The Start of Me and You (5 page)

“Yes,” Tessa said in a whiny voice. “I’m pretending for a second.”

She looked around at each of us.

“Ugh! This sucks,” she cried, slapping her palms against the table. “You’re all here together, and I’m learning definite integrals.”

“We definitely don’t know what that means,” Kayleigh said, and Morgan laughed.

Tessa gave Morgan a dark look. “Go ahead—laugh it up. I eat lunch alone.”

“Not
alone
.” Morgan patted her arm. “You’ll find people to sit with! It’ll be good for you. You’ll make more friends!”

Tessa made a face. “I don’t need more friends.”

I do
, I thought, almost laughing bitterly. I wasn’t unfriendly with anyone, but I’d dropped off the social sphere. Kayleigh knew girls from volleyball and chorus, while Morgan had friends from church, Empower, and student council. Tessa talked to a strange array of people in the halls: a guy she met in woodworking class who looked like a tree himself—huge and lumbering—some girl with a septum piercing, and the kid who worked as the school mascot.

“All right,” Tessa said, glancing up at the clock. “Don’t talk about anything good.”

Before she could leave, I plunked my news down. “I think I’m joining QuizBowl.”

Morgan retracted her head a little, surprised, but a grin spread across Tessa’s face.

“I mean, I’m at least going to try it,” I said. “Maybe it won’t be fun or maybe I’ll suck at it, but … yeah.”

“Look at you, with your beginner’s mind,” Tessa said, holding her hand up as she stood to go. “Do it. C’mon.”

I gave her a high five, feeling a little sheepish.

“Our little nerd,” Kayleigh said, pretending to dab at her eye. “All grown up and competing against other nerds.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Sure, QuizBowl wasn’t a
cool
activity to join and, yeah, the idea of answering difficult questions in front of an audience terrified me. But it wasn’t anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare—harrowing and visceral. No, this fear made me feel fizzy. Hopeful.

In fact, this fear felt like waking up to discover I am still here.

It was just my dad and me for dinner that night, since Cameron had dance class. We talked about my first week of school, and I almost told him about QuizBowl. But I wanted
to be sure it would happen before I shared the good news. Instead, when he asked if I had any fun weekend plans, I said, “Yeah, actually. I’m going to a big back-to-school party tomorrow.”

“Look at you,” he said, putting his fork down. “Out in the world, amongst the people. Proud of you, kid.”

“Ha,” I said. “Thanks. When I told mom, she said: ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She’s trying to make me check in with her when I get to the party
and
when I leave. And I have to be home by ten thirty.”

“Oh, Paiger.” He smiled as he shook his head. “Give your mom a break. It shook her … it shook
us
to—”

“I know,” I said. And I did know. It shook them that Aaron—a kid my age—could be gone, like that. “But she’s driving me insane.”

The good-natured smile didn’t budge. “Eh, so your mom’s a little tightly wound, big deal. It’s what keeps her curls in place.”

I cracked a smile in spite of myself. That same humor kept him employed as the Life & Arts columnist for our city paper. He cracked jokes about political predicaments, pop culture, and everyday life. Somehow, though, he always managed to throw in a poignant thought.

As I polished off my last bites of coconut curry chili, my dad stayed seated across from me. He was a fast eater, given to cleaning dishes before I even put my fork down.
But he remained, as if waiting for a signal I had yet to give him.

“Listen, kid,” he said finally, lacing his fingers in front of him. His voice was uncharacteristically serious, a tone I hadn’t heard since he and my mom announced the divorce.

“What?” I blurted out, succumbing to a fear that refused to fade—that terrible news might be just moments away. “What is it?”

“Everything’s fine. Totally fine. I was just wondering, if …” He trailed off, stricken. “I was wondering if it would bother you if I started dating again.”

“Oh.”
That
I wasn’t expecting. “No. Of course it wouldn’t.”

His shoulders dropped in relief. “Okay. Great. Good.”

“I kind of figured you had been before now,” I said. My dad lived alone except for every once in a while when Cameron and I stayed over. He was still good-looking for his age and had a successful career. It would have made sense if he dated without me knowing.

“Well, I have,” he admitted. “Very casually. Sporadically. You know.”

I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. Gross. No. I nearly shuddered.

“Was that all?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah. I guess that’s all.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he said, but his eyes were elsewhere, hovering on a thought unspoken.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not okay. When my dad dropped me off after dinner, I turned back. I tried to make out his face in the glare of the headlights, and I waved in a way that I hoped would look cheerful.

For the first time in years, it felt strange to be going home to a place where we all used to belong.

Chapter Four

On Saturday night, I smoothed my hair one last time and glanced at my phone. An hour until Tessa would pick me up. An hour and a half until we’d be at Maggie Brennan’s party—my first party in over a year.

My room was already tidy, but I reshelved a few DVDs I had sitting on my nightstand. I put them back into their alphabetical places on my bookcase, where a stuffed animal that Aaron won for me sat on the middle shelf, watching me. The cat, with its beady, plastic gaze and stitched-on smile, lived next to a framed photo of me and Aaron.

Behind both, there was a collage I’d made from magazine clippings in eighth grade. In the center, I’d glued a photo from Morgan’s thirteenth birthday celebration:
Kayleigh making a kissy face, Morgan pink-cheeked and wearing a plastic tiara, Tessa with a closed-lip but real smile, and me—squinty-eyed and mid-laugh. It was only three years ago, but I looked so
young
, with that carefree smile. Like I had no idea how vicious the world could be.

I’d surrounded us with glossy magazine clippings—a purple minidress, a bouquet of peonies, the ocean’s shoreline, a line of bright-red and pink nail polishes, a three-tiered cake, a pair of ornate earrings, and towering satin heels. I’d also added cutout words—
fun in the sun!
,
GIRLS
,
Love ya!

Why had I picked these things? I’d never wear a dress that tight, and I’d always been a pastel nail polish kind of girl. I owned a closet full of ballet flats and only three pairs of heels. The cake was beautiful but in an aesthetic way—not in an appetizing way. And the ocean? No longer something I wanted near me. This wasn’t what I loved, who I was.

So I pulled the collage from the shelf and gently pried the center photo off. At my desk, I glued it onto the center of a new piece of paper: my friends, still the center of my world. The rest? White space. I thumbed through a stack of old magazines, pausing to snip a picture of a TV and another of a stack of books. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t included those things in the first place. Had I been embarrassed of them?

“Paige!” my mom called, piercing the quiet. I glanced at my phone: still twenty minutes until Tessa would be here. “Can you come down here, please?”

I frowned, figuring this would be a lecture about my immovable curfew and the importance of making safe choices when out with friends. Downstairs, I found my mom sitting at the kitchen table with nothing in front of her but a glass of red wine. As the features editor of
Mommyhood
magazine, my mother was rarely without some sort of text—a marked-up draft of an article or a parenting book to review. It jarred me to see her sitting there, just waiting for me.

I mentally reviewed any possible reason that she could be mad at me. But she looked more concerned than mad as I sat down across from her.

“What’s up?” I asked, my voice pitchy.

“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.” She paused, lifting her wineglass to her lips. The time limit for a “sip” passed and transitioned into a gulp. I stared at her as she swallowed it down, cheeks puffed out. She gave a deep-breathing-exercise exhale. “I’m dating someone.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “You are?”

In that first moment, I didn’t feel anything but surprise—at the coincidence that my dad had just mentioned the same topic. I wasn’t surprised that she would be dating, but that it had slipped past me. I hadn’t seen her coming
and going at strange hours or spending a lot of time on the phone. Maybe she met him through online dating.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “That’s great, Mom.”

Her expression relaxed. “Really?”

“Yeah! I mean, you and Dad have been divorced for a long time. Cameron and I are old enough to understand that—”

She held up her hand, cutting me off. “There’s something else.”

Silence settled between us, enough time for my heart to palpitate.

“The person that I’m dating,” she said, “is your dad.”

At first I thought she meant I had a secret biological dad—like, some guy I’d never met who secretly fathered me sixteen years ago, and she recently reconnected with him. That seemed more likely. But no—no, she meant my actual dad. The guy she divorced over five years ago and, in my estimation, possibly never loved in the first place. My face morphed in total horror as I realized the veracity of her words. “What?”

“Your dad and I,” she said, “have been seeing each other. For the past four months.”

Four
months
? My mouth lagged open as the whole scene became a freeze-frame. I blinked, speechless, as my mind flipped through the most basic questions: Is this a
joke? How had I not known? Why in the world would they think this is okay? Oh my God, this is what my dad had tried to bring up with me! He was talking about my
mom
.

“I know it comes as a surprise. But we didn’t want to tell you until we were sure it was worth telling.”

“I … I …”

“And we want you to know that we’re happy.” That word—“we”—flabbergasted me. They had never been a parenting team, even when they were together. “This is a good thing.”

“But … I remember back then …,” I began, pausing to collect myself. My shoulders felt moments away from collapsing—into sobs or maniacal laughter, I wasn’t sure. “You were
miserable
. Neither of you were happy until after the divorce.”

“I know it seemed that way.” She sighed, relaxing her posture. “And maybe it was that way. We needed some space and time to figure things out for ourselves.”

“But … when? H-how?” I stuttered. “Why?”

“We started speaking again regularly after … Aaron.”

I winced, even though I was grateful that my parents dropped their hostility last year. Helping me cope became their mutual priority, and it didn’t go unnoticed—by me or my sister.

My mom continued. “Then everything with your grandma’s health started to decline, and your dad just … understood.”

My grandmother’s slow-but-steady memory loss had taken a toll on all of us, and I was glad my mom had someone to talk to. But it didn’t have to be my dad, of all people.

I sat back, defeated. For years I was forced to sit front row while two people I loved started to hate each other. It felt like the discontent in our house could be absorbed, like cigarette smoke permeating the walls’ insulation.

“I can’t …,” I said, my voice breaking. “I cannot watch it happen again.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, placing her hand over mine. I retracted it. “It won’t. It won’t happen again. Not like that.”

She couldn’t possibly know such a thing. I blinked over and over, but the tears pushed back at my eyelids. Perfect—my face would be puffy in front of the entire junior class.

With watery vision, I stared at my mother, reliving it all: the tense silences that dropped between them like walls, the marked lack of eye contact during family dinners.

“I’m not—it’s not …,” My mother tripped over her words before giving up with a sigh. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I thought you’d be happy.”

Happy? My disbelief shifted into glowing anger that she’d sprung this on me now, after hiding it all this time. I could already hear the gossip, ricocheting against the lockers and tarnishing what should have been my year, my fresh start. I would be demoted to an even weirder reputation: the Girl Whose Divorced Parents Date Each Other.

“I’m going to go to Tessa’s,” I said the moment it popped into my head.

“I thought she was picking you up at seven.”

“Well, I’m going over there now.”

She looked startled, clearly caught between exercising parental authority and allowing me some space to process her news.

“Okay,” she said quietly.

But I was already out the door. I wondered how long it would take her to call my dad and report my reaction. The very thought of that conversation made our familiar house feel foreign and off-kilter.