100 Days of Cake (30 page)

“It doesn't matter. What the dude did was wrong.”

“But I'm pretty sure I went over there because I
did
want to sleep with him, just not like that.”

“Whatever, Mollybean. You're allowed to change your mind—kisses aren't freaking sex contracts. You're always allowed to say no at any point. And he's the adult—he's your shrink, for God's sake.”

“I know.” As I say it, I realize it's true. But here's the thing: everyone we know besides me is counting the days until they can run away to college or to some real-world job on their own, all of them demanding to be treated like grown-ups. So how can we hide under the label of “still a child” when it's convenient?

“At the very least, this guy shouldn't be practicing. You need to report him to the medical board or somewhere.” She takes out her cell phone and starts looking up how to get your shrink arrested or something. “Let's see where we go.”

“Don't.” I take the phone from her and set it on the bed.

I understand why she's saying what she's saying and
how I must sound, but as scary as he was that night, I still miss Dr. Brooks. That circular panic starts in my head every time I think about not going back for our appointments. And so much of our time was great. Does one stupid night when he was sauced negate all of that?

“Molly.”

“No, E. Please don't make me the poster child for shrink sexual harassment or whatever your latest cause is, okay?”

“You can't just let him get away with this.”

“I'm not some endangered rhino or whatever. You don't need to save me.”

“But—”

“Seriously, just promise me you won't tell anyone until I figure it out.”

“Molly—”

“I call BFF law.”

Shaking her head, she mumbles, “Fine, I won't say anything yet.”

“Thank you.” I nod. “So tell me more about Mark.”

W
hen I get on my bike, I don't have a destination in mind. Maybe it's a muscle-memory thing that brings me to FishTopia.

Only, it's not FishTopia anymore. There's brown paper taped up on the windows, so you can't see inside, and a plastic tarp over the block letters of the old sign reads,
COMING SOON: MRS. K'S COUNTRY DINER!

The exclamation point seems like overkill.

My keys still work, so I let myself in.

The walls are still the blue-green color that Alex said looked like my eyes, but all the tanks and fish are gone, returned to some fish factory far, far away. (Or maybe really close. I don't have any idea.) Mrs. K! and her country crew haven't really done much else, and the place is essentially empty. Maybe it's that I'm not used to seeing it like
this, but the space looks much smaller, somehow less important. And the laminate surface of the counter where Alex and I used to sit is way more chipped than I ever noticed.

“Hello. May I help you?” asks a man, maybe sixty-five, with a trim white beard and kind eyes.

“Oh, I, uh, used to work here, and I was . . .” What? Coming by to look for ghosts; coming by to re-create something long gone. “Um, just coming by to drop off my keys.”

“Oh, yes. You must be Molly!” The man is all lit up with excitement. “Charlie Harrison spoke very highly of you! Said that you were quite the go-getter and we should snap you up before you got another job.”

“That was really nice of him.”

“You haven't gotten one, then?” he asks. “Another job?” Seriously, Charlie, what did you say to this dude—that I was a pro when it comes to watching TV and not cleaning? That I spearheaded an illegal rooftop fund-raiser and managed to raise enough money to cover the cost of one season of the
Golden Girls
on Blu-ray? “Let me go grab my wife—Mrs. K. She's handling the hiring.”

“Oh, that's okay. I'm not really looking for anything right now. But I know the other girl who worked here—JoJo Banks—was really hoping you might be hiring waiters. She's really great too.”

“Oh yes, we talked with her, but she turned us down.”

“Really?”
Really?
“I guess she must have found something else.”

“What about the other high school student Charlie mentioned? Alex, I think it was. Do you think he might be interested?”

“I'm sorry. We really haven't been in touch.”

“Well, if you do see him, just let him know we'd love to talk to him.”

I'm through wasting my time with this.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “And good luck with the new place.”

“Thanks.” He smiles. “You'll definitely have to come for the grand opening!”

Promising to try, I set my keys on the counter. It's sad and it's not. Alex and our time together is what I miss, not the building that housed us. How I didn't realize that before is one of life's great mysteries.

Unlocking my bike, I give the building one more once-over, amazed that I never noticed the cracks in the front window or how uneven the concrete of the sidewalk is.

Maybe Alex was right. My need for everything to stay exactly the same was what screwed things up. If things never change, they eventually decay.

I'd love to call him. I could even use the job offer as an excuse—tell him that I know he's avoiding me but people are looking for him.

But I don't.

B
ased on where the light coming through the upgraded windows is hitting the upgraded hardwood floors, it's got to be after noon when I wake up. I actually feel pretty good. One perk about depression, you get your rest.

On the floor outside my bedroom door, Mom has laid out slices of the cakes from the last few days, like a dessert sampler from a high-end restaurant. The whole thing is so cute and bizarre; I start laughing, which feels really good. Mom is such an adorable kook sometimes.

Hot water from the upgraded rain showerhead is amazing, and by the time I'm clean and dressed, I'm famished. I gobble up the old cake to tide me over on my way downstairs.

It's Mom's day off from the salon, and she's in the kitchen sifting flour into a large mixing bowl. She really has
gotten pretty good. There's hardly any mess, and she has this authority over the appliances—she's totally made them her bitches. Leave it to Mom to achieve anything she sets her mind to, even something totally random like baking a hundred different cakes.

Seeing me, this giant grin splits her whole face, and she looks positively radiant. I kind of expect she might break into “Be Our Guest” or something. Then she freezes and doesn't say anything, as if I'm some small woodland creature she's stumbled upon in the forest and doesn't want to scare away before she can snap an Instagram pic.

“Can I help?” I ask.

“You want to?” Mom asks, with the type of enthusiasm that would suggest I've been elected president of the United State or am going on a date with Prince Harry.

“Yeah. Gotta learn to cook for myself at some point, right?”

“Of course.” She hands me a bowl and a wooden spoon and says I can combine the dry ingredients. “You know, one of the reasons I started this was that I thought it was something that you and me and V could do together.”

“Really?” Yeah, nope, had no idea about that.

“When you were little, you girls would always get out Gram's bowls and pans and help her bake. But then you'd come home, and we didn't have half the equipment, and I was always working so much that we never really did any
of that stuff. I figured maybe it wasn't too late to try it.”

It sort of makes sense that she wanted us to spend time together, but maybe she could have just asked us to go on a walk or something.

“So what's on the menu today?” I ask, and she goes through all the ingredients and explains that she's trying to make sure that everything is organic for Elle.

I tell her that Elle is dating the environmental keyboard player.

“These two might be legit made for each other,” I say. “It's crazy.”

“Oh, good for her.” Mom gets a little misty. “See, there really is someone out there for everyone if you just open your eyes.”

I'm about to ask if that means she and Toupee Thom are back on after the fund-raiser, but V comes in from the garage.

“Mom, have you seen my—” She stops when she gets to the kitchen and sees me. Unabashed hatred floods her face. “What are YOU doing here?”

“I
do
live here.”

“Yeah, you do, and for four freaking days Mom's been asking me whether or not we need to haul you to some
Girl, Interrupted
hospital, and now, just like that, poof, you're perfectly fine? You waltz down the stairs at your leisure and decide to play baker's helper, and you're suddenly the golden child again?”

As I'm turning to defend myself, my sister bats the bowl of dry ingredients out of my hands to the upgraded floors, sending up this giant cartoon cloud of flour and baking soda that whitens her dark eyebrows and the front of her hair.

“Veronica Caitlyn Byrne!” Mom shouts like V is six again.

“What's your damage?” I ask.

“My
damage
is that we all have to kowtow to you and your stupid moods, because Dad killed himself and Mom is so terrified you're gonna do the same that she lets you get away with anything!”

“Dad died in a car accident . . . ,” I begin, but a bunch of things are starting to come together in a way that makes more sense than all the stories I've always been told.

“Yep, he did!” V is screaming, flour flecks falling off her face, which would be hysterically funny if everything she was saying wasn't so horrible and world-altering. “He hit a tree at ninety miles an hour because he was aiming for it. It was the middle of the day; it wasn't even raining out.”

“Wha—”

“Guess the kicker!” V doesn't wait for an answer. “Dad was on his way to get YOUR birthday cake! So now Mom is making seven THOUSAND cakes because she's convinced the reason you're such a sad sack of seventeen-year-old is that you never got a cake for your third birthday or some ridiculous psychobabble. Because everything in the world is always about you. And it has ALWAYS been about you.”

“Veronica!” Mom again.

“No, I'm sick of this shit,” V yells. “It's time somebody finally said something.”

V spins on a wedge heel and clomps out of the kitchen, flour hitting the floor in her wake.

“Come back here—” Mom gives up on the scream about halfway through. V's already gone.

When I was a kid, I found this cool book at Gram's about the solar system. I freaking loved the thing. Even before I could read, I'd study the glossy pictures of each planet. And in second-grade science class, I used the book as the model for this poster I made with construction-paper planets. (My teacher especially dug that I'd used aluminum foil to give the moons a shine.) But then one day some NASA scientist or whoever got information back from a satellite and decided Pluto wasn't a planet anymore, that my book and poster, and every poster made by every second grader since forever, was wrong.

My dad is Pluto.

Everything I've always thought about him is wrong.

“Is that true?” I turn to Mom. “About Dad?”

Mom opens her mouth, then closes it.

“Is it?”

Pressing her lips together into a thin line, she nods.

All this wasted time.

Time imagining how much better our lives would have
been with Dad. Time trying to explain how I could miss someone so much who I hardly knew. And all the while he had actively
chosen
not to be here with us.

All that time talking over crap with Dr. B. All that time meeting with the guidance counselor at school. And those humiliating appointments where Dr. Calvin wrote some scripts and offered me finger puppets. All that time worrying about why I am the way I am and how to fix me. All that time, and Mom could have simply told me the truth. It's no different from my mouse-poop frizz. I got Dad's crappy genes just like I got his crappy hair.