Lightbringer

Pippi Longstocking, are you up?”

“Yeah, Dad.” Wendy stuffed the phone behind her Lit book. Jabber, spotting her father, hissed and jumped to the floor, scooting through the dust ruffle to hide beneath the bed. “Polynomials are kicking my as—uh, butt.” That little white lie stung somewhat; Wendy did quite well in math when she could find time to concentrate. Luckily, Mr. McGovern gave her leeway when it came to homework since she always aced the quizzes and tests.

“Ouch.” Wendy’s dad eased into her room, gingerly shutting the door. The edge of the door caught his robe and he had to tug it free, ripping the threadbare terry cloth in the process. “Damn,” he cursed, pushing his glasses up his nose. He sagged so that even his plaid pajamas seemed dejected. “This’s my favorite robe.”

“It’s cool, Dad.” Wendy waved her hand at a pile of similarly mauled clothing in the corner of the room. “Chuck it over there and I’ll get to it next weekend.”

“That’s an impressive stack.” Her father neatly folded the robe and set it atop the teetering pile. “How do you manage to constantly ruin or rip up perfectly good clothes?” He held up the stockings from earlier in the evening. “Didn’t we just buy you these last paycheck?”

“You know me,” Wendy lied glibly, “clumsy, clumsy, clumsy.” The clock chimed three downstairs and she held up her notebook. “Is there anything I can help you with, Dad? I have to be up before seven and I’m only half done.”

Her father scratched his thinning red hair and settled on the edge of her bed. He leaned forward and asked, almost apologetically, “Actually, there is. When did you get in tonight, Winifred?”

Wendy paused for a brief moment, as if considering, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, Dad. I didn’t check the clock. It wasn’t that late, though.” Setting her notepad down on the corner of her desk, Wendy turned in her seat so that she was facing her father, and arranged her features into a mask of concern. “Why? Did I wake you?”

“No. You never wake me, honey.” Her dad sighed and sat back and rubbed his hand through his hair again, a sure sign of distress. Her father had once had a head of hair as full and garishly auburn as her own…until her mother’s accident. Now he was practically bald.

“Look, Wendy, I know you’re sixteen and you’re practically an adult and all that jazz, I understand that. And you’ve never gotten into trouble. After your mother…well, for the past six months you’ve been a super help around the house. I know the twins wouldn’t cope as well as they do if it weren’t for you.” He hesitated.

Inwardly, Wendy snorted and thought: Well-adjusted. Right. If her father knew half of what was going on in their house, there was no way he’d be in such a big rush to hurry from assignment to assignment the way he did. On the bright side, his willful ignorance left her plenty of time to roam around town in the dead of the night, so she wasn’t anxious to alert him to his misconceptions.

Wendy sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah. But?”

“Wendy, sweetie, I’m just worried about you. You used to be a straight A student. You used to be in choir, you were on the student council. But now you and Eddie…” He waved his hand half-heartedly. “The two of you dye your hair black and paint your nails black and all those piercings can’t be healthy. Don’t even get me started on the ink your mother approved right before…well, you know.”

Wendy’s hand flew to her ears where, under her palms, seven studs marched up the curve from the lobe to cartilage on either side. “Hey! I like my ears.”

“This isn’t a joke, Wendy. You barely sleep, you barely eat, you’re out at all hours, and your grades have been dropping all year. Since your mother landed in the hospital you look like death warmed over, and I’m getting sick of watching you screw up your life.”

Offended, Wendy sat further back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, lips tightening into a thin line, eyes narrowing to slits. “Screw up my life? How so, huh?”

Point blank her father demanded, “Are you two doing drugs?” He crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring Wendy’s posture. “Pot? X? Some kinda acid or pills, maybe? Speed? You’re skinny enough for it.”

Wendy, stunned, sputtered. She couldn’t believe this. Her button-down, uptight father was accusing her of getting high? Sure she looked rough, but of all the people in the house to point a finger at, why did he pick her?

Ignoring her shock and anger, her father forged on. “I was sixteen once too, Wendy. I’ll understand if you’ve been experimenting, but if you’re on something really dangerous, I have to put a stop to it. I’m not going to let you fry your brain.”

Finally she found some words. They weren’t the right words, but anything was better than gaping at her father with her mouth hanging open. “I’m sorry, Dad, but excuse me? Seriously? I mean…seriously? What the fuck, Dad!”

“Wendy, honey—” Taken aback by her fury, her father dropped his arms and half-rose from the edge of her bed, confusion written all over his face. “Come on, kiddo. Language.”

“Don’t ‘Wendy-honey’ me, Dad!” Wendy knew her voice was rising shrilly, tottering on the edge of hysterical anger, but she hardly cared. “Look, I’m not a baby! There are all kinds of people selling at school and I could get high anytime I want, but I have this whole ‘my-body-is-a-temple’ thing and I’d really rather not. Hell, Dad, I don’t even drink!” Wendy slammed her Algebra book closed.

“Keep your voice down! The twins are asleep!”

From beneath the bed Jabber began to growl, low and long. Wendy dropped her tone to an angry hiss, unconsciously mimicking the cat. “Whatever. I’m not pulling A’s anymore, sure, but French sucks and English is boring and Algebra is hard, but since B’s were good enough for Mom you really shouldn’t give a shit!”

Horrified, Wendy’s jaw clicked shut and she pressed her hands across her mouth as if she could choke the words back, shame coloring her cheeks scarlet.

“You’re right,” her father said, using the edge of the desk to rise. His shoulders drooped and he shuffled his feet, bunny slippers rubbing the carpet with a whispery sigh.

“D-dad,” stammered Wendy, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You did.” He fumbled at his hips for a moment before realizing his robe was on the mend pile and there were no pockets to shove his hands into. “But that’s okay. I believe you, and I’m sorry I brought it up. You finish up your homework and get to bed.”

“Dad—”

“Hush. Come here.” Her father drew her close and gave her a tight hug. Wendy could smell the traces of Irish Spring on his skin and the fainter smell of ammonia and bleach. He’d been to the hospital again tonight. He practically lived there when he was home.

“I don’t do drugs, Dad.” Wendy stepped back, slid into her desk chair. Her fury abated, she felt cold and tired and very, very sad. She shrugged, uncomfortable but feeling a need to say it once while she had her dad on the defensive, so that they would never need to have this sort of conversation again. “And, just in case you were wondering, I know what I look like, but I don’t sleep around either. Really.”

“Good to know, kiddo.” He ruffled her hair and walked to the door. “Sweet dreams.”

“Night, Dad.”

He turned the knob, then paused. “Oh, Wendy? I’ve got a big contract coming up at the end of this week. I’ll be gone eight, maybe nine days.”

“Okay.” Her mousy-looking father was a corporate efficiency consultant—a destroyer of jobs and dreams all in the name of profit—and his efficiency audits often had him on the road for weeks at a time. When he was gone, Wendy was in charge. “I have it all under control.”

“Never doubted it for a moment.” They paused, both aware of the irony of his statement, and then he slipped back into the hallway without another word.

Weary now, and wanting nothing more than to simply sink into her bed and sleep for a year, Wendy rifled through her Algebra text until she found the assignment again. A tear plopped onto the page, magnifying a variable, and Wendy wiped it away. Four hours until school, ten more polynomials, and an outline for her English Lit report.

“I can do this,” she whispered, rubbing the heel of her palm against her eye as Jabber slunk through the desk to twine about her ankles. “I have it all under control.”