lead.”
My mother shot him a silencing look, and that was it. Gray focused again
on the road. As much as I had started to like Gray, I felt like he shouldn’ t be
there right then. I couldn’ t wait to get back to the condo so my mother and I
could be alone and, I don’t know . . . throw things, talk, cry, whatever. Mom
took a de ep breath.
“You know what? I think it’s good that we’re getting away this summer ,”
she said, in a voice that was slightly too loud and chipper . She turned in her
seat and looked at me. “You’ll get a job down the shore, make new friends,
take up surfing again. You can put all this drama behind you and just have
some fun. I think we all need a fresh start.”
I just stared back at her. What was she going to do? Ignore the fact that
we’d just seen my dad? That we, with one phone call to Mr. Appleby , could
find out exactly where he was? Was she just going to try to go ahead with
our lives as if nothing had happened? Besides, the very idea of living down
at the shore with pretty much every Crestie family who’d just seen me
utterly humiliate d made me want to jump out of the car and run for the
nearest airport.
Plus, there was that whole revelation about me and Hammond. Sooner or
later, she was going to have to ask me about that. Which was, let’s face it,
the very last thing I ever wanted to talk about with my mother .
Shannen had really overachieved on this one.
“I don’t want to go anymore,” I said, my voice low .
“What?” my mother said.
“I don’t want to go,” I r epeated. “Do you really want to spend the
summer with those people?”
“We don’t have to spend any time with them if we don’t want to,” my
mother said naively .
“Right.” I leaned forward between their two seats. “Hey, Gray, where’s
your house again?”
“Between the Schwartz’ s and the Ross’s,” he said, shooting my mother
an apologetic look. “But we have a whole acre between houses—”
“Yeah.” I slumped back again. “I’m out.”
“Ally, we are not going to let your father ruin our summer plans,” my
mother said. “When he left, I made a promise to both of us that I would not
make my life decisions based on him anymore, and we haven’t. We’re not
going to start now .”
I bit down on my tongue. Didn’t she get it? This wasn’t about him. It was
about them. The Cresties. Shannen and Faith and Chloe and Hammond and
the Idiot T wins . . . and Jake.
Just an hour ago, I had thought everything was perfect. I had thought I
could trust him with everything . But it had all been a lie. He’d k ept this
huge secret from me—him and all his Crestie pals. They’d all been
laughing at me behind my back this entire time. It was clear now that if he
had to choose between them and me, he would choose them. He already
had, just by not telling me. By letting them ke ep this secret. By letting them
think they were better than me.
I thought back to how hopeful I’d been when I’d agreed to go to the
shore—all the things I’d imagined me and Jake doing together—and felt
like a total idiot. Had he known then? On his birthday , when we’d first
kissed? Had he already been lying to me? Tears of shame and misery and
self-loathing stung my eyes. If I could go back, if I could rewind to the
beginning of the year , I would have changed everything. Every . Last. Thing.
Gray turned into the entrance to the OVC, his headlights flashing on the
elaborate wooden signage. I felt a practically primal need to be home right
then. To be inside, in my sweats, under the covers, curled into a ball. To
shut off my brain and be left alone for days and days and days.
“It’s gonna be okay , Al,” my mom said. “W e’re gonna figure this out.”
Gray turned onto our street, his headlights flashing on the identical st eps
leading up to the identical doors of the identical condos. My heart caught
when I saw that someone was sitting on the bottom st ep in front of ours.
Had Jake made it here before us somehow? What could he possibly think he
could say that was going to make this better?
“Oh my God,” my mother said, her voice strained.
And that was when I realized that the person on the stairs was not
wearing a suit and tie. He was not tall and lean and square shouldered. He
was not a person I ever would have expected to see right there, right then.
It was my father .