Most Likely to Succeed (10 page)

“He didn’t have to look it up,” my mother said ominously. “He’s the one who put that man in jail.”

I could
not
believe this. Granted, Mr. De Luca sounded like a shadier and shadier character as my mother transformed his crimes from vague rumors into stark, brutal reality. But that only increased my growing respect for Sawyer.

I looked to Dad for help. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose like he was counting to ten. Barrett reached over to my plate and stole another of my shrimp. I was on my own.

I told my mother, “This is a logical fallacy, guilt by association. You damning Sawyer for what his dad did is like me damning you for what your—”

“Kaye,”
Dad said sternly.

My mother always sounded stern. Dad never did. His use of that tone was so surprising that I was shocked out of what I was going to say.

Which was exactly what he’d intended. And it was probably for the best. Because I’d been about to point out that my mother’s brother had been murdered while selling heroin in the neighborhood where they grew up. She’d been sixteen years old.

As Sawyer set a slice of chocolate cake down in front of Dad, he looked cautiously around the table at our angry faces.

“I’m sure it’s delicious,” Dad told Sawyer, “but I’ve changed my mind. Could I get this boxed up to go?”

8

THE NEXT MORNING MY MOTHER
cooked a big breakfast, and Dad congratulated me on making it all the way through the meal without flouncing away. He must have talked my mother down. She didn’t say another word about Sawyer or his jailbird father. And I was in a better mood because I had something to look forward to: seeing Sawyer again.

Right after my parents left to take Barrett to the airport, I drove downtown. The Crab Lab was my first stop. I hadn’t counted on running straight into their two-for-one brunch special. Sawyer grinned brilliantly at me when I came in, but so many customers flagged him down that I stood by the door for five minutes before he even made it over to me. He said he couldn’t talk just then, and I understood why. I would embark on my mission by myself.

I’d strolled the brick sidewalks of our historic downtown countless times, but I saw the buildings with new eyes now that I was looking for something specific. The Crab Lab owned a restored warehouse for events. It stood to reason that, somewhere among these buildings, there was another space large enough to throw a homecoming dance. I just had to find it.

I spent hours walking into every storefront and asking the people behind the counter whether they owned such a space or knew of one. Most of them said no. Tia’s sister Violet, who worked in an antiques shop, said she did have a space like that on the second floor, but we couldn’t hold our dance there because it was full of dead bodies. Skeptical, I walked up the rickety stairs myself, straight into the store’s antique taxidermy collection.

But Violet said the gay burlesque club might be an option. Their second story was an open dance floor practically
made
for homecoming. Dubious about my chances of convincing the owner to say yes, I walked in anyway—drawing arch looks from the men bellied up to the bar—and quickly told the bartender what I wanted.

“Well,
I’m
the owner,” he said, “and of
course
you can use the second floor. In fact, I’ll close down the whole place for the night so we don’t have the barflies drinking among you tender innocents.”

“You would do that for us?” It didn’t seem real.

“I’m a graduate of your fine institution,” he explained. “It’s the least I can do for homecoming. Fight, Pelicans, fight!”

I drove home feeling lighter than I had since Friday. I rolled down the windows and enjoyed the hot wind scented with flowers. When I stopped at the intersection next to Aidan’s house, I didn’t even look to see whether he was home.

I should have stayed away from my own house a few more hours.

My parents had returned. My dad was probably upstairs on his porch, but my mother actually came out of her office to confront me.

I braced myself for another fight, but I was so, so weary.

She opened her arms.

I stiffened, resistant. Then, partly to prevent myself from crying in front of her, I walked into her embrace.

She hugged me tightly for a moment. Loosening her hold, she rubbed my back. She told me to sit down at the kitchen bar and served me two of Barrett’s leftover cookies, even though they would probably spoil my dinner.

I should have known the other shoe would drop. Covering one of my hands with hers on the counter, she told me, “You can struggle, Kaye, and work, and go after your dreams. And one wrong move can ruin you forever.”

I didn’t retort as I had last night. I didn’t have the heart. In her precisely made-up eyes, I saw real concern for me, bordering on panic. And I understood where she was coming from. She had braved terrible odds to get to college. By the time she graduated, everyone she’d loved back home was dead.

But she didn’t need to worry about me. Not to this extent, anyway. My own world was nothing like hers had been. My future was not so fragile.

Was it?

“I wanted to apologize for flying off the handle a couple of times yesterday,” she said.

Yep, Dad had definitely talked her down.

She said, “When I was growing up—”

And with that, she lost me. “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said quickly. “You grew up in a slum, surrounded by criminals and addicts. I’m sorry for what you went through, but my life is not like that.”

She glowered at me for interrupting.

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

“What I was going to say,” she told me indignantly, “is that when I was growing up, people all around me made terrible mistakes. And those mistakes were often deadly. For that reason, it’s hard for me to let people I love make mis
takes. But you’re right. You’re not in the environment I was in. The mistakes you make won’t kill you. I know that. I’ll try to do better.”

I shrugged, munching a cookie. For her, this was a pretty good apology, but she’d managed simultaneously to accuse me of failing at life.

“When I talked to Seth last night,” she said, “he indicated that Aidan is really regretting asking you for a break.”

“He did not ask,” I said.

“Well. And I’m sure your feelings about this are still very raw. But Seth seemed to think the whole problem started because you made an error with the yearbook elections.”

“Mr. O’Neill thinks so because that’s what Aidan told him,” I pointed out.

She nodded. “Aidan also told him you and Sawyer had been connected in some way in one of the polls. You and Sawyer have been spending more time together because of this cheerleading business, and now in student council. Aidan grew jealous and let his feelings get the better of him. He’s going to ask you to take him back.”

“I’m going to say no.”

“And if you do,” my mother said, “Seth and I won’t interfere.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said.

She glowered at me again. This time I didn’t say I was sorry.

Finally she went on. “But I want you to think about the three years you and Aidan dated. You told me time and time again you were going to marry him. Of course, that’s a silly thing for a fourteen-year-old to say, but you were together so long that I began to think you’d found true love after all. You planned to go to Columbia together. Don’t throw this away over one silly fight about a boy you’re not going to date anyway.”

We exchanged a long, unblinking look. She was making sure I’d gotten her message. I was thinking I wanted to try out Sawyer more than ever.

“When I was in high school,” she said, “there was a boy I liked. He was
so fine
.”

“Fine?” I asked skeptically.

“It was the eighties,” she said. “Anyway, he was bad news. I knew he would take me down the wrong path, so I made a conscious decision to stay away from him.”

My heart stopped. “And now you regret it,” I said softly.

She side-eyed me. “No, he’s in prison. If I’d done what he wanted, I would have ended up a single mother without a college degree, much less an MBA, working for minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet.”

Oh, good Lord.

“What happened to letting me make my own mistakes?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You’re right. I told you, it’s hard for me to let go. I do want you to enjoy high school. But this year will fly by, and then your life will really start.”

And with that she reached into the container for her own cookie.

* * *

I spent the rest of the night working on my pitch to Principal Chen for saving the dance. The student council had already put down deposits on the DJ and the caterer. If we canceled the dance altogether, we’d lose those student dues dollars with nothing to show for it. The best solution, both for fiscal responsibility and school morale, was simply to move the venue to the property of a local business owner and Pelican alumnus.

This speech made perfect sense. If Aidan somehow convinced Ms. Yates that I should be fired as student council vice president, Ms. Chen would never allow it, because I was obviously such a great school leader.

But as I rehearsed my speech in my head, I began to have misgivings about telling Ms. Chen we were moving the dance to a gay bar. If she didn’t like this idea, she might not give me another chance.

And even if she did approve the move, the likelihood was high that someone’s parents would complain. Our town was generally pretty accepting, but back in ninth grade, Angelica’s mom had told Ms. Yates she shouldn’t be teaching her impressionable child about evolution.

If we held homecoming at the gay burlesque club, there would be a stink.

The stink would lead to a petition.

Someone would post the petition online, where it would go viral.

Our school and our town would get a national reputation as closed-minded and backward.

It would be all my fault.

And my mother would look at me and say,
I told you so
.

Honestly, why didn’t I leave well enough alone?

I lay on my bed, curled into a ball, staring out my window at the neighbor’s yard, late into the night. When my mind was exhausted from weighing those options and mulling over the problem, it moved on to the conundrum of Sawyer. Maybe my mother was right. I was still furious with Aidan, but did I really want to throw our whole lives together away? We could take a break for a little longer and see if time healed our wounds.

But if I went out with Sawyer, or even acted like I wanted
to, I could easily ruin everything with Aidan. I didn’t buy Tia’s argument that dating Sawyer would make Aidan jealous and bring him closer. Aidan’s ego wouldn’t survive that insult.

Besides, what proof did I have that Sawyer wanted to go out with
me
? He’d been sweet to me last night. He said he’d gotten flustered when he saw me. He’d acted like he wanted me to visit him today. But he hadn’t asked me on a date. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand about Sawyer, but this I knew: He went after what he wanted.

I got so little sleep that, in the morning, I put on clothes and makeup and stumbled downstairs in a haze. But I’d decided two things. I would tell the student council that Aidan had been right. I’d looked for a venue where we could hold the dance, and the only alternative I’d found wouldn’t be acceptable to everyone. We should cancel after all.

And I would tell Sawyer it would be better that we didn’t get together.

If he even asked.

“I hope your paper on
Crime and Punishment
turned out well,” my mother said as I was walking out the door to my car.

My response was to gasp, which gave away to her that I’d completely forgotten about the paper.

“I thought that’s what you were doing up in your room
last night!” she shouted, anger flashing in her eyes. “You spent this entire weekend on everything
except
your paper?”

Dad had left early in the morning to drive to Miami for research on his new book. There was nobody left to say in a calming voice, “Sylvia,” and stop my mother from freaking out.

“If you can’t complete your basic assignments,” she said, “we should definitely rethink this cheerleading mess.”

I cried so hard on the drive to school that I thought several times about pulling off the road. Finally I parked, killed the engine, and searched the glove compartment for a tissue to clean up my mascara before I went inside.

I was blowing my nose in a fast-food napkin when I spotted Harper and Brody sitting on a bench near the school entrance, shaded by palms from the bright morning sun. He was talking close to her ear. Her hair was long and glossy, flowing over her shoulders, her dark eyes shining into the sunlight. A smile was frozen on her face because of something he’d said, but now she’d gotten distracted by a bird, a cloud, or the way the palm fronds waved in the breeze.

Farther away, walking across the parking lot toward school, Tia laughed loudly with Will. I could hear her even with my windows rolled up. She didn’t look much different than she had in third grade: tall, disheveled, with her auburn hair pulled away from her face anyhow, laughing.

My favorite things about my friends, Tia loud and laughing and Harper daydreaming, were things my mother would have scolded me for doing.
Inside voice. Pay attention. Ivy League manners.

I didn’t even
have
a favorite thing about myself. I loved to dance. I loved to cheer. My mother made me feel like those activities were nonsense. All that was left of me was organizational skills and the ability to follow directions. My only two talents had had a fatal shoot-out in my brain overnight. Now I was an empty shell.

The bell rang to call everyone inside. My classmates who’d been moseying across the parking lot quickened their step. Tia and Will jumped the curb and high-fived Harper and Brody, who stood and stretched. They all disappeared beneath the parallel lines of palm trees leading into the school.

I had to go inside too, to face Mr. Frank with no paper and accept my first-ever zero. I knew this. But as I took one last breath of sticky air inside my car, I entertained a fantasy of turning the engine on again and driving in the opposite direction to play hooky at the beach. How much more trouble could I possibly get into this morning? Might as well enjoy myself, for once.

Two minutes later I was inside the crowded school hallway like a good girl, of course. I pulled my books for my first
two periods out of my locker. Aidan leaned casually against the locker next to mine, just as he had countless times before, like we’d never broken up. When he saw my face, though, he straightened and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I forgot to write my paper for Mr. Frank,” I said, hoarse from crying.

“Ha!” Aidan crowed. “That’s one step closer to valedictorian for me.”

I just looked at him with my mouth open. Aidan was competitive. He was callous. But until now I’d never known him to be cruel.

I slammed my locker as hard as I could and stomped down the hall.

“Hey!” I heard him calling after me. “I was
kidding
!”

I kept walking. The bell rang again, and the people remaining in the hallways slipped into classrooms. I was still moving. My history class was in the other direction, but I simply couldn’t see myself sitting in a desk right now, facing the front, my stomach cramping with the knowledge that I’d just blown everything I’d worked for because of one crazy weekend.