Things were tense at home that whole week. Dad kept bringing Mom bouquets of flowers, and even a giant box of her favorite dark chocolate coconut truffles one night, as if he could buy his way out of trouble. And he was still sleeping on the couch, although he tried to get up early and move the pillows and blankets so Josh and Elizabeth and I wouldn’t figure it out. But every night when I got up to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water, there he was—tucked in neatly and snoring away.
Elizabeth took forever in the bathroom in the mornings, and her showers used up all the hot water. I started showering at night just so I wouldn’t have to get up ridiculously early to sneak in a shower before her. I noticed that Mom did, too, although she didn’t say anything about it. Or at least not to us.
Meals began with grace, then limped along without it. (Ha—Dad would’ve enjoyed that line, but I wasn’t in the mood to tell him jokes.) Mom avoided talking to Dad, and tried overly hard to be nice to Elizabeth. Josh was silent. I tried to make conversation, but Dad kept turning everything I said into a question for Elizabeth, who gave one-or two-word answers.
On Thursday night, Dad asked about her progress with the stack of books she’d borrowed from Fine Print, and Elizabeth finally smiled. They started discussing a book of Edgar Allan Poe stories. I squirmed on the stupid folding chair I kept getting stuck with—I didn’t want to complain about it and sound whiny, but it did make my butt go numb.
“Did you know that Poe’s grave is here in Baltimore?” Dad asked.
Elizabeth’s (perfectly sculpted) eyebrows shot up. “No way!” (Side note: Have I mentioned the amount of plucking I have to do every week in order to see out from under the caterpillars on my forehead?)
“We’ll plan a visit,” said Dad. “How about this weekend?”
Dad used to take Josh and me to Poe’s grave on Halloween every year. Now we’d have to share that tradition with Elizabeth, too. I pushed my food around on my plate. Poe’s grave was stupid, anyhow. I was getting too old for that nonsense.
“Can I be excused?” I asked. Mom nodded, and I went upstairs. First I packed my overnight bag. Then I called Raven. The Woodbury sisterhood had no rules about sleepovers on school nights.
“It’s not fair,” I complained from the back seat on the ride to Raven’s house. She and Ruby had driven over to pick me up, and I was out the door before Mom could protest—or maybe Mom just didn’t want to start a fight in front of Elizabeth. “How are you so good at driving already? You’ve only had your permit a month longer than I have.”
“Well, I didn’t quit after my first lesson,” Raven said, executing a perfect lane change.
“She’s driving about ten miles under the speed limit,” her grandmother pointed out.
Raven took one hand off the wheel to swat at her, and Ruby clucked her tongue. “Both hands on the wheel, young lady.”
“But you drive with your knees sometimes and no hands on the wheel!”
“That is not true.” Now Ruby swatted at Raven’s arm, and Raven immediately shrieked, “You can’t hit me! I’m driving!” Ruby laughed and her curls bounced. She had wild long hair just like Raven’s, only silver-white.
“Where’s Renata tonight, anyway?” Raven asked as we pulled up in front of their house.
Ruby sighed. “Working late.” Renata was a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins. She ran her own lab and often got stuck finishing up experiments or helping the interns with their projects late at night.
Ruby and I held our collective breath while Raven parallel-parked, but she did it perfectly. We applauded for her.
As we walked up to the house, Ruby said, “And Cadie, I hear that you’re going out with a nice young man? To the Fall Ball?”
“Oh, he’s just a friend.” I felt myself blush and was glad it was dark.
Raven elbowed me so hard I almost fell over. “She’s been crushing on him since before the dawn of time.”
“Well, I think that’s lovely, dear.” Ruby smiled at me. “Let me know if I can help with your dress for the dance. I’m doing Raven’s, of course.”
Ruby was an expert seamstress, and she loved to rework vintage gowns into dresses for Raven.
“That would be amazing!” I said.
“We’ll go shopping this weekend. Let me just see what I’ll need …” Ruby disappeared down the hallway into her sewing room, and Raven and I went upstairs.
“So? How is it?” Raven always cut straight to the chase.
I sprawled out on her thick white carpet, covered my face with my arms, and groaned. “It’s so awkward. I told you she’s Catholic, right? So we pray before meals now, and I think someone’s going to have to take her to church on Sundays. She practically had a heart attack after Tuesday’s Meeting.”
“How’s the Ice Queen dealing with the new princess in the house?” The Ice Queen was Mom, of course.
“She’s trying so hard it hurts to watch. She and Dad are barely talking to each other. Dad sleeps on the couch but thinks he’s hiding it. Mom walks around with this smile that pops up on her face whenever she sees Elizabeth, like she has an on/off button. I have no idea how Elizabeth’s feeling because she barely talks. Like Josh. Except about books; she and Dad are really bonding over books. So, woohoo for them.”
Raven made a sympathetic noise.
“And I hate wondering what other secrets Dad has lurking in his past. All I want is for everything to be okay with him again, but it’s always at the back of my mind now—he cheated on Mom. Right before she got pregnant with me. I mean, that’s messed up, right? And no one’s talking about it. No one’s mentioning Elizabeth’s mom at all.”
“Well, do you think Elizabeth wants to talk about it?”
“Probably not. She barely knows us. It must be like living in a foreign country. She’s in counseling at school, but I figure sooner or later she’s going to have a meltdown if she keeps it all bottled up.”
“Very gritty. Very reality TV.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I have no idea what I’d do if Max cheated on me,” she mused.
“Yeah, let’s talk about Max. I’m sick of thinking about my family. How are things with Max?”
“Max … is amazing.” Raven closed her eyes and smiled. “Max, Max, Max.”
I tried to imagine saying Farhan’s name over and over just for the fun of it. Right now I was still working on being able to choke it out just once.
“Farhan was waiting at my locker today after lunch,” I said.
“What!” Raven said. “Details!”
“Well, there’s not much to tell. When I saw him there, my face kind of froze.” In fact, my mouth had refused to open but my vocal cords hadn’t gotten the memo and tried to say, “Hey, Farhan.” The result was that I’d garbled wordlessly with my lips pressed together. Part of my nonexistent soul had shriveled.
“Hi,” he’d said, holding up an envelope. “Here’s your ticket.”
I’d managed to unglue my mouth. “Thanks! Wow, it’s, um, a nice ticket!”
Farhan had laughed. “You’re funny, Cadie.”
I loved the way he said my name. He said it so … sweetly. I made sure to emphasize that part to Raven.
“That was your entire interaction?” she said in disbelief. “Cadie. You have got to pull it together. Okay. Pretend we’re at the Fall Ball, and I’m Farhan. What do you say?”
“Um. Will you dance with me?”
“No. Of course he’s going to dance with you. He’s your date.”
“So what am I supposed to say?”
“Small talk. Friend talk. Whatever kind of talk you want! Just because he’s a boy, he’s not not a normal person you can talk to.”
“Raven. That made no sense.”
“Look, I got pretty tongue-tied on my first date with Max, too. But you just have to relax. Remember that he already thinks you’re cute, funny, smart, nice, whatever. You don’t have to convince him.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You really are cute, funny, smart, and nice.”
“I’m not nice,” Raven said, offended.
“True. But you’re cute.”
“And smart! And funny!”
I pretended to consider it. “Ehhh.”
Raven grabbed a pillow off the bed and clobbered me.
Friday after school, Dad came home early and took me and Elizabeth out for a driving lesson before it got dark. She’d just received her Maryland learner’s permit in the mail. Mine had taken weeks to arrive, but apparently if you already had a permit from the state of Ohio and you were Elizabeth Marie Jennings, red tape magically vanished before you. Not that I was pissed or anything.
“We may as well do driving lessons together,” Dad said. “It’ll save time. And you can learn from each other’s mistakes. Right?”
“Lesson one: Cadie demonstrates roadkill,” I muttered.
Elizabeth shot me a sympathetic look. I guess Dad had already filled her in about my disaster of a first lesson. By now I could almost think about it without that lump rising in my throat, but I still didn’t want to get behind the wheel. I suspected this was Dad’s other motive: if he combined our lessons, I’d watch Elizabeth and see that learning to drive wasn’t so bad after all.
“So your, ah, your mom had a Corolla,” Dad said to Elizabeth. I guess he knew because he’d helped her sell it to pay the medical bills. “That’s not too different from our car. It should handle very similarly.”
There was an awkward silence. It was the first time I’d heard anyone address Elizabeth directly about her mother.
“We call our car the Commie Comet,” I offered, to break the silence.
It worked. Elizabeth looked startled, then laughed—quietly, of course. “Makes sense,” she said. “All the bumper stickers.”
“Hey, now!” Dad said. “We are progressives in this household, not Communists, although there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Communists. My parents were fine examples. But the ‘Commie’ part of that name refers to the color of the car, not its political leanings or those of its occupants.”
Dad was kind of babbling, the way I did when I got nervous. I wondered what Elizabeth thought about our political leanings. I assumed she was pretty conservative, what with the Catholic school and the argyle sweaters. She didn’t respond to Dad’s comment, though.
We spent the evening driving around the ShopRite parking lot again. Elizabeth didn’t have much more experience than I did, because her mom had been too sick for the past few months to teach her. But she was definitely catching on faster than I was. Dad had me park in five different spots, then he had Elizabeth try it. I parked sloppily over the white lines or at a skewed angle each time. Elizabeth nailed them all after the first one.
“Are you ready to try a little road driving?” Dad asked finally. “We can just go up and down Elm a few times, nice and slow.”
“Dad,” I said. “I am not driving down Elm. No way.”
“Chestnut, then,” he said. “We can take 34th Street over and practice left turns.”
“Sure,” Elizabeth said.
So she drove around the block twice, practicing left turns and complete stops at stop signs, and then we switched seats and I drove around the block.
My hands were trembling on the wheel the whole time, but I managed to keep my foot steady, and I mostly stayed in my lane. Luckily no one else was trying to drive around that particular block, because I kept the speedometer needle at a daredevil 5 mph. At least no wildlife darted out in front of my tires.
“Good, Cadie,” Dad said. “You have to work on checking all your mirrors, but you’re getting the hang of it. Want to try once more around the block?”
I shook my head. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”
“Okay. Good work for one night.” Dad twisted around to face Elizabeth in the back seat. “And you, missy. You’re a natural! I think you’ll be ready for three-point turns next time.”
I’d never heard him use Proud Dad Voice for anyone except me and Josh.
Which made sense, since he’d never had any kids except me and Josh. Before.
“I think I’ll just walk,” I said, getting out of the car. I slammed the door shut, shoved my hands deep into my pockets, and started down the sidewalk in the dark.
Saturday morning, Raven and I had a date to go shopping with her mom and grandmother for our Fall Ball dresses. Mom was already out of the house—she’d gone in to her office at school to catch up on work (or so she said)—and Dad was preparing to take Elizabeth out for a grand tour of Baltimore. Josh was going along, too, and he actually seemed excited.
“I’m going to show her all around Peabody,” he told me, scraping his cereal bowl. We were finishing breakfast while Elizabeth showered. “The practice rooms, the dance studios, Friedberg Hall, and the Harry Potter library.” Peabody has two libraries: an ugly functional one and a fairy-tale-gorgeous one, six stories high. The main room is a giant marble-floored atrium lit by hanging lamps and a skylight, with gilded cast-iron columns. Every floor opens to a balcony over the main atrium, hemmed in by an intricate scrollwork railing that runs around all four walls. Some of the Prep kids call it the Harry Potter library. Mom calls it the Chapel, because people really do get married there.
“And then the Meyerhoff,” Josh was saying. “We might even get rush tickets for the symphony tonight!”
I smiled at him. “That’s great. By the way, that second Bach suite you’ve been practicing all week sounds fantastic.”
Josh said nothing.
“Are you nervous about the competition?”
“Nah.”
“Well. That’s good.”
He nodded, then got up to put his bowl in the sink.
I grabbed the hem of his shirt as he walked by. “Hey. What did I say?”
“Nothing.”
“But you clammed up. You were all excited, and then I mentioned the Bach and you stopped talking.”
“I’m supposed to be practicing Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody for the competition. Not Bach.”
“Oh. Well, do you already know the Hungarian Rhapsody?”
“No. But I’ll learn it. It’ll be fine.” Suddenly he was red in the face. He twisted away from my grip and ran upstairs.
I followed him up to his room, but as I passed the bathroom, the door opened and Elizabeth came out in her bathrobe, and crashed into me.
“Oops, sorry,” she said, just as the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get that,” I said.
I heard Josh start practicing arpeggios at breakneck speed as I ran back down the stairs and opened the door. Raven was on the step, and Ruby and Renata waved at me from the car.
“Leaving!” I yelled, grabbing my bag from a hook, and banged the door shut behind me.
“Hey,” Raven said as we buckled ourselves into the back seat. “You don’t think we should’ve invited Elizabeth, too?”
“Nah, she’s taking a tour of Baltimore with Dad and Josh today. I don’t even think she’s going to the Fall Ball.” But my stomach sank. I hadn’t thought to ask Elizabeth about the dance at all.
Renata looked back at us from the passenger seat. “Who’s Elizabeth?”
“My secret illegitimate half sister,” I said, and Renata’s eyes widened. “It’s a long story. She just moved here. And she’s probably not going to the Fall Ball because she’s practically a nun.”
I felt a little bad about making fun of Elizabeth, especially after not inviting her on our shopping trip. But then I remembered Proud Dad Voice from the night before and didn’t feel quite so bad. After all, she had Dad for the day. And I didn’t. Not that I couldn’t have gone with them, if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t, because I had better things to do, and—oh my god. I pressed “stop” on that loop in my head before it got out of control.
Renata had a million questions, and I told her all the details as we drove.
“Oh, that poor girl,” she kept murmuring. “Oh, your poor mother.”
I didn’t mention how much I hated sharing a room, or how much my stomach hurt when I thought about Dad sleeping on the couch every night, or how Elizabeth was a natural at driving and perfect at pretty much everything else. All of that would’ve sounded like complaining. Plus it might’ve made my eyes water.
We were going up to the thrift stores in Roland Park first, because that’s where all the rich people live, so the castoffs are more exciting. Then we’d circle back down York Road, and finally hit The Avenue in Hampden. I love shopping with the Woodburys. Ruby has a knack for finding treasures and bargains, and Renata is a big fan of ice cream pit stops at the Charmery.
By the end of the day, we’d found a slinky teal flapper-style dress for Raven that looked drop-dead gorgeous with her red hair and green eyes, and a strapless cream-colored A-line for me that Ruby promised would look stunning once she sewed scraps of black lace and multicolored beads all over it.
Raven, Renata, and I had squeezed into one tiny dressing room in Charm City Consignment, our fourth stop of the day.
I tugged at the top of the dress, staring at myself in the mirror. “I don’t know how I feel about a strapless dress.”
“Well, you’ve got the boobs for it,” Raven said.
“I wish I didn’t have them,” I said. “They’re heavy, you know. And all my clothes are getting tight.”
“And I wish you’d share,” Raven grumped, pressing her hands to her own flat chest.
Renata sighed, turning to look at the back of a mostly backless black cocktail dress she was trying on. Her skin was just as pale as Raven’s, and she was bony-thin. “You got that from me, dear, I’m sorry.” To me, she said, “I’m sure Ruby can sew on a pair of straps, if that would make you more comfortable. But Raven’s right. It looks lovely on you.”
Ruby was waiting outside the dressing room. “Well, let’s see!” she called, and I opened the door to show her the dress.
“Fits you like a glove,” she declared. “We’ll take it.”
She insisted on buying the dress for me. “I consider it an art project,” she said, waving my wallet away. “It’s what keeps me young.”
We stopped for dinner at Tamber’s, an Indian fusion restaurant, which means that in addition to chana masala, saag paneer, and naan, they also serve burgers, fries, and milk shakes. Classic Baltimore.
Ruby took my dress home with her to start working on it—“Only three weeks till the dance!”—so I was empty-handed when I walked in the door.
Which was why I couldn’t drop anything when Mom, who was sitting on the couch, looked up from her laptop and said, “Oh, good. Cadie. I’m so glad you’re home. Your dad can’t take off any more time from the bookshop, and Olga wants me to bring Josh in for an extra lesson on his competition piece, so can you take Elizabeth to church tomorrow morning?”