Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

“Why do you want to see Dad?” Giselle asks, each word cautiously placed like steps through a land mine.

A little dirt devil of uncertainty whirls in my gut. “I don’t.”

She is clearly unconvinced.

“I mean, not like that. I don’t want to see him, see him.” I don’t give a single solitary shit about the man. “I just…I’m going to be a BEP alum, you know? I’m going to be an Ultimate Explorer. I’m going to be up onstage at the Explorers’ Ball receiving an award and a scholarship to Cambridge because I’m so bloody brilliant, and his firm will be clamoring to forge ties with me as an up-and-coming corporate star, and he’ll have to…to see it.”

That was a perfectly valid explanation, but Giselle sighs pityingly the way only an older sister can. “Oh, Celine.”

“What? It’s not…I’m not…” My face is hot, but I fold my hands together and force myself to speak slowly. “I didn’t choose to do the BEP because Dad might—and it is, technically, a might—be at the ball. But if he is there, good.” A lump rises in my throat. I swallow it. “I bet he never even thinks about us. We are a government-mandated direct debit, Giselle. Meanwhile, Mum has done everything for us, been everything for us, and you know what? She did an incredible job, because we are amazing human beings. He should see that.”

Giselle snorts. “Amazing human beings? You’re an emo nerd and I’m a ne’er-do-well with delusions of artistic grandeur. What’s so amazing about that?”

“Shut up.” I smack her arm. “What are you being a dick for?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.” Her hand rests on my shoulder. Her eyes are black like the ink of a message I can’t quite read. “Even if neither of us ever did anything interesting in our entire lives, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t need to be special or significant to have value. You’re just important, always, and people either see that or they don’t. They either love you, or they don’t.” She bites her lip. “Dad’s messed up, Celine. They should’ve given him an Unfit for Purpose stamp at the parent factory. But he is who he is—”

I’m nodding, vindicated, my plan rushing out like I’ve secretly been waiting for someone to tell it to. Maybe I have. “Exactly. Exactly! So when he sees me at the ball, he’ll feel what a failure he is. I’m going to achieve everything he ever did,” I tell her, “only better. And he’ll hear all about it. I’ll get the highest grades in my entire school and they’ll put me on BBC News, and he’ll spit out his morning coffee.” It’s true what they say about the power of intentions because every word I speak wraps around me like magic, reinforcing my bones with steel. “I’ll dominate his field and in ten years’ time he won’t be able to move without hearing my name. I hope the shame suffocates him in his sleep. I hope he retires early with exhaustion. I hope he has the audacity to try and claim me as his daughter so I can tell him I have one father and her name is Neneh.”

There should, by rights, be a mysterious wind whipping around my bedroom as I lay a dread curse upon my sire. Giselle should be glowing with admiration and adding her own deeply positive affirmations to this moment. Instead, for some reason, she seems…upset?

“Cel. Babe. No.”

I stop. Blink. I have no idea what I’ve done wrong.

“Why do you care? Why do you think about him at all?” She stands up, hands on her hips, sadness on her face. “Do you even want to be a lawyer?”

“What?” I squawk. “Of course, I do. Like—” Katharine, I’m going to say.

“Like Dad?” Giselle accuses.

That’s so ridiculous, I laugh. “Him? No. I don’t want to be anything like him.”

Giselle stares down at me. “Then why are you planning your whole life around him?”

“I’m not! God. You think you know everything—”

She snorts. “More than you.”

“Just because you’re, like, five seconds older than me. This is for Mum,” I correct. “Obviously. To prove how…how wonderful she is, and how she didn’t need him, and…and that it was worth it.”

Giselle’s brow creases. “What was worth it?”

“Staying with us!”

My sister doesn’t reply; instead, she studies me with narrow-eyed urgency, like she’s only just noticed I have a third eyebrow and it’s blond. Meanwhile, I’m having a minor internal freak-out because I know when I’m winning an argument. I know when I’m making logically sound points. And all this stuff made perfect sense in my head, but when I say it out loud, it sounds more like the conspiracy theories I analyze.

But…but that’s okay because plenty of conspiracy theories are basically true. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to restore balance and order and meaning to a messed-up situation. And there’s nothing wrong with punishing someone who was supposed to love you but couldn’t do it right. Isn’t that basically what law’s about? Crime and punishment?

I ignore the little voice in the back of my head saying, Well, actually…

My sister takes a noisy breath, her lips pressed together, and I realize with a jolt of discomfort that Giselle—whose moods are usually limited, much like a panther’s, to sleepy, hungry, and bitey—seems worried. Serious. Uncertain. My heart twists. Then she destroys my sympathy by being a complete prat. “Contrary to everything you just said, Celine, I know for a fact that you are very smart.”

I glare. Violently. “I will not deign to respond to that.”

“I believe,” she says, “that if you think about this situation, you’ll reach a logical conclusion. I believe in you.”

That would be a very nice speech if she wasn’t technically insulting me. “Would you stop? This isn’t a big deal. It’s just a ball.” I know I’m ignoring a huge chunk of the conversation we just had by saying that, but God. I’m exhausted. Sometimes talking to Giselle is like having an angel on each shoulder while the devil lives between your ears.

“Just a ball?” she repeats. “No, Celine. No, it’s secret. It’s a lie by omission. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have hidden that bloody leaflet. You’re sneaking around.”

My throat cinches tighter with every calm accusation my sister throws. “That’s not…I’m not…” I can’t finish my sentence.

Giselle sighs. “And even if it was about the ball: aren’t parents invited to this thing? How do you think Mum’s going to feel if she shows up and sees him, and you could’ve told her, but you didn’t?”

I…hadn’t thought that far ahead, possibly because imagining that scenario makes the bottom fall out of my stomach. I was always going to tell Mum eventually. It’s not that big a deal. I just haven’t figured out how to, you know, phrase it, how to explain.

“Yeah,” Giselle says flatly. “I want you to think about this plan of yours.” Her expression sours on the word. “And about what you really want from your life. Because it is your life, Cel. No one else has to live it.” She opens her mouth like she wants to say more, then shakes her head and leaves, closing the door behind her.

I curl up like a bug and roll onto my side, staring up at my Steps to Success board. Giselle doesn’t get it, that’s all. If she got it, she’d…well. She’d get it.

Except there’s this annoying sickly feeling in my stomach that I’m desperate to turn away from. My phone vibrates, and when I glance at the screen, I see Brad’s name. For the first time since we became friends last month, my mood doesn’t lift in response.

Instead, I remember him calling me avoidant, and I remember that he’s right.





BRAD


By December, Donno has kept me and Jordan off the pitch for so long, I’ve started to seriously consider jogging.

“Bruh.” Jordan’s disgust is loud and clear through my headphones. “Jogging? Not to be dramatic, but I’d honestly rather die.”

“What?” I’m lying on my bed (wearing my inside clothes, obviously), studying the smooth, perfect white of my ceiling. Wintery, afternoon sunlight makes the whole room fresh and bright, and Jordan’s cracking me up as always. “Come on, man. It’s basically football, just fewer people and no ball.”

“It’s soulless and painfully boring,” he announces.

“We have to think of our cardiovascular health!”

“That’s future me’s problem. I am too young and sexy for pointless exercise. Give me a trophy or get out of my face.”

Incredible. “I hope you know how ridiculous you sound.”

“Always,” he assures me.

My smile fades. “I’m sorry, by the way, that Donno’s taking this out on you. It’s basically my fault he’s pissed.”

Jordan snorts. “No, it’s his fault he’s pissed, so let him stew. I could give a good goddamn about Max Donovan and his stank-ass attitude. I only joined the soccer team ’cause I needed to make friends over here, and look: I have friends.”