Spectacularly Broken (3 page)

“Pretty boring. What’s it like living here?”

“Sucks,” was his answer.

“Yeah?”

“I hate my life.”

“I’m not all that fond of mine either, sugarplum.”

He snorted out a laugh along with a mouthful of soup. I wasn’t sure what I had said to amuse him so, but he caught his breath soon enough.

“You are
so
gay,” he informed me.

I might have taken offense if his tone hadn’t been so innocently cheerful. I also couldn’t exactly fault him for the observation. Between my skintight jeans, the airy hand gestures, and the eye makeup, it was kind of obvious.

“Yeah, I sure am.” I glanced at him as a sudden thought struck me. “That’s not news, is it?”

Finn shook his head. “God, no. It comes up every once in a while. Mom disapproves, of course, but I don’t think she’ll bring it up around you.”

“And you?”

“I don’t care. Fair warning, though—Lane is terrified it might be catching.”

I grinned around my spoon. “Noted.”

Finn nodded. After another few spoonfuls of soup, he tilted his head at me. “My best friend is gay,” he said. “He told me in middle school. Caught a lot of shit for it, and for a while he tried really hard not to be. He had a rough time. I did what I could to help him figure it out. I get that it’s not something you can pray away, and I don’t think it’s a sin either.”

“Damn right it isn’t.”

“Not that it’s likely to come up, but please don’t tell my mom. She has no idea Hunter swings that way. I don’t want her to make him feel unwelcome when he’s over.”

I nodded my agreement. There was a moment of silence as I slurped the rest of my soup.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Finn asked.

“Fuck no.” I shook my head. “No way am I gonna limit myself to one guy.”

“Oh.” Finn colored a little.

“You got a girlfriend?”

His expression changed then, shuttering. In the blink of an eye, he closed down.

“I used to,” he said.

It didn’t look like he was keen to talk about it, so I dropped the matter. As I stood, I remembered that the Montgomerys didn’t have a housekeeper, and I glanced at my bowl and spoon. Was I supposed to wash those?

Finn grinned at me. He grabbed both his bowl and mine and went to rinse them in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher. He stood and looked me up and down for a moment before giving a decisive nod.

“You’re okay, Lysander,” he declared.

I felt absurdly pleased. “You’re not so bad yourself, Finnegan.”

He winced. “Finn, for the love of God. Please. Don’t you have a nickname?”

“Some of my friends call me Xander, but I don’t really like that either.”

“What about Lys?”

“Eh.” I shrugged, unconvinced.

“What’s your middle name?”

I laughed then. “Oh, you don’t know?”

“No. Why?”

“My full name is Lysander Aurelius Cassius Shepherd. Can you tell my father hated me from the start?”

“Holy shit,” Finn said and abruptly dropped back into his chair.

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, that makes me feel better about mine.”

“Which is?”

“Haze. H-a-z-e. I’ve got a suspicion that my mom was going for Hayes with a
y
and was too doped up on pain meds to spell it right, but I’ve never dared to ask.”

“That’s pretty good too,” I conceded.

“I’m surprised I didn’t know that.” Finn shook his head. “I mean, I read some of the articles from when…” He trailed off abruptly, giving me an apologetic glance. I knew perfectly well why.

“From when my mom died,” I finished his sentence. “It’s okay, you can say it. Not like I remember her or anything.”

“Still. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I mean, I know what…” He buried his face in his hands and made a tortured noise. “Ah fuck.”

“Maybe we should steer the conversation away from dead parents,” I suggested. After all, Finn and I both had personal experience in that department.

“Yeah. Shit. Sorry.” Finn looked up at me. “How about them Mets?”

“Anything but sports,” I decreed emphatically.

“You and Lane are so not going to get along.”

“I wasn’t planning on that anyway,” I assured Finn.

“If you’re lucky, you won’t even run into him. He’s staying at his girlfriend’s place tonight, and we need to leave early tomorrow.”

“How early?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Like nine-ish.”

“Goddamn it.”

“How is that a problem? You’re already packed. Do you have some kind of problem with getting up before eight?”

“Eight?” I stared.

“Yeah. Twenty minutes to shower and dress, twenty for breakfast, and another twenty to get stuff in the car. How much more do you need?”

“Um, it takes effort to look this good.” I ran my fingers through my perfectly styled hair.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Finn muttered. “Seriously?”

“Yes, straight boy.”

“Fine. Whatever. Let’s go upstairs and get it figured out.”

Chapter Three

One restless night and sparse breakfast later, Finn and I were on the road. His car was, politely put, a pile of rusty junk, and I thought it was a miracle the damn thing even ran, but after all our talk about money the evening before, I decided to keep my mouth shut. That lasted exactly until he shoved a pile of handwritten directions at me.

“What’s wrong with GPS?” I whined.

“It’s expensive, asshole. Feel free to bring your own next time.”

My phone would have sufficed, but I hadn’t been able to find my charger, so it was dead at the moment. Maybe my father hadn’t let Sheri pack it, out of spite.

“Oh.” I sighed and scanned the pages. “How long is this gonna take?”

“Something like three or four hours, I think. I planned in some extra time in case we feel like getting lost. We’re supposed to be there by two.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s an orientation or something.”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“No, that’d be awkward,” Finn said, deadpan. I laughed, surprised but pleased by his sense of humor.

We didn’t talk a lot while Finn focused on making his way to the interstate. Once we were cruising at a comfortable seventy miles an hour, I closed my eyes and melted into my seat.

“I’m kinda glad I’m not alone in this.” I voiced my most surprising revelation.

“Yeah.” Finn was quiet for a long time, giving me sideways glances. Just when I’d gotten to the point of exasperation and was about to tell him to spit out whatever he was mulling over, he opened his mouth. “I wasn’t at first, you know. I was pissed my mom suggested it to your dad.”

I tried hard not to be hurt by that. “Why?” I asked neutrally.

“Because everyone is gonna be fawning all over you as soon as we get there, and I’ll be chopped liver.”

“God, I hope not.” I pulled a face. “They shouldn’t even know who I am. There’s not a lot of pictures of me out there.”

“Oh, trust me, they know.” Finn laughed without humor. “I overheard my mom on the phone when she talked them into accepting you despite being way past the deadline. It was all ‘Joel Shepherd this’ and ‘Katherine Vega that’ and movies and Hollywood and lah-di-fucking-dah. Even if they didn’t immediately recognize your name, they know about your parents.”

“Goddamn it.” I was pissed enough to smack the door handle with my closed fist. “What the fuck did she have to do that for?”

“I told you, they wouldn’t have accepted you so late otherwise.” Finn glanced at me. “Why are you so pissed about that?”

“Because.” I glared. “There’s a reason I keep a low profile. I hate all that celebrity bullshit. If I wanted attention, I’d go on some celeb-reality jungle camp show.”

“Oh yes, poor you.” Finn rolled his eyes at me.

“Fuck you. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows just ’cause I have money.”

“Yeah, well, it still sounds a hell of a lot better than not having money.”

I was getting really sick of people assuming my life was magical. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Riiight.”

“I get that being rich sounds awesome and all, but it isn’t, okay? It just fucking isn’t.”

I had raised my voice without realizing it. Finn didn’t immediately reply, and so my bitter words hung in the air between us. Finn’s expression darkened, and I slumped. I really had been trying not to antagonize him.

“Maybe it isn’t all it’s cut out to be; I’ll give you that.” Finn’s voice was deceptively soft. “But being poor? It fucking sucks, Lys. It’s a shitty-ass, pathetic existence, and I hate it. I hate my life. You have no fucking idea.”

We were silent for a long time. I stared at the road ahead, brooding.

“There’s no point in arguing,” Finn finally picked the conversation back up just when I was getting restless. “I haven’t lived your life, and you haven’t lived mine. But I just don’t think you’d last a day in my shoes.”

“Bullshit,” I said tiredly.

“Being rich is easy, Lys.”

“No, it’s not, and fuck you for telling me it is. You have no idea, Finn, none.”

“So tell me what’s so bad about it,” he challenged me.

“Can’t.” I shrugged. “You’d have to live it.”

“Oh, that’s such a cop-out.”

“It’s the same thing you just told me, jackass.”

“Yeah, right. Being famous and living in luxury would be such a chore. Look, Lys, I’m trying to like you, and I’m trying not to be bitter, okay? But you’re making that really difficult.”

“So put your money where your mouth is,” I challenged.

He gave me a look that was so lost it was almost comical. “Uh, what?”

“Pretend to be me, just for, like, a day or so,” I suggested. “Nobody at that retreat knows you, right? We look enough alike that it might work.”

Finn stared at me for a good long moment. “You know you’re fucking nuts, right?”

“I dare you,” I shouted, laughing.

He laughed too. “I’d take you up on it, but no way in hell would that work for even a second.”

I turned my head and caught his eye. “It could. You wanna do it?”

“For real?” He laughed again.

“Yeah, for real. Show me your license.”

“It’s in my wallet.” He indicated his jeans pocket, still smiling bemusedly and shaking his head. “Why?”

I didn’t immediately reply. Instead I found his ID and studied it closely. His hair was shorter in the picture than it was now, and the lighting wasn’t the best.

“That could be me,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

I took out my own ID and held it next to his. “Your hair now is about as long as mine is in my picture. Our faces are pretty similar. They wouldn’t look that closely.”

“Yeah, except people know you.”

“My name, yes. My face, no. There’s not a lot of recent pictures of me out there, and I can guarantee you I’m wearing my Oakleys in all of them.”

Finn stared at me for a moment, then returned his gaze to the road ahead.

“You’re nuts,” he said again. “Seriously. No way could that possibly work.”

I directed him off the interstate and started looking for a hair salon.

* * * *

“What are we doing here?” Finn demanded to know an hour later.

“Getting my hair cut.” I’d fallen in love with my idiotic idea, and now I really wanted to know if I could pull this off. The place I had led us to was cheap and hopefully fast.

“Why?”

“So I’ll look less like me, moron.” I approached the pasty-skinned girl smiling flirtatiously from near the cash register. “Hi, sweetheart. We have a serious emergency here.”

“Oh?” She glanced at my perfectly styled white-blond strands.

“Yeah. I need it cut, and he needs to go a touch lighter with a little more pizzazz. We’ll pay double, but you need to fit us in, like, right now.”

“What?” Finn squeaked.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Uh, okay,” she said, looking nervous as she leafed through the appointment book in front of her. “Um. Gretchen has a client in half an hour that I can probably reschedule. Anya is free, so…yeah.” She gave me a flustered look. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” I said and dragged Finn farther into the salon. “Just tell us where to sit.”

“You’re insane,” he moaned.

“You’re the one who said I should live in your shoes. You want to do this or not?”

“Yes, but…more blond?”

“It’s just hair. Suck it up, buttercup. If anyone should be complaining, it’d be me for sacrificing my two-hundred-dollar haircut.”

“You are
so
gay, seriously.”

I pushed him into a chair. He gave me a look of death but allowed the busty redhead who greeted him to take a critical look at his locks. I was approached shortly afterward by a smiling black girl wielding clippers.

“How short?” she asked without preamble.

“Really short,” Finn informed her loudly. “He’s entering the service.”

“Ooh!” four or five different admiring voices echoed through the salon before I could open my mouth to refute the claim.

“I hate you,” I said to Finn.

Then I braved the clippers.

* * * *

“My head is cold,” I complained once we were on the road again. “Fuck you, fuck you so hard. I look so freaking butch.”

“I’m
blond
.”

“You’ve always been blond, idiot,” I pointed out. “You’re just a shade lighter now, and you can always dye it back. It’s gonna take me months to grow out this monstrosity.”

“It was your idea.”

“The buzz cut most certainly wasn’t.”

Finn touched his hair and pulled a strand of it forward to try to examine it. “Are we really gonna do this?”

“Please look at the road. You were the one who said you hate your life,” I pointed out. “So live mine for a little while. Worst case, you’ll hate that too.”

“For how long?” he asked. “A day? A week?”

“Until one of us fucks up and they notice,” I proposed. “And whoever gets us found out loses the bet.”

“Wait, this is a bet?”

“Duh.”

“I don’t exactly have money to bet with,” he pointed out.

“We don’t have to bet for money.” I thought about it for a moment. “If you lose, you spend next Christmas in a prom dress.

“Oh hell no.”

“So don’t lose.” I shrugged. “I’d offer the same, except wearing a dress isn’t such a huge stretch for me, pun not intended. So pick something for my wager.”