Inevitable and Only Read online

  “I’m not asking you to understand, Cadie. My head’s still spinning, too. But can you at least forgive me?” I could feel Dad’s eyes on me, but I stared at the shrimp, at their pink question-mark curlicues.

  “It was a long time ago, and I’ve changed since then,” he said, trying again. “But this changes nothing about us—about me and you. I promise that. Do you believe me?”

  I couldn’t stand it—this version of Dad whose voice I didn’t recognize, who was doing and saying things that made no sense. None of this felt real. I still couldn’t make myself look at him and I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to cry or punch something. Dad was watching me, waiting for a response.

  Instead, I went up to my room and slammed the door, too. It wasn’t loud enough the first time, so I opened it and slammed it again, feeling like I was even younger than Josh.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, Dad was gone.

  There was a note on the kitchen table: Staying at the bookshop for a few days. I love you all.

  I couldn’t believe he just left like that. Yes, I’d pushed him away. But I didn’t want him to let me push him away so easily.

  Or maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe Mom kicked him out.

  Chinese takeout boxes still littered the coffee table and the piano bench, but Mom didn’t mention him or anything that had happened the night before. I didn’t want to go to school but I couldn’t figure out what to say to her. Umm, can I stay home since our family’s falling apart? Josh was up as usual, practicing scales and arpeggios for an hour before breakfast. I ate a chocolate s’mores Pop-Tart (forbidden breakfast food), just to see if Mom would notice (she didn’t), grabbed my backpack, and slouched to the car.

  Mom had thrown her briefcase and about a zillion piles of paperwork all over the passenger seat, which was weird because she was usually super organized, so I slid into the back next to Josh, feeling like a little kid. She drove even more quickly than usual, stomping on the brakes at intersections, and I cringed every time I saw a squirrel dart toward the road. I was never going to be able to get behind the wheel again. I was scarred for life.

  Speaking of scarred for life, I couldn’t figure out how Josh could act so normal. Not that he ever showed much emotion of any sort. But still—I was a mess, my hair unbrushed, my limbs stuffed into baggy jeans and a wrinkly old sweatshirt. I had my headphones on and Ani DiFranco at top volume (also to see if Mom would notice, because she’s normally very concerned about our hearing). This kid, on the other hand, sat quietly in the back seat with his hands folded, his clothes neat and tidy, his hair combed, staring straight ahead.

  Staring straight ahead. With big glassy eyes that kept fluttering shut.

  I took my headphones off and put an arm around him. He looked at me, startled.

  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” I said quietly, so Mom wouldn’t overhear. “Did you?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. After another moment, he leaned against my shoulder.

  I hate crying. So I didn’t do it. But some tears might have fallen on Josh’s hair, from somewhere.

  When we got to school, Mom dropped us off by the front door before going to park in the faculty lot. As we got out of the car, she jumped out and gave us each a quick hug and kiss.

  “Have a good day, kiddos,” she said, too brightly, then hesitated. “I know this is—a strange day. Remember, I’m up in the front office if you need anything. Anytime.”

  In my head, I grudgingly gave her a few points. She looked ten times worse than me—I was sure she hadn’t slept at all—and she hardly ever said things like, “Have a good day, kiddos.”

  Josh and I parted ways inside the front doors. I turned right, toward the high school lockers, and he went left, to his fifth-grade classroom. I stumbled through classes all day, avoiding anyone I knew (which takes serious skill, when your whole grade has only eighty-nine kids), and tried my best not to think about Dad. Impossible, of course. I ducked into the bathroom between class periods, brushing my hair or messing with eyeliner until the bell rang. Twice during the day, I convinced myself it had all been a bad dream. Then I’d remember the note on the breakfast table, and the Pop-Tart would rumble unhappily in my stomach. No one had remembered to pack lunches, and I didn’t have any money, so I went to the bathroom during my lunch period and spent even more time on my eyeliner. I hoped Josh had a friend who would share a sandwich with him.

  The only thing that remotely redeemed the day was drama class, which was in a separate building behind the school. We called it the Shed, even though it was big enough to hold a theater. There was a tiny classroom, but it didn’t look like we were ever going to use it. Mr. Goodfellow—I mean, Robin (he told us to call him by his first name, which made the whole class fall in love with him immediately)—said we may as well get used to being on stage.

  Even though school had started the week before, Robin had been in New York for the final week of a play he’d directed, so this was our first class with him. We sat in the audience seats and he passed out an FAQ sheet, then perched on the edge of the stage and shuffled papers while we read it and filled it out.

  Five facts about me:

  1. Yes, my name really is Robin Goodfellow, like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I changed it legally when I was eighteen. Do not try this at home.

  2. I believe in the One Bard, William Shakespeare, poet and playwright and actor supreme, hallowed be His name—and when you are in my theater, you will respect my beliefs. Do not take the Bard’s name in vain.

  3. My dream come true would be playing Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. As I cannot sing worth beans, however, I am resigned to a life of Hamlets, Algernon Moncrieffs, and Septimus Hodges.

  4. If you don’t know who those people are, you’ll soon learn. Actually, if you don’t know who Hamlet is, I don’t know what you’re doing in my class. But welcome all the same!

  5. That last one wasn’t really a fact about me, so here are three more for good measure: I grew up in Idaho, I have four younger sisters, and my favorite disgusting food is scrambled eggs with ketchup and mustard.

  Now, tell me five facts about yourself:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  I stared at those five blank spaces. Then I wrote:

  1. I was named after Acadia National Park in Maine.

  I started to write “My dad owns a bookshop” on the next line, but I got as far as “My dad,” then crossed it out. Instead, I wrote, “My brother plays the cello.” Lame. These were supposed to be facts about me, not about my family. I crossed that out, too. Now there wasn’t much room left on line 2, so I thought for a few minutes before squeezing in, “I also love Shakespeare.”

  Robin clapped his hands. “Aaaand that’s time, people! You can take these home and finish them for tomorrow, if you’re not done yet.”

  He gathered us on the stage and had us sit cross-legged in a circle. We began by “centering” ourselves with five minutes of meditation, which was possibly the longest five minutes in the history of the universe. My feet fell asleep, then my hands. Even my lower back fell asleep. Finally Robin rang a little bell to signal that we were all centered, and announced that we were going to start with something called Meisner repetitions.

  “This exercise was developed to help the actor get out of his or her own head,” he said, pacing at the front of the stage and slapping the sides of his head.

  Perfect, I thought, and the dark cloud over my own head lifted slightly in anticipation.

  Robin had short, spiky gray hair, but he didn’t look old enough for gray hair—I wondered if he dyed it to try to appear older. He had the kind of sculpted face you see on Hollywood actors and his skin looked like leather, as if he’d spent too much time out in the sun. He was extremely thin, with ropy muscles that stood out starkly on his arms and even his hands, which he gestured with constantly. He smoked out in the parking lot between classes—you could sm
ell it on him as soon as you stepped into the room. And he was wearing three little silver hoops in both ears, tight black jeans, a tight black turtleneck, and Doc Martens.

  Did I mention that the whole class fell in love with him in the first ten minutes?

  Anyway, the Meisner exercise. The repetitions were just that: we worked with a partner, repeating one simple phrase back and forth to each other over and over, responding to the way our partner said it or something about their body language.

  “The phrase can be a simple observation, or something meaningless. For example,” Robin said, “you could say, You look so sad today, or How are you? or even I love you.”

  The class giggled nervously.

  “When you have a given line, you don’t have to worry about what to say—only how to say it. Be spontaneous! Respond to what you’re given, people! Respond truly to each other as human beings, not as actors, or however you think an actor should act.” He thumped the Meisner book he was holding. “Don’t try to be an actor. I am here to teach you how to respond, not how to act.”

  Then he paired us up, and we got started.

  My partner was Sam Shotwell, a junior, who I was surprised to see in this class. Sam was a jock—or that’s what I’d always thought. Dad liked to say, Jocks have feelings, too. They just express them differently than we do—by throwing small projectiles at each other and running in circles.

  Dad.

  I swallowed and pushed the thought away.

  “You look so sad today,” Sam said.

  I jumped and felt my face flush before I remembered what we were doing. “Let’s try a different one,” I said quickly.

  Sam shrugged. “Okay. What do you want to use?”

  But Robin had already stopped beside us. “No, no, that was very good!” he said. “Keep it up. Cadie?”

  I looked at Sam’s ear and said, “You look so sad today.”

  Robin waved his arms. “Time out. Cadie, listen to the way Sam says it, then respond. Sam, again.”

  Sam took a deep breath, then let it out slowly as he said, “You look so sad today.” The breathy way he said it sounded like he was truly concerned. Not just a student repeating a line in drama class.

  I narrowed my eyes. “You look so sad today.”

  Robin wagged his head happily, pressed one hand to his lips, and gestured toward Sam.

  “You look so sad today?” Sam questioned.

  “You look so sad today,” I confirmed.

  Sam quirked an eyebrow at me and winked. “You look so saaad today,” he said, managing to make it sound suggestive.

  I fluttered my eyelashes and said each word separately, a hand on my hip. “You. Look. So. Sad. Today …”

  “Whew!” Robin interjected, unable to contain himself. “People, this is excellent work. Keep it up, keep it up!” He clapped one hand on Sam’s shoulder and the other on mine, then moved on to the next group.

  My pulse was racing from the adrenaline, and I felt myself blush again. “Okay. Should we try another phrase?”

  Sam grinned. “I love you.”

  Who knew drama class would be flirting class?

  And who knew that Sam Shotwell was cute?

  Of course, none of this changed the fact that Farhan Mazandarani was my one true love.

  Which was what me and Raven had called him for almost a decade now. Farhan and I had barely ever spoken to each other, but what did that matter? In fact, it was part of the romance. Raven used to call him Afar-han, because she said I pined for him from afar (I know, very funny, hardy-har). I’d started at Fern Grove in second grade, which made me a perpetual newcomer—most kids attended kindergarten through the twelfth grade. “Lifers,” they were called. Raven was a lifer, but Farhan was a newcomer like me. He started in second grade, too, when his family moved here from Iran. I instantly fell in love with everything about him: his dark curly hair, his accent (which was mostly gone now). His chubbiness, which made me feel less self-conscious about not being skinny like Raven.

  Or Sam Shotwell, who wasn’t exactly skinny; more like—toned. Buff. Fit. As I left the Shed after class, I wondered if we’d ever do exercises that involved touching each other. I’d heard about lots of touchy-feely stuff from upperclassmen who’d taken drama before—trust circles, contact improv, stuff like that.

  “Cadie!” I turned the corner to my locker, and there was Raven, waiting for me. Her curly red hair cascading down her back, her tight acid-washed jeans paired with chunky apple-green high-heels. Raven tended to look like she was dressed for a magazine photo shoot. “Where have you been all day? I kept trying to catch up with you but you were, like, running between all your classes. And I couldn’t find you at lunch.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said, trying to cram my books into my already-overcrowded locker. Trying to push away thoughts of last night.

  You have to learn how to compartmentalize, Mom always said when I got upset or too emotional about something.

  I pictured a little compartment labeled Dad and tried to shove my tangled mess of thoughts in there, slam the lid, and—

  “Cadie?” Raven looked worried. “You’re making this face like you’re in pain. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine! Just had the best class of my life, in fact. Drama with Mr. Goodfellow. I mean, Robin. He wants us to call him by his first name.” I chattered away about Meisner repetitions while we walked to our next class. “In what universe can a teenage guy say ‘I love you’ to a female classmate with a straight face?”

  Raven slapped both hands over her mouth. “Sam Shotwell did not tell you he loved you.”

  “He did! It was part of the exercise. I swear, actors are so much more highly evolved than the average high schooler.”

  Raven laughed. “I wish I was in this class with you. Except I’m terrified of being on stage.”

  “It really did feel like the Drama Shed was its own little world, separate from school,” I said, “where jocks are allowed to have feelings and people can forget their problems for a while.” I blew out a deep breath. “I guess that’s the point of acting, right? To be someone else.”

  I must’ve said it too wistfully. Raven studied my face. “Cadie, are you sure you’re all right? What’s going on?”

  But I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. If I said it out loud, then it would really be true.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I didn’t go to the bookshop after school. Josh was already waiting outside Mom’s office when I got there. Mom emerged a few minutes later, carrying a huge stack of paperwork, dark circles under her eyes. She tried to smile when she saw us, but only managed it with half of her mouth. Something in my chest twisted a little.

  “Hey,” I said, “can we stop at the ShopRite on the way home? I’ll make dinner tonight.”

  She looked at me, surprised. “All right, then. What are you planning to make?”

  She sounded dubious, as if she didn’t believe I knew how to cook, as if she wouldn’t like whatever I made. As if I hadn’t helped Dad make dinner enough times that I could imitate any of his recipes. But thinking about Dad made the twist in my chest tighten, so I swallowed my sarcastic answer and said, “Whatever you want. You place the order, I’ll be the chef.”

  Mom lifted a hand to rub her eyes. “My contacts are drying out,” she explained.

  Mom doesn’t cry, either. One of the very few things we have in common.

  When we stopped at the grocery store, Mom said she wanted comfort food, something warm and filling. I wished I knew how to make vegetarian paella and chocolate-dipped churros, the special treats my abuelita made for us whenever we visited Mom’s parents down in Florida. But that wasn’t what I was craving, anyhow. So I sent Mom to get flour and sugar while Josh and I filled the cart with cottage cheese, eggs, apples, and raisins. Ingredients for Cottage Cheese Contraption—one of the hold-overs from our days at Ahimsa House. Everyone took turns cooking, so some nights we had gourmet Indian stir-fry or fancy Italian pasta dishes, and other nights we had unidentif
iable casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup from a can.

  Or Cottage Cheese Contraption, invented by an old woman everyone called Granny. She’d been a housewife in Arkansas for fifty years, and when her husband died, she packed all her essential belongings into one suitcase, sold everything else, and took off on a road trip across the country. A year later, she landed in Takoma Park, at Ahimsa House. She’d lived there ever since, grandmothering every lost and lonely kid who came through.

  Josh was two when we left Ahimsa House, too young to remember anything about it. But he loved hearing stories about the people who lived there. About the days when Dad was a grad student in Renaissance literature and drama at Georgetown, when Mom served chai lattes at the Sunflower Café and played jazz piano at fancy DC nightclubs on the weekends. I’d shown Josh pictures of Mom in a tiny black dress at one of her gigs, a choker of pearls around her throat. She was unrecognizable, her eyes outlined in smoky makeup, her long hair loose down her back, a white rose tucked behind her ear.

  Before Josh was born we took a lot of vacations—camping trips to Sugarloaf or the Catoctin Mountains. Mom and Dad had once promised each other that someday they’d hike the entire Appalachian Trail. I had hazy memories from those vacations: campfires, marshmallows, getting dunked in freezing-cold streams by way of having a bath, the thrill of peeing in the woods.

  When I was almost five, Dad got invited to present a paper at a Christopher Marlowe conference in California, so he took Mom and me with him—“his girls,” he called us—and we spent a weekend camping in Joshua Tree National Park. What I remember about that trip was that I had my own tent for the first time, a pink-and-purple-and-orange tie-dyed tent that someone from Ahimsa House had lent us. I was so proud of that tent, of sleeping in it all by myself.

  A month later, Mom found out she was pregnant.

  Dad dropped out of school to find a job, and Mom picked up the last semester of doctoral work she’d never finished at the University of Maryland after she and Dad eloped. I remember watching her walk across the stage in a funny cap, her gown pulled tight over her gigantic belly, holding a scroll that she read to me later: Doctor of Musical Arts. Two weeks later, I had a baby brother.