I stopped. The three of them were gaping at me.
This was what they got for asking me about this shit during dinner.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I backtracked. “I told my mom I didn’t want to go to her boyfriends’ places anymore. I could stay at home by myself, and she could go where she wanted. I knew when I said it that she would be gone a lot. I didn’t picture her being gone almost always.” I crunched a baked potato chip. Ignoring their eyes on me, I looked past everyone at the water.
The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would leave you alone, eventually. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Likewise, you would think rich kids would stop badgering their poor friend when she didn’t melt down about her home life. But the more calmly I answered, the more they kept after me.
“What about your grandparents?” Alec asked.
“What about them?” I asked. “You mean, why haven’t I gone to live with them?”
He nodded, but his eyes were getting wider. He was going to stop me and say this was too much information after all.
I kind of enjoyed telling them, “My grandparents kicked my mom out of the house when she got pregnant at fifteen. She had to drop out of school so she could get a job. Sometimes I think that experience did something to her, being thrown out on her own like that, because she’ll do anything to avoid getting a job now.”
“That was eighteen years ago,” Molly said.
I resented the challenging tone in her voice. How dare this privileged rich girl question my story? I asked her, “So?”
“So, your mom should have gotten over it,” Molly said.
“Some people have problems,” I said. “When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.”
Grayson moved in the corner of my eye. He’d been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was sitting there, listening to this whole mortifying conversation. I turned to him to give him my special go-to-hell face.
But he was staring at me with a shocked expression—not bad shock like Alec, as if he were horrified by my life story, but good shock, as if he’d had an epiphany.
“That explains why she doesn’t get a job,” Molly said. “What part of your mother’s problem makes her leave you alone all the time?”
I was still so surprised by the way Grayson was acting that it took me a second to realize Molly had deeply insulted my mom. Pride took over as I turned back to Molly. “I’m eighteen years old,” I said. “There’s no reason for my mother to mother me. Why are you harping on this?”
“Because people deserve to be treated with respect,” Molly said haughtily. “Children should be cared for. Friends and relatives should not lie to each other. And when I see that happening, I’m going to call it like it is.”
My skin burned so hot that I glanced at the setting sun to make sure it hadn’t caught me in its bright beam. Molly was talking about Grayson blackmailing me to date Alec. Why was she talking about this? She didn’t need to make a point to me. She knew Grayson had me over a barrel. If she let Alec know he was being fooled, or even if she let Grayson know I’d told her about the whole arrangement, Grayson could get so angry that he’d show my forgery to my mother and everyone at the airport.
But I didn’t dare telegraph this to Molly with a look. A sideways glance at Grayson let me know he was still watching me, rapt, like he was seeing me for the first time. I was almost relieved when Alec kept on with his questions.
“You’ve never even tried to contact your grandparents?” Alec asked. “Maybe they’ve had a change of heart.”
Right. Like they had decided to start donating to charity: namely, me. I bit out, “Contact them, how, Alec? They live somewhere in South Carolina and their last name is Jones. You do the math.”
“What about your other grandparents?” he asked.
“I’ve never met them, either.”
“What about your dad? Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a soft thud as someone kicked Alec under the table. He didn’t get the hint. He said, “I don’t mean right this second. I mean in general.”
I took a deep breath. This fake dating thing was wearing me down. I needed to think about it further, really plan it all out, and invent some kind of brainless persona who could go out with Alec without exposing her heart to danger. This sharing of my own actual life was above and beyond the call of duty for this job, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. Finally I said on a sigh, “I don’t know that either. I don’t know who my dad is.”
Alec’s own dad hadn’t lived with him for years, but Alec had known where his dad was. His dad had paid child support and held joint custody, on paper at least. Alec, from his suburban Wilmington home in a neighborhood with paved roads and curbs and sidewalks, with a TV in every bedroom, could not fathom not knowing who his father was.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said soothingly. “I just wanted to learn more about you.” He lifted his hand toward my cheek.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. His questions had a fishing-for-information quality about them. Either that or I was just mad now. The upshot was the same: I was tired of his bullshit. I scooted away from him on the bench. An inch, not enough to escape him if he wanted to touch me, but enough to be symbolic.
It was a gesture he read perfectly. He tilted his head at me, puzzled and hurt, just like he should be as his date drew back from him when he was trying to help. His instinct was to comfort an upset girl. And he was quickly learning not to do that with me. So frustrating, that once in a while I had actual emotions that got tangled up with the fake ones.
“Okay,” he said, giving in. “Really here’s what I’ve been curious about from the beginning. My dad always said what great character you had, and how much drive you had to become a pilot.”
“One day a year and a half ago, I walked in on you and Grayson discussing my drive to become a pilot.” I meant their joke that I’d screwed Mr. Hall.
He knew exactly what I was getting at. His cheeks flushed red against his pale hair. But, typically, he pretended he had no idea. He went on, “I wondered where your drive came from.”
I nodded. “Clearly not from my mother, because she’s white trash.”
“Oh,” Molly said in warning. I wasn’t sure to whom.
Alec gaped at me for a moment, then managed, “I never said—”
I interrupted him. “The only explanation is that my dad is a nuclear physicist. Either I inherited that drive genetically from his side of the family, or just knowing that he’s a nuclear physicist gives me the motivation to make it out of the trailer park myself. It can’t be that I’m just like this. That I just look around and say to myself, ‘It is no fun being a sitting duck during tornado warnings, with no car to drive to the safe shelter they always talk about for people who live in unsafe places like that. It’s no fun not to have food in a refrigerator, or a car to go get it. I think I’ll make an effort to get a job.’ No, I couldn’t possibly come to that conclusion all by my lonesome.”
He stood up suddenly. I flinched at the loud screech as the bench raked back beneath me on the deck. He still blushed, but the red in his cheeks had shrunk from an embarrassed flush to two small, angry points.
“I’m going to get a refill,” he muttered. Then, almost as an afterthought, he looked down at me. “Would you like something?”
I shook my head, adamant about what I’d said, and yet ashamed at the same time.
He took his cup and stalked away across the deck, through the door to the café.
I picked through the salad with my fork again. Two days of regular meals had finally caught up with me. I wasn’t ravenous anymore. I couldn’t eat another bite. I waited for Molly’s cutting comment, which would be that much more cutting because she made it in front of Grayson.
What she said surprised me. “Leah, Alec’s not like Grayson.”
“Oh, thanks,” Grayson protested. “What do you mean, he’s not like me? I am a nice person.”
She turned and cupped Grayson’s face in both hands. I would not dare do such a thing to Grayson, but Molly got away with it. She told him, “You are not a nice person. Shut up.”
She turned back to me. “You can’t be mean like that to Alec. He’s such a gentleman, and he’s treating you like he wants to be treated. He didn’t understand he was wading into a hornet’s nest with your nuclear physicist daddy and whatnot. Holy Mother of God.”
I put my fork down. “You are one to talk, Miss Manners.”
“I observe and adapt,” Molly said. “I’m treating you like you want to be treated, but unlike you, I can turn that mean streak off. Watch and learn.” She spun around, lifting her long legs over the bench, and clopped across the deck to follow Alec inside.
I needed to find something else on my plate to play with, but Grayson caught my gaze before I looked down. He said, “Molly’s right. I thought you would be good at this, but you’re incredibly bad at this because you’re so sensitive. I could have sent Molly in to flirt with Alec with better results than you’re getting.”
“If you think Molly is so great, why can’t you use her, without even using her?” I asked. “Why can’t she be the girlfriend Alec falls in love with over spring break?”
I expected him to give me an angry list of reasons why not. Instead, he seemed to consider my suggestion. His blond brows knitted. He took a long pull at his drink, watching me over the rim of his cup. After he set the cup down, he still stared at me like he would find the answer in my face.
Finally he asked, “Where is she going to college in the fall?”
“SCAD.” When he gave me a puzzled look, I remembered SCAD was a lot closer to my high school than his. Maybe he’d never heard of it, even though the people at my high school thought it was the coolest postgraduation destination possible. “Savannah College of Art and Design.”
“Then, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Heaven Beach is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Charleston. Savannah’s a hair closer to Charleston. I need him to feel pulled away from Charleston.”
My obvious next question was, “What’s so awful about Alec going to Charleston?” That was the key to the whole puzzle. And yet, because clearly I had a head as big as the state of South Carolina, I asked, “How do you know I’m not going to college somewhere else in the fall?”
“Because you’re not.”
“I can’t believe you!” Molly exclaimed. She and Alec were coming out the door. Laughing, she leaned into him. As they stepped outside, she looked for me and arched her eyebrows at me: This is how it’s done.
Oh, yeah? If everybody was pushing me into hooking up with this clueless boy, I would show them how it was done. I rose from the table and walked across the deck with a swing in my step, assisted by the stilettos. Ignoring Molly still touching him, I put my hand on his chest. “Alec,” I whispered huskily, “I’m so sorry I was mean to you before. You touched a tender spot.” I looked up at him through my eyelashes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Molly remove her hand from him, staring at me with awe and new respect.
“Oh.” Beet red, Alec gazed down at me with wide blue eyes, mesmerized by me. He’d completely forgotten he was standing on a deck outside a restaurant with two other people, holding a drink. “No, I’m sorry.” He glanced down into my cleavage.
I tugged him by the arm down the deck steps, toward his car. As we walked, I glanced behind us and stuck out my tongue. Molly stared after us with her lips parted.
But my greatest triumph shocked me, and I had no idea whether it was really a triumph at all. Grayson stared after us too. His blond brows were down. His face had gone pale underneath his tan. Down by his side, he had squeezed all the blood out of his white fist.
twelve
As soon as we reached the party, it was like my triumph had never happened. Walking to the door of Francie Mahoney’s parents’ mansion, Molly caught up with Alec and asked him who he remembered from her classes. She must have assumed, probably correctly, that Alec would recall these people, whereas Grayson would not, or wouldn’t admit it.
“Does she know the whole school?” Grayson asked me quietly as we fell in behind her and Alec.
“Yes,” I said. “Molly’s so popular that she’s not even worried about being popular. I’ve never seen a popular person before who wasn’t trying really hard at it. But she’s rich and smart and interesting and she doesn’t give a shit.”
“She sounds perfect.”
“She is perfect,” I said. “I want to be her. Not be like her, but be her, like in a creepy roommate movie.”
He laughed, the genuine relaxed laugh I’d heard from him a few times. “I don’t know everybody. And I didn’t when I lived here, either.”
“Did Alec?”
“Yes,” he said as we walked through a huge front door into the party.
Molly was instantly surrounded by her friends, who screamed over her and wanted to know who she’d brought. She introduced Alec—didn’t they remember him? Didn’t they? And they did!
Didn’t they also remember Grayson? Maybe not. He was acting polite enough, though, so several girls who couldn’t fight their way into the circle around Alec settled for the circle around Grayson. Molly’s friends hardly noticed me, which was good. Their eyes might slide over to me, but they didn’t dare flare their nostrils or, worse, pointedly look me up and down. Not with Molly standing there. They went back to talking to Grayson.