Don't Expect Magic (2 page)

Across the room, near a bolted row of hard plastic chairs, my pink princess seatmate is sitting on a flowery suitcase and reading her book with her mother. Suddenly the girl throws her arms up and squeals, “Daddy!” A man in a long tan coat strides toward her, scoops her up and twirls her
around as she shrieks with glee. He’s a father from a TV commercial: tall, loving and perfect. He leans over to kiss the mother, and then they all hug. Nauseating.

They pass me on their way to the exit and the little girl waves her wand at me. “I’m giving you a happily-ever-after,” she says.

“Thanks, but it’ll take more than a chopstick to fix
my
life.”

She smiles and moves on, waving the wand at everyone in sight, spreading her imaginary pixie dust all around. I’m relieved when the automatic doors slide shut behind her and her sickening fairy-tale family.

Then I see him. He’s at the next carousel. Wearing khakis, a sport coat and a tie, looking stiff and official. I almost expect him to hold up one of those cardboard signs with my name handwritten on it in big block letters. He’s shorter than I remember, or I guess I’m taller. He’s got a worried expression on his face, and I feel a twinge of something, because the last time I saw him in person I actually
wanted
to. But that’s not how I feel now. It’s just an automatic reaction, and I immediately will myself to emotionally flatline.

I watch as he gazes around the baggage area, searching. A few people turn and whisper to each other when they see him. One man goes over to him and shakes his hand, and a woman asks him to sign her boarding pass. Unbelievable.

Julie appears at his side and pulls him protectively
away from the mini-crowd. She waves vaguely in my direction and then she launches into her own tale of how he saved her life. I can’t hear her, but I recognize the adoring, awed look on her face. As she talks, his glance passes over me, once, twice. I glare at him to help out. His eyes catch mine for a second and quickly shift away—then he slowly turns back. I fold my arms, and finally, he gets it.

After he extricates himself from Julie, he heads my way. He plasters a big smile on his face, exactly like the one that grins out from all of his book jackets. “Delaney …?” he says, his smile twitching a little. It makes me want to scream,
“Who else could I be?!”
but the flight was long and it’s late, and I’m too drained right now to summon up the energy.

So I just say, “Hello, Hank.” His smile flickers again, then dims, but I don’t know why—I haven’t called him Dad since I was eleven, and if he thinks I’m going to start now, he’s as certifiable as the people who buy his books.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he says, in that fake upbeat tone people use when they’re being careful not to insult you directly so you can’t call them on it.

“A lot has changed since you last saw me,” I reply. “About
four years ago
.”

“I’m really sorry about your mom, Delaney.” If I didn’t know the pretend-caring thing was part of the whole “Dr. Hank” act, I’d almost believe he was really sad for me. “If I’d had any idea what was going on, I would’ve come out to help. Why didn’t she tell me?”

I shrug. Mom had gotten sick so fast, she didn’t have time to make
any
plans. It was like one day she was still the nurse, and then it was
her
in the bed, trapped in the same hospital where she got the infection in the first place. It was up to me to take care of things, and I did it all. Except call Hank.

I told Mom that I’d left messages and that I was sure he’d be on his way soon. But it was a lie. I didn’t want him there. Who needed him pacing back and forth and pounding his fist and telling Mom to “think positive” and “be the driver, not the passenger”? I figured he didn’t really need to know anyway, because Mom was going to get better, and then it wouldn’t matter whether I’d called him or not.

He looks at me as if I’m about to burst into tears or something, and he starts to raise his arms, like we’re going to hug. I stare at him with my hostile manga face and he gives up that idea pretty quick. He pats my shoulders instead, but I slither away and drop the strap of my gym bag into one of his outstretched hands. Then I sling on my backpack and wheel my suitcase off toward the exit.

“Uh, I’m actually parked the other way,” he says.

I don’t answer. I just spin around and march off in the opposite direction. He doesn’t say anything else, so I assume I’m going the right way now and that he’s following behind me, where he belongs.

You might’ve seen my dad on TV if your parents insist on watching those morning talk shows. He calls himself a life coach, which means people pay him to boss them around. He’s also written about a million books with idiotic names like
Fate Is for Fakers
and
Luck Is for Losers
and
How to Stop Whining and Start Living
.

He’s on all the covers, usually standing with his foot up on a chair, elbow on his knee, chin resting on his fist. I guess this is his idea of a “can-do” pose or something. Whenever I see it, I want to walk into the photo and kick the chair out from under him.

Mom used to say it wasn’t healthy for me to be so
hostile, even if he deserved it, but I think hostility can be good for you. It’s like a shot of caffeine. It keeps you sharp. I’m going to need that edge to survive in Sunny Vale, or Happy Valley, or Vomit Del Mar, or whatever the name is of this brainwashed, brain-dead, Stepford Wives town.

Once we get off the freeway, the streets blur past Hank’s car window in a video loop of flat square houses with flat square yards, lit by identical streetlights. SUVs sit in every driveway; only their colors are different: black, gray, white, repeat. It’s like a toy town. Or a model for a zombie film.

I lean my head out the window. There’s even a sweet, perfumey, too-perfect-to-be-real smell to the air. “Night-blooming jasmine,” Hank says in a bragging voice, like he personally planted it all.

“I think I might be allergic,” I say. I hit the button on the door and the window hums closed. This is a mistake, because now the awkward silence is trapped inside with us and it sucks out all of the oxygen until I feel like I’m suffocating.

“Are you hungry?” Hank asks, his words strained, like he’s finding it hard to breathe too. “Would you like to stop for pizza or something?”

“I just want to go to bed.” Actually, I’m starving, even though I ate a whole can of potato chips on the plane, along with a cheese-and-cracker plate and a giant walnut cookie. But I’m not in the mood to relive the pizza dinners of the past, where I’d sit across from Hank for the two hours he’d
managed to excavate from his book tour appointments and be forced to listen to his coma-inducing speeches about believing in my potential and striving to be self-reliant. As our time ran out, he’d watch me finish off my vanilla ice cream with this queasy, sad look on his face, like I was a puppy he thought was really cute but was allergic to—and like although he felt sorry about having to give me away, he’d rather abandon me than get allergy shots.

But now—ha!—he
has
to take the puppy, and too bad about those allergies.

“Okay,” he says brightly. “Home it is!” Home. That’s a joke.

A few minutes later, we pull into the driveway of one of the zombie houses. I guess he’s able to tell it apart from the others because the outside plants are especially pitiful. A couple of spindly bushes bracket the door like two tumbleweeds, and a few leafless vines cling to the brick above the front window. A moon-sized overhead bulb casts a harsh light on the concrete stoop.

Inside is just as ugh. Lots of beige and brown, and no style. It’s all catalog clean and slick and expensive-looking, but it’s too dust-free, untouched, unlived-in. I can feel my artistic spirit being sucked right out of me. I cannot, will not, stay here.

It gets worse. Hank leads me down a dim hall to a back bedroom and sets down my suitcase. When he flicks on the light and I see what’s inside, I nearly scream. Everything is pink or purple, and there’s lace all over the place. Dolls
gape at me from the bed. Music boxes and Disney figurines cram the shelves. There’s even a canopy bed. Horrifying.

“It’s like Cinderella exploded,” I say.

Hank gives me a little smile, like we’re sharing a joke. “Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That I was still six years old? I’m
fifteen
.”

“I know—”

“And you’ve
seen
me since I was six. But I guess you never saw my room, did you? Because you never came inside. You were one of those drive-by dads.”

Hank cocks his head and studies me. Uh-oh, he’s going into Dr. Hank mode. He squints, like he’s peering deep into my troubled soul. His lips press together as they await the most piercing, insightful group of sentences
ever
to formulate and then be released to do their magic.

He sits down on the frilly princess bed and pats the spot next to him. I toss my soda-stained backpack at the spot, and he yanks his hand away before it crushes his fingers. He sets the backpack on the floor and then frowns down at his now-sticky hand.

“Delaney, I know you’ve had a tough few months—”

“Four months, two weeks, three days”—I glance at the enchanted-frog-prince alarm clock—“and sixteen minutes.”

Hank takes in a breath and nods, pretending he feels my pain, which is so not remotely possible. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But you’re responsible for that, you know. Telling Posh’s parents that I said I didn’t want you,
even though I had no idea what was going on. I really didn’t enjoy having Posh’s mother spend an hour on the phone yelling at me, by the way.”

“So sorry.” I still don’t understand why Posh’s mom couldn’t have just believed me, instead of calling Hank behind my back.

“And then refusing to wait for me to fly out and get you.” Like I’d want to spend five hours on an airplane stuck next to him.

“I agreed to come, didn’t I?”

“You had no choice, Delaney. You’re my daughter. You’re my legal responsibility.” More likely he was worried about what would happen when word got out that the great Dr. Hank had abandoned his motherless offspring. Tabloid headlines. Thousands of copies of his books, shredded. Can’t have that happen. Better to take in the semi-orphan, even if you dread it.

“Whatever.”

Hank bites his lip and I can tell he’s getting pissed off. He clenches his hands a little, like he’s trying to keep the rage from leaking out. “It makes sense that you want to take your anger out on me, because I’m the closest target—”

“I’m not taking anything out on you,” I tell him calmly. “I feel the same way about you now that I’ve felt about you for a
loooong
time.”

This throws him for a second. He seems to be mentally flipping through his catalog of appropriate Dr. Hank–isms, when his cell phone rings. He scowls down at the number
but answers anyway. “Andrea, this is not a good— No, Andrea, listen to me. It’s time that you— Yes, I know.… No.…
Andrea
 … I’m going to have to call you back.”

He hangs up. “Client,” he says to me, like I care. I fold my arms, waiting. “Well … it’s getting late.” He claps his hands on his thighs and stands up. “Luckily, we have plenty of time ahead of us to talk about everything.”

No, we don’t
, I think, but I don’t say it. Posh’s mom wanted me to “give Hank a chance,” so part of that act is not letting on that every minute is a countdown till enough time has passed to make it look like I tried.

We stand like that for a second, me at the door and him at the bed, in the opposite places from where we’re each supposed to be. He takes a halting step, like he’s afraid I might charge him. I don’t, though, and I don’t block him. Instead I move aside and notice his little twinge of relief as I glide past him to the bed.

“If you need anything, let me know.” He waits at the door, one hand on the frame, keeping him in place despite the hostile air pushing him out.

“Nope. I’m good.”

Hank winces as I sit and swing my boots onto the brand-new pastel pink bedspread, then lift my sticky backpack up beside me. I plug in my black panther-shaped docking station and crank up the iPod. I wait for Hank to tell me to turn it down. I need my music or I could truly have a mental breakdown, and that’s what I’ll say if he gives me any flak.

But when I glance over to the door, Hank’s already gone, and the door is closed. No goodnight or anything. He’s just gone. Blown me off as usual. Not that I expected anything else.

Wait till I tell Posh. I find my phone and send her a text. It’s one in the morning back in New Jersey, but she’ll still be awake, scouring the net for reports on new quasars or reading a book on rare marsupials and using her lime-green highlighter to mark the passages she wants to read later.

Posh Slikowski and I are best friends by default. We met in detention. Posh has “behavioral issues,” while I’m just a smart-ass, according to most of my teachers. Posh was in a special ed class for a while, which was pretty perverted considering she has the highest GPA in the school. Her parents sued the district and now she has an aide who follows her around from class to class and tries to get her to stop talking, but good luck.

While I wait for her to call, I go back to working on my new boot design. I tap my pencil against the page, hoping for inspiration. I’m not going to find it in this room, though, unless I want to make a pair of pink sequined boots with blond princesses etched into the sides. My sparkly wand-wielding seatmate from the plane might like them, and she’d love this room, but I feel like I’ve been trapped in Oz.

I could’ve let Posh’s parents ship out some of my stuff, but I’m not staying, so I’d only have to ship it back again. It’s all in a storage locker somewhere with Mom’s things
and the furniture from our apartment and … I don’t like thinking about it.

I turn up the volume on the iPod so the bed is practically vibrating. A few seconds later, there’s a knock. Ha. I knew it. I knew he’d be back to lecture me.

“Delaney?”

I turn down the music, a little. “Yessss?” I say sweetly.