Deadly Little Lessons (3 page)

I
TURN ONTO A STREET
that leads to Regino’s, the restaurant I went to on one of my very first dates with Adam. We sat at a table in the back, and I remember at one point during dinner looking out the window just as a tree branch broke outside, exposing two limbs that stretched out at sharp angles. The image reminded me of Ben—of the scar that runs along his forearm.

I push the door open, surprised to discover that it’s no longer an Italian restaurant. A sign above the front counter says,
WELCOME TO HALEY’S TV DINER
.

I turn back to gaze at the entrance to see if the exterior has changed as well. Maybe I was too distracted to notice it.

“You can take a seat anywhere,” a waitress tells me.

“Thanks,” I say, looking around. The interior is decorated with posters of new and old TV shows—
I Love
Lucy
,
Happy Days
,
Seinfeld
, and
Family Guy
—and there are flat-screen TVs throughout the place, though only one is currently on. It hangs down over the front counter. A group of older people sit huddled below it.

The waitress hands me a menu; it’s made up to look like a
TV Guide
with a caricature of Steve Carell on the front. “Is this your first time at TV Diner?”

“Sort of,” I say, noticing that the rest of the place is pretty empty, that the old photographs of Florence, Rome, and Milan are gone, along with the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths.

Despite these changes, the table at the back is still there. I head toward it, as if cosmically (and perhaps pathetically) drawn to the infamous tree branch outside the window. But the leaves are at their peak now—lush, vibrant, green—and so I can barely see it.

I wonder where Ben is right now and what he might be doing. After coming to my rescue a few months ago, he decided to go away for a while. He joined a homeschooling group, with the principal’s approval, only he hasn’t been home in months.

I slide into the booth, suddenly feeling stupid for coming here. Why didn’t I go to Adam’s office? I open the vinyl menu, thinking back to that first date. After the tree branch broke, I remember how distracted I was, despite how sweet Adam was being. I couldn’t seem to stay in the moment, wondering if nature was trying to send me some message.

“What can I get you?” the waitress asks.

I feel a chill, wishing that I had grabbed a sweater on my way out of the house. It may be June, but the air conditioner overhead makes things feel more like late November. I order some food by pointing to the first things I see on the menu: a raspberry muffin, along with a strawberry milk shake, despite knowing I won’t be able to stomach them.

I look up at the front counter. The old people are taking notes as they watch TV, as if keeping score or solving puzzles, and yet it looks to be a news show. A forty-something-year-old woman appears on the screen and starts sobbing into the camera.

“Here we are,” the waitress says as she places my order in front of me, along with a couple of containers each of butter and strawberry jam.

“Thank you,” I say, noticing a man on the TV screen now. The woman’s husband? Her older brother? He’s crying as well, which upsets the woman more. She tries to say something, but I’m too far away to hear.

“Hello;
hello
,” the waitress says in a singsongy voice.

“What?” I ask. Has she been talking to me?

“You’re addicted, too, aren’t you?” She laughs.

“Addicted?”

“To
Open Cases
?” Her pixie haircut reminds me of Kimmie’s, as does her plum purple eye shadow. “It’s one of those unsolved-mystery shows—the kind where they ask the viewers for help. The difference with
this
show is that the stories are all fairly current, which means that the regulars here are totally obsessed with solving the cases before the police do.” She gestures to the row of note-takers. “Check them out. They come in here daily to watch the show. You’re welcome to join if you like. Just don’t be too insightful, or else you’re apt to piss Rudy off. He likes to think he’s the smartest one of the bunch.”

I recognize the girl from news reports: Sasha Beckerman, a fifteen-year-old girl from Peachtree, Rhode Island. She’s been missing for six weeks. The photo was taken at the end of Sasha’s eighth grade year and shows her with a fishtail braid and full-lipped smile.

I grab my food and head up to the counter, eager for distraction.

“It’s the parents’ fault,” says the guy at the end of the counter to the woman sitting beside him.

The woman pauses in dunking a butter-slathered cracker into her mug of tea. “Don’t tell me you think
they’re
the ones behind the kidnapping.”

“Who says it was a kidnapping?” another guy says, glaring at her over the rims of his bifocals. “I’m telling you: that girl ran away.”

“Well, I still think people need to cut the parents some slack,” the woman says.

The guy with bifocals shushes her as the host of the show details what the authorities know about the case. Apparently, Sasha told her parents that she was going to a poetry slam with some new friends. But it turned out to be an underground party with no adults present to speak of—except for the one adult she was last seen with: a good-looking guy with a brown leather jacket.

My stomach rumbles; I feel hungry and nauseated at the same time. I take a bite of my muffin, trying to tame the thick lead taste in my mouth. A moment later, my cell phone rings. It’s Dad, but I don’t want to pick up.

“Your phone’s ringing,” the guy with the bifocals says, as if I’d suddenly lost my hearing.

I reluctantly click my phone on and mutter, “Hello.”

“Your mother just got home from work,” Dad says. “Where are you? And since when do you leave the house without checking with me first?”

Since I just found out that for the past seventeen years, you
and Mom have been lying to me
, I want to tell him.
Since I
learned that Mom’s long-winded lectures about peace, love, and
honesty are all just a pile of BS.

“Look, your mother and I would really like to sit down and talk this out,” he continues. “Now, just tell me where you are.”

He still isn’t denying it. The tightening sensation returns to my chest.

“Camelia?” he asks.

I drop my cell phone. It lands on the floor with a clank. The case breaks. The clip holder goes flying.

“Is she all right?” I hear one of the regulars ask.

I’m breathing hard. The room starts to spin.

“Do you need help?” a female voice asks me.

“Get her a glass of water,” someone else says.

Their voices only make me dizzier, so I cover my ears and do my best to remain composed, wishing this were all a dream, that I could wake up and be the girl I thought I was, rather than this person I no longer know. This person who will never be the same.

I
SPEND THE NEXT
fifteen minutes in the bathroom, regaining my breath and praying for the spinning to stop. Once I’ve managed to get a grip, I step out of the handicapped stall and return to the dining area.

To my complete and utter shock, Dad is at the front counter, paying my check.

“How did you know where to find me?” I ask him.

“Don’t forget your cell phone,” he says, sliding it down the counter toward me.

I glance at the row of regulars, assuming that one of them must’ve picked my cell up from the floor, answered it, and told my dad where I was. They’re all focused on me rather than the television now, as if I were every bit as intriguing as the girl on
Open Cases
.

“Let’s go,” Dad says.

I follow him out to the car, both surprised and disappointed that Mom isn’t in the front seat.

Once inside, Dad locks the doors and turns to me. “We have a lot to talk about,” he says.

“Just tell me,” I mutter. “I need to know if it’s true.”

“If what’s true?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, resenting him for making me be the first to say the words. Then I open my eyes and gaze out the window, wishing that I could jump out, and that it was a whole lot further down.

“Camelia?”

I look at him again. “Are you and Mom my real parents?” The question comes out in a whimper.

But still he understands. I can tell by the flare of his nostrils and by how firmly he presses his lips together. “We have a lot to talk about,” he repeats; these seem to be the only words he can currently say.

Meanwhile, I have no words left.

I get out of the car to give myself a moment. It isn’t long before Dad steps out, too. He takes me in his arms, and I reluctantly feel myself melt. Tears run down my cheeks, onto his shoulder, dampening his shirt. I want to be angry at him, but right now I just need for things to be the way they used to.

I’m not sure how long he holds me—if it’s for two hours or two minutes—but we eventually get back inside the car and head for home.

Mom is waiting in the living room. She embraces me as well. They both hold on to me as if I were some long-lost treasure that they don’t ever want to lose again. But I feel like it’s already too late.

Eventually, Mom sits me down on the sofa and gives me some dandelion tea. Her eyes look brighter than normal, as if she might have recently popped a pill.

“Is it true?” I ask, still waiting to hear them say it, part of me hoping that they might somehow even deny it.

“How did you hear about this?” Mom asks, kneeling down in front of me.

I look at her—at her red, corkscrew curls and her angular face—and suddenly feel so stupid. Because what I once thought of as a mother-daughter resemblance—our almond-shaped eyes, our high cheekbones, our pointed chins—I now know is a resemblance between aunt and niece.

“We were going to tell you,” she continues, “but our lives have been complicated lately.” She starts to prattle on about how fearful she’s been for me, because I’ve been involved with all things lethal (avoiding being murdered, rescuing others, getting saved by Adam and Ben).

“You’ve reminded me so much of Alexia this past year,” Dad says. “I think you’ve sensed that, too. And I didn’t want you to worry.”

Worry because Aunt Alexia has a record of attempting suicide.

Worry because she’s been labeled by doctors as mentally disturbed and possibly schizophrenic.

Worry because she hears voices, and because now I’m able to hear them, too.

“We were going to tell you when you turned twelve,” he continues, “but you just seemed so darned young. And so we waited until sixteen came around, but there was such a rough start to the school year, including your aunt’s suicide attempt.…”

“Your mother told me,” I say, focusing on Mom, finally revealing the missing piece. “She called here.”

“Did she call just to tell you that?” Dad asks.

“Did she tell you anything else?” Mom jumps in.

I shake my head, feeling the urge to scream, because this isn’t about my grandmother. This isn’t about what she wanted or what I said in response. “This is about how you lied to me,” I tell them. “How I have no idea who I am right now.”

“I may not have given birth to you,” Mom says, “but you’ll always be my daughter.”

“
Our
daughter.” Dad sits beside me and takes my hand.

“So, is Aunt Alexia really my mother?” I ask, thinking how it was only a few months ago now that Dad looked me in the eye and said that Aunt Alexia and I were kindred spirits.

“She is,” he says, squeezing my hand.

I nod, fighting the urge to tear up again and thinking how it all makes sense. My touch powers, for one; both Alexia and I have the ability to sense things through our art. She and I also look a lot alike—blond hair, pale skin, emerald green eyes—even the nurse at the mental facility in Detroit said so. Did the nurse know the truth all along? Did Aunt Alexia tell her? Am I the last person to know?

“
We’re
still your parents,” Mom reminds me. “We’re the ones who’ve raised you and cared for you and been there for you every day of your life.”

And that’s when it suddenly dawns on me—as if this could feel any more surreal—not only is my mother not my mother, but Dad isn’t my father, either. “Who
is
my father?” I ask him.

Dad takes a deep breath, trying to appear strong, but he looks even more upset than me: his face is blotchy, his eyes are full.

“Why don’t we all take a little break?” Mom says, extending her hand to Dad. “We can continue this conversation later.”

Without waiting for Dad to respond, I head into my room and close the door, wishing that I could block out my thoughts, that I could restart my yesterday, and that I’d never picked up the phone last night.