CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Later that evening when I got home, I collapsed onto the couch, dropping my bag on the floor. My dad wandered out of his studio at the noise. “WTF, kid?”

What had I done that was bad enough that my own father was swearing at me in an acronym? But then I remembered that he was my dad and probably had no idea what he was saying. “What do you think WTF means?”

He sat down on the couch next to me, the smell of oil paints drifting toward me. “It means ‘What’s with the face?’”

I resisted the urge to groan at his utter uncoolness. “No, it doesn’t. And yours would be WWTF. Don’t use WTF again, please.” Especially when he didn’t know the actual meaning.

“Okay. But you look upset.”

A year ago, he wouldn’t have noticed. He would have been too caught up in whatever he was painting to pay attention. While I’d always felt loved, his relationship with Jennifer had turned him into a much more attentive father.

Which could sometimes be a bad thing, but other times, like now, I was glad that I could unload on him. “Life sucks. The universe sucks. Everything everywhere sucks.”

“Well, it’s good to know that whatever’s going on with you, at least you’re not being overly dramatic.”

I frowned as he cracked himself up. “I’m not kidding, Dad. Everything is terrible.”

“Maybe I should rent out a storage locker for all your current negativity.”

This time I did groan. “You don’t know all the facts. Like, Trent and Ella broke up, and I punched him for cheating on her.”

“I knew that already.”

“What?”

“Ella told me and then Jennifer told me. You’re actually the last one to tell me the news. I also heard she already has another date?”

“She’s Ella. Of course she does.” And I meant that as a matter of fact, not with any bitterness. I was really glad she had someone to go with. Even if it was going to be a stupid at-somebody’s-house prom. “And Mercedes Bentley blackmailed my treasurer into not paying our deposit check, and we lost our venue, and with prom being only a few days away, we weren’t able to find anywhere else to hold it. So now we’re having the prom at freaking Victor Kim’s house.”

“Do you want me to make some calls?”

Some small part of me was so tempted, but I couldn’t accept. “No, we’ll figure it all out.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“What? That’s just part of becoming a grown-up. Handling your own problems and not running to your daddy to make it better. Legally, I am an adult,” I reminded him.

“Yes, and legally, you’re still my little girl and always will be.” He kissed me on the top of my head. “Is that everything?”

“Well, there’s the stupid thing mom said in that interview, and then there’s Jake.”

I rarely brought Jake up to my father because of the dangerous look he got in his eyes whenever I said his name. “What about Jake?”

“He’s . . . being secretive.” And it seemed to be getting worse. Like after our emergency meeting this morning (which Jake wasn’t there for) I saw him in the afternoon, outside the building, talking to Ella. They both had very serious expressions on their faces. When I saw them together, I thought of how not too long ago I would have assumed something was happening between them. I had assumed it, at the masquerade ball back in September. I’d been completely wrong then, and I knew Ella would never hurt me that way, but it still felt like another strange thing in a big pile of strange.

“Not that I’m on Jake’s side, but people are allowed to keep things private.”

Boyfriends weren’t. Which, if it wasn’t already, should be another one of those Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not keep secrets from your girlfriend. I shrugged off my father’s logic. “And on top of everything else, he hasn’t asked me to prom. I don’t understand why.”

“Have you talked to him about it? Told him how important prom is to you?”

Obviously not. “No.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? He’s supposed to love me and ask me to go.”

My dad folded his arms and had his “I’m thinking deeply” eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like you. You’ve always been the girl who stands up for what she wants. For what she thinks is right. Why wouldn’t you ask Jake about it?”

“I don’t know . . . because look how things turned out for Ella. What if I ask him what’s going on and he breaks up with me?”

“So what if he does?”

“Dad!” He so didn’t get it. “I don’t want us to break up. I want him to ask me without having to nag him. I want us to go to prom and have a great time. It all just feels so . . . so unfair.”

“Life is pretty much a massive dresser filled with drawer after drawer of unfair. And I’m sure he’ll officially ask you with one of those proposal things. Don’t count out a man in love. You’d be surprised at the lengths he’ll go to for a girl as special as you. And don’t forget that Jake loves you for you. For the girl who does ask questions. He loves the Tilly who stands up for herself when she thinks she’s being mistreated. You don’t have to change to be with him. And you shouldn’t be so worried about losing him that you end up losing yourself.” He tugged me over so that my head was against his shoulder.

Every word he said was so true. I knew better, and yet I had been choosing to live in fear. Maybe it was time for that to change. “You’re actually pretty smart about some stuff.”

“Hey, I’m kind of a relationship expert. I have been married six times.”

“That’s not a good thing, Dad.”

I sat in my room, thinking about my dad’s advice. I should have stood up for myself with Jake. I shouldn’t have let my worries or promposal obsession quiet my voice. I had been so worried about losing him that I had started losing pieces of me. And neither one of us should be happy about that.

My situation with Jake wasn’t the only recent time that I’d failed to speak my mind. I grabbed my laptop and found the interview with my mother. I listened to just the beginning, to get the reporter’s name and who she was with. After a quick Google search, I found her contact information. I fired off an email, telling the reporter that Pearl Li Mitani did have a daughter. Me.

I wasn’t doing it to be vindictive, but to take back something my mother had tried to take from me. My sense of self and who I was. I wasn’t someone she could brush under a rug and pretend like I wasn’t there. My mother had told the world that I didn’t matter enough to acknowledge. And if I wasn’t the daughter she wanted? That was fine. She most certainly wasn’t the mom I’d hoped for, either. I mean no Mothers of the Year had to worry about my mom giving them a run for their money. But I decided not to sit idly by and let her lie about me.

The reporter answered a few minutes later, which surprised me, because that meant she was really working late. The online magazine she was with was based in New York, which was three hours ahead of us. She asked me questions about myself and about my dad, and I answered them all as truthfully as possible.

Not to cause my mother pain, but to help ease some of mine. To reclaim my identity.

Now I needed to do the same thing with Jake. I had to be me, and if he didn’t like it, then I’d learn how to live with it. I’d even go to prom alone, if I had to.

I realized that being true to myself mattered more.

Ella blew into my room, like a massive clothing hurricane, throwing dresses on my bed. “Okay. I have enough formal dresses that I decided to take the top from this one”—she showed me a champagne-colored dress covered in sequins—“and the skirt of this one and make a new dress. It’ll be so cute.” The second dress had a black tulle full skirt. I didn’t get how it would work, but if anyone could make it look good, it would be Ella.

“And I was going to make you a dress out of my stuff, but we’re . . .”

“Not the same size,” I finished. She was petite and tiny, and I was not.

“You don’t have hardly any formal or ball-gown type dresses, except for the ones Jake’s already seen. And that is not good. You need something new. So maybe we go shopping?”

We both knew the malls and formal wear boutiques had been picked clean. Girls from Malibu Prep who didn’t have couture dresses would buy every size of the dress they picked from the store, just to make sure nobody else showed up in it (the ultimate social humiliation). And now there wasn’t enough time to order anything online that would be worth wearing. Ella stood inside my closet, riffling through what I had, and I could tell from her discontented sigh that she wasn’t happy. As if she’d expected the perfect dress to jump out and solve all our problems.

She even kicked the wall out of frustration and let out a yelp of pain. She yelped again when some of the boxes on my shelves fell on her head. I ran over to see if she was okay.

Before I could ask, she had something in her hands, something from one of the fallen boxes. “This is it!”

It was the purple kimono my grandmother had sent me. “I’m not going to wear that.”

“Not like this. But I’m going to make it gorgeous. I mean, it’ll be a little matchy-matchy with your hair, but this will work. I’m going to make a new dress out of it, if that’s okay with you.”

I nodded. “Fine by me.” I’d been very worried about not having anything to wear to our downgraded prom.

She had a fixated and slightly scary look in her eyes. “It will be very Anna Niponica meets Christian Lacroix. Gorgeous.”

That meant nothing to me, but I continued to nod because that was the best way to soothe crazy people.

“And I’ll do our hair and makeup. Our dates can pick us up in their cars. Or wait, I think Brent already reserved a limo. Once Jake asks you, tell him you guys can get in on that if you want. Which pretty much takes care of everything Mercedes ruined.”

More nodding. “Yep. Almost everything.”

Ella kept talking, as if I hadn’t said anything. “Now we just need to call all the ticket holders on the list and give them the new address.”

List? I hadn’t seen a list. Rosie was in charge of ticket sales, and knowing Ella as I did, she’d probably already had Rosie put together an alphabetical list of the students we’d have to inform about the venue change. If we each took a part, it shouldn’t take long for us to contact everyone. “Give me a section of the list and I’ll help.”

She looked at me in surprise, as if she’d forgotten I was in the room. “No, it’s fine. I already distributed the lists earlier today. We’ve got it covered.”

Why was she acting like this? “You’re being ridiculous. Let me help out. It’s kind of my job.”

“No!” she practically barked the word at me. “I mean, no, thank you. You’ve got a lot going on. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back with my measuring tape in a minute, and we’ll get started on your new dress.”

I was too tired to fight with her about the lists. And she was right. I did have a lot going on.

At the moment, the most important thing I had to figure out was how to tell my boyfriend that I suspected he was cheating on me and I was hurt and disappointed that he hadn’t given me a promposal.

And hope it didn’t mean the end of us.

The next day I awoke to a mild scandal. The reporter from my mom’s online clip published our interview, which caused a bit of an uproar in the New York art scene. It wasn’t very wide reaching or applicable to the real world, but it was enough to embarrass my mom. Who issued a statement that read, “What I meant by saying I had no daughter was that we have no relationship to speak of, so my notion of self does not include having a daughter.” Which did not make things better. It turned out most people didn’t think it was cool when you denied your child’s existence.

Admittedly, it made me feel marginally better that I wasn’t the only one who thought she was a terrible person.

Today was the day. I was going to talk to Jake and put everything on the line. And it would end one of two ways.

I hoped the universe had one more happily ever after for me.

But he didn’t come to English, our first class together. I wasn’t willing to wait around for him to show up. Because there were words to be had.

After class, I saw Mindi in the hall and grabbed her. “I have a question for you.”

Her mouth dropped open, shocked. “You’re . . . you’re talking to me?”

“Yes.”

Giant tears welled up in her eyes. “I thought you would hate me forever.”

I did not have time for Mindi drama when I had my own to attend to. “I can’t hate you for being in love and letting Mercedes blackmail you. You’re not the only one she’s tried to torture. I’m still not happy with you, and it might take me a while to get over it. But you can help me get there a little faster by telling me how I can find out where my boyfriend is right now.”

She gave me a tentative smile and then took my phone. “Are you friends on Snapchat?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it will be easy to find him. It’s how I track down where Victor, my boyfriend, is when we’re not together. Here.”

She handed my phone back to me, and I saw a map that had a pin for Jake’s current location.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“Thank you. For talking to me. And, Mattie? I really am sorry. I wish I could do it over.”

Me too. But it wouldn’t do me any good to hold a massive grudge against a girl who was also a victim in all this. “Victor asked us to think about things from your perspective. And while I’m not sure I’d make the same choice as you, I think I get why you did it.”

“I wish I could make things right.”

Hoping I wouldn’t regret it, I said, “Why don’t you go see Ella and get an assignment for setting up on Saturday?”

“Seriously?” Her hands flew to her chest, as if she wanted to hug me but settled on hugging herself instead. “You’re going to let me come to prom? Back to student government?”

Nobody had banned her. That had been more self-imposed, probably because she didn’t want to be stared at and get hate looks. Which I understood. But if she needed my permission to do those things, well, I could do that. “I’d hate to be the one responsible for separating Belle from her Beast.”

“Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know you don’t like hugs, and I’m sorry.” Then she threw her arms around me for a brief second before letting go and running down the hall to find my sister.

I was getting seriously sappy in my old age. I looked back at my phone screen and entered the cross streets in my maps application.

Jake was at the hospital again.

Time to put all my cards on the table.