Sammie bites her lip.
“You know what? I have thought this through. It’s all I can think about.” How dare she call me impulsive or dramatic. She’s the one who’s dedicated her life to the performing arts. “I’m going to act on those thoughts—and it’s going to be quite deliberate.”
I stand up.
“You’re going there now?”
“Yes, Sammie, I’m going there now.”
“But it’s pounding rain out there.”
“Are you coming with? Are you going to be a friend to me? I need a friend right now. Or are you going to continue to throw insults at me?”
“You need help, Vivi.”
“You telling me that I need help isn’t helping, Sammie. It never helps. It just makes me feel worse.”
I grab my jacket and my bag, and I run out the door before she can find more ways to remind me that I’m losing my mind.
“Viviana, wait!”
It’s Evan. I tap the button for the elevator again, even though I know it won’t make it come faster.
“What do you want?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“What?”
“Like you said, you need a friend right now.”
I’m about to tell him to stay here, that he doesn’t need my brand of crazy in his life, but then he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Let me in, Viviana. Will you let me be your friend?”
The elevator bell rings and the door opens.
“Okay,” I say finally. “I will.”
Mistakes to Avoid Your Senior Year of High School #3
Don’t forget to ask your parents for help! Parents can have experience and be a great resource. Don’t shy away from asking them to support you in all your endeavors!
The house is nice. Incredibly nice. Modern and new, with dark hardwood floors, bone gray walls, bookshelves that span the length of the room and hover over an old brick fireplace that’s been painted white. There’s hardly any evidence that kids live here—a white canvas fort with patterned blue-and-green pennant flags and some square baskets hiding toys in the corner of the living room. Granted, they’re on vacation, but other than that fact, there’s no kids’ art on the walls, no pictures of them, nothing—there’s just not much proof that an actual family lives here.
Evan and I head up the narrow stairwell to the second floor, where each kid has a bedroom—the girl’s painted lavender and white, the boy’s painted a deep shamrock green—and each is clean and tidy, just like the first floor. There’s a third room, one that’s bright turquoise, with white furniture—it’s mostly modern, but there are a few stuffed animals on the bed. “I thought they had only two kids,” he says.
“I thought so, too.”
I step into the room and I know instantly that it belongs to a girl. A teenage girl. Someone about my age. The clues are obvious: a black-and-white pillow on the bed that says Believe in Yourself; block letters of the word L-O-V-E and then her name, E-L-L-A, hanging on the walls next to a Stanford pennant. This room has the most photos. They’re collaged on the wall in the shape of a heart. I scan the photos and see her—his other daughter. She’s older than I am—there are pictures of her in her high school graduation cap, one where she’s holding her brother when he was a baby, and other photos of her standing with my dad—our dad—she’s wearing a Stanford shirt, pointing to it with one hand and flashing a peace sign with the other. He’s beaming with this huge, proud smile. The smile that I haven’t seen from him in months.
We find the stairway to the third floor, which leads to Paige’s bedroom suite. Including the bathroom and a huge walk-in closet and adjoining seating area with vaulted ceilings, the upstairs room is the length of the house, and about the size of our entire apartment at Bennett Village.
I sit down on a wooden bench at the foot of their king-size bed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” I take a deep breath and a laugh escapes my chest. “No. Did you ever have the wind knocked out of you?”
“Yeah. I fell ice-skating when I was ten. It hurt like hell.”
“Happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I fell down some stairs. I thought that was my low point.”
Evan sits down next to me.
“He’s been holding out on us. He said I couldn’t go to this summer program because he couldn’t afford it. But he could have. This place shows me that he very easily could have.” I think about Ella’s room. “Or maybe he couldn’t because he has to pay for Stanford.”
Evan nods. “What do you think you’ll do now?”
“Tell my mom?” It comes out as a question, not a statement, but the minute I say it, I know it’s what I have to do. “She needs to know, right?”
“Maybe she already does?”
I look at him. The truth of what he just said hits me hard. “I hadn’t thought of that. I bet you’re right. I bet she knows already.” I drop my head in my hands. “What is my life? I don’t know how to deal with any of this.”
“I think you’re actually dealing with all this really well.”
“What?” I laugh. “No. I don’t think so.”