Ink Is Thicker Than Water (24 page)

“Well, my friend sent me the recipe,” she says. “But I did, and I’m glad you like it. Though Clayton says you and Sara aren’t picky like he is.”

I can’t imagine Dad talking about us beyond things like
Sara does everything right
and
What did I do wrong in a previous life for my genes to produce Kellie?

“I should probably head out.” Jayne rises to her feet and walks to the coat tree to get her blue coat and matching scarf. “I’m trying to line up enough volunteers for an upcoming event, and I won’t feel settled until I have more accomplished.”

“What kind of volunteers?” I find myself asking.

“We’re throwing a fund-raiser for the rescue group,” she says. “Do you know anyone who’d like to help?”

“If my friend Adelaide’s free, I know she’ll help. She’s addicted to volunteering. I can ask if you want.”

“Kellie, that’d be great.”

“Oh, and I guess I can probably help, too, if you need people, though I’m not very good at much.”

Jayne bursts into laughter like I’ve just made the best joke of all time. “Of course I’d like your help. Clayton, send me Kellie’s email address so we can get everything set up, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees like he’s just been beamed in from another time period and can’t imagine what has led him to this very moment.

I stand up to carry my plate and glass into the kitchen. “I should probably try to sleep.”

“Hey, kiddo.” Dad walks into the kitchen after me. “That was a nice thing you did. I know Jayne really appreciates it.”

I nod and find myself giving him a hug like when I was little, clingy and sad and broken. Sometimes I wonder if he misses those days, too. Yeah, people rarely think fondly of a divorce, but back then he was just
Dad
. He wasn’t the guy I’m capable of disappointing just by being me.

By the time I brush my teeth and change into my pajamas, I remember I’m supposed to let Mom know I’m safely here. The thought of talking to her is way too much for me, so I just text. And for maybe the first time in my cell phone–having life, Mom doesn’t respond right away with an,
I love you, Kellie baby
.

Chapter Twenty-three

I go straight to English lit the next morning, dropping my head to the surface of the desk and praying Jennifer will let it go. For some stupid reason, I haven’t counted on the real boss of that classroom demanding otherwise.

“What’s with you?” Adelaide sits down in front of me and turns around to tap the top of my head. “Night is for sleep, the day is for knowledge.”

“Shut up,” I mumble. “My night was not for sleeping.”

“Brooks, look alive.” She keeps tapping me until I finally sit up. “Much better.”

“Seriously, you have no idea how bad my day was.”

“Oh,” she says. “Are you okay?”

I fold my arms on top of my desk and rest my chin on them. “I am completely the opposite of okay.”

“Is it about Oliver?”

“It’s about Sara moving out for good.”

“Oh!” Her brown eyes are round behind the horn-rimmed glasses she wears on occasion. “That’s
interesting
.”

“No, it’s not
interesting
, Adelaide, it sucks. My family’s falling apart.”

“I read an essay the other week about adoptive families versus biological—”

“Do you get this is something I’m actually going through? I don’t want to hear about some essay you read.”

“Kellie?” Jennifer walks over to my desk, holding out a hall pass. “Get your assignment and notes from me later. You look like you could use a free period.”

“Thank you.” I grab the pass from her and don’t look back. Of course Ticknor cares a lot about their students’ mental health—or they want to appear that way at least—so we have a little lounge where you can hang out quietly if you have a pass. There’s a rule against sleeping, but it’s enough just to curl up on the sofa by the window and try to turn off my brain. By the time first period is over, I feel a little more like I can deal with life, though I change my mind on that when I practically run into Kaitlyn in the hallway.

“What?” I snap.

“Kellie, are you okay?” She touches my shoulder, a move only Former Kaitlyn would have made, not the one standing in front of me. “You look—”

“I’m not, not that it matters.” I pull away from her even though that brief touch had felt as if we’d never fought. “I have to get to class.”

“What about that?” She points to the pass, still clutched in my hand. “You could get another hour out of that if you wanted.”

Kaitlyn uses one of her free periods to work as an aid to the school administration, sort of weird for someone who isn’t a goodie-goodie or obsessed with her college application. It is helpful in skirting the rules without getting in trouble, though.

“I could come with you.” She pulls a laminated pass out of her purse. Laminated! “If you want.”

Yeah, Kaitlyn is practically my enemy now, but I do want.

We get our jackets and walk outside to the courtyard. It’s been chilly out, so no one’s been using it lately, but it’s not so cold that everything has been put away for winter yet, so there are still chairs to sit in.

“What happened?” Kaitlyn asks me. “Is it your boyfriend?”

“Why does everyone think it’s him? No. It’s Sara.”

One thing I have to admit that Kaitlyn is very good at is listening, when she wants to, even now. She sits there quietly while I lay it all out there, from me learning Camille had called Dad in the first place, to last night when I’d found out the horrible news immediately before turning into the biggest jerk in the whole world. Of course by this point in the story I’m crying, but Kaitlyn doesn’t look horrified, just wraps her arms around me, a hug like we haven’t had in forever. Way longer than we haven’t been talking.

“I wish you would have told me sooner,” is what she finally says.

“When? When you were yelling at me or ignoring me or—”

“I miss you,” she says. “A lot. I just didn’t know how to keep being your friend and doing the same stuff all the time when there was all this new stuff, too.”

“Everything else that’s cooler than me?” I ask but at least in what I mean to be a semi-joking tone.

“Not cooler,” she says, which is probably her attempt at being nice. “Just different. I’ve known you since we were eight, Kell. I’m not the same as when I was eight. You aren’t, either.”

“I guess I understand that,” I say. “But you weren’t really fair to me. It’s dumb that just because I’m a nerd about music and I think coffee’s gross that I wouldn’t have anything left in common with you anymore. There are a lot of ways to grow up.”

“Yeah.” She nudges my foot with hers. “I guess I see that. We just felt like we were going in different directions. And I didn’t know how to keep being your friend if that’s what was going on.”

It’s the kind of thing I want really badly to disagree with, but then I think about secretly applying for newspaper, and in one go I get what she’s saying. Even if she was a jerk about it.

Why is this stuff so weird and complicated?

“I
miss
you,” she says again. “And I’m sorry stuff’s been bad for you. At least you have a boyfriend, though.”

Leave it to Kaitlyn to keep priorities straight.

“You should eat lunch with us today. I know you don’t think you like Lora and Josie, but they’re actually—”

“No, I mean, they’re your friends now, so I won’t say anything, but I just don’t think we’d get along. I probably have newspaper stuff today anyway.”

“Your articles are really good, I keep meaning to tell you.”

“Aren’t you too cool to read the
Voice
?” I smile so she’ll know I’m kidding, even if like 5 percent of that isn’t a joke. Maybe 15 percent? “Thanks.”

“So your boyfriend’s
hot
,” she says, which I’d had no idea I’d been desperate to hear, but,
yes
. At one point it would have been as if Oliver hadn’t even existed until Kaitlyn had agreed on his level of attractiveness. “Have you guys done it yet?”

“You’re not just asking so you can report back to your posse to help them complete some sort of virginity chart of our grade, are you?”

“Kellie, God, you know I’m not.” She is awfully huffy for someone who’s ignored me for so long. “So you haven’t.”

“No, we…we have,” I say, as it dawns on me that she is still, after everything that has happened, the first one I’ve told.

I kind of like that.

“Oh,” she says, “my God. You have to tell me everything.”

“I do not.” But I grin at her. “I’ll tell you some of it, though.”

We sit there until the bell rings, and then she hugs me again as we head in separately. Honestly, I want to cry even more now, because now that I don’t hate Kaitlyn, I just have to miss her even more. Maybe we mean everything we said, though. Maybe even without sitting together at lunch and basing our weekend plans around each other, it will be okay to text when we need to, to chat if we’re both on our computers, to say hi in the hallways and sit by each other in class. It’s hard to wrap my mind around it—having Kaitlyn back but not really all of Kaitlyn. I guess it is a lot better than nothing. I’m pretty sick of nothing.

I go back to Dad’s after school (well, and after hanging out with the newspaper staff for a while). He’s working from home, which I don’t expect, though he doesn’t seem shocked to see me. Even more strangely, he asks about school and offers to make me dinner without any prodding about my homework or upcoming tests or college prospects.

“I talked to your mom today,” Dad says while I’m plowing into the tortellini that is surprisingly edible. “She told you not to worry about Finn this week, and if you want to stay with me, of course that’s fine.”

Of course when I’m a royal jerk to Mom, she repays me by being fair and kind and all of that. Way to make me feel worse. Also, maybe that whole time I’d been hating how I felt taken for granted while Sara began her rebellion, I should have just said something instead of expecting Mom to read my mind. Open and honest probably does make a lot of sense, as far as family mantras go.

“Seems like you’re a lot of help to Mel,” he says, like he’s just figured out I’m good for anything besides disappointment. “I’m sure she appreciates it.”

“Don’t go on Mom Defense,” I say.

“Trust me,” he says. “I’m not.”

“I don’t know why you ever married her,” I say, only because it’s my first real chance to say it to him. I’ve never gone to Dad’s to get away from Mom before last night.

“Kellie…” Dad sighs and rubs his eyes with his hands. “It was a long time ago. We were both pretty different people then.”

“Really?” I say. “
You
were different.”

Dad sort of shrugs and then takes a few bites of pasta. “I guess I wasn’t. Nothing to be ashamed of, is it?”

“I think it’s a good thing to figure out who you are and just go with it.” I shrug. “I hope I don’t have to wait as long as Mom did to know that much.”

“There’s a lot about your mom that hasn’t changed at all,” he says. “Like you and Sara being her number one priority.”

That’s true, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right at the moment.

“And why would you say that anyway?” Dad asks. “It’s pretty obvious to me who you are.”

I’m afraid he’ll temper anything nice with also defining me as crappy at school or something, so I just jump up and hug him before carrying my plate and glass to the dishwasher.

I call Adelaide a few minutes later, hoping for advice on theorems as well as my very own family situation drama. Of course she’s only good for the first, but it’s still good to hear her voice and think about geometry instead of real life. And I know Kaitlyn would be good for both, but despite my determination to try to have her in my life in this new way, I’m not quite ready yet to call her up like things are fine and dandy.

Sitting on my little futon and resting my head against the tastefully painted wall, I realize I’m homesick for my Oprah-approved paint job and impressive collection of Beatles posters. The thing is, though, even if I were ready to make up with Mom, which I most definitively am
not
, it isn’t fair to her yet.

If I’d really lived my life to her open and honest mantra, we would have talked sooner, and it wouldn’t have built to this head that exploded like a disgusting zit when the Sara stuff happened. Right now Mom and I probably need each other, but here I am in this stupid Asian-influenced room that doesn’t feel like mine, and Mom is without both her daughters.