Drive Me Crazy (8 page)

“I—”

“Miss Mack, other children need to get home too,” our bus driver called.

“I’m coming.” But Kendra Mack turned back to me first. “Maybe you’re actually growing up and she’s holding you back, right?”

I couldn’t say anything. That Kendra Mack was being slightly nice to me—that she even knew who I was—was
enough of a shock. The rest of it was even harder to attach thoughts to.

That night I avoided Fiona’s texts and attempts to chat, and the next day I still didn’t know how to feel. I was mad at Fiona for what she’d said about me and couldn’t help wondering what other bad things she had written. What else did Kendra Mack know, instead of me? Still, I knew I’d wronged Fiona by not standing up for her. Fiona was the kind of friend who patiently listened until you’d gotten everything out, even the things you hadn’t known you’d felt until you started saying them, so I knew even though I was mad—and she might be too—talking it through was the best thing to do.

By lunch I was brave enough to face her. I was heading for the table where we usually sat, relieved to see her waiting for me, when Kendra Mack hollered, “Hey, Cassie Parker, where you headed?” like I’d been sitting with her group all year long. I paused for just a step before turning my back on the table, and my best friend.

“And now for our assembly,” Brick Hasselback says, wielding a serrated knife. Up on the screen, there’s an overhead view of his hands as he slices a cupcake in half. He smears one side with raspberry jelly. He places the other half gently over it and uses a mini ice cream scoop to mound the chocolate-flaked icing on top.

“And there you have it,” he says as the screens above fill with a close-up of the finished cupcake. “Of course, don’t be afraid if it makes a bit of a mess.” He holds up a jelly-coated finger and smiles that smile again. More ladies around us squeal and titter.

I help Lana cut the cupcakes in half while Nono’s on jelly duty and Howie scoops the icing. We get a rhythm going, the four of us, though it is indeed a bit of a mess.

Not as big a mess as me and Fiona. We haven’t talked since. She never even tried to call. It’s as though when I walked away from our table, I walked right off Fiona’s planet. I only found out she’d gotten her journal back when Izzy Gathing said something about it a couple of days later at lunch. I guess I was glad, but mostly there was that hot, confusing ball of shame and anger inside me that I didn’t know what to do with. So I buried it down and spent the rest of the school year trying to keep up with Kendra Mack and the rest of my new friends.

I’ve still kept my crush on Cory Baxter, of course, but after listening to Cheyenne Taylor and Neftali Manji talk incessantly about the boys they like—and hearing how Kendra Mack and Izzy Gathing shoot them down—I’m still unsure about revealing who Lagoon really is. Thanks to stupid Fiona, though, Kendra Mack won’t let up with the Loverboy stuff, and it’s getting a lot harder to hide the
truth from her. Being away from everyone this week only makes it worse. When I’m home, I can at least let their conversations take over. I only have to laugh at the right time, be in the right place, or say the right thing in response to someone else. Away from them all it’s more of a challenge.

“Now, these aren’t the kind of cupcakes you can build an Eiffel Tower with,” Brick Hasselback says, holding one up, “but it’s how I got my start, and I wanted to share it with all of you. So dig in and enjoy your hard work, and I’ll get to signing in a moment.” He grins again before taking a big bite.

The lights go up, and Nono wipes her hands on her apron to give us all high fives. Howie offers the first cupcakes to me and Lana, and she raises hers, smiling.

“Let’s have a toast,” she says.

I lift mine along with Nono and Howie, trying not to get my fingers in the sticky jelly leaking from the sides.

“To . . . ,” Lana starts, but a strange expression crosses her face, like she doesn’t know what to say. She looks up at Howie.

“To accomplishing something delicious together,” he says.

We clink our cupcakes and take bites. Even though thinking about Fiona fills me with nothing but bitterness, I have to admit they are delicious.

Chapter Thirteen
Lana

H
aving so much fun at the baking class with Cassie, Grandma Tess, and Grandpa Howe helps my worry about Mom take the back burner for a while. The cupcakes were amazing, Brick Hasselback was so charming, and Grandma Tess’s excitement was even bigger than mine and Grandpa Howe’s put together. Even Cassie got into it, making sure we had plenty of chocolate flake in that icing, which is why I’m a little surprised she’s so quiet in the car. She still hasn’t uttered a word since we’ve checked into the Visalia hotel and gone up to our room to change for dinner.

“It would’ve been fun if we’d been able to build a crazy cupcake tower,” I say, wondering if that’s what she’s
disappointed about, since Brick Hasselback is so famous for it. Maybe plain cupcakes weren’t quite cool enough.

“Mmm.” She nods faintly. “You mind if I wash up?”

“Go ahead.”

I have no idea what’s bothering her, but it’s strangely still in the room when she closes the bathroom door. I try to turn my attention to getting ready for dinner, reminding myself that tonight’s restaurant is going to be even better than cupcakes. Broadway! has themed dining wings, each decorated around a different Broadway musical. The servers dress up in costumes and sing songs from your show, and even the menu matches. Cassie and I really haven’t talked a lot about movies or music or anything, so I don’t know exactly how into musicals she is, but I absolutely love them. Teaching Grandma Tess all my favorite songs has been so fun, I’m hoping it’ll be the same with Cassie.

“Grandma Tess and I want to get seated in
Wicked
,” I try again with Cassie when she comes back out.

She doesn’t look at me but at her shoes instead, like she’s trying to decide if she wants to change them. “Is that right?” she says. I can’t help but notice the tense sound in her voice.

The way she’s acting makes me think about our fight before, and how she was mad without me knowing it. “Cassie, did I do anything wrong?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I’m not sure what I mean, either. “You just seem sort of quiet, and I was wondering if you needed to tell me anything.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She tucks her afternoon outfit into her dirty clothes bag. “It’s almost time to go, anyway.”

I’m a little relieved, because whatever’s upsetting her, it doesn’t seem like it’s me this time. But I also understand about not wanting to talk about things better than she thinks I might. In my experience, feeling that way is more about thinking you don’t have anyone around to really listen, and I don’t want Cassie to believe that about me.

“I just mean that if there’s something that’s bothering you, you can talk to me about it and I won’t say anything to anyone else. You don’t know this about me yet, but I’m very good at keeping secrets. In fact, Rule Number Six is one that pretty much goes without saying, and that is that Anything You Tell Me Is a Secret, Unless You Say Otherwise.”

“What do you know about secrets?” she mutters, so quiet I almost don’t hear her.

Suddenly the room is charged with an energy that makes my scalp and eyes prickle. I know a lot about secrets, actually. First there’s the secret my parents and grandparents
seem to be keeping about exactly how sick my mom is, but there’s also the one I’ve been keeping from them: how scared and sad I am about it all. Maybe, I think, Cassie already knows about my mom, if Grandma Tess told her parents. Maybe she’s been waiting for me to bring it up this whole time.

“I know better than you think I do,” I tell her.

Our eyes meet, and for a second, the secrets rise up from my stomach and hover at the back of my mouth, wanting to come out. I’ve been too worried it’ll make bad things come true if I say my suspicions about Mom dying out loud, even to Grandpa Howe, but with Cassie here, and both of us needing a good listener, I realize I might spill everything right now. Maybe she would too.

My lips part, and I take in a breath.

A knock at the door makes us both jump.

“You girls all set?” Grandma Tess calls.

I glance back at Cassie, wanting to hang on to whatever that just was, but the moment’s broken, and she’s already heading out.

Grandma Tess is still buzzing with the sugar and the excitement from this afternoon. In the car she tells Cassie a story I adore: her first date with Grandpa Howe, when they were supposed to go out for lunch, but Grandma Tess got so into
her painting she lost track of time and stood him up. So he ended up bringing a picnic to her house.

“I’d never had homemade macarons before,” Grandma Tess says, “so I had no idea what he’d gone through to make them, not to mention the rest of the spread. I’ve gained a much better appreciation for it now, though.”

“Appreciation for the process or the end result?” Grandpa Howe chuckles.

Grandma Tess glances at him with admiration. “Both equally, I think. Though there was a lot I wasn’t noticing that day, including the swipe of Prussian Blue paint I had across my cheek.” I can see her embarrassed smile in the rearview. “Didn’t notice it was there until Howie’d been gone for an hour.”

“You look beautiful in blue,” Grandpa Howe says. “Beautiful in anything, really. I love that memory—you, talking so excitedly, with that splash of color there. Lovely.”

Grandma Tess takes his hand, and the warm, happy feeling I always get when they’re like this washes over me, though it also makes me miss my parents. I decide I need to talk to them before dinner. I want to check on them both, for one, but also I don’t like keeping the truth about my mother from Cassie. The problem is, I don’t actually know what the truth really is, so it’s time to ask. Finding
out feels scary, but then I won’t have to lie to Cassie—or anybody else.

Before I can think myself out of it, I ask if it’s okay if I call them when we get to the restaurant, explaining that waiting until after dinner might be too late.

Grandma Tess answers without hesitating. “Of course you can, Lana. You don’t need to ask.”

So, when we get to Broadway!, though I’m dying to get inside, I tell them to go on in without me.

“Do you want me to wait out here with you?” Grandpa Howe offers.

Suddenly both Grandma Tess and Grandpa Howe are putting too much attention on this phone call. For a second I think about saying forget it, and that I’ll text Dad later, but now Cassie’s watching me too. I don’t want to act so weird that she starts asking me questions I don’t have the answers to.

“I’m fine.” I wave them into the restaurant, like this is no big deal and will only take a second. Grandma Tess opens the door for Cassie, and strains of “I Could Have Danced All Night” from
My Fair Lady
come streaming out. Grandpa Howe takes another glance back at me. His concerned expression, mixed with the sound of the music, makes me want to run into the escape of that restaurant so bad that I press the speed dial for Dad, quick before I chicken out.

He answers after not even two rings. “Lanalee! How’s the adventuring?”

The sound of his voice makes my nose tingle with missing him. So that I don’t cry right off the bat, I tell him about cupcake making and the restaurant we’re at now.

“Grandpa’s not feeding you flayed octopus tentacles and birds’ nests lined with kale-pomegranate crunch yet, is he?”

I smile. “Mostly it’s been a lot of ice cream.”

“Good girl.”

“How’s Mom today?” I ask, to keep from beating around the bush.

He sighs. “Ah, not the best day, I’m afraid. I made her take off early and head home. I almost came with her, it’s so abnormally hot out, but there were things to finish up. She’s in the bath now, though, and you know how that improves things. How are you and Cassie getting along?”

I’m so surprised that Mom left work early—something she only does if I’m sick, and even then she brings work home—it takes me a minute to process his question. “Um. We’re having fun together.” Distracting images of Mom suffering a headache in the heat make it hard to answer. “Sometimes she can get quiet. Like there’s something wrong but she won’t say.”

“Well, sometimes people need their space,” Dad says. “A chance to sort out everything before they can share it with anyone else, you know? Maybe that’s what’s happening with Cassie right now. I’m sure she’ll talk to you when she’s ready.”

My panic revs even higher. I know without a doubt that Dad’s sending me a coded message about Mom. Sometimes people need space. As in, sometimes people need a week with their daughter away so that they can figure out how to break the most terrible news to her, ever.

They’re still not going to tell me yet. Not even if it’s getting worse.

“It looks like you’re managing to have an okay time, anyway,” Dad goes on. “Your pictures are gorgeous. Tell Grandpa Howe he’s going to have to step it up a notch for the next father-son fishing trip, now that I see what he’s treating you to.”

I let out a little laugh, but my chest feels like someone is stepping on it. As Dad winds down the conversation, saying he knows I must be dying to get into that restaurant, I have to blow out a big, slow breath so the fear and homesickness won’t take over. That he isn’t even offering to hand the phone to Mom in the tub means it’s really bad. Before I know it, we’re swapping “I love yous,” I’m promising to
send photos of the restaurant, and then he’s gone.

As I climb up the front steps and haul open the heavy door on my own, I’m not sure any amount of singing and dancing can turn things around for me tonight.