5
That was all my dad and I said to each other before he apologized to Mom for making a scene at work. Then he made a pit stop in his office and jogged out the door again. Like nothing had happened. A couple hours later, he’s still gone, phoning to tell us to eat lunch without him. He claims he’s playing racquetball with a client. Only, I’m not sure I believe that’s what he’s really doing.
I may not believe anything he says anymore.
Mom closed the clinic for lunch, and after nibbling on farm-to-table veggie tacos at her favorite vegetarian restaurant, we are strolling back home through the main Mission Street shopping district.
Apart from food and coffee, the sycamore-lined promenade has nothing anyone really needs, but everything you want. Specialty shops selling Swedish toothbrushes, craft sake, exotic hand puppets, and toys made from recycled wood are tucked between a handful of national chain stores. And all along the sidewalks in front of these shops, moms and tattooed street punks share benches as they listen to a student jazz ensemble that plays for donations outside the Jitterbug coffee shop.
“You barely said anything in the restaurant,” Mom points out, carting the leftovers from our meal in a white plastic bag. “I know it was busy and loud in there, but you usually get in at least one joke about vegetarians.”
It’s easy to do. Tacos should have meat. That place goes against nature. Half of the people who eat there are in need of a good iron supplement.
“Just thinking about the trip,” I lie.
“The trip . . . or your dad making an idiot of himself in front of Lennon?”
“Maybe both,” I admit, slanting my eyes toward hers. “Diamond Dan went a little nuts.”
“Diamond Dan can get carried away by his emotions sometimes.” She sighs deeply, tugging on the diagonal seam of her tunic scrub top. “I’ve never agreed with how he’s treated Lennon. If the Mackenzies ever treated you that way—”
“But they don’t.”
She nods. “I know. And it’s not much of an excuse, but your father is really stressed out right now about the business. He’s lost so many massage clients. We’re bleeding fairly profusely now, and I’m not sure how to stanch the wound until the business bounces back.”
I consider this for a moment. “You could call Grandpa Sam. He’d loan you money.”
Grandpa Sam is my mom’s dad. He’s the nicest guy in the world. Her parents came to the US when she was a baby, and they own a shipping company, Moon Imports and Exports—Moon is their Korean family name—that ships machinery from South Korea. The Moons aren’t wealthy, but they’re doing all right. Grandpa Sam’s the one who bought me Nancy Grace Roman and all my other astronomy gear. I text him my best constellation photos every month, and he texts me back in nothing but repeated, enthusiastic emojis. He used to send only smiley faces, but lately he’s been branching out to thumbs-up signs and stars.
“No, we’re not asking my parents for any more money,” Mom says firmly. “They’ve already done enough.”
We walk in silence for a few steps, and then I think about something she said. “Why aren’t you losing acupuncture clients?”
“Hmm?”
“If the Mackenzies’ sex shop is pushing away Dad’s massage clients, then why are most of your clients still around?”
She shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe because there are more massage therapists in Melita Hills than acupuncturists. I’m a rare commodity.”
“Maybe Dad should take up acupuncture too.”
“Believe me, your father and I have considered a dozen options. We’ve analyzed the business to pieces over the last few months.”
When we get to the end of the block, a woman dripping with beaded jewelry wants to tell us about the benefits of psychoneuroimmunology while a man in a shabby suit across the sidewalk tries to hand us a pamphlet about salvation. I wave both of them away. “Can I ask you a question?” I say after we cross the street. “Are you happy with Dad?”
Mom’s head turns toward me. “Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know.” But now I wish that I hadn’t.
“Of course I am,” she assures me.
I don’t know how to feel about this. How can she be happy while my dad is gallivanting around the globe with other women? Shouldn’t she realize that something is wrong? I think I’d know something was awry if my partner was cheating on me. At least, I’d hope so. My only personal experience with relationships is Andre Smith. I started seeing him after homecoming, but right before our second date, his mom got a job in Chicago, and they moved. Our third date was at his farewell party, and because we were never going to see each other again, we got a little . . . carried away with the goodbyes. Bad choices were made. Apart from my taking three pregnancy tests after he left—just to be triple certain—and then confessing what we did to my mom for health advice to be quadruple certain, the whole experience was a letdown. For me, anyway. Andre emailed for weeks, trying to keep things going, until I was left with no choice but to flag his email address as spam.
This is what happens when I don’t stick to a plan. Complete and utter disaster. Never again.
Mom runs a hand over the top of my head. “Money problems are a strain on any couple. But we’ll get through it. Bad times don’t last. You just have to hang on until they pass.”
But she doesn’t know how bad they really are. And the thing that’s bothering me, other than Dad’s unhinged fit of anger this morning, is the worry that I’m not the only one keeping secrets about Dad’s extracurricular activities. The Mackenzies know. Lennon knows. How long before that knowledge leaks and my mom finds out?
I can’t let that happen.
“Are those hives?” my mom asks, stopping to look at my arm. “Jesus, Zorie. You’re covered in them. Have you had shrimp?”
“No.” Sometimes shellfish causes them, but mostly it’s stress and the occasional random allergen. It’s unpredictable. My body is a mystery.
She frowns at me, worry tightening her face. “You have to get back on daily antihistamines. And we need to get some more of that homeopathic cream from Angela’s shop.”
The cream gives me a headache, but I don’t say this. Mom is telling me that we can stop and pick it up on our way back if we hurry, but something across the street catches my attention. Lennon’s big, black satanic hearse is parked at the curb. We’re half a block or so away from his place of employment, so he must be working. And thinking about his fight with my dad this morning makes me realize something: I will be gone for a week, while Lennon will be here. All it would take is one more standoff with my dad and Lennon might say something about the photo book.
I need to make him promise that he’ll keep his mouth shut.
“Look, you don’t need to be late for your next appointment,” I tell Mom. “I can walk down to Angela’s and pick up the hive cream.”
She hesitates before digging inside her scrubs pocket and handing me some money. “All right. Ask her if she’ll give it to you for a free cupping session in exchange. Sometimes she’ll barter.”
“Honor among healers?”
“Something like that. Take an antihistamine when you get home, and let me check on you later, okay?”
“Will do.”
“I mean it. Don’t make me have to take you to Sacred Heart.”
“Not those monsters,” I say dramatically. “Conventional medicine is for chumps.”
She pokes a tickling finger into my side, making me laugh. “Watch your hives, young lady.”
I assure her that I will.
After we part ways, I backtrack down the sidewalk to cross the street, passing Lennon’s car. Then I head toward the business on the corner.
Reptile Isle is one of the oldest reptile shops in California. The brick shop front is covered in an enormous rainforest mural, complete with lizards and turtles and snakes, oh my. I walk past giant pieces of driftwood and tropical plants flanking its recessed entrance and push open the door.
Inside, my eyes adjust to diffuse light as the thick, musky scent of substrate and snake fills my nostrils. Hundreds of tanks and terrariums line the walls, their UV lights and heat lamps creating a warm atmosphere. Most of the reptiles here are for sale, but the people who own the shop also have a breeding program in the back, and they do a lot of educational outreach.
A large checkout counter sits near the entrance, but Lennon’s not running the register, so I glance around the expansive shop and try to spot him. Under wooden beams that crisscross a large, open ceiling, I wind around aisles stacked with plastic caves, plant replicas, and endless reptilian supplies: tank thermostats, feeding dishes, lizard hammocks. In the center of the store, inside a massive habitat cage, the skeleton of an old tree stands, its bare branches decked with tiny wooden platforms. Tropical plants hang from the cage’s ceiling and flowering vines creep up its screened walls.
This is where I spot Lennon.
He’s standing inside the cage with a giant green iguana draped around his shoulders.
“Her name is Maria,” Lennon is telling a child standing on the outside of the cage with her nose pressed to the screen. “She’s from Costa Rica.”
“How old is she?” the girl asks.
“She’s five years old,” Lennon says.
“That’s how old you are,” the mother reminds her.
The girl seems suitably impressed. “This is where she lives?”
“She has the entire cage to herself,” Lennon confirms. “She’s almost four feet long, so she needs a lot of space to roam around. Want to see her tail?”
He ducks low on the other side of the screen to give her a peek.
Eyes wide, the little girl is both fascinated and wary. “Will she bite?”
“If she’s scared,” Lennon says, coaxing the big lizard from his shoulders to a platform above, where it crawls beneath a potted tropical plant. “She only likes to be handled by a few special friends. It takes her a long time to trust people enough to let them get close to her. But she doesn’t mind if you admire her from out there.”
“Can I have her for a pet?”
Lennon pretends to think about this. “She needs a lot of space, and we’d be sad if we couldn’t see her every day. If you like lizards, a better pet would a green anole or a leopard gecko. They are pretty easy to take care of, if your mom is willing to buy live insects. . . .” He glances at the mother, who shakes her head firmly. Lennon quickly says, “Or, you could just come here to visit Maria.”
The girl considers this thoughtfully while the mother gives Lennon an enthusiastic thumbs-up. His face relaxes into a warm smile. I haven’t seen him smile like that in a long time. It’s sweet and boyish. Unexpectedly, a hollow ache wells up inside my chest.
Stop being ridiculous, I tell myself.
I wrestle unwanted emotions down, packing them away as the mother thanks him and leads her daughter toward the turtle area of the store. When Lennon is alone, I approach the cage with trepidation.
“Hey,” I say.
He swings around and spots me. His head jerks back in surprise, and he glances around, as if hidden cameras might appear, more wary than the little girl was about the possibility of an iguana bite. “What’s up?”
“I was on my way back from lunch and saw your car,” I say, as if this is a totally normal thing, me stopping by. As though I haven’t refused to walk on this side of the street for months to avoid accidentally bumping into him.
He shifts into a defensive stance, arms crossing chest. “Sure you aren’t here to serve me with an arrest warrant for trespassing?”
I wince inwardly. “My dad is—”
“A dick?”
“Anxious.”
Lennon snorts. “So that’s what we’re calling it.”
“Look, you’d be stressed too, if the business you built was going to hell because all your clients were scurrying away faster than rats on a sinking ship.”
He makes a low, thoughtful noise, and the sound rumbles through the screen, scattering my thoughts and doing strange, unwanted things to the inside of my chest. It’s the feeling you get when a large truck trundles down the road. You can’t see it, but you can feel it, and that makes you leery for no logical reason.
“That’s wrong, actually,” he points out. “The original phrase was, ‘When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.’ ”
“Yeah? Well, you better actually hope that doesn’t happen, seeing how we’re all stuck in the same building,” I say, suddenly irritated with his know-it-all factoids. “If we fall down, the rubble might bury your shop. And then where would all the neighborhood perverts buy their butt plugs?”
“Gee, I don’t know.” He braces his hands on the wooden frame of the habitat and leans down until his face is at my level, pressing his forehead against the screen between us. A clean, sunny scent wafts from his clothes, one that’s painfully familiar. The scent of Lennon. “Maybe they’ll go to the same store where your dad buys the sticks that are stuck up his ass. I think it’s next to Adulterers Are Us.”
Fury bubble ups. “You . . . ,” I start, and then realize how loud I’m being. I lean closer to the screen and lower my voice. “You cannot tell anyone about that photo book.”
“I think anyone with a working bullshit meter already knows he’s a scumbag.”
“My mom doesn’t!” I shout-whisper at his stupid face.
Sharp eyes lock with mine. He makes a small noise. “You didn’t give her the package.”
“Because it will break up their marriage,” I whisper. “I can’t do that to my mom. It would kill her.”
Lennon doesn’t respond. Just studies my eyes.
“You cannot say anything to my mom,” I plead. “And until I figure out what to do, you need to tell your moms to keep quiet about it too.”
“I can’t control what they say to your mom. If you recall, they were once all friends. Come to think of it, so were the two of us, before you decided moving up the social ladder was more important.”
“What?” That’s not how things went down. He ditched me.
“Frankly, I’m surprised you’d risk being seen in public talking to me,” he says. “Every second you’re near me, your hit points drop. Better watch it, or your life meter’s going to drop to zero.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“That’s because you’ve been hanging around with Reagan effing Reid for too long.”
“Says the boy who sits home alone with a bunch of snakes.”
“Hey, you would know, spymaster general.”
I press my forehead again the screen. “I already told you, that was a mistake.”
His dark eyes are centimeters from mine. “Was it?”
“Huge.”
“If you say so.”
“Enormous.”
“I’m flattered.”
“I . . .” Wait. What are we talking about?
His smile is slow and cocky.
I pull back from the screen. My ears suddenly feel like someone’s holding a blowtorch up to my head. Tugging the curling ends of my bob, I try to cover the telltale redness, wishing it away before the blush spreads down my neck.
“Screw this,” I say. “I was going to apologize for my dad’s behavior, but now I might be glad he bit your head off. I hope you have to get a rabies shot.”
“Am I the bat or Ozzy? Because if your dad was doing the biting, technically he’d have to get the rabies shot.”
“I hate you so much.”
“You know,” he says after huffing out a single, sarcastic chuckle, “I genuinely felt bad for you. I really did, for all of two seconds. Guess I was an idiot, because I can see now that nothing’s changed. You’re still the same cold-as-ice girl. You’re just like him. You know that, right? More concerned with appearances than anything real. Maybe lying runs in your blood.”
Chaotic emotions bubble up. Embarrassment. Pain. And something else I can’t identify. Anger. That must be what it is, because without warning, my eyes sting with unshed tears.
Don’t you dare cry in front of him, I tell myself.
“Zorie,” he says, voice low and rough. “I . . .”
He doesn’t finish, and it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what Lennon Mackenzie thinks. Not now, and not ever.
“I thought I could come in here and talk reasonably with you,” I say, using the calmest, most professional voice I can muster as I step farther away from the cage. “But I guess I was wrong. All I ask is that if you and your parents have any respect for my mother—”
“Zorie—”
I raise my voice to talk over him. “—that you’ll stay out of her business and let me handle it. If anyone’s going to destroy her life, it should be me, not some stranger who doesn’t care about her.”
And with that, I walk out of the store.
Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.