Читать книгу The Night Olivia Fell - Christina McDonald - Страница 14

7

OLIVIA

april

After dinner, Mom went upstairs to take a shower. The house still smelled of burned bread even though all the windows were cracked open. It clawed at my throat and seared my nose, making me feel sick.

As soon as I heard the shower turn on, I ran to the desk in the corner of the living room and shuffled through the neatly organized paperwork and alphabetized, color-coded files. Nothing there. I took the stairs two at a time to Mom’s bedroom. I pushed through electric cords and notebooks in her bedside table drawers. I dropped to my knees and checked under her bed. Just a scattering of dusty, mismatched hand weights, random books that didn’t fit on the bookshelf downstairs, a box with cards and notes I’d given her.

Obviously I’d been in Mom’s room loads of times, but I wasn’t a weirdo. I’d never searched through her personal things. It felt gross. Disgust slithered up my throat, but then I remembered her lie: . . . those brown eyes.

There must be some proof somewhere about who my father was. The minutes crawled by. I was running out of time.

In her closet, I shuffled through clothes and shoes, ran my hand along the top shelf. Suddenly my fingers knocked against something. I stood on my tiptoes and pulled it out. It was an old shoebox, a thick layer of dust across the top. I sat cross-legged on the floor with it on my lap. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. The shower was still going but I knew I didn’t have much time.

The box was light. I almost thought it was empty. But when I took the lid off and pushed a layer of tissue paper aside, I saw a thick piece of paper. It was my birth certificate. I looked at the spot where my parents’ names were listed, but only my mom’s was there.

I put it down and lifted out the tissue paper. Underneath was a hospital ID bracelet with my name in pale blue letters.

And then I saw it: a small square piece of plain white card, the type you might find in a bunch of flowers delivered to your doorstep. On one side it was blank. On the other, in thick capital letters, it said:

SORRY.

G

× × ×

The next day I stayed after school to help Peter with our chemistry homework. Tyler gave me the silent treatment all day, but I just pretended everything was fine. It was the best way to deal with Tyler. Pretend everything was all right, and pretty soon it would be.

I didn’t really want to go home after that, so I texted Mom and told her I was still studying, then grabbed the late bus to Madison’s. I wanted to tell her about the card I’d found and the lies my mom had told.

I pulled the hood of my coat up over my head as the mist thickened into rain. Storming down the quiet suburban road toward Madison’s house, I passed elegant mock Tudors and Pacific Northwest timber homes and dove into the dripping green pines spread out lush and thick above the ZigZag Bridge.

The ZigZag Bridge wasn’t really a zigzag – it was only called that because the river that ran underneath it twisted back and forth until it reached Puget Sound. When I was a kid, we used to call it the Cinderella Bridge because it looked like something out of a fairy tale. The suspension cables were hung from four silver towers, two at either end, crowned by soaring spires, while the gleaming metal framework was decorated with lacy arches and ornamental railings.

I hunched my backpack higher on my shoulders and headed over the bridge, my feet echoing loudly against the wooden slats of the pedestrian walkway. Usually I took the shortcut from my house through the woods to Madison’s instead of looping up and around, walking over a mile along the ZigZag Road. Mom had made me promise never to take the shortcut – she thought the woods were full of murderers or something – but the paved road took way too long.

For her peace of mind, I told her I always went the long way to Madison’s. I didn’t want to lie to her or anything, but I didn’t want her worrying either. Sometimes she could be a bit overprotective. Besides, it wasn’t exactly lying. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

I leaned on the doorbell at Madison’s house, my breath coming in short bursts until the door flew open.

Madison’s brother, Derek, looked like he’d been facedown in a pillow for a really long time. His face was crinkled with sleep, and he blinked his eyes fast, as if the late afternoon light burned his retinas.

‘Olivia? What are you doing here?’ His voice was raspy, and he raked one hand through his dark, tousled curls.

I stared at Derek, totally speechless. I hadn’t seen him in almost three years. He looked so different. And by different, I mean really, really hot.

Gone was the lanky, awkward teenager I’d known. His chest had filled out, his face slimmed down. He’d grown a few inches and now towered over me. He was wearing skinny black jeans and a fitted black T-shirt that was tight at the biceps. A silver chain necklace was coiled twice around his neck.

‘Derek, hey.’ My voice squeaked, and I coughed to cover it. ‘I forgot you were back from New York. Sorry about pushing on the doorbell. I thought Madison would answer.’ The words rushed out of me too fast, and I knew I sounded like a dumb little kid.

I was desperate to know whether he’d thought about me while he was away the way I’d thought about him. Last time I’d seen him, I’d declared my undying fourteen-year-old love. He’d kissed me gently on the cheek and said, ‘See you later.’ The next day he’d left for New York.

I never told Madison about my crush on her brother. She’d hate it. She could be jealous and nasty when it came to Derek. Once I was at their house and I didn’t feel well, so I played Nintendo with Derek instead of hide-and-go-seek with her. She went to his room and took all his certificates he’d glued into a scrapbook and shredded every one of them.

‘You want to come in?’ Derek asked.

I followed him through the dining room into the designer kitchen. The stainless steel shimmered in the afternoon light. An expensive watercolor of trees hung above the mahogany dinner table.

I shrugged out of my wet jacket, draping it over a chair. He pulled two bottles of water out of the refrigerator, tossing one to me.

‘So.’ I took a sip of my water. ‘You back for good?’

‘Yep.’

‘Did you like it?’

He shrugged.

‘Well, what was it like?’ I had so many questions, but this new Derek wasn’t like the one I’d known three years ago. Plus, all the things Madison had told me about him . . . maybe I was a little bit scared of him.

‘It was fine, it’s a big city, so it’s pretty busy, but yeah, I liked it.’ He sounded bored. Or maybe annoyed. ‘Madison isn’t here,’ he added.

‘Where is she?’

‘Auditioning for some play or something.’

I hit my forehead with my hand. ‘Oh yeah. Shoot. I forgot about that.’

He set his water on the counter. ‘So, what’s up?’

‘Nothing much. Just school and finals, getting ready for senior year and stuff.’

‘No.’ He looked exasperated, like I was the dumbest person ever. ‘I meant, why’d you come storming over here?’

I hesitated, not sure I wanted to tell Derek about my mom.

‘Did you get in a fight with your boyfriend?’ He smirked.

Anger boiled in me, and I clenched my fists. I wasn’t used to feeling angry. But I felt like it was leaking from me, set free by the acid of my mom’s lies. I couldn’t control it, and suddenly it took a new direction.

How dare he? The last time I was with him, I’d thought – well, it didn’t matter now, but I’d thought we shared something special. It was silly, just the slight brush of our arms against each other while watching a movie. A long gaze. It was stupid.

I didn’t even recognize this new Derek.

‘I’ll come back later. Sorry I bothered you.’ I put my water bottle on the counter and spun around, heading for the door.

Derek stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

‘No, I’m sorry.’ The smirk fell off his face, and for the first time since I’d arrived he looked like the Derek I used to know. ‘Honestly, you’re not bothering me.’

He was so earnest, it reminded me of when we were little kids and I got stuck in the washing machine trying to hide from him during hide-and-seek.

‘So. Boyfriend problems?’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘For your information, my mom lied to me and I’m really pissed off about it.’

Derek leaned away, as if blown back by the force of my anger. ‘Shit. Sorry. What about?’

When I didn’t reply, he headed toward the stairs. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

I hesitated, confused by his quick change of personalities. Maybe he was more like Madison than I’d thought. I followed him to the far side of the kitchen, across the hall, and down the stairs to the basement.

‘My mom and dad gave me the downstairs. I think they’re just hoping I’ll disappear down here.’ He chuckled, but the laugh didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Downstairs was more welcoming than upstairs, all blond wood and worn brown leather. A grunge band blasted on a massive surround-sound stereo system. A huge entertainment center and two leather chairs took up one side of the basement, while the other side had an unmade king-size bed. At the back of the room, a hallway led to darkness.

He shoved clothes off a leather chair. ‘Here, sit down.’

He picked up a set of remote controls and turned off the stereo, then pressed a button. The ornately carved walnut doors of the entertainment center opened slowly, revealing a huge plasma-screen television. He flopped onto the other chair and flicked through the channels until he found a rerun of Family Guy.

He looked up at me. ‘You gonna sit?’

‘Um, sure.’ If Madison came home and found me hanging with her brother, she’d totally flip. I perched on the arm of the chair and tugged on the tail of the silver bracelet at my wrist.

‘So, what’d your mom lie about?’ he asked.

‘Well, last week some kids from my school and I were at U-Dub at this thing to get juniors ready for college. We saw this girl – Kendall – and she looked just like me. I’m not even kidding. Everybody said it. Like sisters.’

‘That’s weird.’

‘Yeah. So yesterday I asked my mom about my dad. Like what was he like and did he have any other family and she mentioned that he had brown eyes.’

‘So?’

‘First of all, I’m in advanced biology. My mom has blue eyes, so if my dad had brown eyes, it’s pretty unlikely I’d have green eyes. Not impossible, but genetically unlikely.’

‘And second?’

‘Second of all, I asked her when I was thirteen what color eyes he had, and she said green. And now she said brown.’

‘But why would she tell you two different colors?’

I threw my hands up and slid into the chair. ‘She’s getting confused with her lies.’

‘And this girl, Kendall. She has green eyes too?’

‘Yeah. And this same chin dimple.’ I pointed at the cleft in my chin. ‘I Googled it. It’s genetic. But my mom doesn’t have it.’

‘So Kendall looks a lot like you, she has a chin dimple, she has the same color eyes as you, and now your mom lied about what color your dad’s eyes were – and you think, what? That you’re related to this girl?’

‘Well, yeah.’ Saying it that way made it sound really stupid.

‘It seems a bit, you know, Hollywood.’

‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘But my mom lied to me. We never lie to each other. . .’

I chewed my lip.

‘At least, I thought we didn’t,’ I amended. ‘But now I’m wondering what else she’s lied about. And . . .’ I pulled the piece of white card out of my back pocket. ‘I found this in her room. It was in a shoebox in her closet.’

I held it out to Derek, and he read the text. ‘Sorry. Sorry for what?’

‘I don’t know. But it was with my birth certificate. It must have something to do with me.’

‘Have you looked her up on Facebook?’

‘My mom?’

‘No. Kendall.’

I shook my head. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

‘Well, did you ask her who her father is? Find out his name?’

‘I didn’t think of any of that stuff when I met her.’

Derek grabbed a shiny silver MacBook from his bedside table. He brought it back to the chair, flipped the lid up, and opened Facebook.

‘Do you want to look?’ Derek asked.

Madison said I was a doormat. Mom said I let Madison walk all over me. Maybe they were both right. Maybe it was time I stood up and did something for myself.

I nodded. ‘Yeah, okay.’

I leaned over his shoulder and typed in my log-in details, aware of how close we were. He smelled just faintly of pine trees and the clean, soapy smell of shaving cream.

Kendall Montgomery’s page popped up right away. In her profile picture she was pouting, her eyes creased as if she was about to smile. I didn’t want to know her. And yet I did.

‘Holy shit.’ Derek’s eyes popped open wide. ‘She does look just like you.’

‘I know. It’s creepy. What should I do?’

‘What do you want to do?’

I was surprised. People never asked me what I wanted. I usually just went along for the ride.

I looked into Derek’s midnight-blue eyes. Something in them made me feel safe enough to find out things I should probably leave alone.

I leaned over him and pressed Add Friend.

‘I want to talk to her,’ I said.