“Language!” Rachel says, even though Theo is long gone now, and also sixteen.
When I was little, I used to love to play pharmacist. I’d dress up in one of my mom’s aprons and use the empty bottles my dad brought home to dispense Cheerios to my stuffed animals. Until my mother died, it never occurred to me to be anything but proud of my dad, and even then, my doubts were only about his survival skills, not his professional ones. I actually like the idea of him behind the counter at Ralph’s, just down the road from school. I miss him. This house gives us too many rooms to hide in.
Screw Theo and his rich friends; we didn’t have dental in Chicago.
My father is an optimist. I doubt he realized it would be this hard, or maybe, when it was just the two of us flattened in our wrestler’s house, he thought: There’s no way California could be any harder than this.
“I can’t not take the job because he’s embarrassed?” My dad says it like he’s asking Rachel a question, and again I find I have to look away. But this time it’s not to spare me, but to spare him. “I need to work.”
—
Later, I sit outside on one of Rachel’s many decks. Stare at the hills, which cocoon the house with their fairy lights. Imagine the other families out there, finishing up their dinners or soaking their dishes. If they’re fighting, their fights are likely familiar, old habits rubbing each other raw in spots already grooved. In this house, we are strangers. Nothing like a family at all.
Weird too to think about how things used to be here, before my dad and I arrived, before Theo’s dad died. Did they all sit down to dinner together, like my family did?
I have my phone with me, but I’m too tired to text Scarlett. Too tired even to see if I have another email from SN. Who cares? He’s probably just another entitled little shit, like everyone else at Wood Valley. He’s already admitted as much.
The screen door opens and closes behind me, but I don’t turn to look. Theo plops down into the lounge chair next to mine and takes out a set of rolling papers and a bag of weed.
“I’m not an asshole, you know,” Theo says, and begins to roll his joint with tender precision. Fat and straight. Elegant work.
“Honestly? You have given me no evidence to the contrary,” I say, and then regret it immediately. Couldn’t I have just said Yes, yes you are. Or Leave me alone. Why do I sometimes talk like a sixty-year-old? “Won’t your mom see you?”
“One hundred percent sanctioned, legal, and medicinal. Got a prescription from my shrink.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
“No joke. It’s for my anxiety.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and I find myself smiling back. Only in California, I think. He holds the joint out toward me, but I shake my head. My dad has had enough trauma for one day. He doesn’t need to see his Goody Two-shoes daughter smoking up with his new stepson. For a pharmacist, he’s surprisingly conservative about pharmaceuticals. “Anyhow, I think she’d be relieved it’s just a joint. A kid from school died last year. Heroin OD.”
“That’s awful,” I say. There was a ton of drug use at my old school. Doubt the stuff they take here is any harder, probably just more expensive. “I wonder what his prescription was for.”
Theo shoots me a look. It takes him a moment to realize I’m kidding. I tend to make jokes at inappropriate times. Go darker than I probably should. He might as well learn that about me now.
“You know, in any other situation, I could see us being friends. You’re not that bad. I mean, Ashby could have a field day giving you a makeover, but you already have the raw material. And I can tell you’re kind of cool in your own way. Funny.” Theo looks straight ahead, delivers his backhanded compliments to the hills. “Your dad sucks, though.”
“And you are kind of an asshole,” I say. “For real.”
Theo laughs, shudders at some invisible wind. It cools down at night here, but it’s still too hot for the scarf he has knotted around his neck. He takes a hit, long and hard. I’ve never smoked pot, but I can see the appeal. I can feel him unwinding next to me, sinking deeper into the chair. The glass of wine has loosened me too. I wish Rachel had offered me a second. That’s a gift I wouldn’t have refused.
“Yeah, I know. But do you have any idea how much shit I’m going to take at school because of him? Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t.”
“This sucks for me too. All of it. Every single minute of every single day,” I say, and once it’s out, I realize just how true it is. Dad, you were wrong: it could be worse. It is so much worse. “I had a life back in Chicago. Friends. People who would actually say hello to me in the halls.”
“My dad died of lung cancer,” Theo says, apropos of nothing, and takes another long hit. “That’s why I smoke. Figure if you can run twelve miles a day and get cancer anyway, I might as well live it up.”