Chapter 18

“Yes, it’s perfect. Wear your hair down and wavy and pair it with your wedge sandals. Unless he’s short. Is he short?”

“No, he’s not short.” He was actually a really good height for me. “So, are you guys going to Logan’s party tonight?”

Claire, who had been stirring her straw around her cup, looked up. “Logan’s having a party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“We hadn’t heard about it,” Laney said.

“Oh, sorry. I should’ve told you. I thought he was just inviting everyone. You should go.”

“We weren’t invited.”

“He probably figured I’d tell you. Sorry.”

Claire and Laney met eyes for a brief second and then Claire went back to her drink. “Yeah, that sounds like fun. Maybe we should go, Laney. Let’s invite Jules too.”

I couldn’t tell if they were mad at me for not telling them or what. I felt bad. I’d just figured he was telling everyone. “I’ll try to join you all after my date.”

My mom was trying to be polite; I could tell by the smile on her face. The problem was it was the most forced smile ever and there was no way Bec couldn’t tell.

“Where are you going again?” my mom asked, looking mostly at me but her eyes kept darting to Bec, this time lingering on the row of earrings that lined her left ear.

“Just to my house. We have Government together and Tia said she would help me study. Here’s the address.” Bec slid a piece of paper across the counter to my mom. “And my parents’ phone number is on there too if you need to talk to them.” She smiled and my mom’s smile became a little less forced.

But to me my mom said, “Your brother is in town. I wanted us to go out to dinner tonight as a family.”

Just as she said this, Drew walked through the kitchen holding his car keys. “I’m going out with some friends, Mom. Can we do dinner next time I’m in town?”

“What?” my mom asked.

Drew stopped in the middle of the kitchen when he saw Bec, a look of curiosity taking over his expression. He took in both her outfit then mine and didn’t need to say anything out loud for me to know he was wondering who Bec was and why she was here.

“This is Tia’s friend,” my mom said. “Bec, right?”

“You two are friends?” His tone conveyed his disbelief.

Bec let out a single laugh. “Not so much friends as study partners.”

This explanation didn’t change Drew’s expression. He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “Huh,” he grunted, then finished walking through the kitchen. “We good, Mom?” He flashed her the smile I remembered always got him out of the trouble he’d caused when he lived here.

She shooed him away with a smile of her own.

I pointed toward the front door. “See, he’s not even staying. So I can go, right?”

“How come you’re so dressed up for a study session?” Mom asked, looking me up and down.

The excuse came easy. “Because she has a cute brother.”

My mom rolled her eyes as if she now understood the whole reason I was hanging out with this strange creature standing in her kitchen. “Okay, keep your cell phone on, Tia.”

“Of course.” I kissed her cheek and Bec and I left my house silently.

When we got outside, I said, “Why the need for an elaborate story? I thought your brother would pick me up.”

“Obviously not.”

“It’s just I didn’t prepare my mom for . . .”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, parents love the ‘she’s helping me study’ thing. It makes them think their kid is smart. But for the record, my grade in Government is two percentage points higher than yours. So if you need help studying . . .”

I laughed.

“Is she going to be pissed that you went out when she was planning on going to dinner as a family?”

“I don’t think she’d been planning on it necessarily.” I mostly thought she was using that as an excuse not to let me go with Bec.

“So she always looks like that?”

“Like what?” I glanced over my shoulder expecting to see her standing on the porch, but it was empty.

Bec unlocked the car doors and we climbed in. “Perfectly put-together.”

I thought about my mom, her hair always styled, her makeup always done. I’d rarely seen her any other way. “Yeah . . . I guess so.”

As Bec backed out of the driveway my mother appeared on the porch. I smiled and waved. “So when my mom calls your parents, because she most likely will, they’re going to be okay?”

“I gave her my phone number.”

“Oh. Right.” Other kids probably tricked their parents like that all the time but I’d never had to. “So wait, if you can drive, why did your brother have to drop you off at prom?”

“Because supposedly he needed the car that night, which was another reason I was so angry to see him at prom with you.”

“What was he supposed to be doing?”

“I have no idea.” She pulled away from my house. It was the moment of truth. I was about to see fill-in Tom again.

When we got to her house, Bec ushered me inside and straight into her bedroom, closing the door. Had this been some sort of elaborate plan to murder me? I did a full circle, taking in a room that didn’t seem like it belonged to her. Well, some of it did—like the band posters of boys wearing guyliner and the roughly sketched charcoal pictures. But then there were beautiful photographs of nature—a wave breaking against a rock, the canopy of a tree, a cloud-filled sky. On her dresser was a big vase full of colorful sea glass.