My mom had a business dinner the next day, so Dad went out to get groceries so he could make dinner for me.
“I thought I’d make spaghetti with lots of ant poison,” he said.
I used to put tons of Parmesan cheese on my spaghetti when I was little, and Dad used to tease me the cheese looked like ant poison.
He asked me about school as I helped him with dinner. I avoided the fact my best friends hated me and told him about Colin’s betrayal with the evil Mirabella.
“I bet she is a back specialist. Is he the guy you have hanging on the back of your door?” he asked. I nodded.
“He’s kind of… pretty, and he’s wearing more makeup than your mom does,” he said.
“It’s not makeup,” I said, even though I suspected he used tinted lip balm, bronzer, and possibly mascara. “Oh guess what? Mom said I could repaint my room. I forgot to ask Ashanti who painted their living room.”
“I’ll help you. Do you have a color picked out?” he asked.
He said he’d pick me up from school tomorrow and we could get all the stuff. Dad picked out the movie after dinner. We watched Field of Dreams, but then he saw my old The Truly Mean Queen movie in the pile and said I was terrified of the Queen in it when I was a little kid.
“We took you to the amusement park and you wanted to go on this ride, and we didn’t know it was basically a queen like her chasing you throughout the whole thing. You screamed your head off, and we ended up buying half the gift shop to calm you down,” he said.
“I still have the mouse.”
“I noticed.”
****
The next day, Devon had to skip lunch for tutoring and Hana was absent. I went to the bathroom and wolfed down a peanut butter sandwich in the last stall before going to the library. The school library never carried any books we might actually want to read. I couldn’t find my usual copy of Jane Eyre, so I read an ancient looking Nancy Drew, which smelled like our attic.
We had a pop quiz in history because we were being “highly disruptive.” I had to correct Tori’s quiz, and I made big red check marks next to all of her wrong answers. I knew I had gotten them all wrong too, but it made me feel better knowing Ms. Brainiac failed the quiz. When she got her quiz back, her hand shot up in the air, and she asked Mrs. Hearst if she would also accept Churchill for number five. Mrs. Hearst shook her head, and Tori tried again for half-credit. I heard somebody whisper, “Loser” at the next table.
After school, Dad was over at the house waiting for me.
“How was your day, kiddo?” he asked. “Ready for operation re-paint?”
We went to the home improvement store and I picked out royal blue paint. Dad told me to call Mom on his cell phone and find out what she wanted us to pick up for dinner. Mom said she had another business dinner with Ronald and Alfred from the office. I had met Ronald when he had offered us his daughter’s old bedroom furniture when we first moved to Grand Rapids. At the time, he thought my mom was single and he kept flirting with her — big time. It was disgusting, and I’ve hated him ever since.
“Maybe you guys could order pizza,” she said.
I couldn’t believe she’d go out with Ronald while my dad was in town. So not right.
“Can’t you cancel?” I asked.
Mom said Alfred was leaving on a trip tomorrow, so I told Dad she had plans.
“Another meeting? Well, let’s get a pizza,” he said.
Dad felt bad she had to work late, and I let it slip I thought Ronald liked Mom. Dad’s slice stopped halfway to his mouth.
“Does she work with this Ronald person a lot?” he asked.
I shrugged and reached for a napkin. “I dunno. He’s kind of weird.”
“You’ve met him? What’s he like?”
“Kinda boring. And he sweats a lot.”
I told him Ronald dyed his hair a weird shade of blond, was a lot older than Mom, and he was kind of pudgy. Dad nodded and chased a piece of pepperoni around his plate.
After we ate, I spread out the drop cloths while dad stirred and poured the paint. It wasn’t hard to cover the grapefruit color, and we decided to finish up instead of wasting a good Saturday afternoon. I was all sweaty when we finished and went to take a shower. I heard my parents arguing when I got out of the shower. I slipped into the den and crawled under the sheets without bothering to dry my hair. I heard the door slam. My mom came into the den, but I pretended to be asleep.