The din of too loud conversation greeted us before we even reached the cafeteria. Once we crossed the threshold, scents of cleaning solvents, cheeseburgers, pizza, ketchup, burritos, and sweat combined into a rank stench that made my stomach turn. The feeling only lasted a few seconds, though, and by the time we’d passed the first table, I didn’t even notice it anymore.
I led Keith through the maze of bodies and tables to where my friends were sitting. Jake’s best friend Finn was in his customary pose, staring at his open laptop with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand while he typed with the other. Ally sat beside him, munching on celery sticks and studying a script. Jake’s stuff was there beside Finn, but he was out of sight.
“Hey, guys,” I said as I tossed my backpack into an empty chair across from Finn.
“Hi,” Ally said, her eyes focused on the words in front of her. She’d been cast in the lead role of Roxy Hart in Westgate’s spring production of Chicago and was still working on memorizing her lines. She crunched into another stalk and turned a page.
“You’re looking good, Katz.”
Ally coughed, choking on her celery as she looked up. “Hi, Keith,” she managed after a quick drink from her water bottle. She closed her script and hurried to consolidate the stuff she had spread out on the table. “What’s going on? Are you slumming it today?”
“Something like that.” He slid into the seat beside her. “I swung by the garage on Saturday, but you weren’t there.”
“Yeah, Freddie told me.” She fiddled with the pages of her script and smiled. “I was there yesterday, though. He said you were asking about space to work on a rebuild?”
“Hopefully,” Keith said, “if I can get the car.” The two of them launched into a discussion about something beyond my comprehension, and I tuned them out.
Across from me, Finn seemed oblivious to the rest of the world. Finnegan Marks had been Jake’s best friend for as long as I could remember, though they were an unlikely pair. Jake saw school as a necessity; his grades were something that needed to stay solid if he wanted to keep playing music. But Finn was the academic overachiever, the guy who took classes over the summer to get ahead in various subjects and obsessed over his GPA and how it ranked against others’. He was the only sophomore not taking any regular tenth-grade classes, and he’d been given permission before winter break to take the AP Calculus AB exam in May, which was probably why he was so engrossed in whatever was on his screen.
I tapped his laptop to get his attention. “Where’s the other half of the brain trust?”
“Getting food,” he said with a tilt of his head in the direction of the cafeteria line. He typed a few more keystrokes before he adjusted his wireframe glasses and looked up. “I heard you almost lost your phone.”
Stories had a strange way of veering far from the truth the more they circulated around Westgate’s halls. Finn knew better than to believe anything he’d heard. I narrowed my eyes at him before I turned on my heel and headed toward the line, Finn’s laughter ringing behind me. Jake intercepted me as I approached it, an obscene amount of food balanced on his tray.
“What’s all of this?” I said. “Did you skip breakfast again?”
“You’re having a bad day,” he said, grinning. “I thought I’d buy lunch.” He tried to blow the hair out of his eyes but wasn’t having much luck, so I reached up and brushed it back for him.
“Thanks.” I grabbed a bottle of water and a large cup from the tray to help lighten the load. “You didn’t need to.”
“I know.” He flashed a toothy grin.
Something about his smile made my insides grow warm and my pulse quicken. I blinked a few times, and the feeling left as quickly as it came. I stepped aside for him to pass, and then followed him back to the table, wondering what was wrong with me.
Chapter Five
Dr. Griffin’s car was parked in front of the garage when I got home later that day. Our two-story cottage-style house was in one of Playa del Lago’s older neighborhoods, the kind of subdivision where all the houses had cookie-cutter floor plans and nearly identical landscaping. I was pretty sure everyone owned similar cars, too, and the black Lexus blocking my spot looked right at home among its brethren.
I didn’t mind my mother’s boyfriend. He was probably the only guy she’d dated that I liked, even if it was weird I knew him first as a therapist. I’d only had one session with him before I’d started seeing Dr. Brinkley, but it was still bizarre. I made it a point to be extra careful whenever I talked to him.
I dropped my backpack at the foot of the stairs and strode into the living room where he usually hung out whenever he came over. “Hey, Dr. Griffin,” I said as I entered.
He jumped to his feet when he saw me, and I smiled. Mom said stuff like that was a show of good manners and one of the things she liked most about him. I liked him because he treated me like a regular person, not like I was twelve, the way the last guy she’d dated did. And compared to my dad and some of the other men she’d talked about, Dr. Griffin seemed the most normal.
“Hi, Talia,” he said. “Your mom’s upstairs. How was school?”
I lifted my shoulder and let it drop again as I sat on the couch. Dr. Griffin was a master interrogator; I could never be sure how to respond to his questions. It was almost as though answering something as innocent as “How was your day?” could reveal some hidden neurosis, and I’d end up spending the next hour explaining myself to him. I think he understood, though, because he never seemed disappointed if I didn’t say anything. He grinned and sat back down in one of the big upholstered chairs.
Probing questions aside, I was pretty comfortable with Dr. Griffin. Whenever I felt like talking, he was genuinely interested in what I had to say. I liked how he smiled a lot, and how his eyes crinkled when he laughed. But I especially liked how he made my mom laugh.
He rubbed his hands on his trousers and cleared his throat. “I’m glad you’re home,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
My spine straightened as my senses went on high alert. Did Mom tell him about the phone? Was I going to have to endure a lecture from him, too? I decided it would be best to tell him my side of the story and worry about the psychoanalysis later.
“Look, Dr. Griffin,” I said, “it really wasn’t—”
“I’m thinking of asking your mom to marry me,” he blurted in a single breath.
That was unexpected. “What?”
“I talked to your grandparents, and they seem excited, but I still wanted to check with you first.”
“Oh.” I knew Mom really liked him; they’d been dating for about a year, so it wasn’t like they’d just met or anything. And she was happy, genuinely happy when he was around. But I was surprised Dr. Griffin asked my permission. I mean, my mom was a forty-something-year-old woman, and I was just a kid. What difference did it make what I thought?
He raised his eyebrows. “What do you think, Talia? Would you be okay with being my stepdaughter?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, slowly at first and again with more enthusiasm. “Yeah, I guess that would be cool.”
He exhaled. “Thank you.” His shoulders relaxed, as though relieved by my response, and I wondered what he would’ve done if I’d said “no.”
“And when you’re ready,” he said, “maybe you can start calling me ‘Rob.’”
I nodded even though the whole first-name thing weirded me out. I liked referring to him as Dr. Griffin. It kept an invisible wall between us. And it was easier than pretending we were friends.
The clack clack clack of my mom’s boots on the terrazzo floor announced her presence before she breezed into the room wearing what I called her Suburban Soccer Mom look: jeans, a mock turtleneck, and a polar fleece jacket with her light-brown hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Dr. Griffin stood as she entered.
“Oh, good,” she said when she saw me. “You’re home. I was afraid you’d forget and go to Jake’s after school again.”