I’LL TELL YOU MINE IF YOU’LL TELL ME YOURS
Tuesday, 3:07 P.M.
“The counter by the window’s open.” Stevie held a green ceramic mug in one hand and her black patent clutch in the other, all while balancing a cupcake plate server-style on her forearm. “Come on.” She headed for the long bar that faced Marquette’s front entrance across the street.
“Nah. Let’s go to that table in the back.” At the Frost-It-Yourself cupcake bar in the middle of Sugar Daddy, I swirled a glob of birthday cake frosting over a warm chocolate cupcake, then added two heaping scoops of chocolate-covered espresso beans for good measure. Being blackmailed required all the sugar and caffeine I could manage.
“Fine.” Stevie turned from the window. Outside, a slight girl with blond hair identical to Molly’s scampered by. I hit the deck.
“Sorry! Lost an earring.” I waited for three measures and popped up again. “Found it.” I faked putting the earring back in. Good thing we did that lame section on the art of mime in Sean’s theater class this semester.
“Um, good.” Stevie looked at me strangely.
I mentally smacked myself on the forehead. Of all days not to accessorize, I thought as I shook my waves over my naked earlobes.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed my mug and cupcake and headed for the back corner. Other than us, there were only two other customers—a high school boy listening to his iPod with his eyes closed and a mousy-looking girl with her nose buried in a book. There was a 99 percent chance Molly and the girls wouldn’t make an appearance at our hangout this afternoon, since they were shopping for decorations for the dance. But what if they took a retail break? Ditching my girls to meet up with Stevie was bad enough. But bringing her to Sugar Daddy was unacceptable. I felt like I was cheating on Molly. Again. I might as well have brought Zander for a make-out session by the cash register.
A hot, steamy make-out session.
With Zander.
“Kacey,” Stevie snapped. “What’s with you?”
Stevie shrugged and slid into the sparkly red seat across from me. “Whatever. It’s not like we’re here for pleasure. I brought you here because we have to figure out a way to break up our parents.”
“First of all, I brought myself here.” I pulled one of Nessa’s mini legal pads from my back pocket and flipped to the list I’d made in study hall. “And second of all, are we just not gonna mention the part where you’re blackmailing me? Not that you have anything to blackmail me with.” I started doodling, too nervous to make eye contact.
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Wrong.” I braced myself and met her gaze. “I’m here for the same reason you are. To break up our parents.”
“And because you’re scared. Because you know I could get you in serious trouble,” Stevie said coolly, quickly rebraiding her dark, glossy hair. “Because you’re guilty.”
“You’re bluffing,” I said, gritting my teeth. My already tender gums screamed in pain. “You’ve got nothing.”
“Wanna try me?”
We stared at each other for a long moment. From her disgustingly long lashes to her hardened jaw, she was a fortress. This was a girl who was not going to go down without a fight. Which actually made her the perfect ally for Operation: Date Sabotage.
“Okay.” I flipped to the next page on my pad so fiercely that the bright yellow paper tore in half. “We can start by brainstorming some reasons people break up. Then we could figure out a way to apply those reasons to—”
“Are you assigning research? Because I’m not doing that.”
“Do you want them to break up or not?” I said, exasperated.
Stevie bent over her hot chocolate mug and sighed, blowing the steam directly into my face. “Keep going.”
I scooped a blob of icing from my cupcake and licked my fork. The sugar rush was instantly soothing. “First question. How come your parents split up?”
“What?” Stevie’s features hardened once more. “Are you kidding me?”
“Look. I know it sucks to talk about this kind of stuff. But if we’re gonna break them up…”
“Fine,” Stevie conceded. “So what’s my last name?”
“Huh?”
“My last name. If you can tell me my last name, I’ll tell you why my parents split.”
“I—you never—” I cradled my mug in my hands. It burned. “I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”
“Too bad. You were so close.” She shrugged. “So, what about your folks? Your dad probably got sick of your mom’s career coming first, am I right?”
A hot flash of anger ignited at my core. “That’s none of your business.”
“I’m just saying. That’s usually how it works when one person has a high-powered job.”
“Well, you’re wrong.” I lifted my mug and took a long sip, even though I knew it was still too hot. It scraped my throat as it went down.
“Hey, do you girls mind if I crank up some tunes?” the girl behind the counter asked, fiddling with the dial on an old-school boom box.
She paused briefly on a classic rock station. Static buzzed over the speakers, but I’d heard enough.
“NO JOURNEY!” I yelled at the exact same time as Stevie. For a second we just stared at each other, then we burst out laughing.
“Okay, okay.” The girl cracked her gum and switched to the pop station.
“Goose worships Journey. I don’t get it.” Stevie traced the rim of her mug with her index finger, her silver dome ring glinting in the fluorescent light. “The lead singer sounds like a girl.”
“Right? But what kind of musical taste can you expect from a guy who wears—”
“—skinny jeans?” Stevie’s lips lifted in a smile. “I told him to burn those puppies before he moved. But did he listen?” She shook her head. “Boy’s got a mind of his own.”
I didn’t answer. It didn’t take a genius to know that she was still into Zander. Or that there wasn’t room for her in my relationship—whatever it was—with Zander.
“I think maybe there was someone else,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“When my dad left. I think there was some other… person. Woman. Whatever.” I’d never had proof, but it was the only explanation that made sense. When he’d lived with us, he’d been around all the time. More than Mom, actually. He was the one who went to parent-teacher conferences. He took me to Lincoln Park to toss the Frisbee. He made peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches for school lunch and always remembered to put them in the freezer for twenty minutes in the morning so they were perfect by lunchtime.
And then one day we were on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, and I was looking over Lake Michigan and holding a pouf of blue cotton candy on my tongue. And we got to the top, with the whole world just beyond the tips of our sneakers, and without even looking at me, he said he was moving to Los Angeles. He said things weren’t working out with Mom and that this was “better for everyone.” Just like that.
The worst thing about it was that I should have known. I was a journalist—I had instincts about these kinds of things, especially since they fought all the time after they thought we were asleep. It was the only time my sixth sense had failed me.
“Oh.” At least Stevie had the sense to not say anything else, like how she was sure my dad still loved me or how she knew this girl whose parents divorced and then got back together.
“I mean, I don’t know for sure. We don’t talk, really. Do you talk to your mom?”
“Yeah.” Stevie stared down at her untouched red velvet cupcake. “They only split a couple of years ago. Dad got that grant to go to the Amazon, and I guess he had to pick between staying with us…” Her jaw tensed, and she shoved the cupcake plate away. “Anyway, Mom filed for divorce the day he left.”
“So how come you live with Gabe now?” I asked, tentatively taking another sip of hot chocolate.
“Mom got kind of depressed after the split. She still lives in Seattle, though, so I see her a lot. But when Dad got back, I decided to move in with him.”
I tried to imagine what it would have been like if my mom had fallen apart after the divorce. After Dad left, nothing was the same anymore. His shoes weren’t in the doorway. The bathroom didn’t smell like his mint soap. But my mom was still there, a wonderful, reassuring constant.
The bell jangling over the door made me jump. But it was just a crowd of over-pierced twenty-somethings from the community college around the corner.
“…’cause he works so much. I get the apartment to myself a lot,” Stevie was saying.
“Yeah. Me too.” I wondered if she was lonely by herself. At least I had Ella when Mom was at work and Paige right next door. “Don’t you ever get bored, though?”
Her chin dropped, releasing a shiny curtain of bangs that blocked her eyes. “When Goose was in town, he used to come over and hang out. Sometimes he’d even spend the—”
“We’re supposed to be talking about our parents,” I reminded her, a little too loudly.
Stevie cleared her throat. “Yeah, not anymore.” She shoved back her chair. “I’m getting more frosting.”
“But we’re not done!” I protested. A familiar stabbing feeling in the pit of my stomach chided me for telling Stevie anything. It was the same feeling I’d gotten the morning after my first sleepover with Molly, when I’d had one too many bowls of ice cream, gotten a serious sugar rush, and accidentally blurted out that I’d never had a boyfriend.
Stevie didn’t turn around to face me until she got to the cupcake bar. “Andrews,” she called, slopping an unholy amount of cream cheese frosting on her cupcake. “That’s my last name. And with any luck, it’ll never be yours.”