I grinned. “Not regularly, just sometimes when he’s feeling particularly guilty. Like Christmas. Sort of his way of saying, “Thanks for NOT coming.”
“What do you mean
I made a sound that might qualify as a snort if it was any louder. “Not if I can help it. His new wife, Tiffany, likes to think Dad never even dated before she came along, forget about the whole married-with-kids thing. She’s only twenty-nine or something, and now that they have the baby, it’s better that I don’t exist in their reality.”
“Ugh,” Kaylie said. “She’s twenty-nine? Isn’t your sister that old?”
“Almost,” I said. “Sara’s going to be twenty-six in a couple of months.”
“That,” Kaylie said, making a face, “is gross. It’s like he’s doing his own daughter.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, smiling a little. It was nice to hear this stuff out loud and know it wasn’t just me. “These days, he’s nothing more than a sperm donor as far as I’m concerned.”
“So that’s why you hardly mention him?” She looked at me like she was waiting for more.
I scrambled for a good answer—it was stupid to have brought any of this up. Dad left when I was five, and he rarely looked back, so I tried not to care. Lately, all I saw of him was his pointy signature at the bottom of the checks I got every now and then, but talking about it always led to more questions, and you could never be too careful where the truth was involved. I tried to act casual, like I was concentrating on something on the opposite wall. “It’s really no big deal,” I said with a laugh that sounded fake even to me. “People get divorced all the time.”
Kaylie shrugged. “Sometimes I bet my parents would like to pay me not to show up. That way they wouldn’t have to stress over my grades all the time.”
I relaxed into the safety of talking about something other than me. “No way. Your parents are totally cool. They just care if you get into a good school, is all.” Her mom was like something out of one of those Nick at Nite sitcoms—their house was always so nice, and she didn’t seem to mind that my sleeping bag was a permanent fixture on Kaylie’s floor. I promised myself tonight was the last night I would stay over there for the rest of winter break. Hang out too long and people get tired of you.
Kaylie squinted up at the board again. “So, chick flick?”
“Sounds good.” I gave the ticket info to the guy behind the little round window and handed him the cash.
Kaylie’s little brother ran up and poked her in the shoulder. “I need five bucks.”
“Mom gave you money, Daemon.”
“That was for the movies,” he said. “I need money for video games with the guys.”
I took the tickets and my change from the cashier and stepped away from the window.
“Well, now you have a choice,” Kaylie said. “You can either go to the movies like you’re supposed to, or you can blow the money on loser video games and sit here for two hours until we’re done.”
Daemon frowned and looked back at the group of seventh-grade boys. I remembered how much it sucked to be the youngest and have to beg for everything. Sara and Phil were so much older than me that I always felt like I had extra parents instead of siblings. They were always talking about how they weren’t given half as much stuff when they were kids and how Mom spoiled me just because I was the baby. Ever since they moved out, they seemed to have totally forgotten what it was like living there. “Here,” I said, handing Daemon a couple of singles.
“Thanks,” he yelled back as he raced toward his friends.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Kaylie said, glaring at him. “He’s such a leech.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I wasn’t on her side. “I’m loaded, remember?”
We still had fifteen minutes until the movie started, so I tried to decide if I wanted to blow more money on an industrialsized box of Milk Duds. They were such a rip-off here, but what was a movie without gobs of melted chocolate and caramel stuck to the roof of your mouth? Kaylie stood on her tiptoes beside me, looking for people she knew. She nudged me with her elbow. “He’s totally staring at you.”
“Who?” I asked, looking around. Somebody staring was generally not a good sign. Even worse if they were pointing.
She glanced over my shoulder and then back to me. “Like you don’t know who. Josh Lee who. In the popcorn line.”
As if I didn’t already know where he was standing, or that he was wearing the blue jacket with the koi design he got at the beginning of the year. As if I didn’t secretly watch him at lunch on the quad or practically lose my powers of speech every time our hands touched passing papers in physics.
“Right. I’m sure he’s staring at you, not me.” I pushed my hair out of my face and tried to look casually around. Kaylie was the one guys always stared at—tiny and cute, she could have been a cheerleader if she wanted to. Why she picked me to be her friend was still a mystery, but hanging out with her made my life seem almost normal.
She also never let a little thing like subtlety bother her. “Ooh, he’s with Steve Romero! We should totally go over there and talk to them.” She was a foot shorter than me but freakishly strong, pulling me in that direction before I could think up a good excuse not to go.
“No, Kaylie. Wait . . . ,” I tried, but we were already there.
“Hey, Steve, hey, Josh,” she said effortlessly. “What are you guys going to see?”
“That new Will Smith movie,” Steve said, peering over the heads in front of him. “If this line ever gets moving.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, sounding surprised. “We are too.” She bumped me with her hip and I managed a weak smile. I knew the smartest move I could make right then was to stand there and shut up.
“Hey,” Josh said to me. He didn’t look too annoyed and was even smiling a little.
