Center of Gravity Read online

  Lila has a similar gold band for my dad, and there is an awkward moment when she realizes that he’s still wearing his original wedding ring.

  “Oh,” the woman marrying them says. “Well.”

  Dad closes his hand in a fist, instead of trying to take his wedding ring off. I expect Lila to be upset. I would be, if I were getting married and my future husband refused to take off his old wedding ring.

  She surprises me, though.

  She takes his right hand and slips the ring onto it, then turns back to the woman with her chin lifted, like she’s daring the judge to judge her.

  There are a few more things to say about not letting the sun go down on anger and what the State of Colorado has authorized her to do, and the woman ends with, “You may kiss your bride.”

  Dad does. Lila’s fingers tighten in the back of his shirt. His tangle in her hair, long and loose like sunshine flowing down her back. The kiss only lasts a few seconds, and then they’re married.

  * * *

  “It won’t be so bad,” Megan says on the second-to-last day that I’ll live in Denver. We’re in her basement, probably for the last time ever. “I mean, Los Angeles. You’ll probably see famous people.”

  I slam one of my foosball posts all the way toward her, blocking a shot, probably harder than I needed to. “I don’t care about famous people.”

  She tries to fake me out, pretending to punt, but then sends the ball toward my goal. “But what if you see, like, movie stars?”

  I block her again, easy as pie, and send the ball back to her keeper. “I’m not going to see movie stars, Megan.”

  My shot sinks.

  “Dang it.” She straightens up and spins her keeper in a slow, lazy circle. “Well, you might.”

  “You sound like you want me to go.”

  Mom would have called this low-hanging fruit. The easiest way to feel better is to get Megan to tell me that she wants me to stay. That she’s going to miss me. Instead, Megan goes quiet while she fishes the ball out of the pocket on her side of the table. Too quiet for too long.

  “You want me to go?” I ask.

  “Not really.”

  What is that supposed to mean?

  “It’s just … maybe it will be good for you. And California sounds cool and all. I mean, it’s a beach house.”

  Would it be good for her if her dad all of a sudden married some other woman? Some other pregnant woman? “I don’t care about a beach house.”

  “Maybe you’ll be able to stop…” I know what she’s thinking. Maybe I’ll be able to stop the milk-carton thing. And she doesn’t say it, but I think she’s thinking maybe without me and my milk cartons around, she can just be perfectly normal again. Maybe even better than normal.

  Without me, she could be popular. I’ve probably been holding her back since kindergarten. “I need to finish packing.”

  She doesn’t try to stop me when I leave.

  * * *

  Megan watches from the end of her driveway as we pull away in Dad’s pickup. The bed is packed with everything we’re bringing with us to California.

  I’ve cried so much, my eyes hurt. My head hurts. Everything hurts. I crane my neck to see through the side-view mirror until Megan and the For Sale sign stuck in our front lawn are out of sight.

  Dad doesn’t say anything. He’s already apologized a thousand times. It hasn’t changed the fact that we’re driving away from home. Forever. Or that there is a giant SOLD! sticker across the front of the For Sale sign. Another family is moving into our house.

  Some other girl gets to sleep in my bedroom, next door to Megan. She’ll do her homework in the dining room where Mom used to help me with my math. She’ll go to my school. Maybe she’ll sit in my seats, use my textbooks. Be my best friend’s new best friend.

  Maybe Megan will eat lunch with the new girl. She’ll hang out with Hillary MacLean more, I’m pretty sure. It makes me want to cry all over again to think about that.

  “I’m sorry, Cookie,” Dad says once we’re out of our neighborhood. An apology. Again. He can’t help himself. I know he really is sorry, but I wish he’d thought about how sorry he’d be before he got us into this mess.

  Even I know what condoms are for.

  Lila drove her own car back to California the day after the wedding. It’s a purple convertible Karmann Ghia that looks like it came from the same Easter basket as the hollow chocolate bunny I sometimes feel like I’m turning into.

  She went to get the new house ready. It’s not new to her, though. She grew up in it, Dad told me. She gets to live in her childhood home, and I don’t.

  None of this is fair.

  Dad looks at me, but before he can apologize again, I prop my feet on the dashboard. I put my headphones over my ears and I look out the window, at Denver, for the last time.

  Dad tugs one earphone off my ear. “You’ll be back here, Cookie. To visit Gran, at least.”

  “Whatever.” I settle the music back where it belongs. But not before I hear Dad mutter, This is going to be a long trip.

  He’s right.

  * * *

  Dad puts down his coffee and leans across the table toward me.

  “Here’s the thing,” he says. We’re at a McDonald’s somewhere in Utah, eating Egg McMuffins before we start driving for the second day. I feel like I’ve been on this stupid road trip my whole entire life.

  “What’s the thing?” I ask when he doesn’t actually tell me what the thing is.

  “I need you to stop being mad at me.”

  Really? “Well, I need you to stop making me move to California to live with … with someone I don’t even know.”

  “You will know her.”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “You have to.” Dad takes a swallow of his coffee and then rubs his eyes under his glasses. “We’re going to be a family, Tessa. You’ll see.”

  “I thought we already were a family.” Egg McMuffin turns to Bowling McBall in my stomach. “This isn’t fair.”

  “Trust me,” he says. “I know.”

  “I don’t even know her.” Déjà vu. We’ve been around this block before. Many times, especially in the last twenty-four hours.

  He puts his coffee down. “That’s my fault. Not hers.”

  “She’s making us move to California,” I point out.

  “She isn’t making us do anything.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t—”

  I’ve heard this before, too. “We could’ve moved to a different house in Denver. You could’ve not—”

  He puts up a hand to stop me.

  “This isn’t fair,” I say. We’re both just repeating ourselves now.

  “I wish I could make life fair for you, Tessa. I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to scream I hate you right in the middle of a Utah McDonald’s, but he looks so sad, the words dry up before I can. They aren’t true anyway, and Dad and I don’t lie to each other.

  * * *

  We spend the second day pretty much like the first, and the second night at a Motel 6 in Las Vegas. On the third day of our road trip, we arrive in California.

  I’m nervous all of a sudden. I feel a million miles from home. Like we’re moving to the moon, not just a few states west. “Why did Lila’s parents give her a house?”

  Dad drums his thumbs on the steering wheel a moment before he answers. “Because they could, I suppose.”

  “They’re rich?”

  He nods slowly. “I guess they are.”

  “Are they going to be there?” What I really want to know, but won’t let myself ask, is Are they going to like me? Also, do they hate him?

  “No.” He turns away from the road for a second to look at me. “They’re spending the summer in Jamaica.”

  There is something about what he says that I don’t quite understand. Some catch in his voice. “Are they mad at her?”

  “Not mad,” he says.

  I know the part that he doesn’
t say. I’ve heard it before, when I’ve done something wrong. They’re not mad. They’re disappointed.

  We finally pull up in front of a tall, narrow white house that really is right on the beach.

  The good thing about the drive from Denver to Los Angeles being so long is that I’m ready for it to be over now, no matter where we are.

  Anyway, the beach smells good. Fresh and fishy at the same time. It’s weird that’s even possible, but it is. I can see the ocean, only a few shades deeper blue than the sky, and I want to walk to it. See it.

  “Dad,” I say. “Is that the beach?”

  He looks toward it and nods. “Let’s get unpacked.”

  The front door opens, and Lila comes out of it and down the walk. Dad hugs her, but she has to lean in, over her round belly.

  She looks at me, but I turn all my attention to the house before she can say anything. I’m not sure what I’ll do if she tries to hug me, too. I take a step away, just in case.

  The house has three stories and is perfectly square. Like a tower, almost. The top floor has a wide balcony that goes all the way around it.

  Lila sees me looking up at it and says, “That’s your room. It was mine when I was a kid. It always made me feel like a princess.”

  I look from her to my dad. I’ve landed in some bizarre world where I’m about to start living in the bedroom that his wife, who is one hundred percent not my mother, was probably still sleeping in five years ago.

  “At least we won’t lock you in,” he says. Lila and I both gape at him. He blinks and, for a second, looks as confused as I feel. “Like the kids in your book.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “You read Flowers in the Attic?”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “Mom always read everything you did.”

  Mom’s not here. I cannot make those words come past my rusty jaw.

  “Let me show you the room,” Lila says. “You’re going to love it here.”

  I shift my backpack and hear Mom’s voice in my ear saying, Be brave, Tessa. My mother was a hero. She saved soldiers’ lives before I was born, and she would not like to see me standing in front of a beach house bawling about something I can’t change.

  Dad puts an arm around me, and we go in together.

  * * *

  The house is tall, but it isn’t very big. The ground floor consists of a living room and kitchen and bathroom. No dining room, just a small table and chairs next to a sliding-glass door that leads from the kitchen to a patio in the backyard.

  The second floor is Lila’s bedroom and another bathroom. I know that it’s really Lila and Dad’s bedroom, but I can’t go there yet.

  The third story of the house that Lila’s parents gave her as a wedding present is just one room—like a cherry perched on top of a cupcake. Lila called it mine, but I stand in the doorway and know that she’s lied to me.

  This is not my bedroom.

  “You’re having a girl?” I ask her.

  She looks around the room and smiles. “I think so.”

  While Dad and I were finishing the school year and packing up the only home I’ve ever lived in, Lila was busy turning her old bedroom into a nursery.

  It’s painted pink. The exact shade of the Canada mints my gran likes. They taste like stomachache medicine to me. In fact, this whole room looks like one giant stomachache.

  Wallpaper lines the bottom half of the room on all four sides. It’s printed with brightly colored girl dolls holding hands. The top half of every wall has big windows and there’s a sliding-glass door. It’s like being inside a doll’s lighthouse.

  There’s a crib with lacy bedding against one wall and billowy white curtains on all of the windows.

  The pink paint and doll paper haven’t been put there for me. But there’s a twin bed against one wall with a headboard that has built-in cubbies with sliding doors. It’s made with a fluffy white comforter and two sky-blue pillows. Lila took the door off the closet and there’s a desk inside. A bulletin board hangs on the wall in front of it.

  She’s cut my name out of glittery paper and tacked the letters to the board.

  There’s a stack of Seventeen and Tiger Beat magazines sitting on top of the desk. Dad must have told her I like them. But it’s what’s sitting on the bed that makes me come deeper into the room for a closer look.

  Petals on the Wind. The next book, after Flowers in the Attic. I never got it from the library. In fact, I’ve barely read anything since the day I met Lila.

  “Do you like it?” she asks.

  I turn to look at her. “It’s so pink.”

  She beams, like I’ve complimented her. “I always wanted to paint it pink. My mother likes neutrals.”

  I look at the candy-pink walls again. Before I can think of anything to say, Lila turns and leaves me alone in the room.

  My shoebox fits perfectly in one of the cubbies at the head of the bed, behind the sliding door. My ballerina jewelry box, with my mother’s little scissors, will go on top when I unpack it.

  I feel a little weird sitting on the bed. It’s not mine. We didn’t bring any furniture. My bed is sitting in a storage unit in Denver.

  I wonder if Lila slept in this bed growing up.

  Homesickness hits me like a sucker punch. I don’t want to be here. I can’t believe that I have to live in California, in this house, with Lila and a baby.

  “Tessa!” Dad’s voice carries up two flights of stairs like it’s nothing. Acoustics, I think, and the word popping up in my head helps me pull myself together. My choir teacher from the fifth grade taught us about acoustics. This is an old house, and sounds carry up the stairs like they’re a highway for words.

  When I come down the two flights, Dad and Lila are in the kitchen. Lila is putting away the leftover road-trip snacks. Dad is staring at the open pantry like maybe she’s keeping a skeleton in that closet.

  “Are we unloading now?” I follow Dad’s gaze and stop like I’ve run into a brick wall. “Whoa.”

  There are at least fifty boxes of trash bags in the pantry. The big black kind my dad puts leaves in when he rakes the yard. And toothpaste. Dozens of red boxes of cinnamon toothpaste. Each one with a toothbrush attached to it.

  There are also gallon jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise. More than we could eat in a year.

  I look up at my dad and open my mouth. I’m not sure what I’m going to say, but it doesn’t matter. Dad shakes his head once to stop me and says, “Let’s get the truck unpacked.”

  Lila comes to help, even though she’s so pregnant now that she waddles when she walks.

  “You’ll have to share a bedroom with the baby.” Yeah. The crib and doll wallpaper gave that away. How I feel about that must show on my face, because she hurries to add, “But not for a while. A few months at least. I got a great deal on a bassinet that we can keep in our room until she outgrows it.”

  Our room makes my heart skip a beat.

  I want to ask how she knows the baby will be a girl, but it’s like my brain can’t figure out this whole stringing-words-together thing.

  Lila doesn’t seem to notice. She picks up a suitcase and just keeps chattering. “I’m so glad you guys are finally here. I was thinking that we should go to Disneyland before the baby is born. Who knows when we’ll be able to go if we wait. Have you ever been to Disneyland?”

  “No,” I say. “I haven’t.”

  I shoot Dad a look. He says, “Let me carry that.”

  “Oh, it’s not heavy.” Lila carries the suitcase toward the house.

  Dad stands, watching her go, then shakes himself. “Okay, Cookie. Let’s do this, huh?”

  We didn’t actually bring much. Before we left Denver, we had a garage sale and moved the rest of our house, including all of Mom’s things, into storage.

  A few nights before we left, I’d laid awake in my bed and eavesdropped on Dad’s half of a phone call with Lila.

  We’re just bringing clothes and books and things.

  No. No dishes.

&nbs
p; Lila, I’m definitely not bringing my bed. Just what we can fit in the truck. Everything else is going in storage.

  I know what it costs. I rented the unit.

  Honey, I don’t care if we eat off paper plates for the rest of our lives. We’ll be there at the end of the week. I just want to get there.

  He calls her Honey. I’ve heard it on other phone calls, when he doesn’t know I’m listening. The truth is that I don’t care. For all of my life, he’s only ever used two other pet names.

  I’m Cookie. My mom is Cream. It started when she was pregnant with me. He can call Lila anything he wants, as long as it isn’t Cream. Or Cookie, I suppose. But especially not Cream.

  Dad lifts my bike out of the truck bed. The front tire has gone flat.

  “We’ll fix that tomorrow.”

  “Should I put it in the garage?”

  Dad looks toward the garage that he’s seeing for the first time, same as me. “I think so.”

  “Wait!” Lila says at the same time. When we turn to look at her, she bites at her bottom lip. “It’s okay. We’ll make some room.”

  The pantry was weird. The garage, though. Wow. Lila removes a huge padlock, and when Dad lifts the door over his head, I don’t even know what to say. Or think.

  There is a wall of disposable diapers on one side. Dozens of packages in all sizes. And another wall of paper towels along the back. And another of toilet paper on the other side. And in the middle, filling the whole garage, there are industrial-looking metal shelves lined with cold cereal and baby food and boxes of macaroni and cheese. I see mouthwash and a whole row of shampoo.

  It’s like some kind of grocery store. In a garage. There is nowhere for my bike. Or any of the things I kept in the garage at home. My pop-up soccer goal. My sled. My skis. Or Dad’s tools. Or Mom’s box of nursing textbooks.

  I wonder if this is why we left it all in storage in Denver.

  “Here.” Lila uses her hip to shove a stack of cases of applesauce farther down a row between two shelving units. “You can park it here.”