Henry’s truck pulled into the gravel driveway of his home—my temporary place of residence. I was quick to note the two other cars in the driveway, a newer-looking nice black Nissan Altima and an older blue Ford Focus.
The house was huge compared to the two-bedroom apartment I’d lived in all of my life. The front bushes were perfectly trimmed and an American flag waved back and forth in the light breeze.
I kid you not—there was a white picket fence. A white picket fence!
There were three windows on the second level of the house, and in one of them, I saw a guy with headphones, peeking through his curtains. When our eyes locked, he disappeared in haste.
Ohmygosh. Henry really did live with other people. As he climbed out of the truck, I slid across the driver’s seat and stepped out. Before I could smooth out my coat, a woman—Rebecca, I assumed—was standing in front of me. Hugging me.
Why in the hell was this stranger touching me?
“Oh, Ashlyn! We’re so glad you’re here!” She squeezed me as my arms stayed glued to my sides. “God is good, bringing you to us. This is heaven-sent, I just know it.”
I blinked once and took a step back from her. “Heaven killed my sister so I could come stay with my estranged father’s family?”
A painful silence appeared, up until Henry snickered with uncomfortable laughter—which led to Rebecca’s chuckling uneasily.
“Here, honey. Let me grab your bags.” Rebecca moved to the back of the truck and Henry followed after her. They began to speak softly to one another as if I weren’t standing two inches away. “Where’s her luggage, Henry?” she whispered in a heightened sigh.
“This is all she has.”
“One bag? That’s it? Lord, I can only imagine her life in Chicago. We’ll have to get her some things.”
I listened but didn’t react to their words. Strangers. That’s all that the people behind the truck were to me. So for them to judge and try to figure out the life I spent in the past with my mom and Gabby only made their ignorance that much clearer.
Henry walked back toward me, my suitcase in his hand, and Rebecca followed close behind.
“Come on, Ashlyn. Let me show you around inside.”
Stepping into the foyer, I was shocked when I saw a huge framed portrait of their nice little family hanging against the wall. There was a brunette girl, who was a spitting image of Rebecca, blue doe eyes and all.
She looked to be my age but much more uptight based on her sweater-vest and past-the-knees skirt. Beside Henry was the boy I saw staring out the window. There was a forced smile on his mouth and a weird look of confusion in his eyes.
Henry noticed that I was studying the photo, and I watched a lump form in his throat. His mouth opened, but he shut it quickly when words didn’t come to mind.
“You have a lovely family, Henry,” I said dryly, moving on to the living room. The brunette girl from the photograph was sitting on the oversized, fluffy-looking chair reading a book.
She stood from her chair when she heard us enter, and a big, warming smile was sent my way. “Hi. You must be Ashlyn. I’m Hailey. We’ve heard so much about you.” She seemed genuine in her welcome, but I knew I couldn’t return the smile.
“Yeah? I wish I could say the same.”
She didn’t flinch from my rude comment yet kept smiling.
Rebecca moved behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. I really wished she would stop touching me. “Hailey, can you show Ashlyn to your bedroom?”
“We’re sharing a room?” I asked, hating the idea because I was in dire need of my own space.
“Yeah. I hope that’s all right. Don’t worry. I’m not a slob.” Hailey grinned and grabbed my suitcase from Henry. I reached for it, telling her that I could handle it, nut she refused. “It’s fine. Trust me. We’ll probably hate each other soon enough, so we might as well be nice for the time being,” she joked.
Her room was pink. Like, very pink. Four pink walls, pink comforters, pink curtains. There was a bookshelf with trophies and ribbons of all kinds. Horseback riding, soccer, spelling bees. It was clear that Hailey and I had grown up in very different lifestyles.
Could you imagine? A bookshelf with not a single book.
“I cleared out the two top drawers for you and the right side of the closet.” Hailey hopped on her bed, which was directly across from mine. I sat down too, running my hands over what appeared to be a homemade blanket. “So Dad said you’re from Chicago?” she asked.
I cringed at her word choice. “You call Henry dad?”
She cringed right back at me. “You call dad Henry?”
This was all getting to be too much. I wanted to ask her questions about how long she had lived with Henry, about how long she’d called him dad, but I didn’t want to know the answers.
After reaching for my suitcase, I pulled it onto my mattress and crossed my legs. Unzipping it, I sighed as the scent of Gabby’s favorite perfume floated out from inside.
As I dug through the suitcase, I pulled out all of Gabby’s favorite dresses and her favorite comfy clothes. Her CD collection came out next, and I stared at her favorite tunes, which we would blast through the living room on Sunday mornings while eating Cap’n Crunch and marshmallows.
“You two were close?” Hailey asked. Then she rolled her eyes at her question. “That’s a stupid question. Sorry. I mean—sorry for your loss.”
I glanced around at Hailey’s photos on the wall and saw more family photos and pictures of her friends—well, one friend—and a guy with his arms wrapped around her waist.
“That’s Theo, my boyfriend. Well, kind of. We are taking the remainder of summer break to meditate and figure out what it is we want from our relationship. Then when school starts, we’re going to see if our spirits vibe with one another still.”
The blank stare I delivered her way made her chuckle.
“Theo studies Buddhism, and I’ve learned a bit about it. Some of our most powerful interactions consisted of doing yoga together, releasing all the negative energy from our bodies.”
My mom had been very big into yoga for a weekend. She hadn’t stuck with it, but she had said that she’d felt more like herself during that time than she ever had. I didn’t know what to say to Hailey because she was kind of weird. Not weird like me, but weird like her.
I was convinced that everyone in the world had a form a weirdness to them. And the cool thing, at least I hoped so, was the idea that there was someone out there just as quirky as you were. The idea of finding your other weirdo was so attractive to me.
I was still looking for that.
“He wants me to have sex with him,” Hailey blurted out, and I could feel my face redden. Ohmygosh! She continued. “I’m waiting. Kind of why we’re on our break.”
I didn’t know what to say to her because her comment was pretty personal and I didn’t even know her last name. Were all people in Edgewood, Wisconsin, as forward as Hailey? Did girls just talk about their sexual encounters and stuff like it wasn’t kind of private?
I fell onto my bed. On the ceiling was a painted mural of a sky with clouds and birds. Hailey lay down on her bed and stared up, too. “Theo helped me with it. He said it helps balance my energy and brings peace into my personal space.”
“Hailey, no offense…but you’re really odd for someone who’s so pretty.”
“I know, but I think that’s where I get my spunk.”
I thought she was right. Being pretty and a snob was so cliché, but being a pretty oddball? Now that was something worth noticing.
The guy who had been staring at me from the window earlier stepped into the room and his head turned directly to Hailey. “Can I use your car?”
“Where are you going?” Hailey asked, her…younger brother? He seemed younger. Not by much.
“Out.”
She reached for her hairbrush on her side table and began running it through her long locks of hair. “Ryan, did you meet Ashlyn?”
Ryan gazed over to me with such a dull look that it would had been insulting if I hadn’t been returning the same bored expression his way. He sighed heavily, turning back to his sister. “Keys, Hails.”
“Did Dad say you could go?”
Ryan pulled out a cardboard box from his jeans pockets, opened it up, and pulled out an invisible cigarette, which he invisibly lit. Great. I was living with the crazy kids.
“He’s not our dad, Hailey. Christ! He’s her father.” Ryan’s hand gestured toward me.
“Could have fooled me,” I muttered, unpacking the rest of the things in my bag.
Ryan turned toward me, this time with a look of pleasure on his lips. He blinked and his stare went back to Hailey. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“No.”
“Ugh. You’re ruining my life.” He walked over to her and flopped down on her bed.
“Oh, grow up, Ryan.” Hailey continued brushing her hair and looked up to me. “Don’t mind him. He’s in this weird, stoner, ‘I hate the world’ phase of his teen years.”
Well, at least I could relate to one of the people in this household. Minus the stoner part.
“Don’t listen to her. She’s in this weird, hippie, ‘I love the world’ phase of her teen years.” Ryan smirked, sitting up. “I’m Ryan Turner.”
“Ashlyn.”
“Cool name.”
“My mom liked the names Gabrielle, Ashley, and Lynn and couldn’t choose. So Gabby became Gabrielle and I became Ashlyn.” I looked at the two sitting across from me and narrowed my eyes. “Who’s older?”
“Me,” Hailey smiled.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “By emotional age, maybe. By physical age? I take the crown.”
“I’m a junior. He’s a senior. We’re Irish twins. Nine months apart.” Hailey laughed, shoving her ‘emotional little’ brother in the shoulder.
“Why don’t you have a car, Ryan?”
“Because my mom hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Hailey argued.
He gave her a sarcastic look, and Hailey frowned as if Ryan were telling the truth. He shrugged. “You’re really not going to let me use your car?”
“Nope.”
“But…I haven’t seen”—Ryan paused and glanced my way—“you-know-who in days.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Who’s ‘you-know-who’?”
Ryan and Hailey exchanged looks, having a complete in-depth conversation with their eyes and a few hand motions. I watched the Irish twins silently interact with one another and felt as if I were watching a Charlie Chaplin movie.
It was a reminder of how Gabby and I used to communicate without words, only with looks. I wondered if Ryan and Hailey knew how lucky they were to be so close. I also wondered if they knew how cursed they were.
Ryan tossed his hands up in the air in frustration at his sister and stood up. “I’m going to bed,” he said, ignoring my question. “Nice meeting you, Ashlyn.”
“You too.” And he was gone. I gave Hailey a confused look.
She shrugged. “He’s very selective with who he shares details with.” She paused. “He has a lot going on in his life.”
“It’s kind of nice to know that your family isn’t as perfect as your portrait,” I said, pulling my messy bun down just to toss it up into a messier bun on top of my head.
“No family’s perfect.”
I opened my mouth and paused when Henry poked his head into the bedroom. Perfect timing. “You kids all right?”
Hailey nodded. “Yup. Just getting ready for bed.”
He smirked and turned my way. “There’s pizza in the fridge if you’re hungry, Ashlyn. And if you need anything else—”
“I won’t,” I quickly yapped to get him to leave.
The wrinkles in his forehead deepened as he rubbed his hands against his brows. “Okay. Goodnight.”
He left the room, and Hailey let out a long whistle. “You two are the spokespeople for awkward interactions.”
“Is it weird with him being the assistant principal at the high school? I mean, I hardly saw him all my life, and now I’m living with him and he’s going to be in school with me, too. That’s pretty much twenty-four hours of seeing him. It’s like Henry overload.”
“He’s not as bad as you think, once you get to know him. Just give him a chance.”
Once I get to know him?
The stranger was giving me advice on my biological father.
What was wrong with that picture?