and Amy were sitting facing my dad and Mara, their backs to me.
This was not part of my plan. It was one thing to sneak some food out of a container while my
wicked stepmother and her evil daughters comparison shopped through Lucky in the dining
room. It was another to fill my plate up and sit at the counter by myself while everyone else sat
there watching me. My hand was still on the doorknob. Was it too late to turn around and head
back downstairs? I remembered a special report I heard on the news once that said it's important
to have a three-day supply of food and water on hand at all times. Why hadn't I taken that
broadcast more seriously?
My dad pointed at an unopened container with his chopsticks. "Orange chicken," he said.
Okay, this was completely unfair. I mean, I was starving.
"Why don't you come sit with us?" asked my dad. He pulled out the chair next to him and patted
the seat.
Without removing my hand from the doorknob, I considered my options. A) Turn around, go
back downstairs, potentially starve to death or B) Sit down, eat, watch basketball game.
But if I sat down and ate with them, would I be
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expected to talk to them? I looked at Emma's and Amy's backs, remembered their frantic phone
call, the rescue. Thank you, Lucy. We love you, Lucy. Lucy, you're the best.
Traitors.
I decided I'd sit and eat but not speak. I walked over to the chair my dad had pulled out and sat
down. Mara passed me the container of orange chicken. I unfolded the foil edges and took off the
plastic top. Everyone was looking at me as if I'd just had a miraculous recovery from a deadly
illness. I served myself some chicken and took a bite. It was hard to swallow with four sets of
eyes watching my every move. When I put my fork down, Emma reached across the table to
hand me a container.
"Rice?"
I nodded. A nod does not equal a spoken word. I spooned some rice onto my plate while
everyone else sat in silence. I took another bite.
"Emma and Amy have something they would like to say to you," said my dad.
I looked across the table at Emma and Amy, my mouth full of orange chicken. Their heads were
bent.
"Girls," said my dad.
Emma looked up. After a second, Amy did, too. "We're sorry, Lucy," they said in stereo.
I swallowed, but I didn't say anything. There was a silence, and then my dad prodded them again.
"Sorry for what?"
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"We're sorry we got you in trouble," said Emma, dropping her head down.
"We're sorry we made it sound like you knew we were at the party the whole time," said Amy,
whose head was now also down.
Suddenly Emma looked up. "Really, we're sorry," she said. "You were so nice, Lucy."
"Don't hate us, Lucy," said Amy.
I wasn't sure what to say. I mean, I didn't exactly hate them. But I didn't exactly trust them,
either. I looked around the table. My dad took a bite of his moo-shu pancake, and I thought I
caught a glance pass between him and Mara.
"Lucy, now it's my turn to apologize," said Mara. "I should have trusted you wouldn't have done something to endanger Emma and Amy."
Were we in an alternate universe? I nodded at her. She grabbed a paper napkin from the pile next
to her and handed it to me. "Here," she said. "For your lap."
So we were in the real world. "Thanks," I said, taking it.
Nobody said much for the rest of the meal. When we finished eating, my dad brought over the
big kitchen garbage can and we dumped all the paper plates and empty containers and disposable
chopsticks into it.
I was pretty sure it was the first time since San
Francisco that I hadn't been asked to clear the table.
***
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Later my dad came downstairs just as I was setting my alarm.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," I said. I checked the volume and made sure it was set to go off in the a.m., not the p.m.
"So I'm going to work out of the New York office for the next couple of weeks," he said, leaning over the banister. "Like I did today."
I put the clock back down on the floor next to my bed. "Sure," I said.
"That's the best I can do for now."
"Okay," I said.
He waited, like he wanted to say something else. Or maybe he was waiting for me to say
something else, I wasn't sure. But what was I supposed to say? I guess everything's okay now.
Emma and Amy said they're sorry, you temporarily relocated to New York, and Mara let us have
Chinese food and eat in the kitchen! Bibbitybobhityboo!--we're one big happy family.
As it was, my dad and I just ended up looking at each other in silence for a while.
"So I guess I'll see you tomorrow," he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Well," he said, "good night."
"Good night."
It took me forever to fall asleep.
What my dad had said made it impossible for me
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to stop thinking about how my life would change if he really was working in his firm's New
York office instead of flying out to the West Coast every Sunday. The idea of him opening the
front door each night when he got home from work made me so happy I almost started crying.
How easy would it be to sit through dinner with my step-monster and her offspring if my dad
was there, too; if afterward he and I watched a game together or went for ice cream like we used
to? If he was around, wasn't it possible my home life would actually become ... bearable?
Finally I made myself roll over and go to sleep. Because while my fantasy was certainly a nice
one, the reality wasn't so pretty. "Two weeks," I said into my pillow. "He said two weeks."
That's the problem with fairy tales. Every good thing happens for a limited time only.
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Chapter Twenty-eight
All week prom gossip flew fast and furious. In math, while Mr. Palmer droned on about graphing
parabolas, I taught Jessica what a point spread was, using the latest rumors about which couples
would make it to Saturday night and which wouldn't. Even though I was doing it while he was
talking about something else, I thought Mr. Palmer would have been proud to hear me explain,
when we got to Jane and Sam, that you can't solve an equation if you don't know whether
something (i.e., Jane's bitchiness) is a variable or a constant. I realized that despite my math
teacher's being clinically insane, I'd actually learned something in his class.
Having just been talking about him in math, I was surprised when Sam didn't show up to art, and
I was even more surprised when he wasn't there the next day, either. It wasn't until the end of the
week that
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I asked Ms. Daniels where he was, and while she was telling me all about the colleges he was
visiting and how she hoped he'd seriously consider RISD, I suddenly remembered the daydream
I'd had about us slow dancing at the prom. It made me feel really self-conscious. First I have a
weird vision of us dancing together and then I'm all concerned about why he isn't in school? Just
as I was starting to seriously regret having bothered to ask Ms. Daniels about Sam's whereabouts,