Sixteen

Gracie gave me a ride to school the next morning. It was such an uncharacteristically charitable act that I was on my guard. I sat silent on the ride there, expecting her to ask me to do something in return for her, but she didn’t say a word. That same nervous tension that had hung over us since we’d left the hospital was still there, and when she pulled up to the curb in front of school, I was so eager to get out that I swung the door open before she’d come to a complete stop.

“Relax, you’ve got plenty of time,” Gracie said.

“Well, thanks. Bye,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried into school.

Jenelle and Shawna spotted me as soon as I started down the hallway. With everything that had happened, I had kind of forgotten about my hair again. It was old news now. Except, of course, it wasn’t. Jenelle’s mouth hung open as I walked up to her.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“Good morning to you too,” I said.

“You look just like that actress,” Shawna said. “What’s her name? In that movie?”

“She looks like she’s completely lost her mind,” Jenelle said.

I headed past them and to my locker, but they followed at my heels. Shawna couldn’t come up with the name of the actress, and Jenelle made a few more choice remarks about my hair. I ignored both of them while I hung up my coat and grabbed my books.

“Is this what you were doing yesterday?” Jenelle asked.

“No,” I said.

“Where were you then?”

“Annie was sick,” I said. “We had to take her to the hos-
pital.”

“Oh my God,” Shawna said. “Is she all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “No. I don’t really know.” I closed my locker and turned around. Zach was walking down the hallway. He didn’t even look in my direction. Was he mad at me for running off yesterday? I stared at him, and there was a fluttery sort of achy feeling in my chest.

“You’re mental, aren’t you?” Jenelle said.

“What?”

“I asked you what was wrong with your sister.”

“Right,” I said. “I don’t really know. She won’t talk about it. The doctor gave her some medicine.”

“No offense,” Jenelle said, “but your family is pretty weird.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. My family was weirder than Jenelle knew, but I wasn’t about to tell her what I’d figured out. “I’ve got to go.”

“Go where?” Jenelle asked, but I didn’t answer her. I needed to talk to Zach. I was pretty sure I would explode if I didn’t talk to him.

His locker was all the way at the end of the hallway. I stood a few yards away, watching him grabbing books from his locker, and for a moment I felt short of breath. God but he was gorgeous. He closed the locker door and I was about to call his name, but I caught myself just in time. He wasn’t alone. Meg stood beside him. She must have been standing on the other side of the locker door, and I saw that they were talking about something. They walked together up the hallway, and I shrunk back against the wall trying to make myself invisible, though neither one of them even glanced in my direction. They were too caught up in each other.

I felt flushed and slightly sick. They were a couple. Of course they were. How could I be so stupid? I knew they’d gone to the dance together, but for some reason I’d assumed that hadn’t meant anything. Why? Just because Zach the snake Faraday had shown up at my front door yesterday? What was wrong with me? Why was I so obsessed with this guy?

I forced myself to stop thinking about Zach and instead spent my day thinking about Annie and Cameron. I tried to piece together my fragmented childhood memories, looking for clues. My father—well, the man who I’d always assumed was my father—had barely spoken to me my entire life, and I realized now that it wasn’t because he’d blamed me for his wife’s death. It was because I made him uncomfortable. He was ashamed of me, of my illegitimate birth. Maybe he was angry that I had completely ruined his daughter’s life, kept
her from going to college and becoming more than yet another girl drowning a slow, sad death in Shallow Pond. I was angry that this secret had been kept from me my whole life. Did they really think this would make my life easier? My whole life had been a lie.

Annie was still asleep when I’d left for school in the morning, and she would probably be asleep when I got home. It wasn’t fair to bug her about this right now, not when she was sick. I needed to know, though. Of course, there was someone else who would know the story, and lucky for me, he was back in town after years of trying to escape his past. I needed to talk to my father. I needed to talk to Cameron Schaeffer.

When I stepped into English class, Zach was already in his seat. As usual, I felt a little weak when I saw him. Why oh why did he have this effect on me?

“Hey,” he said when I sat down. “What happened to you yesterday? Why did you run off?”

“I just remembered something I needed to talk to my sister about,” I said. He nodded slowly, like he didn’t really believe me. Well, it did sound like a lame excuse, but it was also pretty much true. “It’s complicated,” I explained.

“Right, sure,” he said. “Well, hope you got everything worked out.”

“Actually, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. We had to take her to the hospital.” His eyes grew wide, and at first I thought it was because he was surprised by this news, but I think he thought I was making that up too. “She’s fine. I mean, she got some medicine, and she’s home now.”

“Whatever,” Zach said. “You don’t need to explain it to me.” He didn’t believe me.

“Mr. Faraday, Ms. Bunting,” Mrs. Grimes said. “Kindly pay attention, please.” I blushed in embarrassment, but I was also secretly pleased. I liked hearing our names together like that. She hadn’t called me Barbara, but on the other hand she hadn’t called me Gracie or Annie either. Maybe my new hair had done the trick.

I was silent through the rest of the class, but I wasn’t paying attention. That wasn’t going to happen with Zach sitting right next to me. How serious were he and Meg? Did he think I was a complete bitch for running off on him yesterday? Did he hate me for lying to him, even though I hadn’t really lied to him?

When the bell rang I hurried silently out of class without looking in Zach’s direction, but he caught up with me in the hallway and stopped me by grabbing my sleeve.

“Hey, how about a rain check?” he asked.

“Rain check?”

“Well, we didn’t get to talk much yesterday. Maybe we could hang out again.”

“Sure,” I said. I was confused. By “hang out,” did Zach mean as friends? Is that what he saw me as? One of his buddies?

“Great. How about after school? It’s colder today, so we might have to find an indoor place. Maybe the diner?”

“Uh, I can’t today,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to be the diner. We can go wherever you want. We could go bowling, go to the mall—you can pick.”

“No, it’s just that today’s not good for me,” I said. “I have something I have to do after school.”

He nodded. He looked hurt. He thought I was blowing him off. I mean, I was sort of blowing him off, but it was because I needed to talk to Cameron.

“It’s something important that I have to do,” I said.

“No, that’s fine,” Zach said. “I’ll catch up with you an-other time.”

He walked away, and that ache that had been gnawing away at me all day suddenly flared up.

“Zach!” I called after him, but he didn’t hear me.

After school, I hadn’t even made it out of the senior hallway when Jenelle and Shawna caught up with me. I’d been hoping to disappear before they noticed, because I knew I couldn’t tell them that I needed to go over to Cameron Schaeffer’s house or why I needed to go there.

“What, you’re not even going to wait for us?” Jenelle asked.

“I feel like walking,” I said.

“You can walk up the hill.”

“What?”

“We’re going sledding with the boys,” Jenelle said. “Why don’t you invite Hot Stuff?”

“He and Meg are together.” I instantly regretted saying the words out loud. It was proof that I was interested in Zach.

“I never liked that girl,” Shawna said.

“She’s fine,” I said.

“It’s your fault for not making your move when I told you to,” Jenelle said. “You’ve got to show some interest in a guy for him to notice you. Let’s go. The boys are waiting.”

“I can’t,” I said. “There’s something I have to do.”

“Your homework can wait, Bunting.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s … ” I struggled to find an excuse. “I can’t really talk about it.”

“You should come,” Shawna said. “It will be a lot of fun.” She was wearing a ridiculously short skirt. I hoped she planned on getting changed before she went out to play in the snow.

“Another time, guys,” I said.

“I can’t believe you’re totally ditching us again,” Jenelle said. “What is with you lately?”

“It’s just something I’ve got to do,” I said.

I tried to look apologetic as I left them behind, but Jenelle still sneered at me.

Yesterday’s freakishly warm weather hadn’t lasted. It was cold out, but I didn’t even notice it as I walked. My mind was on Cameron, everything I knew about him and everything I didn’t. All this time I’d thought he was nothing but the stupid guy my sister had fallen for, the guy who’d broken her heart. Other than the fact that he had ruined Annie’s life, I’d never really thought of him as an important person in my life. Well, and why should I? What had Cameron ever done for me? It had been years since he’d seen me. He’d never called. He’d never sent so much as a Christmas card.

At least, I didn’t think he had, but I wondered if he had tried to get in touch. Had Annie kept him from contacting me? Had she removed his cards from the mail? Was it all part of the lie that was my life?

I wondered what Cameron thought of me. Was he ash-amed of me? Did he wish he’d had the chance to get to know me better? Had he been so scared at the responsibility of being a father that he’d run away? I wondered what had brought him back after all these years. Perhaps he’d come back to see me. I even entertained the notion that the reason he was dating Gracie was that he thought it was the only way he’d be able to see me.

I reached the Schaeffers’ house in record time, having kept up a good pace as all the confusing thoughts swirled around my head. I actually felt a bit warm from the exertion, despite the cold. I was also having second thoughts.

I didn’t know Cameron at all. Wouldn’t it be weird if I just showed up at his front door and said I wanted to talk to him? What had seemed like such a good idea when I was at school was now looking completely idiotic. How did one even start a conversation like this? Maybe I could write him a letter. I decided that was what I would do. I would go straight home and write up everything I had to say, then mail it to him.

“Babie?”

I gasped. I hadn’t realized that he was in the driveway. He was loading a bunch of stuff into the trunk of the car parked there.

“That’s a pretty different look you’ve got going there,” he observed.

“Oh,” I said. I patted my shortened and dyed locks.

“If you’re looking for Gracie, I think she’s working this afternoon.”

“No, I was … “ Just about to leave? My heart raced in my chest. Inside my gloves I felt my hands sweating. “Are you going somewhere?” I asked.

He’d packed a bunch of stuff in the trunk and now slammed it closed. Was he getting set to leave town again? Was my father leaving my life again before I even had the chance to get to know him?

“To the pond,” he said.

“The pond?”

“Ice fishing. Gotta go while the ice is still thick.”

“Oh.”

I thought of that camping trip, all those years ago. Had Cameron caught those fish we’d cooked on the fire?

“Remember that time we went camping?” I asked. He broke out in a grin and laughed. When he smiled like that, he was a good-looking guy. I searched his face for traces of me in it, but I couldn’t tell. I looked so much like Annie that whatever I’d gotten from Cameron was probably buried.

“I can’t believe you remember that,” Cameron said. “You were just a little bit of a thing then.”

“I remember we had fun.”

“Yeah, those were good times.” He brushed his hands off on the front of his jacket and his eyes got a faraway look to them, like he was remembering that camping trip.

“Well, I guess I should let you go,” I said. I’d lost all nerve whatsoever. “Be careful!” I turned to head back up the street.

“Wait!” Cameron called. I stopped in my tracks but didn’t turn around. “It’s kind of boring to go fishing alone. Are you doing anything? Why don’t you come with me?”

I felt my face break out in a huge grin, but I composed myself before I turned around.

“Okay,” I said.

“Cool, hop in.”

As I sat down in the passenger seat and Cameron started up the car, I couldn’t believe how perfect this was. We were going on a father-daughter fishing trip. Out on the ice, it would be the perfect time to talk about everything with him. I couldn’t help but feel that he knew that, that he had invited me along for just that reason. Maybe he was ready to finally get to know me.