Epic Fail (4 page)

Chapter Five

B
y the time Dad got home, Layla was doing her homework and I was helping Kaitlyn with hers at the wooden farm table in our kitchen—which had made a lot more sense in Amherst, where we’d lived in a former nineteenth-century barn, than here in our sixties-style ranch. Dad trudged in from the garage, shoulders hunched, looking pale and worn-out and older than his fifty-one years. My mother was always trying to get him to go for a run—she seemed to think exercise was the cure for what ailed him—but he always responded in more or less the same way, with a politely impassive look that said,
And why exactly would I want to do that?

“How’d your first day go?” I asked him after we’d greeted each other.

“Exhausting. And a little worrisome. Take a look at this.” He dropped his overstuffed briefcase with a thud onto the linoleum floor and reached into the pocket of his cardigan, which had a big hole right near the shoulder. Great. He had stood in front of every class he taught in that sweater. Tthe man never looked in a mirror.

He pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. I opened it: two neat columns of names followed by phone numbers. I handed it back. “What is it?”

“A list of all the students who came up to me today to request—make that
insist
—that I contact their math tutors directly. Today’s the first day of school—why on earth would these students already have tutors? It’s one thing if they start to struggle, but it’s like they don’t even trust me to teach them in the first place.”

“I want a tutor,” Layla said. “It would make doing homework so much easier.”

“Me too,” said Kaitlyn. “If Layla gets one, I get one.”

“No daughter of mine will ever have a tutor,” Dad said.

“What if we’re failing a course?” asked Layla.

His graying eyebrows drew together. “If you fail a single course, young lady, we will pull you out of school and get you a job scrubbing toilets for the rest of your life.”

I knew he was teasing her, but he had a scary-good deadpan and Layla’s mouth dropped open in outrage. “That’s so not fair!”

“Then study hard and get good grades. There’s a laziness to this culture that I will not allow my children to succumb to. An intellectual laziness.” He added thoughtfully, “Maybe it’s all the sunshine—corrodes the brain.”

“I like it here,” Layla said defiantly. “I mean, I don’t like being the new kid, but at least we’re finally in a real city where there’s more to do than watch the grass grow. And guess who we met today? Melinda Anton’s son!”

Dad gazed at her for a moment, the edges of his mouth twitching. “How silly of me to worry that you might succumb to the culture. Thank you for putting my mind at ease on that score.” He picked up his briefcase and headed toward his study. “Elise, your mother said she’d be late for dinner. What do you think we should do?”

“We kind of ate already,” I said. “Want a slice of pizza?” Chase had insisted we take the extra, since his own family was—as he put it—allergic to leftovers.

“Do you mind bringing it to my office? I have a lot of work to get through tonight.” He left the room, heading toward what my mother referred to—with more hope than sanity—as “the maid’s room.” It had its own bathroom and hallway and was quieter than any other part of the crowded house, and my dad had instantly nabbed it for his own use when we first moved in two weeks earlier.

I heated up a slice of pizza and brought it to his office, where he sat at his desk, absently rubbing his temples as he worked on his lesson plans. On my way upstairs, I heard Layla’s voice coming from the family room and suspected she was vidchatting.

Up until recently, my sisters and I all had to share one computer, but Juliana and I had successfully lobbied to get our own laptops by quoting the Coral Tree Prep handbook, which said that most high school assignments were posted online. Layla tried to get in on the action, but my parents said she could wait one more year, so she was still sharing the household PC with Kaitlyn.

We had a no-chatting-until-homework-was-done rule, so I headed in to tell her to keep it down before someone less sympathetic (i.e., Kaitlyn) told on her.

The family room was crammed full with two large sofas, a half dozen side and coffee tables, and several rugs with clashing patterns that overlapped, creating long bumps perfect for tripping us up. We had taken all our furniture with us, and our Amherst house had been twice the size of this one. I stumbled over a rug bump on my way into the room, and Layla looked up, closing the image so I couldn’t see what she was doing.

“You know you can’t vidchat now,” I said. “Not until you’ve finished your homework.”

“I’ll get it done. Just give me a minute.”

“Layla—”

“Please, Elise.” She lowered her voice. “All the girls I know are talking online now. Their parents let them do it whenever they want.” She gripped the edge of the computer table. “I have to fit in here. I
have
to. Or I’ll die.”

“No one dies from not fitting in, Layla. Trust me.”

“It’s easy for you. You have Juliana. You guys are like the three musketeers.” I wasn’t sure about the math on that one. “You do everything together and I’m all alone. Kaitlyn’s too young—she’s useless. And ninth grade is like . . . like some futuristic prison state where everyone’s fighting to survive. And if I stand out like some kind of dork, I’m doomed.”

She did love her melodrama, my sister. “Don’t even try to keep up here,” I said. “We don’t have the same kind of money, and Mom and Dad are stricter than most of the other parents. You have to find friends who’ll accept you the way you are.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she said. “Really. These girls seem nice. Just let me talk to them for a few more minutes, and then I
promise
I’ll do my homework.”

“You better.” I moved toward the doorway—carefully sidestepping the rug bump this time—and then turned and said, “Look, Layla, vidchatting is no big deal. But don’t smoke to fit in. Or do anything else that you know is wrong. That’s just stupid.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes big and brown and a lot like Juliana’s. “I won’t.”

She was either sincere or a very good liar.

Yeah, I know which one, too.

Later that evening, alone in our room doing homework, I told Juliana what Layla had said. “I know she’s always cared too much about fitting in and being popular, but at least back home that just meant being a little cliquish. Here . . .” I ran my finger along the cold metal bed frame: it had been the upper half of a bunk bed in our old house that our parents had separated into twins when we moved because they were worried about earthquakes. “I don’t even know what trying to fit in here might involve.”

“Do you think we should talk to Mom about her?”

“Nah. Mom has enough going on. And you know how she’d react: we’d all end up living in a prison state. Let’s just keep an eye on Layla ourselves.”

As if on cue, the door burst open without a knock. “I’m back!” Mom sang out.

Juliana asked her how her day had been.

She adjusted her glasses so they went from tilting too much in one direction to tilting too much the other way. “I have my work cut out for me, that’s for sure. I don’t think anyone has been enforcing a single rule at that school. I had to confiscate seventeen cell phones today. Seventeen! And then of course the parents were up in arms, calling to complain that they couldn’t get in touch with their kids.” She shook her head. “You girls have no idea how lucky you are to have parents with real values, who care about raising principled children.”

Juliana and I were both silent. We had parents who liked to impose embarrassing restrictions on us. But . . . they cared. There was no denying that.

“So,” Mom said, leaning against the doorway, casually retying the bow on her shirt. “That seemed like a nice group of kids you were hanging out with today. They were all so—” She considered her choices before settling on “—interesting.” She liked the adjective so much that she immediately used it again. “I’m glad you found such an interesting group of friends so quickly.”

“We just ate lunch with them,” I said uncomfortably. “That’s all.”

“That Derek Edwards seems like an especially interesting [
third time
] young man,” she said nonchalantly. “Does he talk much about his parents?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t think he likes to.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because people get weird about it.”
Like you right now,
I thought.

“Huh,” she said. “Well, I hope he realizes that as far as the school administration goes, he’s just another student to us.”

I shot Juliana a look. She quickly changed the subject. “There’s leftover pizza if you’re hungry, Mom.”

“Oh, did you order in? Try not to make a habit of that.” We didn’t correct the misunderstanding. Her mind was on a different subject anyway. “There are so many famous people at this school. Did you girls know that James Bryan’s kids also go to Coral Tree? And George McGill’s and Beatrice Reilly’s and—” Before she could finish her recitation of all the celebrities—a couple of whom I’d never even heard of—whose kids were, supposedly, no different from the other students as far as she was concerned, Kaitlyn came rushing in and hurled herself at Mom, wailing, “Layla pushed me!”

“I didn’t push her!” yelled Layla, from right behind. “She crossed over onto my side of the room—after I had told her she couldn’t—so I just gently made her move away! She’s such a baby!”

“IT! WASN’T! GENTLE!” Kaitlyn screamed, turning and standing on her tiptoes so she could shout it right in Layla’s face.

My mother sank against the doorjamb. “Do you have any idea how stressful it is to have a hard day at work and then come home to
this
 . . . ?”

“It’s not my fault,” Kaitlyn said, and burst into tears. “She’s so mean to me!”

“Could you guys continue this somewhere else?” I asked, with a meaningful nudge at my history binder. Kaitlyn and Layla were always going at it like this, and now that they had to share a room—which they hadn’t at our old house—the battles were constant. I was sick of the noise.

Juliana put aside her books and got up from her bed. “I’ll take care of it, Mom,” she said. “You go eat.” My mother thanked her and happily disappeared. Jules turned to Kaitlyn. “If you promise not to bother Elise, you can hang out in our room for a little while. Would you like that?”

Kaitlyn happily flung herself on Juliana’s bed and Layla shrugged. “Good riddance,” she said and left.

“Can I sleep in here, too?” Kaitlyn asked, snuggling into a pillow.

“No,” I said, but Juliana patted her on the head and said, “We’ll see.”

A little while later I left to grab a snack and ran into my dad who was exiting the kitchen.

“Just keeping your mother company while she had some dinner,” he explained. “She’s been telling me stories about the parents at Coral Tree. An entitled group, to say the least—more money than sense, as the saying goes.” He hooked his arm in mine. “This is a strange new world we’ve found ourselves in, my friend.”

“No kidding.”

“Your mother also told me that you and Juliana are already connected to a very ‘in’ group of kids. I’m glad you’re making friends, Lee-Lee, but don’t get too caught up in the social whirl—remember you’re working toward a scholarship, something these other kids probably don’t have to worry about.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, and grinned at him. “My brain has yet to be corroded by the SoCal sunshine.”

“Yet? Let’s aim for never, shall we?”

I nodded. “I’m basically done with homework for the night. Want to do the crossword puzzle with me?” We liked to do the
New York Times
crossword puzzle together when we had time.

His face lit up. “Absolutely.”

A few minutes later we were settled in his office. As I studied the clues, I said, “Thanks for waiting. I know you could do it much faster without me.”

“Not true.”

I was sitting on the arm of his big office chair. I rested my cheek against his thinning hair. “Dad, it’s obvious you have it all done in your head before I even say a word. You give me hints so I
feel
like I’m getting the answers—but it’s all you.”

He shrugged and smoothed out the paper—the only man left in America who didn’t read the news online. “One day, Elise, you’re going to outstrip me at everything, even crossword puzzles. And I won’t mind one bit.”

We had visitors for dinner Thursday night: my mother’s brother and his family.

Uncle Mike had a Hollywood-based catering company. Aunt Amy managed the business end. Their daughter, Diana, was three months younger than me.

When we lived in Massachusetts, we saw them only about once a year, but I always liked Diana, who was smart and unpretentious with a dark and self-deprecating sense of humor. We stayed in touch online, but one of the few consolations for having to move my junior year of high school was getting to see her more often.

Within a few minutes of their arrival on Thursday, Mom managed to let drop the fact that Juliana and I had become friends with Melinda Anton and Kyle Edwards’s son.

“Not
friends
,” I said. “We barely know him.”

“You’ve eaten lunch with him almost every day this week.”

So she’d been spying on us. Great. “I eat lunch with Jules who eats with Chase Baldwin—”.

“He’s Fox Baldwin’s son. The music producer,” my mother supplied helpfully. “I Googled him, just for fun, and you wouldn’t believe the photos and news stories that popped up. He’s very well known.”

“And Chase and Derek are always together,” I continued, trying to ignore my mother’s color commentary. “But that doesn’t mean Derek’s eating with
us
—I don’t think he’s said two words to me all week.”

“If he’s sitting across the table from you, he’s eating with you,” Mom said firmly.

Diana laughed. “She’s got a point, Elise. Plus there’s the transitive property: if A eats with B and B eats with C, then A is eating with C.”

“I met Kyle Edwards once,” said Uncle Mike, scratching at the ever-widening bald spot on his head as if he could uncover the memory below it. “He was at a dinner party I catered.”