in you and let you go off by yourself. Now I’m not even sure I can trust you alone with Cammie. I didn’t realize you’d have the kind of influence you’re having on her.”

“Maybe you don’t know your kids as well as you think you do. That stuff you said you knew was all shallow. Like, do you know they want to do with their lives?” I tilted my head to the side, eyeing him curiously. “Do you know that? Because I do, I think, and I’ve known them for three weeks. And if you
don’t
, I don’t really get why you’re out here talking to me instead of them. I already have a father, and he may not know my answers, but that doesn’t mean you should be trying to figure them out in his place if you don’t even know them for your own kids.”

“I watch out for them, Lauren,” he replied, his tone calm. He offered me a small smile. “You may take more focus to get a read on, but I certainly know my own kids.”

“Okay, so what
do
they want to do with their lives?” I challenged.

“Scott would like to start a family with Jill, once he gets out of school. And Cammie wants the same, a family of her own here in Collinsville… although only after getting into a good college, and, I’ll admit, probably not with Peter, as much as Wendy likes him.”

It surprised me that he’d picked up on Cammie’s feelings toward Peter. But for the most part, he was wrong. Completely wrong about Scott, certainly, and, if my hunch was correct, at least partially wrong about Cammie.

But I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I just got to my feet and asked, “Can we be done now?”

“I suppose,” he said, but he was pretty clearly disappointed as he watched me turn and head back inside. He wasn’t the only disappointed one. David Marshall, counselor extraordinaire with the ability to turn any “bad” kid good, seemed to have only achieved that title by putting his own kids on the backburner.

And as a girl who’d grown up without much of a father, I had no desire to be the one responsible for Cammie and Scott losing theirs. 

*   *   *

When I got upstairs, Cammie’d just gotten out of the shower and was already changed into her pajamas.

“Exhausted already?” I asked her, reaching down into my suitcase for a change of clothes. I was eager to take a shower of my own.

“Yeah, I might need a nap,” she sighed, and rubbed uncomfortably at her shoulder. “Sleep off the ache.”

“Did you pull a muscle or something?” I asked. She kept rubbing at the same shoulder, and winced even as she nodded.

“I think I strained, like, my shoulder or my neck or something. Too much heavy lifting.”

I tossed my clothes onto my bed and moved to her, motioning for her to stand up. “Here.”

“What?” she asked, watching me with mild amusement even as she got to her feet. “Do you know how to fix it?”

“Maybe. I got sore muscles a lot from gymnastics. My mom used to make it go away.”

“You got sore muscles at age four?”

I grinned. “I was a very intense toddler, okay? I fell down a lot.”

“Possibly on the head area?” she asked, grinning.

“Very funny. Just let me—” I reached out for her shoulder and she winced when I pressed down. “Sorry.”

“Just be gentle.”

“I’m trying,” I insisted with a laugh, and rubbed at a spot between her neck and shoulder with the pads of my fingers. Cammie tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes. I realized this had been a bad idea right around the time she let out a small moan. “There. Feel better?” I asked, abruptly pulling away. Her eyes opened and she nodded.

“Yeah, a little.”

“Cool.” I turned away from her to retrieve my clothes. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”

“Wait, um…” I paused, and turned to look back at her. She hesitated, and then continued, “You mentioned your mother helping you when you’d get hurt. So she
was
around when you were younger?”

I nodded. “Yeah. A little bit. I just don’t remember much about her from back then. I was too young.” I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. “Anyway… shower.”

She nodded and I left, wondering what her questions had been about. I knew a lot about Cammie, most of it deduced after heavy observation, and she knew a lot about my problems, but I guess beyond why I was here, I hadn’t shared much about my personal life with her after all. Was this her way of trying to get to know me?

I got back to her bedroom twenty minutes later. She was in bed, and her eyes were closed, but they fluttered open as I sat down on my own bed. “Trying to nap?” I guessed.

She shrugged her shoulders, her voice quiet. “I don’t know. Not really.” She paused, and then asked me, “Do you ever just get kind of lonely out of nowhere?”

“I spend my life lonely,” I laughed. “Especially recently. I’m alone
here
.”

“You have me,” she said. I smiled at her, a little surprised.

“Good to know. And you have me.”

She swallowed hard at that. “That’s not what I mean. Or… I guess…” She trailed off and fell silent, deep in thought, and I smiled at her again.

“You should tell me about the stuff you draw,” I suggested.

She arched an eyebrow. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because. I’ll tell you that when you tell me whatever you’re hiding about your mom.”

I knew she was only saying that because she figured I’d never go for it, but honestly, I considered it. Cammie wasn’t going to tell anyone; I trusted her not to now. That was what mattered to me. I was Nicole Erickson’s daughter in Los Angeles and it wasn’t fun there. The good thing about Georgia was that at least I was just Lauren here. But maybe it was time to give that up – at least partially.

“Okay,” I said at last, and without giving her time to retract her offer, I told her, “My mom was a famous actress.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, and I waited for it to click with her. When it did, her eyes widened and she asked, “Nicole Erickson? Oh my God.”

“Yep.” The only famous actress who’d passed away recently enough to make sense. “The one and only.”

“Wow.” She shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing. And then she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I like being Lauren, and because it didn’t seem necessary. You knew my mom died recently; why flaunt that she was famous?”