“Chill out, Dex.” Lacey tapped her nails on the side of her glass, then skimmed a finger around the rim until it whined.
She never talked to me about her parents, or anything else from the time before we’d met. I didn’t mind. I liked imagining the past, the before-us, as a void, as if there had been no Lacey-before-Dex as much as there’d been no Dex-before-Lacey. I knew she’d grown up in New Jersey, nearish the ocean but not near enough; I knew she had a stepfather she called the Bastard and a father she’d liked better who was, in some vague but permanent way, gone; I knew we were better together than we were alone, and better still than everyone else, and that was enough.
“My dad took off when I was a kid,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since.”
“I’m sorry,” my father said. I said nothing, because what could I? “That’s an asshole move.”
Lacey raised her eyebrows at his word choice, then shrugged. “I’m thinking he’s a pirate. Or a bank robber. Or maybe one of those sixties hippie terrorists who had to go on the run. I could get behind that. Or, you know, he’s your typical deadbeat who chose his dick over his daughter and started up a new family on the other side of town.” She laughed, hard and insistently, and I tried not to wither and die just because she’d said the word dick with my father in the room. “Jesus, your faces! It’s no big deal. My mom’s got herself a shiny new husband and a baby to match. Fresh start, she says—best thing that ever happened to her. Of course, a real fresh start would slice me out of the picture, too, but life’s a compromise, right?”
I’d figured on the absent father. I knew about the Bastard. But not the baby. She’d never said anything about that.
“I’m sorry,” my father said again.
“She just told you it’s no big deal,” I said, because I had to say something.
“I heard what she said.” He stood up. “How about some hot chocolate? A Jimmy Dexter Special.”
That was our thing, his and mine, hot chocolate on winter nights with a fingerful of pepper stirred in just for the sake of having a secret ingredient.
“I’m full.” I hated how much I sounded like my mother, her diet always absenting her from the room whenever chocolate entered the discussion, leaving my father and me another thing to call our own.
“And I should go,” Lacey said.
As soon as she said it, I wanted to take it back, say yes enthusiastically—Yes, let’s drown ourselves in hot chocolate and gorge ourselves on cookies, whatever you want, whatever will make you stay—partly because she didn’t have a father and I felt evil for even momentarily refusing to share mine, but mostly because she was Lacey, and every time she slipped out of my sight I was worried she’d never reappear.
My father hugged her good-bye. It was a precise copy of the hugs he gave me, solid and all-consuming. I loved him then, for loving her on my behalf. For being not just the kind of dad who would want to hug Lacey but the kind she would deign to hug back. Still, the next day after school, I suggested we go to the lake instead of back to my place, and the day after that her favorite record store, and that weekend, when she asked about sleeping over, I said, knowing she’d hate it but suspecting she’d be too proud to say so, “Let’s do it at your place instead.”
THERE ARE THINGS YOU NEED to know,” Lacey said.
We’d been sitting in the Buick for twenty minutes, engine off, music silenced, house looming at the end of the driveway. I could say something to let her out of this gracefully, but I wanted to see inside.
She cleared her throat. “The Bastard is . . .”
“A bastard? Got it.”
Lacey uncomfortable was a strange sight. I didn’t like it, or at least didn’t want to.
“I just want to be clear on the fact that I consider everyone in that house an accident of birth and circumstance. Nothing to do with me. Clear?”
“Clear. As far as I’m concerned, we’re basically orphans, raising ourselves in the wild.”
She snorted. “If only.” And then, “Let’s do this.”
But we didn’t, quite, not until she turned the cassette player on again and we listened to one more track, Lacey’s eyes closed and her head tipped back as she disappeared into that place only Kurt could take her. When his screams died out, she pressed stop. “Follow me.”