“She’s gone a lot,” I said simply, allowing him to draw his own conclusions. Maybe she was gone on business. Ha! Or she was caring for a sick friend. I left the statement there and hoped he would leave it too.
Molly ensured that nobody would leave it there. She offered, “We’ve been best friends since we were sixteen, and I’ve never met Leah’s mother.”
“Really?” Alec asked, astonished. “How is that possible?”
“She is literally never home,” Molly said.
“She’s there sometimes,” I said, rushing to my mom’s defense. When Molly eyed me dubiously, I said, “Okay, she’s not there much, but that’s my fault. She used to take me with her on visits to see her boyfriends, or she would invite them over to stay with us. But when I was ten, we lived near the army base. She got with a guy who’d been to Iraq and had problems. He beat her. He beat his fifteen-year-old son who lived with him too. One night his son hit me, and then—”
I stopped. The three of them were gaping at me.
This was what they got for asking me about this shit during dinner.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I backtracked. “I told my mom I didn’t want to go to her boyfriends’ places anymore. I could stay at home by myself, and she could go where she wanted. I knew when I said it that she would be gone a lot. I didn’t picture her being gone almost always.” I crunched a baked potato chip. Ignoring their eyes on me, I looked past everyone at the water.
The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would leave you alone, eventually. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Likewise, you would think rich kids would stop badgering their poor friend when she didn’t melt down about her home life. But the more calmly I answered, the more they kept after me.
“What about your grandparents?” Alec asked.
“What about them?” I asked. “You mean, why haven’t I gone to live with them?”
He nodded, but his eyes were getting wider. He was going to stop me and say this was too much information after all.
I kind of enjoyed telling them, “My grandparents kicked my mom out of the house when she got pregnant at fifteen. She had to drop out of school so she could get a job. Sometimes I think that experience did something to her, being thrown out on her own like that, because she’ll do anything to avoid getting a job now.”
“That was eighteen years ago,” Molly said.
I resented the challenging tone in her voice. How dare this privileged rich girl question my story? I asked her, “So?”
“So, your mom should have gotten over it,” Molly said.
“Some people have problems,” I said. “When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.”
Grayson moved in the corner of my eye. He’d been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was sitting there, listening to this whole mortifying conversation. I turned to him to give him my special go-to-hell face.
But he was staring at me with a shocked expression—not bad shock like Alec, as if he were horrified by my life story, but good shock, as if he’d had an epiphany.
“That explains why she doesn’t get a job,” Molly said. “What part of your mother’s problem makes her leave you alone all the time?”
I was still so surprised by the way Grayson was acting that it took me a second to realize Molly had deeply insulted my mom. Pride took over as I turned back to Molly. “I’m eighteen years old,” I said. “There’s no reason for my mother to mother me. Why are you harping on this?”
“Because people deserve to be treated with respect,” Molly said haughtily. “Children should be cared for. Friends and relatives should not lie to each other. And when I see that happening, I’m going to call it like it is.”
My skin burned so hot that I glanced at the setting sun to make sure it hadn’t caught me in its bright beam. Molly was talking about Grayson blackmailing me to date Alec. Why was she talking about this? She didn’t need to make a point to me. She knew Grayson had me over a barrel. If she let Alec know he was being fooled, or even if she let Grayson know I’d told her about the whole arrangement, Grayson could get so angry that he’d show my forgery to my mother and everyone at the airport.
But I didn’t dare telegraph this to Molly with a look. A sideways glance at Grayson let me know he was still watching me, rapt, like he was seeing me for the first time. I was almost relieved when Alec kept on with his questions.
“You’ve never even tried to contact your grandparents?” Alec asked. “Maybe they’ve had a change of heart.”
Right. Like they had decided to start donating to charity: namely, me. I bit out, “Contact them, how, Alec? They live somewhere in South Carolina and their last name is Jones. You do the math.”
“What about your other grandparents?” he asked.
“I’ve never met them, either.”
“What about your dad? Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a soft thud as someone kicked Alec under the table. He didn’t get the hint. He said, “I don’t mean right this second. I mean in general.”
I took a deep breath. This fake dating thing was wearing me down. I needed to think about it further, really plan it all out, and invent some kind of brainless persona who could go out with Alec without exposing her heart to danger. This sharing of my own actual life was above and beyond the call of duty for this job, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. Finally I said on a sigh, “I don’t know that either. I don’t know who my dad is.”
Alec’s own dad hadn’t lived with him for years, but Alec had known where his dad was. His dad had paid child support and held joint custody, on paper at least. Alec, from his suburban Wilmington home in a neighborhood with paved roads and curbs and sidewalks, with a TV in every bedroom, could not fathom not knowing who his father was.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said soothingly. “I just wanted to learn more about you.” He lifted his hand toward my cheek.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. His questions had a fishing-for-information quality about them. Either that or I was just mad now. The upshot was the same: I was tired of his bullshit. I scooted away from him on the bench. An inch, not enough to escape him if he wanted to touch me, but enough to be symbolic.
It was a gesture he read perfectly. He tilted his head at me, puzzled and hurt, just like he should be as his date drew back from him when he was trying to help. His instinct was to comfort an upset girl. And he was quickly learning not to do that with me. So frustrating, that once in a while I had actual emotions that got tangled up with the fake ones.