The Lovely Reckless (2 page)

I've heard my father talk about the line between right and wrong so many times. It defines every aspect of his life, and tonight I crossed it.

I slouch against the molded plastic seat and count the black rubber marks on the floor. My long hair falls over my shoulder and hides my face. I want to disappear, especially when the precinct door opens again.

“What the hell is going on?” King Richard, my pathetic excuse for a stepfather, bursts into the lobby.

“Why don't you take it down a notch, Richard? This isn't your office,” Dad says. “Nobody here works for you.”

“James.” Only Mom calls my father by his given name. “You could at least try to be civil.”

Dad crosses his arms. “I could do a lot of things.…”

Nobody pisses my mother off more than Dad. At least he gives her another target.

“That's enough, Elise.” My stepfather shoots her a warning look.

Mom's heels click against the floor as she scurries over to her place beside King Richard. He rests his hand on the small of her back in case he needs to pull her invisible puppet strings.

Within seconds, they're arguing. It's nothing new, and I don't worry until the shouting dissolves into sharp whispers. Never a good sign.

Snippets of the conversation drift through the hallway, and I strain to listen.

“—ruined her chances of getting into Stanford.”
Mom.

“If she keeps this up—”
King Richard.

“Ever since Noah died—”
Dad.

“It's a shame she can't ID her boyfriend's killer.” Officer Tanner doesn't bother whispering. “That son of a bitch should be locked up.”

My stomach lurches like someone kicked me.

He's right, but it's not a shame.

It's pathetic.

My mind is damaged—shrink code for too weak to handle what I saw that night. Now I'm a hostage to the flashbacks that hit without warning and the insomnia that keeps me from sleeping more than three hours a night.

Mom and Dad walk toward me shoulder to shoulder. A united front. They divorced when I was three, and they get along about as well as two rabid dogs locked in a closet. If they managed to agree on anything, they must think I'm a few weeks away from hooking on a street corner.

For the first time tonight, I'm scared.

Mom looks at me like I'm a stranger. “I've tried to be understanding, Frankie. But you're out of control. Avoiding your friends, sneaking out of the house, drinking with the lifeguards from the club.” Maybe she
has
been paying attention between tennis matches.

“That was
one
night,” I argue. At least that she knows about.

“I hoped you would snap out of this and go back to being the girl you were before.”

Before I watched someone beat my boyfriend to death in a beer-stained parking lot. Before I realized that doing all the right things doesn't matter. Noah was an honor student, a star athlete with offer letters from three Ivy League universities, and a good person.

And he's still dead.

“I just want you to feel like yourself again, sweetheart,” Mom says.

She doesn't realize that girl doesn't exist anymore.

“Your father and I think it's time for him to get more involved.”

More involved?

Based on how involved he is now, that's a pretty low bar. I spend two weekends a month with Dad, if he isn't too busy working undercover in RATTF—Regional Auto Theft Task Force—a supercop unit. When I do see him, it's not exactly quality time. I usually end up eating leftover pizza until he gets home from pretending to be a car thief. On his days off, we practice what Dad calls Critical Life Skills—and what I call Ways to Dodge a Serial Killer. Fun stuff … like how to escape from the trunk of a car if it doesn't have an automatic-release handle inside.

“Maybe your father will be able to help you get back on track,” Mom adds.

Doubtful.

“How is that supposed to work when we barely see each other?” I ask, ignoring my dad, even though he's standing right next to her.

Dad steps between us. “You're moving in with me.”

 

CHAPTER 2

CLEAN SLATE

When I open my eyes, the first thing I see are sunny yellow walls—at least that's the way they looked to me as a kid. Now they make me feel like I'm trapped inside a stick of butter.

Reality hits me, like it has every morning for the last seven days.

I'm living with Dad.

And this butter stick is my bedroom.

I've spent the night here plenty of times, but this is different. I won't be standing by the window on Sunday afternoon waiting for Mom to pick me up. I'm staying here until at least the end of the school year.

For now, this is home.

I dig through a dresser drawer, searching for an outfit the old Frankie would hate. Frayed white button-down or black tee? Tough call, but I go with the button-down. The loose threads would drive the old Frankie crazy. I pull on a pair of skinny jeans, and my elbow whacks against the dresser.

This room is the size of my walk-in closet at Mom's house, and it's decorated like it belongs to a ten-year-old: a dresser and matching nightstand covered with hand-painted flowers and green vines, a twin bed with ruffled sheets—and let's not forget the yellow walls.

Unfortunately, I have bigger things to worry about today.

In the hall, Cujo, Dad's huge gray-black-and-white Akita, sits next to my door.

“Hey, buddy.” I scratch the dog's big, square head, and he follows me. The apartment has a simple and borderline-claustrophobic layout—two bedrooms and bathrooms at one end of a narrow hallway lined with mismatched frames, and a living room–dining room combo and a galley kitchen at the other end.

In the kitchen, Dad surveys rows of cereal boxes in the pantry. There are at least a dozen different kinds.

“You're not making me a real breakfast?” I ask sarcastically, walking past him on my way to the fridge.

Dad swears under his breath. “Sorry. I'm not used to—”

“It was a joke.” I scan the shelves stocked with Dad's staples: Diet Pepsi (Coke isn't sweet enough), whole milk (for his cereal), white bread and American cheese slices (in case he gets sick of cereal and switches to grilled cheese), and a gallon of 2 percent milk (store brand).

“I bought extra Diet Pepsi and the milk you like,” he offers.

“I drink Diet Coke.” And I stopped drinking 2 percent milk when I was ten, a fact I don't bother mentioning anymore.

My father memorizes dozens of car makes, models, and license plates so he can bust car thieves and the chop shops that sell stolen parts, but he can't remember what kind of milk I drink? Skim. I should make him a list of my food preferences and stop torturing us both.

“I've got cereal.” He shakes a box of Froot Loops.

“No, thanks.” I close the refrigerator empty-handed.

Cujo's ears perk up and he bounds for the front door.

“Did you hear something, partner?” Dad asks.

The dog barks, and a split second later, the doorbell rings.

“It's probably Lex.” I give Cujo a quick scratch behind the ears and start unlocking the deadbolt.

“Frankie!” Dad shouts as if I'm a child about to run out into traffic.

I turn around, searching for a sign of danger. Nothing looks out of place. “What's wrong?”

Dad points at the front door with a fierce look in his eyes. “
Never
open a door without checking to see who is on the other side.”

It's official. My father has crossed over from paranoid to crazy. “That's the reason you yelled at me like I was about to set off a bomb?”

“Depending on who is on the other side, you could've been.”

I gesture at Cujo sitting next to me calmly, with his head cocked to the side. “Cujo isn't growling. He always growls if there's a stranger at the door.” A retired K-9 handler trained Cujo as a protection dog. He's the definition of an intruder's worst nightmare.

“You can't let anything lull you into a false sense of security. Letting your guard down one time is all it takes.”

Does he think he's telling me something I don't know? I stifle a bitter laugh.

“This isn't funny, Frankie.”

No, it's painful and pathetic, and I live with it every day.

Parents are supposed to understand their kids, or at least make an effort. Mine are clueless.

The doorbell rings again.

Crap. Lex is still standing in the hallway.

I make a dramatic show of peering through the eyehole and turn to Dad. “Happy?”

“These are critical life skills. As in, one day they might save your life,” he says as I open the door.

Lex stands on the other side, smoothing a section of her choppy hair between her fingers. It's dyed a lighter shade than her usual honey blond, except for an inch of brown roots where her natural color is growing in. The inch is deliberate, like the smudged charcoal eye liner that looks slept in and makes her blue eyes pop against her coppery-brown skin.

Her eyes remind me of Noah's.

Thinking about him feels like standing in the ocean with my back to the waves. I never know when it's coming or how hard it will hit me.

“I was starting to wonder if you left without me.” Lex breezes past me. “Ready for your first day in the public school system, or, as my mom calls it, ‘the place where every child is left behind'?”

We haven't seen each other since the beginning of the summer, but Lex makes it feel like it's only been days. I spent the last three months trying to leave the old Frankie behind, avoiding Lex and Abel, my closest friends, in the process.

“How's it going, Lex?” Dad asks.

“Pretty good.” She yawns. “Please tell me you have coffee, Frankie. The line at Starbucks was insane.”

“There's a pot in the kitchen,” Dad offers.

“Thanks, Mr. Devereux.” If she keeps acting this cheerful, Dad will think she's high. We've known each other forever, but when Lex developed a gross crush on my dad in seventh grade, it almost resulted in best friend excommunication.

“Don't thank him yet,” I whisper. “His signature blend is burnt Maxwell House.”

“I'd rather go without food for a week than caffeine for a day.” Lex pours herself a cup of liquid coffee grounds.

Dad fishes a Velcro wallet out of his back pocket and lays two twenties on the table next to me. “Swing by the store after school and pick up some Diet Coke and anything else you want.”

I leave the crumpled bills on the table. “I won't have time. Community service starts at three thirty, right after classes let out.” Thanks to King Richard, I already have a probation officer and a community service assignment. He called in a favor at the district attorney's office, and my case was bumped to the top of the pile. “Lex is dropping me off at the rec center and picking me up when I'm done.”

I told Dad all this last night.

“You don't mind?” he asks Lex. “You're already driving Frankie to school in the mornings. I would take her myself—”

“But you can't blow your cover. I totally get it.” She takes a sip of her coffee and cringes, but Dad doesn't notice.

“You can't slip and make a comment like that at school.” Dad gives us his serious cop look. “You both understand that, right?”

I ignore the question.

“Absolutely,” Lex says. “I mean … I absolutely
won't
say anything.”

“Good.” Dad nods and looks over at me. “I would never send you to Monroe if I thought it would be an issue. The high school and the rec center are in the Third District—the nicer part of the Downs. It's nothing like the war zone where I work in the First District.”

It's weird to hear him describe any part of the Downs as
nice
. I guess it seems that way if you compare the run-down projects, abandoned buildings, and streets lined with liquor stores in Dad's district with the neighborhoods near Monroe.

“People in one-D think I'm a car thief. If anyone finds out I'm a cop, I'll have to walk away from my open cases and transfer to a district outside the Downs.”

Most people hear the word
undercover
and automatically think of DEA agents in movies—the ones who have to disappear without telling anyone where they're going and move into crappy apartments so they can infiltrate the mob or the Hells Angels. But that's not the way it works for regular undercover cops like Dad.

Obviously, he doesn't wear a T-shirt that says
I'M A COP
. But he also doesn't have to lie to the whole world about his job—just people who hang out in, or near, his district.

“Frankie? You understand, too, right?” He sounds irritated. That's what I get for ignoring his question the first time.

“I've never told anyone about your job except Lex, Abel, and Noah. Why would I start now? Maybe you should lecture Mom. She still bitches about it to all her friends.”

Dad sighs. “I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm just reminding you to be careful what you say.”

“Consider me reminded.” I glare at him, and Dad turns to Lex.

“Your parents don't mind you driving Frankie to the rec center?”

“They're fine with it.” They probably have no idea. Lex's parents are never around unless they need her to pose for press photos.

“Does your father still have family in the Downs?” Dad asks.

“Nope. The Senator moved everyone out as soon as he could afford it.” Lex refuses to call her father Dad. Instead, she calls him the Senator because she says he cares more about being the first Puerto Rican–American senator in the United States than about being a father.

“I don't blame him,” Dad says in his cop tone. “There's a lot of crime. It's a tough place for honest people to live. Make sure to keep the car doors locked while you're driving.”