Two days go by.
Two days in which I haven’t seen nor spoken to Tyler, two days in which Ella has spent every waking hour moping around the house, two days in which everything feels out of place. Sometimes I hear Ella ask Dad where he thinks Tyler’s at right at the moment. Dad always says he’s not sure. Sometimes she even says that kicking him out of the house was the worst thing to do, because now she can’t keep an eye on him. He has more reasons to get high now, she believes. I like to think she’s wrong about this. I have enough trust in Tyler to hope that he’s viewing all of this as the wake-up call he needed. A chance to maybe figure out his life. Jamie and Chase, however, aren’t so understanding. Last night, Jamie argued with his mom. Yelled at her for kicking Tyler out, called her unfair and too strict. This morning, Chase said he didn’t like the house being so boring. Said he wanted Tyler to take him out for a ride in the Audi, something they do once in a while. Chase is into cars. But today his brother isn’t here to take him for a ride around the neighborhood while over-revving his engine.
Thinking of Tyler’s car, it’s odd not seeing it parked diagonally on the sidewalk. I imagine it parked outside Dean’s house, in that same I’m-a-terrible-parker manner, and it makes me think, in that split second, about heading over there to visit. Just because Tyler has been kicked out of the house doesn’t mean I can’t see him. He’s only five minutes away. Maybe I’ll ask Rachael to give me a ride over there.
Shaking my head as I run across the lawn and over the street, I make my way to the red Bug that’s waiting for me on Rachael’s driveway, its engine purring. Rachael is adjusting her hair when I slide into the passenger seat.
“You’re officially the worst person ever when it comes to time management,” she throws at me, but she’s smiling. She pushes shut the mirror in her sun visor and pulls on her seatbelt.
“I’m sorry,” I say as I press a hand to my chest in mock horror, “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t be three minutes late. Feel free to burn me at the stake, oh holy one.”
Rachael laughs and whacks my arm, rolling her eyes straight to the back of her head in the same way that Amelia often does. I feel homesick in that second. “So,” she says, “what’s the gossip from Saturday?”
As she drives, I stare at her. Worry consumes every inch of my being, combined with the fear that Tiffani has probably already begun to spread our secret like wildfire. Rachael knows, I think. And Meghan, and Jake, and Dean. They all know.
She glances out the corner of her eye, a playful grin on her lips. “C’mon,” she says, “You have to tell me! Did you go home with Jake?”
Maybe she doesn’t know, or maybe she does and is just trying to catch me out, so she can stop the car and yell, “LIAR!”
It’s the first time I’ve seen Rachael since Saturday. After her three-day hangover subsided, she called up the house and demanded that we go for coffee to have a catch-up, because she hasn’t seen me in “two years.” Now I’m wishing I’d faked an illness.
Eventually I answer her question with a quick “No,” and then turn away from her. I prop my elbow against the window and pretend to find the neighborhood interesting and beautiful, but after living here for a while, it just looks familiar and normal and boring to me now. “What about you?” I throw her a quick glance, looking at her from beneath my eyelashes.
She grows flustered under my stare and leans forward, gripping onto the steering wheel and biting back a smile. “I stayed at Trevor’s.”
“Just stayed over?” My eyebrows arch.
“Well, that and some other unmentionable events.” A laugh escapes her lips but it quickly falters into a sigh. She shrugs. “I just want him to ask me out on a proper date already.”
I feel bad for her. Trevor is all I’ve heard her speak about the entire summer, and although he may only be her “party fling,” according to Tiffani, it’s obvious Rachael is seeking something more from their encounters.
“Guys are assholes,” I tell her, because I’m starting to believe it.
Take Trevor, for example. Sure, he may be sweet when he’s drunk, but deep down he’s probably nothing but a horndog. Example two: Jake. The player. I admit to falling into the trap at the beginning of the summer, when I thought he actually cared about getting to know me, but in the end all he was really after was a new name to add to his list. Final example: Tyler. He’s an asshole for the way he treats people and he’s an asshole for getting Tiffani pregnant.
This fact has gradually angered me more and more over the past couple days. I didn’t take him as someone who’d be so careless, who could make such a big mistake. The reality of it all is beginning to sink in, and hurts. Tyler’s going to be a dad. He’s too young and too irresponsible, and I know that there is absolutely no way he’ll be able to handle it.
Rachael bitches about Trevor all the way to Santa Monica Boulevard. He’s hot, but he’s a prick. He can be really loving, but he’s a prick. His parents like her, but he’s a prick. By the time we park the car and reach the Refinery, I feel like I know enough about him I could steal his identity.
“I’m so freaking mad,” Rachael huffs, finally giving up on her ranting. But she perks up when she orders her cappuccino, and I my latte, and then we set ourselves down by the wooden table against the windows facing out onto the boulevard. “Oh, I totally forgot!” She pulls her purse up onto the table and rummages around inside before pulling out not only twenty bucks, but also my phone. “You must have left it at my place before we went to Dean’s. I found it under my bed just as I was leaving to pick you up.”
I stare at her. “Are you kidding me? I thought I was mugged on the beach! I cried!”
She bursts out laughing and places the bill and the phone in front of me, but when I try to switch it on I realize it’s dead. I heave a sigh just as the barista sets our coffees down in front of us, immediately brightening up my day.
“Okay, I’ve been waiting all morning to talk to you about this. Let’s get down to the big news! Can you believe Tyler and Tiffani broke up?” Rachael explodes after taking a sip of her coffee, looking at me with wide eyes. “I mean, I’ve been telling her for ages that he’s a piece of shit—I’m sorry, I know he’s your brother and I know I’m supposed to be his friend, but seriously, he treated her like crap.” Her hands move as she talks, frantic and quick, like she’s a reporter announcing some breaking news. In a way, it kind of is.
“Has she spoken to you?” I set my eyes on her, wondering if Tiffani has told her the full story: the version that includes me. I try to ignore the fact that Rachael’s taking Tiffani’s side. Sure, Tyler didn’t treat Tiffani all that great, but can anyone blame him? She was controlling him and he didn’t want to be with her.
“She came over last night,” Rachael says, and I listen while holding my mug to my lips, sipping slowly at my latte. “He broke up with her. How insane is that? I think she said it was on Sunday morning.”
“Yeah, it was. I was there.” I shift my eyes to the windows, observing the constant stream of people and cars passing by.
Rachael’s eyes widen again, her entire mind focused on the drama. “Can you believe he cheated on her again?”
Immediately my eyes snap back over to her and I slowly lower my mug. I wrap my hands tight around it. My heart is throbbing in my chest. “Did she tell you who the girl was?”
“No,” she says, and the biggest wave of relief flows through my body. “Do you know?”
“No,” I lie. I turn away again, hoping she doesn’t see the guilt in my eyes or hear the waver in my voice. “Another girl from out of town, I think.”
“I just can’t believe he turned around and broke up with her when it should have been the other way around.” She purses her lips and gives a small shake of her head. “She was so pissed off she told his mom about the coke.”
I frown. That’s not the only thing she told her. “Yeah, he got kicked out.”
“I know,” Rachael says, “which is why I can’t believe she’s letting him stay at her place.” Holding her coffee to her lips, she takes a long swig.
“Wait, what?”
She glances at me. “What?”
“He’s staying at Tiffani’s place? He told me he was going to Dean’s.” This new information hits me hard. I get that the situation Tyler is in just now is tricky, but I didn’t expect him to just throw himself back into her arms so easily. My heart beats even faster.
“Well, he’s definitely not at Dean’s,” Rachael says, an eyebrow raised. She shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought it was weird too. But you know how Tiffani is. She’s so possessive over him, no wonder she’s forgiven him. She can’t bear the thought of some other girl claiming him. She says they’ll definitely get back together, which is so stupid, because he’s nothing but a cheater, so why the hell would she want to get back together with him?” She puffs out her cheeks once she stops babbling. “She’s kind of a lunatic. She just can’t let go.”
“She’s pregnant, Rachael,” I say in a hushed voice, and it slips out of my mouth so fast that I begin to panic. It’s not up to me to break the news. Maybe Tiffani wanted to tell Rachael and Meghan herself.
Rachael’s jaw drops and I swear she almost tilts backward off the chair, her coffee splashing out of the mug when she slams it down on the table. She immediately huddles closer to me, her eyes blinking quickly from the shock. “What?”
“She told him on Sunday,” I whisper, feeling sick again at the idea of it all again. “Right after he broke up with her.” The more I think it all through, the more it makes sense. Of course he’s staying at her place. That’s what happens when couples end up with a kid on their hands. They throw the past behind them and stick together. “She has to forgive him and he has to go back to her.”
“This is insane!” Rachael whisper-yells into my ear before pulling away from me. She tries to process the news, her eyes still blinking wildly as she stares out the windows. A perplexed expression crosses her face. She looks back over to me. “Wait,” she says. “She was drinking at Dean’s on Saturday.”
I don’t reply. I just think about her words for a second, trying to recall everything that happened at Dean’s before I got drunk in the garage. Rachael’s right. Tiffani was more than keen to join in with the game of shot roulette, which she shouldn’t have been if she was pregnant. She was tipsy when I spoke to her in the back yard.
“Wait,” Rachael says again, holding up a finger, one eyebrow arched. “You said she told him right after he broke up with her?”
“Yeah. Like, five seconds after.”
Rachael exhales a long breath before saying, “You don’t think . . .?”
My thoughts suddenly sync with hers, and the realization of what she’s hinting at hits me so hard that I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.
Tiffani’s faking it.
“Oh my God.”
“It’s not uncommon,” Rachael says, pressing a manicured finger to her lips. It’s as though she’s just cracked a murder case. “You tell the guy you’re pregnant so that he has no choice but to stay with you.”
“You really think Tiffani would do that?”
“I want to believe that she wouldn’t,” she says quietly as she reaches for her coffee, “but she’d seriously stop at nothing to stay with Tyler. He does a lot for her reputation. Like I said, she’s a lunatic.”
Or, in Tyler’s words, a psychopath. But I don’t think she has a real mental disorder, just some serious issues. She has to have issues if she’s willing to attempt something like this.
I can’t even begin to imagine Tiffani stooping to such a low, but Rachael is right. Over the summer I’ve learned that Tyler and Tiffani’s relationship is seriously messed up. No matter what he does, she can’t stand to be without him, because she can’t stand not being in control. Of course she wants it all back. And how do you force a guy into getting back together with you? Fake a pregnancy.
“I know how we can find out if she’s lying or not!” Rachael says enthusiastically, and I swing my legs around to face her properly. My forehead creases with worry. I don’t know what’s going through Rachael’s head, but it’s probably something ridiculous. “You know how we’re all going over there on Friday?”
“I’m not invited,” I say, and immediately turn back around and set my eyes on the store across the street. I wasn’t even aware that Tiffani had invited everyone over, so clearly I’m not included. And I can’t blame her.
“You are,” Rachael says, and then nods to my phone, still lying on the table in front of me. “You haven’t had that for a couple days. She’s probably texted you. Anyway, it’s movie night.”
I grind my teeth together to stop me from accidentally saying something. Rachael doesn’t understand. I know I won’t be invited. Tiffani hates me. But I can’t tell Rachael this, of course, because Rachael will ask why, and that’s a question I’m not willing to answer. What would I even say? Tiffani hates me because I slept with Tyler, who, just to clarify, in case you forgot, is my stepbrother. Two secrets in one! So, Rachael, I’m a shitty friend and a shitty person. Hell yeah!
“So on Friday,” she continues, getting to her feet, “we need to figure out if she’s lying or not. And I know exactly how.”
* * *
Once I’m home and I’ve charged my phone, I find twenty-nine missed calls from Dad from Saturday night, and three from Mom over the past few days. There are also some texts from Amelia, telling me that Landon Silverman hasn’t stopped texting her ever since their sexual encounter in the back of his truck a few weeks ago, and that she keeps blowing him off because he’s “no longer her type.” Two months ago she was drooling over him in the hallways.
But there’s not a single text from Tiffani.
Unsurprising.
There’s also nothing from Tyler.
Surprising.
I haven’t done anything to him, so he can’t be mad at me. I know his head’s most likely a mess, but that doesn’t give him the right to just ignore me, to toss me to the side while he figures everything out. I still care. I still want to know how he’s holding up. But for the most part, I try not to let his silence get to me. Maybe he just wants space.
With Dad, Ella and the boys visiting friends on the other side of the city, I have the house to myself. So while I’m rummaging around the kitchen, I decide to call my mom back to check in on her. In all my sixteen years of breathing, she has never once gone twenty-four hours without seeing me. Somehow, she’s managed to survive an entire summer.
I drum my fingers along the worktop as I listen to the monotonous tone, but there’s no answer, so I try her cell. She picks up on the third ring.
“Oh, look, my favorite daughter is alive!”
Her voice fills me with a warmth that can never be replaced, the type of warmth that makes you smile no matter how bad your day is. I’m starting to appreciate it more. “Mom,” I say, smiling, of course, “I’m your only daughter.”
“That’s why it’s such an easy choice,” she fires back. “How’s everything going?”
Terrible, I want to say. Dreadful, awful, out of control. “Good.”
“And how are things with the asshole who gave you half your genes?”
I roll my eyes and yank open the refrigerator. Mom’s never been shy when it comes to expressing her severe dislike for Dad. “Not good,” I admit. Dad’s been awfully quiet since Sunday and I can’t figure out if it’s because he’s mad at me or if it’s because he’s trying to be cool for once by leaving me alone to do my own thing without him stalking my every move. It’s most probably the former.
“What’s happened?” Mom asks, and her voice is suddenly laced with concern.
I shrug even though she can’t see me, and then press my phone to my ear with my shoulder as I fumble around inside the refrigerator, shifting through packets of meat until I find the apples stored at the back. I grab one and step back. “Nothing,” I say. “We’ve just been arguing a lot.”
“About what?” Now she just sounds worried, and there’s whistling across the connection. She must be outside.
“Me not coming home,” I confess. Mom’s always been easy to confide in, always been there when I needed her, always been my best friend. I’m never apprehensive about being honest with her. “I’ve stayed out all night a couple times.”
“Doing what?” Scrap the concern and the worry, now she sounds stern. “Eden? Do I need to put you on birth control?”
For a second I just fall silent, too mortified to muster up a reply. That’s another thing about Mom: She’s very, very straightforward. “That’s it,” I say, “I’m hanging up now, bye Mom, please don’t talk to me ever again, I can no longer make eye contact with you, it’s been nice knowing you, love you, bye.”
“Eden!”
“Yes?”
I can hear her laughing down the phone. A gentle, soft laugh. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re sixteen and you’re getting older and at your age I—”
“Can we please change the subject?” With my cheeks flushed, I head over to the faucet, wash my apple, and then pull myself up onto the worktop and take a bite.
“Hmm,” Mom says after a long minute of hearing my crunching across the line, “you’re enjoying your summer, aren’t you?”
I take another bite and swing my legs back and forth over the edge of the counter, tilting my head to the side as I carefully consider my answer. I know for a fact that if I’d been in Portland for the summer, it would have been spent trying to hang out with Amelia, minus Alyssa and Holly. It’s been nice to get away from their constant digs about my weight for a while. I would have also probably joined the gym, maybe even studied, and I definitely wouldn’t have fallen for someone I shouldn’t have. Summer in Santa Monica has been an entirely new experience altogether.
“It’s been different,” I eventually answer.
“So you’ve made lots of friends there?”
I think about this for a moment. Tiffani has totally wiped me off her list of friends, so she doesn’t make the cut, and Jake has zero substance once you see past his smooth pick-up lines, so I wouldn’t consider him a friend either, more like a douchebag who tried to hit on me. So I’m left with Rachael, who has filled Amelia’s void for the summer; Meghan, who has been consistently sweet; and Dean, who’s always been there to either rescue me from a party or brighten up my day. And Tyler, of course. Although, I think we’re slightly out of bounds when it comes to the friend zone. We crossed that line a long time ago.
I exhale. “I’ve made enough.”
“And you really like the city?” she presses, a sense of urgency to her voice. I picture her gripping her phone tightly as she holds it to her ear, the way she always does when she’s eager for gossip or yelling at sales representatives when they call first thing in the morning.
“I guess?”
“Eden,” she says slowly, and then pauses. “What do you think about moving down there?”
I draw my phone away from my ear and scrunch my face up at the screen, wondering if I’ve misheard her. Moving? As in, living here? “What the hell?” I hold my phone between my ear and my shoulder again as I slide off the counter, staring out the patio doors. “Like, permanently? Me?”
“Us,” she corrects. She’s quiet now, but I can still hear cars whizzing past her.
“Us?”
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, and her voice rises an octave as she she dives into her venting mode. “How come your dad gets to just head off and start up a new life somewhere else? Why can’t I do that? Why am I stuck here in Portland when I didn’t even want to live here in the first place? I was happy in Roseburg, but noooooo, your dad wanted the big city life of Portland!”
“Santa Monica is a city.”
“Yes, but there are half a million more people in Portland, Eden,” she informs me in her matter-of-fact voice, the same voice she uses to talk to patients. “I’ve been looking into it.”
“But why?” I almost scream the words in exasperation. For someone who hates Dad so much, it doesn’t make sense for her to want to move closer to him. “If you want to try somewhere new, move to Chicago with me in two years. Or Canada. Why do you want Santa Monica?”
Silence ensues for a moment, and I impatiently dig my nails into my apple as I wait for her to answer. She takes a deep breath. “Well . . .” she starts, slightly hesitant, “while you’ve been gone I’ve been talking to a few people. I joined a dating website.”
This takes me by the utmost surprise. Mom . . . dating. It’s something I never thought I’d witness, simply because for three years straight she has drilled me with the fact that men are the spawn of Satan. “Are you playing a joke on me?”
“No.” She laughs a little, but I can tell she’s slightly nervous, most likely embarrassed too. “This summer has made me realize that I don’t want to be living on my own when you go off to college and that I really, really need to throw this divorced ass back onto the market. I’ve been talking to this really nice guy for over a month now.” She waits for a second, presumably to see if I have anything to say, and then continues when I remain silent. “His name’s Jack. And guess where he lives? Culver City. Fifteen minutes away from where you are.”
I know where Culver City is: It’s where Tyler and I just so happened to end up at the police station. “So you want to move here because you’ve been talking to some guy for a month? He could be a total creep, Mom.”
“God, Eden, no.” She heaves a sigh and I can hear her jingling around a set of keys, and it makes me wonder what she’s doing and where she is. “More like I head down to meet him over coffee, and we’ll take it from there. Who knows? It could go really well, and you’ve already made friends there, and it would make starting a new school less daunting. It’s a good place to start for both of us.”
Less daunting? School with Tiffani and school with Jake and school with Tyler? I can’t think of anything more anxiety-inducing than that. “I don’t know,” I murmur as I chew my lip and toss the apple into the trash can, barely eaten, and then run a hand through my hair. “It’s such a huge thing.”
“I think it could be good for you,” she adds. “You won’t have to deal with those girls again. The ones with the stuck-up parents.”
“Alyssa and Holly,” I tell her, but my words escape as a mere whisper. I try to ignore the churning in my stomach and the pounding of my heart, focusing instead on Mom’s warmth as it radiates across the line.
“I passed them in Walmart the other day,” she says roughly, “and do you have any idea how bad I wanted to hurl my bag of onions at them?”
I laugh, and it feels good to be giggling at her humor and ability to lighten up even the worst of moods, and it feels nice knowing she’s on the other end of the line. “I’ll bet you did.”
“Look,” she says, but then pauses for a moment as a door swings open. I recognize the familiar creaking, the annoying oil-deprived hinges of our front door offering an irritating greeting every time we open it. “It’s just an idea. We’ll talk about it when you get home. Deal?”
I’m about to say “deal,” but before I even get the words out of my mouth, the front door slams shut, loudly echoing across the connection. Following it, there’s the squeakiest of barks.
My eyebrows shoot up. “Was that a dog?”
“Dammit,” Mom mutters. “She was supposed to be a surprise.”
