“What? It’s weird, we all agreed on that ten minutes ago.” She looked at me as Dave and Ellis turned their attention back to the computer. “What are you, a split personality or something? ”
I felt my mouth go dry as the impact of what they’d discovered finally began to hit me. I stepped forward, my eyes narrowing to the screen on the table, and the list of names there. Five girls, five profiles, four pictures. MCLEAN SWEET. ELIZA SWEET. LIZBET SWEET. BETH SWEET. And at the bottom, just a name, nothing else for Liz Sweet. It was as far as I’d gotten.
“Mclean?” Deb said softly. I looked at her, still very aware of Dave studying the screen only a few feet from me. “What’s all this about?”
I swallowed. They’d all been so honest with me, so open. Dave and his past embarrassments, Riley and her dirtbags, Ellis and the Love Van, Deb and, well, everything. Even Heather had pointed out her house and talked about her dad, the technophobe Loeb fan. With this, they had perfectly good reason to doubt everything I had told them in return. Even if, I thought, looking at Dave, it was true.
“I . . .” I began, but no words came, nothing, just a gasp of breath, and then I was turning back down the stairs, picking up speed as I went. I moved quickly back through the restaurant, past Tracey, who was stacking menus at the bar.
“Hey!” she called out, a blur in my side vision. “Where’s the fire?”
I ignored this as I moved on, through the door and down the hallway to the back entrance. I was just pushing the door open, my palm flat on the flimsy screen, when I heard Opal come out of my dad’s office, behind me.
“You should have told me,” she said over her shoulder. Her face was flushed, angry. “You let me just go along here like an idiot, thinking things were okay.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” my dad said.
“But you knew something!” She stopped, whirling around to face him. “And you knew how I felt about this place, and these people. You knew, and you said nothing.”
“Opal,” my dad said, but she was already turning, walking away, pushing open the door to the restaurant with a bang and going through it. My dad watched her go with a sigh, his shoulders sagging. Then he saw me. “Mclean. When—”
“So it’s official, then,” I said, cutting him off. “We’re leaving?”
“We need to talk about it,” he replied, coming closer. “There’s a lot to consider.”
“I want to go,” I said. “I’ll go whenever. I’ll go now.”
“Now?” He narrowed his eyes, concerned. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, stepping out onto the ramp that led to the door. “I have to get back to the house. Mom’s . . . she’s waiting for me.”
“Hey, hold on a second,” he said. “Just talk to me.”
It was what everyone wanted. My mom, my dad, my friends upstairs, not to mention all the people in all the places I’d left behin. But talk was cheap and useless. Action was what mattered. And me, I was moving. Now, again, always.
Fourteen
“Sure you’re okay?” my mom asked, glancing over at me. “Not too hot? Too cold?”
I looked at the console in front of me, where there were buttons for seat heat, regular heat, fan, humidity control. Peter’s SUV, one of the biggest I’d ever seen, wasn’t a car as much as a living space with wheels. “I’m good.”
“Okay,” she said. “But if you want to adjust anything, feel free.”
So far, we’d been on the road for a little under an hour, and conversation had been limited to this topic, the weather, and the beach itself. The car was on cruise control, and I honestly felt like I was, as well—just going through the motions while the chaos of the afternoon receded, mile after mile, behind us.
I’d been right: when I got back to the house, my mom was waiting, busy distributing juice boxes to the twins, who were strapped into their adjoining car seats in the vast backseat. “Hello!” she’d called out, waving a plastic straw at me. “Ready for a road trip?”
“Yeah,” I’d replied. “Let me just get my stuff.”
Inside the house, I splashed water on my face and tried to calm down. All I could think of was everyone gathered around that laptop, with those versions of me up for scrutiny in front of them. The shame I felt was like a fever, hot and cold and clammy all at once, and no amount of buttons or adjusting would make a damn bit of difference.
“So what I’m thinking,” my mom said now, doing a quick check in the rearview mirror of the twins, who were asleep, “is we’ll go to the house and get unloaded, and then maybe take a quick trip to the boardwalk. There’s a really good diner there, and we can grab dinner and then go look for a swimsuit for you. Sound good?”
“Sure.”
She smiled, reaching across to squeeze my knee. “I’m so, so glad you’re here, Mclean. Thank you for coming.”