“I don’t think that’s what it is. I think he’d rather pretend it didn’t happen, and if he takes you there it’s a reminder to him that it did.”
She was totally right. I nodded. When Mom died, I lost two parents. I lost her in the car wreck, and I’d lost my dad to grief. He’d just… stopped. The only thing he did anymore was work. He didn’t cook, he didn’t work out, he didn’t play with me or help with my homework. He just barely existed at all. And that had been going on since the accident.
“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry, okay?” she ruffled my hair and smiled kindly at me. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up?”
I nodded, even though I was worried. I hoped she didn’t mean that she would pay for it and take me. The Summers didn’t have much money. Mr. Summers, Pete, was a fireman, and Lynne was the attendance clerk at the high school. And they had four children. There was Sadie, Tim, Alexis, Wynter. Wynter went by Wyn because she hated her full name. I couldn’t say I blamed her; Wynter Summers was just… a bit much.
Hopefully, Lynne would just work her magic on my dad. He’d do almost anything she said. If she told him to pay for therapy for me, he would. But I knew he wouldn’t take me. Lynne or Pete would get stuck with that, and it made my face burn with embarrassment to think about it.
I knew that in many ways the Summers saw me as another member of the family. I even had my own bed. It was a twin set up in Alexis’ room. She was just a couple of years younger than Tim and me, and we got along well.
But everyone knew it was Tim and me who were inseparable. We went everywhere together and did everything together.
And I knew it would always be that way.
***
I pulled my dark hair back in a ponytail and applied the lip gloss just how Sadie had shown me. I put on the delicate gold chain with the fleur de lis charm on it. Then I put on the matching earrings. My mother, who was French, gave it to me just months before the car wreck that took her from me. It was the only jewelry I ever wore.
I smoothed down the lines of the faded blue dress I was wearing and bit my lip. It was too short. I should have tried it on sooner. Lynne Summers had offered to take me shopping, but I knew she’d spend her on own money on me. Dad wouldn’t take me shopping himself, and he probably wouldn’t give me money for it, either. We weren’t anywhere near poor; he was just very tight with money. When Mom was alive, she balanced him out, made him reasonable. Without her… well, in a lot of ways he’d become impossible to deal with.
Not only was my dress faded and too short, but it was also wrinkled. It was a material I was scared to iron. I stepped back and looked at myself in the mirror. I’d always liked this dress because it was the exact color of my eyes, which I thought were my one good feature. They were an unusual shade of blue; almost teal. They were just like my mom’s, and it was like having a piece of her with me when I saw them in the mirror. It was like having Mom’s eyes looking back at me.
Not in a creepy, ghostly way. It was comforting. Like she was a part of me.
“Natalie!” my dad yelled from downstairs. “The Summers are here to pick you up.”
Shit. It was too late to change now. “Coming,” I called. I grabbed my purse, stuffed my feet into some old, scuffed black ballet flats, and hurried down the stairs.
I stopped and looked at my father. He was on the couch, his eyes glued to a baseball game on TV. He wasn’t coming to my eighth-grade graduation. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was.Mom died when I was ten. Before it happened, my parents were at every event of mine. I always had my hair styled perfectly, and my clothes were neat, clean, and stylish.
Everything in my life had changed the day she died. I didn’t just bury my mother. I buried my entire way of life.
“You sure you don’t want to come, Dad?” I asked hesitantly.
He didn’t even take his eyes off the screen. “The Braves are on.”
I winced. I loved the Braves, too. I grew up going to games because we had season tickets… well, we used to have season tickets. I might only be fourteen, but I knew where to draw the line. I knew it wasn’t okay to watch Atlanta play an early season game that barely mattered rather than attend your daughter’s eighth-grade graduation ceremony. It wouldn’t have been okay even if it was a play-off game in September or October. But at least it would make more sense. I hadn’t even bothered to tell him about my speech or all the awards I was getting; I knew it wouldn’t matter.
I didn’t say anything else. I just walked out the door and got in the Summers’ late model minivan.
The difference was immediate.
It was loud and chaotic in the car. Everyone was dressed up and excited. They were all talking and joking around with each other. I felt such a sense of relief to be back with them. It felt like I belonged more with these wonderful people I shared no blood relation with than my own father.
“Nat! Sit back here with me.” Tim motioned to me while Alexis and Wyn clamored for me to sit near them. Sadie was texting Harrison like a madwoman, but she paused long enough to look up at me and give me a grin.
As if Tim needed to ask. I said hello to everyone then climbed to the very back to sit next to him. I pushed my glasses up on my nose as I plopped down beside him. “Hey.”
He was holding a large bouquet of flowers. He set them down long enough for us to run through our complicated high five sequence. We’d started doing it years ago; neither of us could remember when. We’d added to it every year since.
When we were done, I swept my ponytail back over my shoulder. “Who are the flowers for?”
Tim’s handsome face turned pink, and he looked away. For one breathless moment, I thought he was going to say they were for me. I had no idea how I would feel about that. Tim? Likingme? Even though we were best friends, we were in very different social groups at school. Tim was the most popular guy in our class, but he wasn’t an ass like a lot of the popular kids were. He was handsome, funny, quirky in the best way, smart, and kind. He was also the tallest, most athletic kid in our grade. Everyone wanted to be around Tim. He was nice to everyone. The Summers family was like that, apparently. Sadie, who was in high school, was gorgeous and a cheerleader. But she was the nicest person you’d ever meet. Wyn was the same, it seemed. The jury was still out on Alexis. She was the one Summers kid who had let her good looks go to her head. She was beautiful, funny, smart, and everything else the other kids were. But she was also… kind of mean. She was a couple of grades under us and was the queen bee of her class for sure.
Tim could’ve been that way, too. But he wasn’t. I was nerdy, skinny, awkward, and weird. I knew it. I would never have fit in with the popular kids if it wasn’t for Tim. As it was, I knew they only tolerated me because of him. They didn’t actually like me, but they knew Tim would flip out if any of them treated me badly.
Still, I couldn’t imagine that he thought of me as someone he’d give flowers to.
