100 Days of Cake (19 page)

“Thanks.” V looks up and smiles; flattery will get you everywhere with that girl. “I work at this boutique on Marigold Drive, and they have some cool stuff.” She twists the wood bracelet around her wrist. “I was actually the one who ordered it for the store. Jaclyn—the owner—knows that I want to get in to fashion merchandising, so she's started letting me help with stuff like that.”

“Really?” Mom asks. This is totally news to me, too. Since when does V want to go into fashion merchandising? What
is
fashion merchandising? And V is fifteen. Even Mrs. Peck would tell her that she doesn't have to worry about “extracurrics” until junior year.

“Yeah, Jaclyn says I have my finger on the pulse of today's youth or something.”

“Well, that's just wonderful.” Mom smiles. I don't think she and V have been on great terms since V got grounded. “Why didn't you say something earlier?”

V gives her famous eye roll and mumbles something about how she tried.

“I'll have to start coming by the store more often,” Mom says.

“Actually, the anniversary of the day I met my fiancée is coming up,” says Dr. B. “Maybe I can come by and have you help me pick out a present for her?”

I wonder if he's just being nice. Let me rephrase that. I sincerely hope he's just being nice. I know it's probably mean and petty and all, but it's still driving me nuts that V apparently hangs out with Alex; I'm not sure I could handle her being all buddy-buddy with Dr. B., too.

“Sure.” V nods. “If you tell me what she likes and bring in a picture, I can totally help you find something.”

“Perfect.”

“How did you meet your fiancée?” Mom asks. “I always love to hear about that when the brides come into the salon to get their hair done.”

“It's kind of a cute story, really. Whitney and I were in the same line at the DMV, and we just struck up a conversation.” When Dr. B. talks about her, his face just kind of brightens, and it's almost like he's a whole different person.

“Oh, that is so sweet,” Mom gushes.

“On our third date I finally admitted that the other line had been significantly shorter, but I was willing to spend extra time at the DMV if it meant I got to meet her.”

“Aww.” Now even V is charmed.

Their story is romance-novel perfect. None of this awkward high school stuff; no gal disappointing a guy by being different than he thought she would be.

Dr. B. talks a little about how it's hard with Whitney gone during the week but adds, “I'm really proud of her. She had her first big investigative report on this week, and it went really well. They're thinking of giving her a regular feature.”

All at once I'm struck by the
need
to save FishTopia. Not just for Alex and the fish, but so Dr. B. can be proud of me, too.

The rest of dinner goes on, and I start to get that floating feeling that I'm not really there but hovering over everyone. What a nice group. The mom who's still hot enough to rock her kids' clothes, two teen girls (one of them a knockout, the other okay), their polite houseguest. Everyone following the correct table manners.

“You know, Mrs. Byrne, it is absolutely remarkable how much you look like your daughters in that picture.” Dr. B. points to the portrait over the table, and Mom blushes and thanks him.

Turning to me, he asks, “Is that from the dollhouse your father made you?”

“Wha?”

“The doll in the picture.” He nods up at the little figure
I'm holding, which had been just one of the photographer's props to get a little girl to smile.

Mom cocks her head, and V rolls her eyes so hard, it's got to hurt.

“Oh . . . I . . .” There's absolutely nowhere good for me to take this sentence.

“That so never happened,” V says incredulously. “We have a whole room upstairs of all the toys our parents coulda/woulda/shoulda given us. Dad
never
gave us anything good.”

“I . . .” Dr. B. looks at me.

“Whatever. Are we done playing family time? I've got stuff to do.” V pushes back from the table and storms off.

“You're still grounded.” Mom is on her feet, like she might go after her.

“Fine. I've got stuff to do in my room,” V calls as she hurries up the stairs.

All perfect and calm, Mom turns to Dr. B. again. “I'm sorry about that. Teenagers can be . . . difficult.”

“No, Mrs. Byrne, I'm the one who should be apologizing,” says Dr. B. “Molly's sessions are confidential, so it was wrong of me to ask in the first place.”

Neither one of them really has anything to apologize for. I'm probably the one who should say I'm sorry. But I can't even look at them.

Everyone is really quiet until Dr. B. finally invents
some early-morning appointment and thanks my mom for the delicious meal but says he should probably be going. Mom doesn't even try to make him take a piece of Rainbow Ribbon Cake.

Later that night, Mom knocks on the door when I'm drawing a picture of Pickles on my phone with some dumb painting app.

“Come in.”

“Sweetie.” Sitting on the edge of the sleigh bed, she takes the phone out of my hand so I have to look at her. “I'm sorry I blindsided you by inviting Dr. Brooks over,” she says, brushing my mouse-poop hair off my forehead.

“It's fine.”

“He's very nice.” She hesitates briefly. “But do you honestly think that he's helping you?”

“
Yes
, Mom.” Unbelievable. She's the one who insisted I go see Dr. Brooks in the first place! Now V makes one stupid comment, and Mom is convinced that he's the worst shrink since Hannibal Lecter. “Don't I seem, like, a million times better than before?”

“Well, you have seemed pretty happy this last week or so.”

“See, there you go.”

She looks like she wants to say a whole lot more, but eventually she just sighs and nods, then asks, “Want a piece of cake?”

I
'm still so completely, utterly mortified by dinner the other night that I don't even want to go to my appointment. But since I gave Mom the bad baby routine about how much Dr. B. is helping me, attendance seems mandatory.

My stomach is all bunchy, and I'm crushing the Admissions Ace! stress ball in my hand when I hesitantly walk into his office.

From behind his desk Dr. B.'s lips are pressed into a closed-mouth expression somewhere between disappointed and doting—the kind of look you give a sweet puppy that took a dump on your ten-thousand-dollar imported rug.

“So it seems you might have been misleading me about a few things,” he says as I take a seat on the couch.

“I'm so sorry.” If the stress ball in my hand were a lump of coal, it would be a diamond by now.

“What's up with that?”

“I don't know,” I say, but Dr. B. is looking at me for more of an answer.

“I want you to think about it, Molly.” He's back to that serious shrink tone he had during our first few months, before the music and the movies. “Why do you think you would make up memories about your father?”

I shrug. There are spiderwebs in the air-conditioning vent in the floor; I'm staring it at intently enough to notice. “I guess I just don't remember much about him at all . . .”

“And you feel bad about that?”

“Yeah. It's like, just because I don't know that we always ate grilled cheese on Wednesdays or whatever doesn't mean I don't miss him.”

“Of course not,” Dr. B. says, and explains that a lot of times people miss an absent parent, even if they never met that person. “It can be a huge void that takes years to get over.”

“I wonder how stuff might be different if he were still around. Like, maybe it would have helped balance things out at home with Mom.”

“This is all very normal, Molly.” Dr. B. nods. “And this is the kind of stuff that you can feel safe discussing here—without worrying about hurting your mom's feelings or anything like that. But I'm still not quite sure why you would make stuff up for me.”

Another me apology.

“For therapy to be effective, you really have to be brutally honest with me and with yourself.”

“I guess you just kept asking questions about my parents, and you seemed to really like it when I talked about my dad. And I wanted you to like me.”

“So you were telling me things that you thought I wanted to hear?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you have to stop doing that, Molly Byrne.” He smiles. “And don't worry. Nothing you can tell me will make me not like you.”

“For serious?”

“Of course.”

The muscles in my stomach loosen, and I stop my assault on the stress ball.

“So nothing but honesty from now on,” he continues. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

He asks about V and our relationship, saying that she seems to “have a lot of pent-up anger” directed at me.

“I got her grounded a few weeks ago, and she's mad about that,” I say. “I think I did it sort of on purpose, too.”

“Let's talk about that, shall we?” he asks.

And almost everything I tell him is true.

W
e are getting completely desperate!

It's been two weeks since I vowed to save FishTopia, and we're nowhere near making enough money to show Charlie that this place is viable.

Alex and Elle and I are outside the store trying to flag down customers again, but by now people have lost all interest. They've all already seen Alex in his fish getup, and it's yesterday's news. In fact, I'm pretty sure people have started actively going out of their way to avoid us now.

A kind-faced elderly woman with a walker approaches the store, and Alex waves a friendly flipper toward her.

“Get a real job, you bum,” she spits as she turns and roll/walks away.

Closing my eyes, I try one of Dr. B.'s calming exercises.

A flipper on my shoulder: Alex.

“Maybe it's time we grab some Wang's and regroup inside,” he says, and I realize I haven't had anything to eat since leftover cake for breakfast.

Elle nods. “It's about time I try this legendary lo mein you two are always going on about.”

“Yeah, we should check on Jimmy anyway,” I say.

Elle's brother had been so complainy about the heat that we said he could go inside and luxuriate in all the fans. That was about an hour ago, plenty of time for him to have permanently traumatized the fish.

As I'm pulling open the door to Wang's, I notice a giant stash of about fifty of our flyers (on colored paper!) in the outside garbage can, just as Elle predicted. To her credit she says nothing about it and only gives me the slightest side-eye.