Lettie
I haven’t rung Riley’s doorbell since middle school, back when I wanted to wring her neck. Ten minutes ago, she sent me a message. I didn’t know she still had my phone number, but suddenly she’s texting, asking to talk about something “important.” I can guess what topic is on her mind.
I wait for someone to come to the front door, wondering what on earth Riley thinks I can do to help. I try to put myself in her shoes—imagining how it would feel to find out this late in life that my father wasn’t my father. Well, I suppose that’s a bit unfair. He’d have raised me and all that, so I don’t think DNA should negate years of noteworthy effort. But still, I get it—there’s a certain identity that comes from knowing exactly where you come from.
I never did get the full story of how she found out. The bell rang the day she confided in me, and we were rudely interrupted by hordes of students who streamed into the hall. I’ve been curious to know more since then, but not enough to reach out to her.
Now that I’m at her house, I have this thought that we’ll drag out the Barbies like the old days, use them to role-play the looming confrontation with her parents.
Evan, the non-bio-dad, opens the door. His blue denim shirt, stylishly paired with black jeans, is unbuttoned, and I see way too much Evan Thompson for my liking. His eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. A scattering of scruff can’t hide his pale complexion. All in all, he looks handsome as always, but he’s a bit strung out, like a guy who should have left the nightclub hours ago.
He’s holding a glass tumbler that’s a quarter full of a brown liquid that smells like lighter fluid. I have a passing thought that Evan has a stash of drugs in the house that’s helping to feed Riley’s habit. It’s something I would have discussed with Jay if only we were talking or texting. We haven’t communicated since our last odd exchange.
I’m not a good guy. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me show you I can.
I still don’t know what he meant by that. Was it a threat against me, or would he hurt someone I care about to prove a point? Either way, I’m not completely turned off by it or him, and I suppose that’s another problem for my future therapist to sort out.
“Lettie,” says Evan, clearly surprised I’m there. He doesn’t make enough room for me to slip inside without passing close enough to smell alcohol on his breath. Sadly, the odor makes me think of my mother.
“Riley’s in her bedroom,” he tells me. Even though it’s been years, he knows I can find my way. “How’ve you been?” he asks.
“Good,” I say, hoping that will be the full extent of our conversation.
I’ve always liked Evan, or at least he’s always been nice to me, which is partly why I feel extra uncomfortable knowing this secret about him.
I scamper upstairs. Riley’s bedroom door is closed. I go inside without knocking.
“Thanks for leaving me alone with your dad,” I say sarcastically. “Talk about awkward.”
The room looks nothing like I remember. It used to be pink and full of fluffy things. Now it’s blue and there are a lot more mirrors.
“Sorry about that,” she tells me from her seat at a desk in a corner of the room that was once home to a mountain of stuffed animals. Her ponytail swishes from one shoulder to the other as she gets up from her chair, not to give me a hug but to close the door.
“I was going to meet you downstairs, but I’ve been avoiding my father, and he got there first.”
“Do you think he knows that you know? Does he even know?”
I’m sure I could have been more sensitive in how I phrased my questions, but we aren’t actually here to play dolls.
“No to both,” Riley says. “But I think he’s going to find out.”
“How so?”
“My mother is going to tell him.”
I plop down in a turquoise beanbag chair, which shifts under my weight, while Riley perches herself on the edge of her bed.
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
My gaze darts about the room. I can’t help but wonder what’s gone on in here—if Riley and Dylan have done the deed on her bed, if she has pills stashed in her desk drawer, or maybe love notes from her secret boy toy, though I suspect those would mostly come by text.
“They’re fighting all the time now,” she tells me.
“They are getting a divorce,” I say. “Maybe it’s, you know, not so great that they’re still in the same house?”
“Ya think?” says Riley emphatically.
She looks profoundly sad, and I feel for her in all the ways I haven’t. What can I say? Emotions are confusing.
On one hand, I want to revile her choices, but now that I’ve seen her vulnerable side, I find my judgment softening. Sure, she’s my former bully with cheerleader good looks and envy-inducing popularity, but I guess we’re all just one secret away from feeling like an outsider.
“I need your help with something—but before that, I have a confession to make.” Riley clears her throat like she’s about to make an announcement. Then: “It was me … I’m the one who identified you as the school vandal. I’m the reason you got suspended last year.”
She sounds remorseful, but I saw her in a school play once and she was a pretty good actress. Regardless, I still look surprised, but that’s because she actually fessed up to it—the rat.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” she continues. “I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Well, what did you think would happen?” I ask testily.
“I dunno,” she admits. “I guess I wasn’t really thinking—or at least I wasn’t thinking about you.”
Well, that stings, but she’s got my attention. “Okay,” I say. “So why are you telling me this?”
“I’m trying to apologize, Lettie, okay?!” Red splotches appear on Riley’s porcelain smooth cheeks. I think she might cry.
“It helps if you actually use the words I’m sorry,” I suggest.
“I’m sorry,” Riley says as her gaze drops to the floor.
I let Riley stew in her discomfort for a silent minute before I let her off the hook—sort of. “If we’re being totally honest, I already knew.”
Riley perks up with surprise. “How?” she asks.
I’m not going to sell out Dylan to make my point, so I take a different approach. “The only distinguishing feature in the published image was the splotchy birthmark on my wrist. Nobody’s ever commented on it before—nobody except you. You didn’t have a blemish on your body when we were kids—still don’t—so you were unusually fixated on it. I figured it would have stuck out to you.”
Riley looks impressed, like she’s in the presence of a great detective.
“But back to the point. Why’d you tell on me?”
A deep sigh exits Riley’s mouth, as if to rid herself of all bad feelings, though her guilty expression remains. “I wanted a college reference from Mr. Giuseppe.”
My eyebrows go up. “Vice Principal Giuseppe?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty stingy with them. I thought if I gave him the vandal, he might give me a recommendation.”
Her lame excuse gets a scoff from me. “You sacrificed me in middle school for your popularity, and you did again it in high school for a reference, of all things. At least I was standing up for a cause. You only think of yourself—and you always have.”
“I’m sorry,” Riley says, her voice pleading. “I really am.”
“Do you know I still get stomach cramps when I hear the word loony? And I have an irrational fear of security alarms every time I leave a store. You were horrible to me, Riley—absolutely horrible.”
“I know … I know,” she says, sounding genuinely contrite. “I’m really sorry, Lettie. I was stupid and young.”
“You weren’t that young when you named me as the vandal.” I pantomime using spray paint on an imaginary school door.
Riley doesn’t know what to say to that. I want to tell her how close I was to giving Jay the green light to share the photos of her and Umbrella Man, but my better judgment prevails.
“I’m asking you for a second chance,” Riley begs.
“You betrayed me twice. Why should I give you a chance to do it again?” I counter, squinting at her. “Anyway, what’s more important, why did you do it? Not the graffiti—I get that. I’m asking why did you become such a raging bitch to me in middle school? We were friends! Best friends!”
Riley takes a moment to collect her thoughts, as if she’s composing herself for some big confession. Once again, her gaze lowers to avoid mine. “I was jealous,” she says.
Wide eyes broadcast my astonishment. “Jealous of what? Me?” I point to myself and laugh in disbelief. “I don’t have your money, your looks, your friends. What did you have to be jealous of?”
“Your family,” Riley says. “You, your mom, your dad—you were all so … perfect. My parents, they fought all the time. It was miserable around here—still is. Guess I’m used to it now, but back then I hated it—every minute of it.”
I flash to our playdates, my mind conjuring echoes of the loud squabbles that evidently tormented Riley.
Tears coat her eyes—kryptonite to my defenses.
“I just wanted what you had—a happy, normal family,” she says, her voice quavering.
While she’s expertly plucked at my heartstrings, I’m still hurt and angry. “That makes no sense,” I tell her. “You wanted what I had, so you treated me like crap? How’d that work out? All it did was ruin our friendship and made us both miserable.”
“It was childish and stupid of me, I know,” Riley says.
A hefty sigh releases most of my bad feelings. What’s the point in dwelling on them anyway?
“I’m really sorry for what you’re going through,” I offer, after a brief silence.
Riley dismisses her troubles with a shrug. “It is what it is.” That could be either wise and worldly or an avoidance tactic.
“Are you sure about—”
I don’t have to finish the thought, as Riley is nodding emphatically. “I took a DNA test,” she says. “The kind that looks for ancestors and stuff.”
The unfiltered Lettie would say something sarcastic like: “As opposed to the DNA test that reveals your spirit animal?” The sensitive Lettie keeps her mouth shut.
“What made you do that?” I ask.
“Teagan was doing it with her mom for fun, some kind of family tree project. And I thought my mom and I should do it, too.”
Teagan is one of my former tormentors—the one who nicknamed me Loony Lettie, in fact. This visit is getting less fun by the second.
“Do you think your mom knows? I mean … if she does, why would she want to take the test?”
“She didn’t want to take it,” Riley says. “Or at least she said she’d get the kits for us, but she never did. I think she was stalling because she knows Evan’s not my father. She was probably hoping I’d forget about the whole thing.”
So now he’s “Evan.”
“Whenever I brought it up, my mom would act like it had slipped her mind. The more she put it off, the more curious I became … so I ordered the test myself.”
Parents just don’t get it. The more they want us not to do something, the more likely it is we’re going to do it. Such thinking is hardwired into our teenage brains.
“When I got the results, they didn’t make sense.”
Riley hands me her phone. On the screen is a report from a company called MyRoots. I’m looking at a pie chart with one-half colored red. The red part is labeled “Poland.”
I think I get Riley’s aha moment. Thompson is mostly an English name, and Riley has always said her family is from the UK. This chart says otherwise.
“Evan doesn’t have any Polish ancestry, I’m guessing?”
Riley shakes her head.
“My dad is English and Irish. My mom’s family is from Scotland. That’s what I’ve been told.”
The Scottish ancestry is there, along with a bunch of reports indicating that Riley has a low probability for serious genetic diseases.
Good for her.
“Scroll down,” Riley says. “There’s more.”
And there is more—a table of common relatives. Many of those listed were thought to be fourth and fifth cousins, those who share at least 5cM (centimorgans) of identical DNA. I can’t say whether Riley gets the genomics that make up this report, but she doesn’t need a STEM background to know what the word cousin means. The report is lengthy and a bit overwhelming, but I don’t see anything that clearly identifies a close relative, or Riley’s biological father.
“There are relatives here I’ve never heard of. I certainly don’t recognize any of the names with Polish ancestry. I’m thinking I should try to contact one of them … I want to find my real father.”
I cringe again, because I feel bad for Evan. Spitting in a tube has somehow negated his parental status. I think about my own dad. I could never discount his role and influence based on some report.
“I mean, Evan’s still your father,” I tell her. “No matter what.”
“You know what I mean.” Riley sounds quite determined. “I want to find the man responsible for creating me.”
“What about asking your mom?” I ask.
Riley shakes that off. “My mom is like crazy fragile right now. I don’t want to make it worse.”
I get it. But I still don’t get exactly what I’m doing here. “Rye, what are you asking?” I need her to get to the point. More accurately, I need to get to my math homework.
“You’re the smartest person I know,” she tells me.
I’m flattered—a little.
“Thanks, but there are a lot of kids at school who are smarter than me,” I say. That’s not a lie, assuming “a lot” is around six. Maybe seven.
“Yeah, but you’re the smartest person I know well,” she says.
Can’t argue with that, I think.
“What do you want from me, Rye?” I ask. “Why am I even here?”
Part of me wants to walk out the door before she has a chance to answer. But I feel for Riley, too. She’s made mistakes and so have I. Maybe we all deserve second—or sometimes third—chances.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You want me to help you find your bio-dad?”
Riley’s face lights up.
I half smile back at her, but on the inside, I’m thinking: What am I getting myself into?