The Reece Malcolm List (3 page)

“No, I thought you’d sleep outside,” she says. “Yes, your room. I know it’s a little dull, and I’m not entirely sure I’m sold on the blue—”

“The blue’s nice,” I say. “Thank you, really, it’s like a perfect room.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she says. “But I’m glad you approve. Bathroom’s through that door. I envy you for having your own.”

“Is, um, your boyfriend, is he mad about this?” It’s not any of my business, not exactly, but I should know what I’m getting into.

“I’m not entirely sure my boyfriend’s capable of being mad.” She sets my backpack on the bed. “But, no, God, don’t worry about him.”

I nod even though of course I can’t just shut off my worry. Tracie had my whole life to get used to the idea of me—and never had—while this guy only had a couple of days.

“Why don’t you unpack or take a nap or something? You must be exhausted. I’m going to make some calls to figure out the school situation.”

I nod, and she walks out of the room. It’s way too weird to even think about unpacking my things into this room that doesn’t feel like mine no matter what Reece Malcolm says. Back home my room was only about half the size of this one, but I taped up theatre posters and programs and photos all over, and I framed my mirror with pictures from plays and musicals I was in. It’s the kind of stuff I wish I had with me to trick myself into feeling like this room is mine. In the rush and weirdness of the last few days I haven’t thought about it until now, and I seriously can’t believe I left all of it behind.

I don’t feel like thinking of it any more, so instead I curl up on the bed and do my best to doze off. Normally even a little bit of stress keeps me up, but it’s like all at once the last three months catch up with me. One minute I’m lying down, and the next Reece Malcolm is calling me.

“Sorry.” I try to feel more human and less like a nap. They’re supposed to rest and invigorate you, but it never goes like that for me. “Has it been, like, hours?”

“It has been, like, hours,” she says. I don’t miss her voice really landing on that
like
, just a little bit of mockery to make me notice she notices I talk like an idiot. “Brad’s home and he wants to make dinner. I want to go out. What do you think?”

I’m not sure whose side is safer to be on. “Either’s okay with me.”

“You’re no help. Come on downstairs.”

I get up, slip my shoes back on, and follow her to the living room where this guy with shaggy hair, hipstery black glasses, and a scruffy face like he hasn’t shaved in days is waiting at the foot of the stairs. My brain can’t handle the fact that this guy who doesn’t look much older than me and is dressed in a faded concert T-shirt and jeans more worn than my mother’s can be the person in question. I mean, Reece Malcolm has bestsellers and probably a ton of money and a freaking Pulitzer.

Does not compute.

“Hello, Devan,” he says, waving to me. It’s a geeky move, but his posh British accent makes up for that. (Well, almost.) “Welcome, it’s wonderful to meet you.”

“Take it easy there.” Reece Malcolm pushes him back from the staircase. “She just woke up, and you don’t need to be the welcome wagon.”

He shakes my hand really enthusiastically, despite her warning. Up close he still looks young, but at least closer to my mother’s age than mine. Cute, too, not that I’m judging my mother’s boyfriend’s attractiveness on any level, just that I guess after closer examination he seems acceptable enough for her.

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

“Brad Harper,” he says. “I apologize for any welcome wagoning.”

“Shut up,” my mother says, but she laughs. She’s much less terrifying when she laughs. “Let’s go out for dinner. I’ve had a long day, and Devan an even longer one—”

“Which means it does make more sense to stay in.” Brad glances at me. “We’ve literally had this argument every night since I moved in.”

“I usually let him win,” my mother says. “But only because he’s an amazing cook.”

I can feel that they’re not really talking to me, so I just kind of stand there hoping I can go back upstairs soon. This whole day has been some kind of exercise in awkwardness.

“Sit down,” my mother tells me. Commands, really. “We’ll stay in. Sadly, I think Brad has a point.”

I walk past them and gingerly sit on the sofa. It’s surprisingly comfortable considering how angular it is. One of the moving boxes is close enough to look into, and so chockfull of CDs I have to resist the urge to dig through.

“Devan, what’s your favorite meal?” Brad asks. “I’ll do my best to accommodate.”

No one has ever asked me that before. I like Brad already. “Whatever’s fine.”

“You’ll have to tell him something,” my mother says. “He’s relentless.”

“Um, I guess pasta’s good.” It feels like a safe choice. “If that’s okay.”

“Pasta’s always fine,” says my mother, as Brad says, “I can definitely accommodate pasta.” He leaves the room, and my mother sits down across from me in the big leather chair.

“See?” She folds her legs under her. “Try to imagine Brad angry about anything.”

“Well, right,” I say, because she has a point. Though I can imagine
her
angry pretty easily, and just because Brad is the welcome wagon doesn’t mean she’s okay with any of this.

“So.” She stretches her arms above her head. “After some research, it turns out the school down the street has a great performing arts program, and it’s not too late to have you audition for a couple open slots in the advanced choirs, since I guess some kids have moved away and left them. Hardly shocking in L.A. You’d have to audition first thing next week, though.”

“Oh my God, seriously?”

“Yeah, Monday, nine o’clock sharp.”

“No, I meant . . . performing arts program. For serious? In a high school?”

“For serious.”
The ease with which she can turn a phrase into an insult is strangely impressive. Dad could be distant but I never felt like he was
trying
to make me feel like crap. “And you probably don’t care, but their academic standards are fairly high, too.”

“I do care,” I say, even though I don’t.

She leans forward to pick up a laptop from the floor, and moves over to sit next to me. “Here’s their website. I should probably offer to assist Brad in the kitchen, so, you know, do whatever else you need to, email, Facebook, I have no idea what else relevant people do online.”

“Thanks,” I say, to the MacBook resting on my legs as well as to the insinuation that I’m relevant.

New City School actually looks, as Reece Malcolm might say, a-
ma
-zing. It’s a private school with tons of acting and choir classes, and the alumni page features bright shiny headshots of people apparently actually on Broadway and television and in national tours of musicals. In case she asks, I look at the academics page and memorize class size (no more than twenty), destination colleges of recent graduates (all the best performing arts programs plus all the Ivy League ones, too), and historical information (founded in 1979). Finally I click on the tuition link. My heart figuratively sinks and my mouth literally falls open.

Just because I went all geektastic about choir and fall musicals doesn’t mean I want her to do . . . well, this. If she’s already annoyed about the total intrusion I must be on her life, I can’t imagine what she’s thinking now.

Okay, technically,
right
now
music is blasting from the kitchen, and she and Brad are laughing loudly. So I tell myself to relax for a second and at least drop an email to Justine to fill her in.

My mother’s email is still logged in when I go to pull up mine, and I tell myself
a little
really sternly to log out right away. But I don’t. Of course I click on the most recent exchange between her and Brad, though I find nothing bitching about or even mentioning me, just an argument about putting a TV in the living room (Brad is pro, my mother is con). The next email is from her agent, Vaughn Sinclair, and he’s sending a snarky fake congratulations on
letting the English invade
. It’s kind of weird to see, because even though it wasn’t helpful in learning about Reece Malcolm, I would read Vaughn’s agency’s blog all the time, hoping eventually he’d drop some little tidbits.

Hopefully that makes me smart and enterprising vs. creepy and stalkery.

The email after that is dated a couple days before we even heard from Dad and Tracie’s lawyer and then my mother’s with the news, so of course it’ll have nothing to do with me. I read it anyway. Spying is kind of hard to stop once you start. It’s from Kate Logan, who I know is Vaughn’s wife—he blogs about her
a lot
—as well as a Tony and Emmy Award winner. I guess she’s one person in Hollywood I wouldn’t call a sell-out. Kate’s just checking that my mother hasn’t killed Brad in their first few days of living together.

Clearly, my instincts about my mother’s nature are to be trusted.

Finally I log in to my own account, but I can’t make myself email Justine. Putting this day into actual words doesn’t seem possible. Plus, I’m not sure I’ve had one truly honest conversation with her since Dad died or she went to choir camp at the beginning of the summer. So instead of trying, I log myself off and set the computer on the coffee table. I feel only a little guilty for snooping in my mother’s email; isn’t it fair to know what I’m getting into?

“Hey.” My mother walks into the room, hands on her hips. I have this sudden horrible fear she knows exactly what I’ve been doing. “Come on, Brad needs help. Can you handle chopping?”

“Sure,” I say, even though knives kind of freak me out, being so shiny and sharp and pointy and all. (Except for the times I’ve brandished them while singing selections from
Sweeney Todd
.) Being helpful can only ingratiate me to them, though. Right?

The kitchen is large and airy with stainless steel appliances and a nearly black wood table. How am I supposed to lead a normal life when every inch of this place is straight from a magazine? Although, to be fair, my chances of leading a normal life are already way gone.

“Devan, could you grate this for me?” Brad holds out a wedge of Parmesan and a cheese grater. I can handle that. It’s nice being in here anyway, with garlic sizzling on the stove, music playing, and Brad hustling between the counter and the table and the stove like someone on a cooking show. My mother is tossing greens in a bowl and asking Brad for clarifications every minute or so (“What now?” “How much?” “I do
what
with the goat cheese?”), which leads me to believe her cooking skills aren’t far ahead of mine.

We sit at the table to eat, which is something totally not normal for Dad and Tracie, and not at Justine’s house, either, thanks to her parents’ weird hours as doctors. So if this whole situation isn’t scary enough, now I have to worry about table manners and conversation and all of that.

“So, Devan, Reece tells me you’re an actor,” Brad says once he makes sure I get the first servings of the salad, pasta, and steamed green beans. I can’t believe this amazing meal is for me. “Have you been in any shows lately?”

“Last spring I was in
Little Shop of Horrors
,” I say. “But I couldn’t do anything over the summer because we were living in this little town without any local theatre, and no bus or anything to get into the city at all.”

“How dreadful,” he says, as my mother says, “That sounds like hell.”

“Well,” I say, “yeah. It was.”

“This will be a nice change for you, then,” Brad says, then sort of yelps as my mother very obviously kicks him under the table. “I apologize; given the circumstances of your father’s death, I can’t imagine why I’d say such a—”

“It’s okay, I say dumb things all the time. I mean—not that it was dumb, just—”

My mother laughs really hard at that, which makes me feel bad for Brad, though he laughs, too. Eventually. And I realize I’m smiling a little.

“I should tell you,” my mother says, “this whole using the kitchen table thing is entirely Brad’s idea. He feels the need to live like adults, which is something I’m only occasionally on board with. So we’ll see how long it lasts.”

I nod, using my fork to wind a wide ribbon of pasta around a perfectly crisp piece of chicken. “By the way, this is like the best thing I’ve eaten in forever.”

“Thank you,” Brad says.

“Yeah, he’s fucking amazing,” my mother says in a tone I can tell is holding back a mushy one. Despite the f-bomb just dropped. “Did you check out the website for New City, Devan?”

“Yeah, um, it looks great and all, but . . .”

She reaches across the table to pour more wine into her glass. “But?”

“Just, the tuition? It’s kind of crazy. And you totally don’t have to do that, and—”

“Don’t,” she says. “If you like it, that’s what matters.”

“No, but—”

“But what?” she asks, which is a dumb thing to interrupt with.
Maybe I was just about to tell you
. “This is the type of school you need to attend. Discussion closed.”

I don’t don’t don’t
need
to. But now I feel like maybe I’m doing something wrong, and I’ll blow it. My place here isn’t exactly safe. “Okay. Sorry, I just—”

“Oh, God,” she says. “Not the apologizing again.”

I’m pretty good at acting, which is the only reason I manage not to cry. I get through dinner and help load the dishwasher even though Reece Malcolm and Brad say I don’t have to, and then it feels like it’s hopefully late enough I can politely excuse myself upstairs. From their reactions it seems I’m right about that much.

The room’s so perfect I feel weird messing it up with my stuff. So even though I’m not really ready to accept this is where I live now, I unpack my suitcase into the closet and the chest of drawers, and then stow the suitcase under the bed.

It doesn’t take very long, unfortunately, which just gives my brain more time to think about everything going on. And that’s the last thing I want it to do, because I hate the stuff it’s dwelling on. I hate how sure I am that my mother thinks of me as an imposition, that she hasn’t been waiting for me to arrive for sixteen years, that she hasn’t said anything about that at all, and that she seemingly has no excuse for just pretending I didn’t exist this whole time.