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Homework came in overwhelming waves, especially chemistry and calculus, which I had a hard enough time learning even with formal instruction. My mother tried to teach me, but she sucked at it, too. Some days I thought she’d break down in the hallway or the kitchen and fill the house with sobs. I don’t know much about what my mother’s life was like before she had kids, but I think she was happier. I think she didn’t spend all her time caring for one child who was a high-maintenance musical prodigy and another who couldn’t even manage her own medication schedule.
Charlie was a little different, because Charlie did what she always did when she was afraid or not sure how to handle a situation: she hid. She stayed out of the living room, my fortress, and only ventured into the kitchen when she knew I wasn’t there. I hardly saw her at all those first two weeks, but after I had a particularly bad time with the Gravedigger, Charlie stood on the other side of the doorway, out of sight, and played me songs on her violin. Usually the 1812 Overture.
The third week turned out to be the best of the three. That Sunday, Dad came home.
Rain thundered against the windows. I sat barricaded in my pillow fort, leaning against the couch, wondering about the contents of those eighteen-and-a-half lost minutes of the Nixon White House tapes, when rain-rippled headlights roamed across the far wall and gravel crunched as a car pulled into the driveway. Maybe my mother had left without me knowing and was just getting back. But she wasn’t supposed to leave me alone. She wouldn’t.
A car door shut. Someone pulled open the screen door.
“DADDY’S HOME!” Charlie screamed from the kitchen.
I peeked out of my fort. My mother stood right in the doorway, Charlie’s fringe of red hair visible behind her.
And then a completely soaked, suntanned someone leaned around the doorframe. He grinned when he saw me, his warm dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Hey, Lexi.”
I almost cracked my head open on the coffee table in my rush to get out of the fort. With my blanket still wrapped around me like a cloak, I threw my arms around his neck and hid my face in his collar.
“Hi, Dad,” I mumbled.
He laughed and hugged me back. “Lex, I’m all wet.”
“I don’t care.” It sounded more like mfffmmph.
“I came back as soon as I could,” he said when I let him go. “Did you know? South Africa is really far away.”
Chapter Eighteen
I dismantled the pillow fort enough to make the couch sit-able again. Dad and I watched the History Channel and played chess all day, and in the evening, my mother and Charlie joined us. Charlie played behind the life-size George Washington statue in the corner, reenacting the crossing of the Delaware.
When it was just me and Dad, he’d ask about school and what I’d been doing while he’d been gone. He carefully maneuvered around the word “friends,” something I thanked him for. But I did reassure him.
“They’re my friends. I mean, really, they are. Or were . . . I hope they’re still my friends, if they know . . .”
“If they’re really your friends, they won’t care about your condition, Lexi.” Dad hugged me closer to his side. He smelled like rain. “Tell me about them.”
So I told him about the club. About the triplets. About Art and the fact that even though he could kill a small man with a poke to the chest, he still acted like a complete teddy bear. About Jetta and her French heritage. About Tucker and his conspiracies. I smiled more than I had for the past two weeks.
“Who’s the kid who brought you home?” Dad asked suddenly, throwing me off kilter. “The one you punched?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“Mom told me,” he said, smiling. “Punching? Is that how you wrangle boys these days?” He nudged me in the side. I swatted his elbow away and pulled my blanket tighter, trying to hide the blush in my cheeks. “Wrangling” boys hadn’t been on my agenda lately.
“It’s just Miles.”
“Just Miles?”
I ignored him. “He runs the club.”
“What, that’s it? Nothing else?”
“Uh, what do you want to know? He’s the valedictorian. He’s really tall.”
Dad made an approving sound at the word valedictorian.
“He knew who Acamapichtli was,” I added after a second. “Along with most of the other Aztec emperors. And the Tlatocan.”
Dad’s approving noise rose an octave.
“And I’m pretty sure he can speak German.”
Dad smiled. “That all?”
My face heated up again at the look he gave me. As if I liked Miles. As if I wanted to think about him.
Just thinking about his stupid face and his stupidly blue eyes turned me into the most confused person on the planet.
“No,” I said, burrowing into my blanket. “He can also take a hit.”
By the end of the third week, the world balanced on its axis. Dad stayed home, Mom stayed happy, and I got to go back to school on Monday. Sure, I wanted to puke from the anxiety rolling around in my stomach, but now I could get back to my (admittedly late) college search, catch up on all that schoolwork, and see my friends again.
Assuming Miles hadn’t told them everything, of course. If he had, there was a real chance they wouldn’t want to talk to me at all. But, reassuringly, I thought they had tried to contact me. The phone had been ringing more often than usual, and more than once someone knocked on the door and was turned away by my mother. I wished I had my own cell phone, but my mother probably would have taken that away from me, too.
Sunday night, as I tromped down the back hallway—I’d just finished putting up all my pictures again—to the living room, I heard my parents’ voices floating out of the kitchen. Talking about me. I pressed myself up against the wall outside the doorway.
“—that it’s not a good idea, that’s all. We can’t pretend that it isn’t as bad as it looks.”
“I don’t think we should resort to that yet. Lexi’s a responsible girl. Something must have bothered her. I don’t think she’d forget—”
My heard swelled painfully with appreciation for my dad.
“David, really,” said my mother. “You can’t know that. What if she didn’t want to take it? It was my fault for not paying enough attention, but . . . but that’s not the point. The medication isn’t the problem. This has happened before, and it might happen again, and it keeps getting worse.”
