Dave one more kick in the foot before she followed.
I was starting to get the very bad feeling that my dream night wasn't going quite as I'd planned.
We made our way down a long hallway that ended in French doors, which opened onto a deck
overlooking the covered swimming pool.
On the deck, passed out under a large glass table, was Connor. A few feet away lay Matt.
Connor was on his stomach with his head resting on his forearm. For a second I wondered if he
was still breathing, but then Jessica walked over and kicked his ankle and he groaned.
I bent down. "Connor?" I asked.
"Hey, Red," he said. His words were slurred; I sensed more than heard what he was saying. Then
he lifted his head. "Wassup?"
"You okay, Connor?" I sat down on the cold wood and touched his hair. Next to his hip lay an
empty bottle of Wild Turkey.
"We lost, Red," said Connor.
"I know," I said. "I'm really sorry."
"I think I need to sleep for a little while," he said, dropping his head back down. "Thanks for stopping by."
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Chapter Seventeen
You know what Prince Charming isn't supposed to do? He isn't supposed to puke all over
Cinderella's boots. I cleaned Connor's vomit off the leather, helped him climb into Kathryn
Ford's car, and sat behind him while he slept, snoring heavily, but I wasn't finding him as
charming as I usually did. In fact, I wasn't finding him charming at all.
My father was going to kill me. And for what? By the time Kathryn turned onto my block, I was
in a panic. My palms were so sweaty I could smell them. For the first time since I'd decided to do
it, ignoring Mara's note was starting to feel like a very, very bad idea.
Just as Kathryn pulled up in front of my house, I had a momentary reprieve--it looked as if the
only lights on inside were the ones Mara and my dad leave on when they go out for the evening.
But then I saw that a lamp
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was on in my dad's study, and I knew wherever everyone else was, he was home.
And he was waiting for me.
I took a deep breath. "Well, thanks again," I said to Kathryn. "Sorry if this ruined your night."
"Don't worry about it. I told Mark I'd meet up with him in the city." Kathryn's tone made it clear she didn't spend her Friday nights partying with the under twenty-one set.
"Oh, right," I said. "You did mention that."
She nodded toward Connor, asleep in the passenger seat. "Our boy's pretty wrecked, isn't he?"
Something about how she said our boy kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn't like I was
about to correct her. Um, actually, Kathryn, he's my boy.
"Yeah," I said.
She looked at him for a long minute. "He's such a cutie," she said.
Now I was officially irked. Do not call my boyfriend a cutie. The hatred I'd reserved for Mara
ebbed a bit in the face of my new yet surprisingly powerful hatred for Kathryn Ford.
She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Too bad he's too young for me," she said.
She turned her head back to where I was sitting, reached through the front seats, and patted my
knee. "He's all yours."
"Oh. Ah, thanks," I said. Then I felt like a total idiot
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for saying it, since I'd pretty much just thanked her for insulting me. "Well, good night," I said.
"Have fun in the city."
"I will," she said.
I went up the front walk as slowly as if I were wearing shoes of lead, literally dragging my heels
along the flagstone. In the front hallway, I spent several long minutes taking off Connor's jacket
and hanging it up. As soon as I'd shut the closet door, I felt bereft, like the jacket was a suit of
armor without which I was totally exposed. For a split second I considered just going downstairs
and getting into bed, pretending I hadn't seen my dad's light. But then I thought about how it
would feel to defend myself to him in the morning, in front of Mara and the Princesses. As bad
as tonight was going to be, tomorrow could only be worse.
I walked through the darkened living room and down the two steps to his study, where a small
crack of light glowed under the closed door. I stood there, breathing deeply, and then I knocked.
"Come in," called my dad. I pushed open the door. He was sitting at his desk, typing on his
laptop.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," he said.
"When did you get home?" I asked. I was amazed I was able to keep my voice normal when
everything else about me was shaking hard enough for me to feel it.
"A few hours ago," he said. He leaned back in his
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chair and put his feet up on the desk, gesturing for me to sit down in the chair facing him. "I
heard you had quite a week."
I shrugged and took a seat, feeling like I was settling into the witness stand. "I guess you could
say that."
"Want to tell me what happened?" he asked, pushing his hand through his hair.
My dad's not just a lawyer, he's a lawyer who's obsessed with the "inherent beauty" of the
American legal system. Imagine it, Lucy, a country where the accused is innocent until proven
guilty. Usually when he starts waxing rhapsodic about the Bill of Rights, I just roll my eyes or
point out that there's nothing especially beautiful about helping multinational corporations sue
each other, which is the kind of law my dad practices; but tonight I was glad he was so
passionately committed to the rights of the accused. After all, even if Long Island seems like it's
in a different universe from San Francisco, officially we were still in the United States.
I sat forward with my hands on my knees. "Okay, the thing is, I didn't do anything, and all of a
sudden Mara and everyone was saying how I was being selfish."
"And why do you think they would say a thing like that?" he asked, tapping the tips of his fingers together.
I was totally relieved. I'd thought he was automatically going ta take Mara's side, but now I could
see he was going to listen to my version of the story. "I don't know," I said. "Mara asked me to let her friend sleep in
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my room, and I asked her if I could think about it, and all of a sudden everyone was acting like
I'd said no, when I hadn't."
"So you feel you were ganged up on for no reason at all? ' Was it my imagination, or had his tone changed? Before he had sounded genuinely curious; now he sounded overly curious, i.e.,
like he really wasn't curious at all.
I refused to believe my dad's question was rhetorical. Was it really that impossible for him to
imagine his precious wife and stepdaughters might possibly gang up on his innocent daughter.
"As a matter of fact, I do think that."
"Well, I wasn't there, Lucy, so I can't say for sure what happened, but Mara made it sound like
you were inexcusably rude to her for absolutely no reason."
"Well, did it ever occur to you that just because Mara made it sound like that doesn't mean it happened like that?"
"Lucy, I don't understand what's going on here." He dropped his feet to the floor and sat forward in his chair. "Mara said she asked you to do her friend Gail a favor, and you said no, and then