Maybe there is a God. I’m not really doing a very good job of praying to Him (or Her?), because on Thursday morning during Anatomy, I experience nothing short of a miracle when Ms. Santana hands me a note from the attendance office.
I unfold the note in my lap.
Had to leave early today and take Kyla to the doctor’s. Her fever is back and the school nurse won’t keep her in the infirmary again. You have my permission to get a ride home from Bryce, but that is it. A single car ride! School and home! That’s it! I swear, Callie, if I hear you left early or pulled some kind of hijinks, you will see my wrath. And if you think this is my wrath, this is only the warm-up, baby. Be safe. Wear your seat belt. I love you.
Mama
I fold up the paper just the way it was given to me, and I almost have to stuff the damn thing in my mouth to stop myself from screaming with joy. My arm shoots up in the air, but I don’t even wait to be called on. “Miss! I need to use the restroom.”
Ms. Santana motions to the hall passes hanging on the back of her door. “Make it quick.”
I speed out the door, and as soon as it shuts behind me, I make a dash for Bryce’s locker, where I scribble a note on his dry-erase board.
Meet me in the wrestling mat room at noon. Come alone. -C
I rush back to class, where I completely tune out the rest of the lecture and instead make romantic plans for my romantic afternoon, right down to what snacks I’m going to get from the vending machine for our reunion feast.
I use the dance-team sweatshirt from my locker as a tablecloth to lay out our vending-machine spread of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, pork rinds, a sleeve of Oreos, Skittles, Funyuns, and two Dr Peppers. Hmmm. Maybe we should make out before partaking?
The wrestling-mat room isn’t ideal, seeing as the mats are years old and carry their own specific stench, but the one thing this place guarantees is privacy. Especially since wrestling season ended early when no one qualified to move on past District.
I watch the clock above the door as the last lunch bell rings. I wish I would’ve worn something cuter today, like a little dress and some strappy sandals. But instead I wore the cheer shorts I slept in last night, an old homecoming T-shirt, and knee-high gym socks with a pair of hot-pink sneakers. I glance down at what I have to offer. It’ll have to do.
Thirty minutes into lunch, and still no show. That’s when I break into the Oreos. The polite thing to do would be to brush my teeth before any making out—Oreos have this miraculous way of working themselves into every crevice of your mouth—but Bryce is already late as hell, and I’m starting to fume. He’d be lucky to kiss my chocolate-crusted mouth at this point.
By the time the final bell for what should be my economics class rings, I contemplate going on a search for him. Maybe he never made it to his locker? Or maybe he got held up by a coach or something. But I don’t have a phooooooone. And if he shows up and I’m not here, we’ll just be missing each other again.
I crumple down on a mat and spread out like a snow angel—not that I have much experience making those.
The next bell rings for last period, scaring my whole body to life. And then the door creaks open and I shoot up. Bryce stands in the doorway, with Patrick peering over his shoulder.
“You were supposed to come alone,” I say through clenched teeth.
Bryce looks to my rations on the floor. He laughs at my one empty can of Dr Pepper lying on its side next to a half-empty sleeve of Oreos.
“And at lunchtime,” I add.
His shoulders flop as he shrugs. “I wanted to go to Taco Bell with the guys. I figured you would wait.”
I stand up, shaking the crumbs off my shorts. “And what is Patrick even doing here?”
Bryce looks over his shoulder and shrugs again.
“Hey, are y’all lovebirds gonna eat those pork rinds?” asks Patrick.
I roll my eyes and toss them in his general direction. “Get lost.”
He tears the bag open and pops one in his mouth. “Good luck, dude,” he says between bites.
The door closes behind him and I immediately ask, “Good luck with what?”
Bryce takes a careful step toward me. “Baby, we need to talk.” He drops his partially zipped backpack on the mat and a few things spill out, including his cell phone.
“Well, yeah, that would be nice! I mean, I’ve barely seen you in the last two weeks.”
He nods. “See. You get it. I knew you’d get it.”
“Get what?” For the first time, doubt ripples in my stomach. Doubt in us. High school sweethearts for a year and a half now. When people talk about living the dream, we’re the dream they’re talking about!
“I just feel so disconnected from you lately.”
“Well, baby,” I say, trying my best to keep my voice measured and even. “I’ve been grounded for three weeks. The whole no-phone-and-house-arrest situation makes it hard to communicate, but that’s not a forever thing.” I take a step closer and drag my fingers down his elbow. “And maybe I can leave you with a few good memories to get you through until this whole ordeal is over.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s just like, with you not on the dance team and working at that piece-of-shit gym . . . it’s like we’re living in different worlds.”
My stomach drops and my vision blurs. I close my eyes, blink hard, and pull back from him. “Excuse me?”
“I just, like, think we should maybe quit or take a break.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s like you’re not one of us anymore.”
“One of who?”
He holds his mouth in a firm line, refusing to further incriminate himself.
I dart to the ground for his cell phone. He tries to stop me, but I’m too quick.
“Give that back,” he demands.
I slide the phone into my back pocket. “Oh, you’ll get it back,” I say. But before I do anything else, I reach down for the full can of Dr Pepper.
Bryce watches me curiously.
I pop the tab on the can, and the sound of it piercing the silence is pure satisfaction. Almost more satisfactory than me reaching up and pouring nearly half the can out on top of his head.
Bryce freezes in shock as soda dribbles down his chestnut golden-boy hair and onto his T-shirt, where his ultimate-bro Oakley sunglasses hang from his collar.
And then it’s like what’s happening suddenly hits him. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he screams.
I reach for my backpack and dart out the door.
It’s a second or two before I can hear him on my heels. “Give me my phone back!”
“Who is she?” I shout, not paying any mind to the fact that classes are still in session. “I know every bitch in this school! Who is she?”
Sprinting and typing in his security code isn’t what I’d call easy, but I manage. “You didn’t even change your code?” I say over my shoulder. And somehow it infuriates me most that he felt like there was no way he’d get caught. All I can think is that there’s another girl. There has to be. Guys don’t just leave girls like me unless they’ve got something else lined up.
I stop dead in my tracks just down the hall from the front office and scroll through his messages. He practically runs into me—all limbs as he reaches over me for the phone, but I have a sibling, which gives me the upper hand. If there’s anything my little sis has taught me, it’s how to be a master at keep-away.
And then I see it. A name I don’t recognize. Hiding there in plain sight under a fake contact. “Who’s Neil?” I ask. “New kid in school?” There are no new kids in Clover City.
“That’s private property!” he says. “That phone costs more than a month of your mall-rat paychecks.”
“That’s okay,” I tell him. “Let it all hang out. Well, whoever Neil is, I’m sure he has great boobs and a super-perky ass.” I feel something boiling in my chest. Something that feels like tears. Instead of giving in, I bite them back. I scroll through the messages, but all I see are dumb memes traded back and forth and a few short texts about how the family reunion is sure to “blow.”
His chest heaves and his forehead is damp with sweat. “Neil is my cousin from South Carolina, you psycho bitch.”
Furiously I scroll through more text messages, and I find a little bit of flirting between him and some other girls from school—Sam included—but most of it . . . it’s harmless. Nothing.
“There’s not another girl,” he says with finality. “But believe what you want.”
I whirl around on my heels. But the fire in my belly is quieting and disintegrating into hurt. He’s telling the truth. There is no other girl. He’d rather be alone than with me. I pull myself together and wear my anger like a shield, because the only thing I have left to save now is face.
“Likely story,” I say. “Maybe I’ll remember that before I delete all your gross dick pics from my cloud. Or I could accidentally share them. All those little buttons are so tiny and confusing.” Now we’ve got an audience. Students and faculty are slowly creeping out of their classrooms. Great. My mom is going to kill me. But honestly, what do I have left to lose? “Oh, and here’s a note for future dick pics. Everyone knows you’re just trying to make it look bigger if you take it from underneath.”
Someone behind me whistles, and I hear a teacher say, “Everyone, back to class.”
Principal Armstrong walks up behind Bryce. “Both of you in my office.”
“Not until this slut gives me my phone back.”
“You want your phone back?” I ask. “Your super-expensive phone?” I’m screaming now. “The one I could never afford? I’ll give you your dumb phone back.”
And then I slam his phone, screen facing out, into the nearest locker. I lied when I said popping the tab on that can of Dr Pepper was satisfaction. This is satisfaction. The glass cracks and I slam it again. “Good thing you have so much money to buy a new one!” I throw the phone over his head and it skitters down the hallway, making a few crunching noises along the way.
I walk past Principal Armstrong and escort my own damn self straight into her office. She follows me, guiding a scowling Bryce along.
I turn around just as I enter her office. “I’m not sitting in the same room as him,” I tell her.
Armstrong rolls her eyes, then nods, sending Bryce over to Vice Principal Benavidez’s office.
I sit down in the chair in front of her desk, and the moment Armstrong closes the door behind her, I begin to sob. “I need . . . I need to call my mom,” I say.
She pats my shoulder. “That was supposed to be my suggestion.”
Principal Armstrong does most of the explaining, for which I’m grateful. I nearly tremble when she hands me the phone, but my mom is . . . calm. She tells me we’ll talk about it when I get home and that she’s calling Keith and my dad to see who can get to the school quickest.
I hang up, and Armstrong hands me a box of tissues. She cradles her chin in her hand and turns up the music on her computer just a little. Some kind of nineties acoustic songs with flowy lady voices dancing along to each note. “What is this? Old-lady slow jams?”
“Tori Amos,” she tells me. “You’re having a bad day, so I’ll try not to hold that against you.”
We sit there in silence for a little while.
“We can talk if you want,” she finally says. “I can even send you down to the counselor. Or I can play mah-jongg and we can wait for your ride.”
I sniff. “That last option is good.”
About thirty minutes pass before there’s a light knock on the door. A freshman student aide sticks her head in the door. She focuses on me, my tearstained face, dirty clothes, and Oreos stuck in my teeth. “Um, her dad is here.”
The aide steps back and in walks my dad. Not Keith. For some reason, I’d just assumed that the aide meant Keith. But no. My dad is here.
“I was working a job just outside of town,” he says.
But I barely even hear him, because all I can do is fall into his arms. He squeezes me tight. The thick black stubble peppering his chin tickles against my neck, and I let the whole weight of my body relax against him. It feels like falling into bed after a long day. He wears his everyday self-imposed uniform of a plaid button-up shirt and the same style of Levi jeans he’s worn since he and my mom started dating.
“Should we talk?” he asks Principal Armstrong.
“Tomorrow. I’ll talk to her and her mom first thing in the morning. And you too, if work permits. But I think it might be best to get out of here before the last bell rings.”
He nods once and takes my hand. With his other arm, he hoists my backpack onto his shoulder.
He doesn’t speak until we’re out in the fresh air. “Made quite a scene, did ya?” He tries to swallow a chuckle as he slides on his signature Ray-Ban aviators. “Your mother liked having an audience for our fights, too.”
“Dad.”
“Brian had it coming.” He opens the passenger door of his truck for me and tucks my backpack at my feet before slamming the door shut.
“His name was Bryce!” I say, loud enough for him to hear as he walks around to the other side.
He hops in and turns the engine on. “Guess it doesn’t much matter anymore.”
I sigh.
“Do I need to give you the whole he-never-deserved-you pep talk?”
“No,” I tell him. “He was never in my league.” But for the first time the confidence I’ve always put on display for the world to see feels like a complete and total sham.
“You know you’ll find something better out there.”
“But maybe I won’t,” I say, my voice tiny.
He pulls into the Harpy’s drive-through without even stopping to ask if I want something.
The speaker crackles as we approach the drive-through. “Welcome to Harpy’s,” the deadpan voice says. “What’ll it be?”
“You never found someone better than Mom,” I say.
“Two vanilla cones,” he says. “One dipped in strawberry and one in chocolate.” He pulls forward, but not all the way up to the window, and steadies his gaze on me. “With your mom and me, it wasn’t about needing something better. Not for either of us. It was about finding something that worked. We loved each other, but we didn’t work. That wasn’t fair to you or Claudia. And besides, she snored too much.”
“Well, you never found something that worked.” I huff and cross my arms. “And she still snores, by the way.” A smirk tickles at my lips.
He says nothing as he pulls up to the window and hands the grumbly woman with a name tag reading LYDIA a few bucks before passing me my strawberry-dipped cone and digging into his chocolate one.
But I let the ice cream drip onto my fingers for a moment. Partly because I shouldn’t eat it, especially after all that junk I ate this afternoon. I haven’t been working out like I did when I was on the team, and thinking about how many calories and how much sugar are in this thing makes me cringe.
But the real reason I’m sitting here with this uneaten cone is because—“Oh my God! Dad, you’re seeing someone.” I gasp. “Does Claudia know?”
He freezes midbite and then proceeds to wipe his mouth with the inside of his elbow. “I’m not seeing someone in particular,” he says. “Not yet. But I am starting to see people.”
I grin and smack the dashboard. “It’s about damn time!”
He pulls the paper off his cone and shoves the rest in his mouth. “Well, with your abuela retired from the university, she’s starting to travel more.”
“So basically you’re not hanging out with your mom every night?” I ask.
He winces. “Damn, you know how to make it sting.”
“Well, if I’m still living with Mama when I’m your age, be sure to make fun of me too.” I smile. Even though I give him a hard time, Dad actually lives with Abuela to help her take care of her land, which is her second greatest love outside of my abuelo. She’s always been fiercely independent. My dad’s never said so, but I know he could never bear to rob her of that and my abuelo at the same time. “We need to get you on some dating apps,” I tell him.
“Yeah. No, thank you. I’ll try the old-fashioned way.”
“I could fill out your bio and help you take a good selfie,” I offer. I deepen my voice. “My name is Marco Reyes. I like watching TV with my mom. I have two daughters. The younger one is my favorite. I’m obsessed with purchasing gadgets from infomercials and then kicking the shit out of them when they don’t work.”
He chuckles.
“And I’m just looking for a nice lady my age who doesn’t want to make me buy clothes that might be considered in some way fashionable or current.”
“Hey,” he says, “my style is classic.”
“If classic means boring, then sure. You’re like a cartoon character who wears the same outfit over and over again. Like, does Bart Simpson just open his closet and have endless red shirts and blue shorts?”
He shrugs. “Never have to worry about what to wear.”
“Boring,” I say again as I turn up his music. My dad has different playlists for different things. Showering, cooking, mowing the yard, working. But they’re all the exact same eclectic mix of Rod Stewart, Maná, Bruno Mars, Selena, the Bee Gees, the Beastie Boys, and Jay-Z. If I could only get him to throw in a little bit of Drake and Kesha, it might not be so bad.
Once we’re on my street, he pulls down our alleyway behind the house. It’s mere seconds before my mom is walking out the back door in her signature bright-red lipstick—which she’s totally reapplied and I know it’s because she knew she’d see Dad. I don’t have any grand illusions of them ever getting back together, but things like her lipstick still make my gut twist over what might have been.
“Cal, wait for me inside while I talk to your dad, okay?”
I nod and give my dad a one-armed hug so as to not drip any ice cream on him. He presses a kiss against my cheek, and his stubble tickles.
“Thanks, Dad,” I tell him.
“Siempre, mija.”
I feel those tears prickling up again. I don’t give in, though. Instead I hop out of the truck with my backpack and devour my cone as I jog up the stairs and wait for my mom inside.
“Mom?” Kyla calls from her room as Shipley trots down the stairs to greet me.
“It’s just me. Mom will be back in a minute.”
“Okay.” Her voice pouts.
After a few minutes, the sliding glass door opens and Mom gestures for me to sit at the kitchen table.
Her whole body ripples with a sigh. “You skipped class.”
I nod.
“You broke into the wrestling-mat room. You destroyed personal property. And you disrupted a whole hallway of classrooms. All at my place of work.”
“It’s my place of school, too,” I remind her. “If anything, the lines here are a little fuzzy.”
She’s quiet, and that’s my cue to explain myself. I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow. I can’t cry again today. I can’t. “He broke up with me,” I say. “It’s like the last year and a half didn’t even happen. And there’s not even another girl. He just doesn’t want me anymore.”
She reaches across the table for my hand. “Oh, baby. Baby, baby, baby.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I shouldn’t have done any of that. I know. But I just—I have no friends and no life.” My voice cracks a little on that last syllable.
“Which is your own doing,” she reminds me unapologetically. But then her whole body sinks toward me as she uses her foot to tug on the leg of my chair and pull me closer to her. “But you’re hurtin’, and when you hurt, I hurt.”
We sit there in the quiet stillness of the house where I’ve spent nearly my entire life. Finally I say, “I like your lipstick. Looks nice and fresh.”
She blushes lightly. “Always gotta remind ’em what they’re missing.”
She’s right. I can’t wait for that moment—because I know it’s coming someday—when Bryce looks at me and he sees all that he missed out on. Or at least I hope it’s coming, because I’m clinging to that. But right now I just feel like a total slob who stuffed her face with soda, Oreos, and ice cream all day and made a huge scene at school. Tomorrow all anyone will be talking about is how crazy Callie is and how I overreacted. Drama queen. “That girl has lost it,” they’ll say. “First the dance team. Now this.”
“Can I be excused?” I ask.
She nods. “Come down and help me with dinner at five thirty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She stands and opens the cabinet above the refrigerator where she keeps her champagne flutes from her and Keith’s wedding. “Hold your hand out.”
She places my phone with its gold, sparkly case in my hand. “Is this a trick?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I figure today might have gone a little smoother if you’d had a phone. And I was thinking what if there was some kind of emergency or whatnot.”
I nod fervently.
“You’re still on house arrest,” she reminds me. “Still totally, completely one hundred percent grounded.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.” I hold the phone to my chest as I walk upstairs to my room with Shipley a few steps behind me. I feel like I’ve finally got some kind of lifeline back.
But then it hits me. A lifeline to who? To what? There’s no one out there waiting for me to rejoin the social world. I’m grounded forever, and it doesn’t even matter because I’ve got nothing left to be grounded from.
The thought is tragically freeing.