Next morning. Mom wakes me by poking me in the foot. Because the rest of me is still buried under the covers.
“Wake up,” she orders in her usual drill-sergeant style. “Get dressed.”
I groan. “We’re supposed to be on vacation. Doesn’t that mean sleeping in?” But the vacation is almost over. We have one more day in Hawaii, and then we’ll be going home.
I still haven’t figured out how I am going to keep myself together around Pop.
“Rise and shine,” Mom says. “We’re all having breakfast together.”
I sit up slowly. “Who’s we in this scenario?”
“The core group,” she answers. “The Wongs, of course, and Marjorie and the Jacobis and the Ahmeds.” She is suspiciously cheerful, when I’ve been expecting her to be furious. I’ve pulled an Afton, after all. I up and disappeared last night, and I never answered her texts, and I still don’t intend to provide her with any explanation as to where I was. To top that off, Nick and I talked on the beach until like two in the morning, which put me back at the room about two thirty.
I sink back against my pillow. “I need a vacation from this vacation,” I moan.
She actually smiles. Here I was thinking that she was going to shouty caps things like WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU? and I THOUGHT I COULD RELY ON YOU and NORMALLY YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD, RESPONSIBLE CHILD but she just stares down at me for a minute, smiling this very weird smile, and then she pokes my foot again. “Get up. Put your swimsuit on under your clothes, because we’re going swimming directly after breakfast. Get a move on.”
I get up. Afton and Abby are already showered and ready to go. I was sleeping so hard that I didn’t hear them getting ready.
“Come on, Ada,” Abby whines as I pull my board shirt over my head. “I’m hungry.”
“What else is new?” I say.
“Be nice,” Mom says from the bathroom mirror, where she’s paying extra special attention to her hair. She’s wearing a flowery sundress I haven’t seen before, and makeup, too, I notice. “Oh,” she adds, “and I also invited Nathan Kelly to breakfast, and his son. What’s his name again?”
My eyes dart to Afton. What did she tell Mom?
Afton raises an eyebrow. “Nick, I think,” she answers for me.
“Isn’t that the boy who got lost in Rio?” Mom says.
I think of Nick sitting on the street in Rio, tying wish knots into a bracelet on his bony wrist. The image leads me, as all things seem to do now, back to Billy Wong.
Mom’s phone chimes. She puts it in her purse and then claps her hands together, a call to order. “All right, girls,” she says with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. “Let’s go.”
The restaurant where we’re meeting the group has a large outdoor deck that overlooks the ocean. The entire group is seated along one big table, and sitting in the middle are Nick and his dad. I stop when I get to him. “Hi.”
“Good morning,” he says, and yawns.
“Are you as tired as I am?”
He doesn’t get to answer me, though, because right then Abby starts screaming.
It isn’t a scared scream, I quickly figure out. It’s an excited, loud, over-the-top, earsplitting squeal. Because there’s a familiar smiling figure sitting at the very end of the table, jumping up now, opening his arms and lifting Abby up and kissing her chubby cheeks.
Pop.
“Surprise!” he says, and Abby yells, “This is the best surprise ever!” and they keep kissing each other’s faces, big smacks: Mwa mwa mwa!
“Ada, breathe,” Nick whispers, touching my arm.
It feels exactly like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I watch in a daze as Pop puts Abby down and hugs Afton, who looks nearly as stunned as I am, and then kisses Mom—a quick kiss, but still intimate. Then he frowns and his eyebrows rumple and he glances around, his gaze finally landing on me.
“Hi, Pop,” I wheeze.
“What are you waiting for, silly? Get over here,” he says.
I stagger over and into his arms. He squeezes me a couple of times, then pulls away and looks at me. “There’s something different about you.”
“That’s what I said,” Mom exclaims. “I can’t put my finger on what it is.”
I look at Afton. Help me, I say with my eyes, help me, or I’m going to wreck us all.
She shakes her head quickly. “She got a haircut, you guys. That’s all.”
“Oh, I see,” Pop says, tilting his head one way and then the other to check out my hair. “That’s nice, Ada.”
“I also got a manicure, a pedicure, and a facial,” I mumble. I leave out the waxing for obvious reasons.
“Wow. Well, you look great,” Pop says.
I do not look great. I have dark circles under my eyes, and some leftover puffiness from the previous night’s cry fest, and a secret burning me from the inside out.
“Thanks,” I croak. “What are you really doing here?”
“I’m fighting,” he whispers back.
I take a second to dash away some quick tears. He heard me. He listened.
The details of the surprise come out after we all take our seats. Mom called Pop yesterday, and he said he wanted to join us. They moved around some flights. Pop took the red-eye to Hawaii, to surprise us. We’re going to stay tomorrow, as previously scheduled, but then we’re going to go to Kauai.
“So we’ll get another whole week in paradise,” Pop says. “Together. As a family.”
“Hooray!” Abby yells. “And it will be so much better with you, Poppy!”
“Hooray,” I say weakly. It’s good news. I know this. But it still feels bad.
“And that reminds me,” Mom says. “Happy Father’s Day.”
The table erupts in a chorus of “Happy Father’s Day,” aimed at Max, Jerry, Billy, and Pop. Yep. It’s June twenty-first. Which means, this year anyway, we’re supposed to be celebrating our fathers.
Just five minutes ago, I was fine. I wouldn’t call myself happy, maybe, but the pleasant aftereffects of last night’s decompressing dancing and soul-spilling with Nick still lingered in my system. I was calm, relatively speaking. I was ready to go home and figure all of this out.
But now everything’s been turned on its head.
Pop’s here. He’s sitting on one side of Mom, and Billy Wong is sitting on the other side of her. From my angle the three of them are in a perfect triangle.
The waitress comes and takes our orders, but I don’t order anything but fruit. Watching Mom has made me lose my appetite. She’s being uncharacteristically affectionate toward Pop, even holding his hand, leaning in to whisper things in his ear, smiling, smiling so hard, with all of her teeth, her eyes squinty.
She’s putting on a fine performance, and it makes me want to throw up. Or throw something at her. Or I could throw a fit. Whatever I do, I decide, should definitely involve throwing.
My phone buzzes. Nick. I glance down the table at him. His face is the quintessential expression of sympathy. He feels bad for me. He knows.
I feel bad for me, too.
I can hardly hear the words everyone is saying. It’s like I’m underwater. But suddenly I hear Billy say, “And tell him about last night.”
“Last night?” Mom repeats. “What happened last night?”
Billy turns to Pop. “Your wife, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply amazing. She was the star of the awards ceremony.”
“Oh, well, she’s always a star in my book,” Pop says. She puts her hand over his and smiles at him.
But Billy’s not done. “But she wore heels. All night.”
Pop turns to Mom with a kind of mock surprise. “My wife wore heels?”
“I regretted it, trust me,” Mom says. “I’m still regretting it.”
“You were pretty, Mama,” Abby says. “You talked good, too.”
“Thank you, bug,” Mom says. She looks at Billy again. “But I wasn’t the only one who was amazing last night. You, if I remember correctly, won a ‘distinguished service’ award last night.”
Oh god, I think. I’m glad I missed that.
Pop raises his eyebrows. “Congrats, Bill. What did you win it for?”
Billy waves his hand, like it’s not important. “It’s complicated,” he says. Like maybe Pop isn’t smart enough to understand it. He looks at Mom knowingly. “Let’s just say, I won it for my ‘distinguished service’ in my field.”
My blood starts to heat. Every sentence, every flirty word that passes between my mother and Billy Wong right in front of Pop like this is transforming me from girl into volcano, filling me with white hot magma, the pressure building.
My phone buzzes. Afton this time.
Be cool. You don’t want to freak in front of everyone.
My thumbs whips across the surface of my phone. Mind your own fucking business, I write.
Down the table, I see Afton turn her phone facedown.
Mom is still talking about the stupid award. “I don’t know if I’d call it distinguished, though. I’m just saying.”
Billy’s still smiling that nice-guy smile. “I will have you know, Aster, that I am extremely distinguished. Ask anybody.”
“No,” says Peter. “I don’t know what distinguished is, but I’m pretty sure you’re not it, Dad.”
“Yes, he is,” says Josie.
“He is,” Jenny agrees sweetly, because everything Jenny does is sweet, poor dear Jenny who has no idea.
All eyes then turn to Michael, who has until now been texting on his phone. He glances up. “Uh, I plead the fifth, Dad,” he says. “But I do think you’re a great guy.”
“Gee, thanks, son,” says Billy.
Mom pats Billy arm. “Aw, now, everybody’s always so hard on Billy.”
He smirks at her. “You most of all.”
She puts a hand to her chest, her blue eyes widening. “Me? I would never—”
I clutch the edge of the table. “Stop,” I murmur.
Nobody hears me. They just keep on talking, laughing, making light of everything. Mom is still holding Pop’s hand, while she’s joking about being hard on Billy.
It’s too much. Vesuvius is about to erupt.
I stand up. “Stop!” I yell as loudly as I can.
Conversation at the table fades to silence. Everyone, not just the Wongs and my family, but Marjorie and the Kellys, the Ahmeds and the Jacobis, all turn to stare at me.
But I am focused on Mom.
“Stop talking to him,” I say, my entire body quivering with rage. “Just stop with your stupid games already.”
Mom frowns. “What is wrong with you, Ada?”
“What is wrong with you?” I scream. “I mean, come on, Mom!”
She shakes her head, still acting puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know about the affair!” I burst out.
Silence. It’s like I’ve turned everyone at the table to stone.
Afton is the first to break the spell. “Ada—”
“It’s my turn to talk now,” I say. “I’ve been trying not to talk about it all week, but I just . . . can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I’m sorry. I’m not built that way.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom says after a long moment of silence. Her expression is weird, like she’s surprised but some part of her was also expecting this. “I didn’t know that you knew.”
“Of course I didn’t know!” I glance at Pop wildly. He doesn’t look surprised, either; he looks deeply embarrassed. “How would I have known?”
“We just wanted to wait until you were old enough to understand. We didn’t want you to be hurt,” he says gently.
“Oh, god.” I glance from him to Mom to Billy and back to Pop. “So you . . . this is so messed up. I mean, I’ve heard of people swinging and playing fast and loose in their marriages, but this is messed up.”
“Now wait just a minute, young lady,” Mom says, back to her no-nonsense voice. “That’s not what we—” She composes herself. “We don’t need to talk about this here.”
“It’s all right,” comes a voice from farther down the table—Jerry, who has never looked more ready to take charge of this kind of social emergency. Beside him, Penny gives a nervous giggle, and Kate is buried in her phone, probably live tweeting the entire exchange. “I’ll talk to the waiter,” Jerry says. “We can get a different table, maybe inside. It’s too bright out here anyway.”
Without waiting for confirmation, everybody gets up, the chairs scraping as they hurriedly push them back. They all start to file out, except for Marjorie, who stays right where she was.
“Margie?” Nick’s dad asks.
She waves him off like a pesky fly. “No way, sonny. I want to see how this turns out.”
I boil over again as the Wongs also start to slink out. “Wait, you’re not leaving, are you, Billy?” I ask loudly.
He stops. “Me?”
“Don’t you think you, of all people, should stay?”
His eyes are wide. The fear I see in them gives me courage. “You’re an excellent actor,” I go on. “You missed your true calling by becoming a surgeon.”
“Oh my god, Ada, stop,” says Afton, standing up.
“I mean, you’ve got balls, I have to admit,” I continue like I didn’t hear her. “The way you dare to sit here, next to her, when she’s here with my father. You absolute fucking bastard.”
Now everybody at the table is saying the words Ada and stop and don’t. Then, above them all, comes the high, reedy voice of my little sister.
“What’s an affair?” Abby asks. “Why is everyone so upset?”
Shit. I forgot about Abby. I am officially the worst sister in the universe. “I’m sorry.” I glance at Afton, whose face is pale as milk under her tan. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t do it anym—”
“It was me,” Afton says then, loudly and clearly and slowly, like she’s speaking to a person who doesn’t speak English well. She draws herself up to her full height and looks into my eyes. “It. Was. Me.”
I don’t understand.
“It was me you saw that morning,” Afton says. She closes her eyes for a moment, and a myriad of emotions cross her face in quick succession. Anger. Guilt. Relief. Then she takes a deep breath and turns to our parents. “Ada thinks Mom is having an affair, because earlier this week she came back to the hotel room, and she saw me—”
I’m shaking my head. “It couldn’t have been you. I saw—”
“It was me,” she insists fiercely. “Trust me. I was there.”
Now I feel sick for an entirely new reason. “You and Billy Wong?”
“Ew!” Afton exclaims. “Ew, no! No, stupid. Me and Michael.”
Everyone in the group swivels to stare at Michael. He’d almost made it to the door of the restaurant, attempting a half-hearted escape, but at his name he knows he’s caught. He freezes for a second, like maybe if he doesn’t move, we won’t see him.
“Well, son?” pipes up Marjorie. “Was it you?”
He sighs and turns to face us. “I would just like to say that—”
“But it happened Monday morning,” I argue. “Michael wasn’t even here on Monday.”
“He came in late Sunday night,” Billy corrects me gruffly.
“But how would you have known that?” I ask Afton. “How did you even have time to—”
“When he wasn’t at dinner on Sunday, and I heard that maybe he wasn’t going to come this year, I texted him,” Afton says stiffly. “And he texted back, and said he was coming, after all; he was actually on the plane, heading over. And so then we were texting back and forth . . .”
“He’s who you were texting all night,” I murmur.
She nods. “He gave me his number last year. We had a little . . . thing, at last year’s awards dinner.”
“Thing?” This time it’s Michael’s mother, aka Jenny, asking the questions. “What thing?”
Afton ducks her head, blushing. “A kiss,” she says, at the same time that Michael says, “It was just a kiss.”
“No.” I press my hands to my head because it feels like my brain is going to explode. “It still couldn’t have been you, Afton. You went with Abby to hula class that morning.”
“But when we got there, we ran into the Wongs,” Afton explains. “I left Abby with Jenny and Peter and Josie, and Michael and I . . .” Her face colors even more. “We went back to the room.”
“And you put on Mom’s new robe.”
“Hey!” Peter glares at me, his hands planted on his hips. “Not all Asians look the same, you know.”
“It was dark in there!” I protest. I swallow. “I didn’t actually see Billy’s face. I just assumed it was him. He’s the only guy Mom really talks to.”
“What did you see them doing in there?” asks Josie.
Shit.
“Hey, I have an idea,” comes a familiar voice from next to the door. Nick. He’s been standing there, listening to the entire exchange. I want to think it’s his form of being my moral support and not just sheer curiosity. “Why don’t you kids all come with me?” he asks. “This is grown-up talk, and it’s kind of gross. Who wants to play a game in my room on my PS4?”
Mom and Jenny nod at him gratefully. He nods back. For once, his video game addiction is going to come in very useful. Abby, Josie, and Peter all follow him out without another word.
I turn to Afton. In that little break with Nick and the kids, the facts have settled in my brain, and the facts are these: Afton has screwed up everything. She even said so in the restroom last night during the awards dinner. But I hadn’t known that I was supposed to take her literally. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I fume. “For, like, two days you let me think that it was Mom hooking up with Billy? How could you let me think that?”
“I tried to tell you!” she cries, her hands clenching into fists. “But you were so mad, and you kept talking and talking, and I couldn’t get a word in, and then Mom came in, and then the stuff with Michael happened . . . I was going to tell you. Just as soon as I could get a moment to think about what I’d say.”
I sink into my chair. “You should have told me.”
“But wait,” interjects Marjorie. She finishes the last of her glass of orange juice. “Didn’t you tell us, Billy, that Michael has a serious girlfriend?”
All eyes go back to Michael. He doesn’t say anything. He just puts his hands into the pockets of his shorts and sighs. “I don’t have a good excuse. I messed up. In my defense, though, your sister—”
“My sister is not crazy,” I spit out.
“Your sister is . . . kind of irresistible,” he says.
I can see his point. If Afton decided that Michael was going to be her rebound—the first cute guy she saw—and went after him with her typical Afton-like tenacity, Michael didn’t stand much of a chance. My sister is a force to be reckoned with.
Still, though. Douchebag.
The waitress arrives with various plates of food. She already looks stressed out, what with half the group moving to a different table, inside, and now the kids are gone, but their food’s here. Then Billy says, “Look, we’d like to move, too, if that’s okay. We have some things we’d like to discuss with our son.”
“Sure,” the waitress says, in a voice that conveys how very weary she is with all these freaking tourists. “Just pick a clean table, and I’ll bring your food there.”
Billy and Jenny thank the waitress, nod at Mom and Pop, and walk out, Billy pulling Michael behind them by the arm. “Do you know how old that girl is?” I hear him mutter.
“She’s eighteen,” Michael says. “I know, but Dad—”
Then the door swings closed behind them, and they’re gone.
Marjorie heaves a sigh. “This has been very entertaining,” she announces. “But I should go, too.”
She picks up her plate and sees herself out.
So it’s finally down to Mom, Pop, Afton, and me.
Which is a good thing, because something else has just occurred to me.
“Wait,” I say. “When I said I knew about the affair, you acted like you knew what I was talking about. But you didn’t know about Afton and Michael, did you?”
“No,” Mom says grimly. “I didn’t know they had sex in my bed. I wish I’d never found out about that, honestly. But everything makes so much sense now—how you were acting out all week, why you were so angry.”
“So what affair did you think I meant?” I ask.
Silence.
Then Pop sighs. “We thought you meant our affair.”
“Your affair,” I repeat stupidly.
Mom clears her throat. “When your pop and I met, I was still married to Aaron, and Pop had a serious girlfriend.”
I blink a few times. This means that Mom and Pop had an affair while they were both committed to other people.
“Oh,” I say numbly.
“We weren’t trying to deceive you, honey, or keep it a secret from you forever, but you were very young at the time.”
“Oh.” I glance at Afton. Her face is totally unsurprised by this revelation. She must have known somehow, too. Which is why she was saying those things, in her fight with Mom, about not being a good role model herself. “I see.”
“We always meant to explain how it happened to you, someday,” Pop says. “We should have. You’re old enough to handle it now.”
Or not.
I stand up. I’ve been so wrong about everything. In all of human history, it feels like there has never been anyone so spectacularly wrong as I have been.
“I have to go now,” I say, and then I run.