That’s what he got for volunteering to host a graduation bash, though.

I tripped over the garbage on my way to the front door, wincing when the light hit my eyes. My head hurt like hell, but at least I wasn’t puking. After four years of going to high school keggers—and crashing the occasional frat party—I’d learned to hold my alcohol pretty well. Better than a lot of girls my age, anyway. Most of the girls I saw at parties were kissing the toilet after a couple bottles of Smirnoff Ice, then had to be carried out by their football player boyfriends. Babies.

With a sigh, I dug my cell phone out of my purse and dialed the number to the cab company. I seriously hoped I wouldn’t get a chatty driver. If he said more than five words to me, I wasn’t going to tip.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home, eating frozen waffles in her housecoat and watching Good Morning America. She looked up when I walked through the door, the syrup bottle in her hand.

“Hey, Whitley,” she said. “How was the rest of your night?”

“Good,” I mumbled, going straight for the fridge. My mouth was unbelievably dry. “Sorry I didn’t call.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I figured you were staying over at Nola’s.”

I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, not bothering to inform my mother that Nola and I hadn’t spoken since ninth grade. For a second, I wondered whether she’d notice if I did a line of coke on the table right in front of her. I doubted it.

“Trace sent you something,” she said as I sat down in the chair beside her, clutching some Saltines for good measure and positioning myself to see the TV, which was on the counter across from us. She doused her waffles in syrup and pushed the bottle to the side. “I put it on your bed.”

“Thanks.”

We sat in silence for a long moment before Mom finally asked, “So, are you excited about graduating?”

She kept staring at the TV, watching as the national weather guy moved on from our part of the country and pointed at Florida, informing us that it was sunny—no shit, Sherlock. I got the feeling Mom didn’t really give a damn about the answer. It was just one of those questions you ask because it makes you a crappy parent if you don’t.

“Not really,” I said, twisting the cap on the Gatorade and taking a big gulp. “Graduating isn’t a big deal. It’ll be nice to start college, though. Dad loved UK. Hopefully he can help me pick a goddamn major.”

“Language, Whitley,” she warned. “And, honey, be careful about taking your father’s advice on this stuff. He can’t even make smart life choices for himself, let alone help you make yours.”

I scowled at her before taking another drink. Six years after the divorce, and she still slammed Dad at every opportunity. You’d think she’d be over it by now.

“I don’t see anything wrong with how Dad lives,” I told her.

“Please.” She laughed bitterly. “In that trashy condo? Jumping from girlfriend to girlfriend? Forty-eight years old and still hasn’t grown up at all. He can’t even make enough time to see his own daughter more than once a year.”

That’s your fault, I thought. I stood up and tossed my Gatorade bottle in the trash, mumbling, “I’m going to lie down. Headache.”

“All right, honey.” Mom speared a bite of waffle with her fork. “I hope you get to feeling better. And don’t forget to pack. Your father will be here to pick you up at noon tomorrow…. But you know how punctual he is.” I didn’t listen closely to the rest of her tirade.

I was halfway inside my bedroom before she finally shut up. When it came to Dad, my mother never knew when to just leave it alone. Everything about him annoyed her now: the way he dressed, the way he drove; she even said that the sound of his laugh made her cringe. She couldn’t see how alike my father and I were, totally oblivious to the fact that some of the traits she loathed in him were part of me, too.

The worst part, though, was that Dad never said a bad word about her. She didn’t know it, or she was too bitter to see, but Dad still cared about her feelings. That was the reason he’d said no when I’d asked to live with him four years ago—he said it would break Mom’s heart if I moved out.

I never told Mom I’d asked Dad that. But over the years that followed, I became more and more certain that he was wrong. She wouldn’t have even noticed if I left. She could bitch to a houseplant just as well as she could to me.

With my head hurting even worse, I yanked the curtains closed to block out any trace of sunlight and fell onto my bed, burying my face in the pillow with a groan.

I felt something stiff and crinkly under my stomach and sighed. The room had finally stopped spinning now that I was lying down, and sitting up seemed like a bad idea. Moving as little as possible, I reached beneath me and pulled out the offending object, holding it up to examine it. It was the thing Trace had sent me. A blue envelope with my name written across it with a pretty pink gel pen. Emily’s doing, for sure. My brother’s penmanship was shit.

With slow, unsteady movements, I opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside. YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, the cover said. What a cliché. Inside, though, my brother had crossed out all the cheesy poem crap and written his own message. Of course, since Trace wrote it himself in his sloppy boy handwriting, it took me a few minutes to decipher.

hey kid—

so proud of you. so is emily. we wish we could have been there, but here’s a fat check to make up for it but dont go spending it all on booze. call you soon.

Love, the best big brother ever

and Emily and Marie, too

I smiled. It was a mark of how much I loved my big brother that I found his lack of punctuation and proper grammar endearing.

Emily and Trace had been married for about two years. They met when Trace got his job as the assistant to some talent agent out in Los Angeles. Emily was an actress—which means she was a waitress—who was originally sleeping with Trace’s boss, trying to get parts. But then she met Trace, and he claims it was love at first sight.

Normally, if someone told me that, I’d gag, but I bought Trace’s story. After they met, Emily dumped agent-man (she wasn’t getting any gigs anyway) and started dating my brother. I figured that would be a conflict of interest with Trace’s job or something, but I guess that kind of crazy stuff happens all the time in Hollywood because he was still working for the guy. He even got promoted after that. And Emily had Marie, their daughter, just last month.

That was why Trace hadn’t made it to my graduation. Marie was too little to fly, and Trace didn’t want to leave Emily at home with the baby by herself.

I didn’t blame him. He had a lot going on. And picking up and flying all the way out here for just one night would have been stupid. I mean, Dad hadn’t even been able to make it because of work, and he lived within driving distance. It was no big deal. The ceremony was dumb anyway.

But it would have been nice to see Trace.

Next year, I thought, putting away the card and check he’d sent before curling up on my side and closing my eyes to fight off the headache. Dad and I will fly out to California together during his vacation. No work, no Mom driving us crazy. It’ll be great. Next year…

And with that thought, I drifted off to sleep.

2

After the divorce, my mother insisted on moving as far from Dad as possible. I think she was shooting for California or Hawaii or something, but instead we wound up only two hundred and fifty miles away, just far enough so our antenna didn’t pick up Channel 34.

My dad was this hotshot news anchor. He was, like, the most popular television personality in the tristate area or something. Channel 34 had the lowest ratings of all the local networks before they hired Greg Johnson to do the morning news. And everyone fell in love with him. Women wanted to date him, and men wanted to go fishing with him. Suddenly, Channel 34 was the most popular station in the area.