I pushed the white lump of meat Misty called chicken around my plate, trying hard not to check my phone for the 200th time. I didn’t expect any more messages, but the compulsion to check was still there, like if I stared at the screen long enough, I’d be able to see the person on the other end of the connection.
Across the table, Misty had already finished and was now chomping gum with her mouth open. She always said the gum was a replacement for cigarettes, but at least if she still smoked, we could force her to go outside. And maybe I could even lock the door behind her.
‘Did you like it?’ Misty cooed as Dad finally dropped his fork.
He smiled. ‘I always do.’
His plate was still half-full.
Misty smacked her gum in response, and Dad acted as if the sound wasn’t the most annoying thing in the world.
‘Eli, what did you think?’ Dad asked in a voice that clearly said, Eli, you better tell Misty what a great cook she is, because I have more important things to do than lecture you later.
I speared a bite of the rubbery chicken and waited until my mouth was full of it to answer. ‘I think it would have tasted better in front of the TV.’
Before Misty, Dad let me eat most of my meals on the couch. I would chow down in the living room while he ate up in his office. That was a typical setup for us – both under the same roof but not in the same room. He checked in with me every couple of days to make sure my grades were still good and nag me about spending too much time on the computer, but other than that, he pretty much left me alone. I didn’t realise how much it was like not having a dad at all until Misty showed up and started forcing all this ‘togetherness’ on us.
Eating at the table was one of the things she insisted we do ‘together.’ She said that was the way normal families did dinner, but if you ask me, she’d watched a few too many old sitcoms, because I knew for a fact that Zach’s family ate all their meals standing up at the kitchen counter in between Zach’s chess tournaments and his little sister’s soccer games. But Dad went along with whatever Misty said made us ‘family.’
Funny, I thought we were already a family.
Apparently we were doing it wrong.
‘Are we boring you, Eli?’ Dad asked. His eyes moved pointedly toward my phone, which I didn’t even realise I had checked again. ‘You haven’t let the screen go dark for more than five seconds all night. Expecting a call?’
‘Probably from a girl,’ Misty teased.
I flashed on Isabel at the bike rack – her clingy shirt and low jeans, her accent that lingered in the air like music, even after she was done talking. If there was any message I could get tonight that would be more exciting than the one I’d already received, it would be from her.
‘A girl?’ Dad winked. ‘’Bout time.’
Misty laughed her husky, smoke-filled laugh, and Dad’s chest swelled up in that way it always did when she acted like his corny sense of humour was truly funny. I shoved a piece of broccoli in my mouth, annoyed. She didn’t even sound like she was faking it.
‘Is there dessert?’ I asked, mostly just to stop the flirting. It was even more unappetizing than the food.
‘Sure.’ Misty stopped cooing at Dad and gave me a pointed look. ‘We still have those Popsicles from this afternoon.’
Was that a threat?
I wouldn’t put it past her to narc on me to Dad for being rude earlier. And of course, he would take her side. He couldn’t seem to see how suffocating she was, maybe because he was out of town most of the time.
He worked in sales and travelled all over the country. A few years ago, he’d spent more time travelling than usual – mostly to Florida – leaving me with my aunt a lot. And one day he came back from Miami with more than shells he picked off the beach. Apparently he’d been dating Misty for months, and he got tired of seeing other guys pawing her in the strip club, so he brought her back to Iowa where people more or less kept their hands to themselves – if not their eyeballs.
It’s why I never had any guys over the house. They would just drool on Misty and tell me how lucky I was that my dad had such a ‘hot’ girlfriend. I didn’t see the appeal at all, and in that way alone, she was like a mom.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my phone screen turn off again, but I willed myself to keep my gaze on my plate. Part of me was itching to call Zach and tell him all about the cryptic messages, but another part of me knew he would probably talk me out of going, and I wasn’t really in the mood for that voice of reason. Zach kind of took the fun out of things that way, sometimes.
I had already looked up the address – just a house in a normal neighborhood, owned by some couple I’d never heard of with no obvious internet profiles. It all looked pretty harmless from the safety of my bedroom, but now I had to admit I was getting a little nervous … mostly about sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, which I’d never done, because I never had anywhere to be in the middle of the night.
A shrill ringing interrupted our dinner just then, and I dropped my fork, scrambling to grab my phone.
‘Definitely a girl,’ Misty concluded as the fork clattered against my plate.
But it wasn’t my phone ringing; it was Dad’s.
And suddenly I remembered what all the messages had pushed out of my head: Spanish, Señora Vega, the red F seared into my vocab quiz. I watched as Dad reached toward the ringing in his pocket and wondered how to say don’t answer in Spanish.
Misty’s hand closed over Dad’s arm. ‘Paul, I’m sure it can wait.’ Her eyes flicked to my phone too. ‘In fact, I’ve been thinking about a ban on electronics at dinnertime.’
Normally, I’d be annoyed that Misty was trying so hard with her grown-up rules … as if, at 27, she wasn’t closer to my 16 years of age than Dad’s 40 … but in this moment, I was grateful.
Unfortunately, it was one rule Dad wasn’t interested in following.
‘It could be work,’ he said, plucking his phone from his pocket and swiping the screen. ‘Paul Bennett,’ he answered instead of Hello.
Misty started clearing plates, and I held my breath as Dad uttered a few ‘uh-huh’s and ‘mm-hm’s and one stiff ‘I see’ before thanking the person and hanging up the phone. His eyes were on me the whole time, and I swear I saw a blood vessel in one eyeball burst.
‘Okay, look,’ I jumped in before he could start. ‘Here’s the thing about Spanish—’
‘No, here is the thing about Spanish.’ Dad jabbed a finger on the table with a sound as loud as if he’d punched it with a fist. ‘It is an easy pass.’
‘I know, Dad, but—’
‘High school language courses are a matter of homework and memorisation.’
‘I know—’
‘They do not require complex reasoning or excessive effort …’
I tuned out as the lecture launched. I tried to interrupt with my excuses, but Dad rolled over me with his fury and worse – his disappointment. As expected, he managed to blame my Spanish failure on my time spent coding, and he worked in the usual line about jacks and masters. Then he added something new to the spiel:
‘I know you think you’re smarter than everyone else, Eli.’ The bitter way he said it made it clear that by everyone he meant him. ‘But colleges value more than your IQ. They value hard work. If they see a smart kid failing one class, they know you’re just not doing the work.’
And here was the difference between me and Dad. He believed you could have anything you want in life if you just work hard enough for it, but I didn’t have to work very hard for most things at all. And maybe he was just a little bit jealous of that.
‘So?’
My single-word answer to Dad’s lecture pissed him off exactly as much as expected, and this time it was his fist that landed on the table. ‘Damn it, Eli. It’s like you don’t even want to go to college.’
Bingo.
Dad looked startled by my silence, and I thought for a second that his brain might short-circuit.
‘Of course, you’re going to … why wouldn’t you …’ he blustered.
‘I don’t need to.’
Misty placed a small plate of something vaguely dessert-shaped in front of me, and I pushed it to the side.
‘What do you mean you don’t need—’
‘Dad, Google pays someone two million dollars a year to hack their cloud.’
‘And I don’t need a college degree to do that. I can do that right now. Why waste four years?’
Misty’s nails drummed the kitchen counter. Click click click click.
‘Two million, really?’ she said.
I ignored her. Or I tried. Click click click click.
Dad was unimpressed. ‘I imagine those jobs are few and far between. Anybody can be a musician. They can’t all be rock stars.’
Ouch.
My wounded feelings must have showed on my face, because Dad hurried to add, ‘I understand computers can be a lucrative career path, but a lot of people can code these days. It’s an extremely competitive market.’
‘Good thing I’m smarter than everyone else, huh?’
I grinned, but Dad did not appreciate having his words tossed back at him. His lips met in a thin line, and he stared me down for a few seconds until he figured out how to knock the grin off my face.
‘I’m taking away your computer.’
‘What?!’ I spluttered. ‘That’s – you can’t – that’s ridiculous!’
‘No more computers until your next Spanish quiz. Then, if I see an improvement, and if the rest of your grades are still acceptable, I will reconsider.’
‘But it’s too late for Spanish anyway!’ I cried. ‘This isn’t a solution!’
‘No, it’s a punishment.’
‘But, Paul,’ Misty interrupted, coming to stand behind me. ‘He needs the computer for his other classes. So much of his homework requires the internet now.’
I don’t know if it was the way Dad chewed his lip, considering Misty’s input when he hadn’t considered mine, or if it was the motherly hand Misty put on my shoulder, like we were on the same side, but something in me snapped.
‘Don’t help me!’ I spat, jerking away from her hand and out of my chair. ‘This doesn’t even concern you. It’s a family thing.’
‘I know I’m not your mom—’
‘That’s right. You’re just my dad’s midlife crisis.’
Okay, yeah. Total dick thing to say. But that’s what happens when you have to keep all your thoughts and feelings about something to yourself. Eventually it all bursts out in one ugly truth.
I opened my mouth to apologise or at least lie and say I didn’t mean it, but Dad’s voice filled the room before mine could make a sound.
‘Eli, that was out of line!’
‘She nothing!’ He exploded out of his chair, letting it clatter to the floor. ‘You don’t ever speak to her that way. Ever!’
My mouth flopped open like a fish, and I may have cowered a little.
Dad paced the kitchen, thundering about ‘respect’ and ‘shame’ and ‘no excuses’ and I don’t know what else because I was so shocked to see him lose his cool, I missed most of it. Usually, he was the master of the quiet chill. But I did catch one word near the end that surprised me even more than the outburst.
Grounded.
Dad seemed as surprised to say it as I was to hear it, and the room went momentarily silent. We stared at each other from opposite sides of the table, both standing with our heads tilted in a question, as if waiting for the other one to explain what this was, this ‘grounded’ thing.
Dad could be intense about school and grades, but he was never really one to discipline because I was never one to cause much trouble … that he knew of, anyway. I would have blamed Misty somehow, but she looked just as shocked as I did. Or possibly she was still reeling from that shitty thing I said. My lips twitched now with the unspoken apology.
‘Yes.’ Dad nodded, shaking off his own surprise and embracing the punishment. ‘Grounded. No hanging out with Zach, no after-school activities …’
Because I have so many extracurriculars.
He must have seen the thought in my eye roll, because then he added, ‘No TV and no computer.’
Misty gave a small cough.
‘No computer for anything other than homework,’ Dad amended.
‘Uh … okay,’ I said. ‘But can we start tomorrow? I have a thing tonight.’
‘You have no “thing,”’ Dad said, his voice now taking on an icy edge. ‘You have one thing, and that thing is Spanish. You will spend the rest of this night and every night for the next week in your room thinking up extra-credit projects and ways to persuade your teacher to pull up your grade. And not that you deserve her help after tonight, but it just so happens someone in this house speaks Spanish.’
Was that true? I glanced at Misty, begrudgingly impressed.
‘Maybe,’ Dad said, ‘if you start treating her with a little respect, she’ll work with you.’
Misty smiled at Dad with watery eyes. I don’t know what she saw when she looked at him, but it couldn’t be this sort-of-skinny guy with glasses and no hair and a talent for making people feel small.
‘Fine,’ I said, trying not to sound defeated. ‘I’ll start now.’
Then I turned on my heel, took the stairs two at a time, and locked my bedroom door shut behind me before he could ask whether I needed my computer for homework.