The Other Half of Me (10 page)

SEVENTEEN

Shock doesn’t adequately describe the look on my dad’s face when my statement finally sinks in. Tate hangs way back in the corner of the kitchen and leans against the stool that usually acts as our mail table.

“I don’t understand,” Dad says for the fifth time. I’ve explained everything to him already—how I read the article; how I found Alexa through the Web site; and how after talking on the phone a bunch of times, she wanted to meet me—but none of it is making sense to him. Dad is pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “Why? Why would you want to go looking?”

“She didn’t do it because there’s anything lacking here.” Mom is sitting down at the kitchen table, trying to remain calm. She tilts her head at me. “Did you?”

I’m stationed near the refrigerator, pulling at a stray thread at the bottom of my hooded sweatshirt. “No, not really.” The strained look on my face is a dead giveaway, too. “Dad, if you thought you had a brother or a sister out in the world somewhere, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“Half brother or sister, you mean,” Dad says sharply.

“Hey, Russ and the twins are my half siblings, too,” I say. “Half is all I’ve got.”

For someone who is so good at settling other people’s problems, my father is pretty resistant to the unexpected, and to change. But maybe we all are. I sneak a look at Tate. I can tell he feels guilty for all this.

Sierra finally speaks up. “Are we not, like, enough sister for you?” She doesn’t resemble Sid anymore. She resembles a drooping flower that was rained on too much.

Now I’m feeling guilty. I don’t think I was fully aware of how much this might affect everyone else. Does that make me selfish? “It’s not that at all. I just wanted to see if there was someone out there who had more in common with me.”

“Well, you should’ve asked permission,” Dad grunts. “And how do you know that this isn’t some sort of scam?”

“A scam?” My eyebrows are raised to the point of distorting my face. I’m trying to paint a picture of what my dad looked like when I was a child, but my canvas is blank. “Well, you can call her moms if you want.”

“Her
moms
?” Dad’s voice raises about twelve octaves. “Jenny, do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? Have you even thought this through?”

“Calm down, honey,” Mom says to Dad. The rest of my family and Tate slink out into the living room, where they’ll hear everything we say but not be right in the center of the storm.

“Jenny?” Mom touches my shoulder and I flinch, thinking she’s going to scold me.

“What’d I do wrong now?” I try not to sound bitter, but I am. Why can’t they just be excited for me?

“It’s not that you did anything wrong,” Mom says.

My dad rolls his eyes. “Yes, she did.”

Mom throws him a stern look and then turns back to me. “You have every right to seek out someone who may be connected to you. However, we never hid how you were conceived, Jenny, and you shouldn’t have hid this from us.”

“Well, if I didn’t have to worry about your reaction, maybe I wouldn’t have.”

“Fair enough,” my mom says reasonably.

But my dad is definitely not in a reasonable mood. “Even so, I don’t think it’s a good idea for
her
to visit.”

I square off against him. “You can say
her
name. A-lex-a.”

“Drop the tone, Jennifer,” Mom barks. She’s going to side with him. They are unified, a team. “Alexa’s visit can wait until we’ve all had a chance to discuss the implications of this.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and at the same time, I knew they would say exactly this. “Why won’t you guys trust me on this one?”

“Why should we trust you when you did this behind our backs?” Dad’s voice raises to sonic level.

I stomp my feet on the floor like a little kid. This is what he’s reduced me to. “Well, I already invited her.”

He doesn’t scream or yell this, he just says it flatly, without any feeling at all: “I guess you’ll have to
un
invite her.”

I am willing myself not to cry. “Don’t I have a say in this?”

Dad crosses his arms over his chest. He’s said before that this is body language meant to convey the end of a conversation.

Mom gets up from the table and stands by his side. “We’re not saying you can’t see her ever, Jenny. Just not now. We need some time.”

The gentle way she says this makes me feel hopeful. Maybe all this drama will blow over soon.

And then Dad puts the last nail in the coffin. “Jenny, I want you to go upstairs and call her to cancel the visit
now
.”

His words suck the hope right out of me, and he storms out of the room before I can say anything more.

EIGHTEEN

Last night didn’t go as planned.

I went upstairs as my father ordered me to, and I even picked up the phone to call Alexa, but I couldn’t bring myself to dial. The thought of hearing disappointment in her voice kept me up half the night, too. When I woke up this morning, I decided that I would e-mail her—sure, it’s the easy way out, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll do it after breakfast. That way, I can think of all the right things to say.

Who am I kidding?

I’m halfway down the stairs when the doorbell rings. The only person awake this early and on the neighborhood prowl is the FedEx guy. But when I open the door, I find someone else instead.

“Tate!” The exuberance in my voice takes even me by surprise. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. His hair is sticking up in the back, and he’s wearing this pair of gray sweatpants with a small hole in the knee. I wrap my arms around him and he hugs me tightly.

“Can we talk?” he whispers in my ear.

I pull away a bit so I can look into his eyes. There’s a lash on his right cheek, and I wipe it away with my thumb. “Sure. I have a few minutes.”

“A lot can happen in a few minutes,” he says before sweetly kissing me on the mouth.

We walk over to the unlandscaped area in the backyard. Tate wedges his legs between six ten-pound bags of gravel. The bags are stacked, slumped one on the next, creating a column of space in between the sacks. Near the bags are unearthed plants and shrubs, and an uneven pile of stone bricks my dad envisions being neatly aligned one day.

“There’s room for two,” Tate says. The space is just large enough for us both to fit comfortably and remain unseen by anyone else, closed off by the garden supplies.

“So, what’s up?” I ask while taking one of his hands in mine.

“I came by to say I’m sorry for getting you into trouble.” Tate kicks his soles onto the brown gravel bags, but they don’t shift. “I should have minded my own business.”

I can feel the calluses on Tate’s hand with my fingers. Years of football have toughened them up. “It’s okay. They would have reacted like that if I had told them to begin with.”

Tate kisses me on the cheek. “So we’re okay?”

“Of course we’re okay.”

He looks down at the ground. “Did I ever tell you that my mom is an art dealer?”

My eyes widen. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah. When other kids were reading
Goodnight Moon
, my mom would show me those huge art books. Anyway, there’s this painting, by Mondrian.”

“
Broadway Boogie Woogie
?” I ask. I can see the colors so clearly in my mind it’s as though the canvas is next to us.

Tate smiles and shifts his weight a little so we can look at one another without neck strain. “I love that painting. All the reds and yellows are intersecting like city streets. Everything bounces—the colors, the angles. You almost feel as though you’re in motion, just by looking at it.” He clears his throat nervously. “That’s how I feel when I’m with you.”

“You do?” My heart is fluttering so fast that my breathing becomes shallow.

“Yeah. You know, the other day I didn’t come over here to see Russ about sports stuff. I just needed an excuse to see you.”

I put my arm around his waist, and he tucks me under his shoulder. “Well, now you don’t need an excuse.”

“Good,” he says, playfully touching my nose with the tip of his finger. “Speaking of which, do you have a good excuse for not calling her last night?”

Now I definitely can’t breathe. “How did you know I didn’t call her?”

Tate grins. “You can’t fool me, Fitz.”

I am amazed by this guy. Completely, totally amazed.

“Come here,” he says. We kiss again, and I inhale the smell of him—a blend of spices and citrus and sleep. It makes me want to dig into the tubes of paint I’ve never used, the bruise-dark eggplant color and the hefty cream, and mix them and see what happens.

He pulls away a little and leans his head against mine. “I can’t believe school starts in a few days.”

In one moment summer slips away and we’re back in the corridor with the crush of cliques and other obstacles that may end up coming between us. “I know.”

I wait for him to say something else, something that will reassure me that things will stay this way when autumn is in full swing, but he doesn’t. I put my arms around him, and we stand there, hugging and then kissing until I realize that time is fleeting and there’s something I can’t put off any longer.

“Tate, I have to go.” I squeeze Tate’s hands and he squeezes mine back. We leave our little hideaway, and he walks me back to the front door.

“I know you’re not one for sports pep talks, Fitz,” he says with a grin. “But my coach told me once that preparing for the unexpected doesn’t do anyone any good. It only takes your mind away from the experience.”

When he kisses me and dashes off into the morning breeze, I know without a doubt or a shread of fear that experience is what life’s all about.

A few minutes later I’m sitting in my closet, surrounded by paints, holding my phone in my hand. I decided as I climbed up the stairs that I wasn’t going to take the easy e-mail way out. I’m about ready to dial when Russ pokes his head in.

“Hey, Jen?”

My eyes are fixed on the phone. “Yeah?”

“What’s she like?” he asks. Russ was notably silent during the sister-inquisition downstairs last night. I wonder what he’s thinking.

“Impulsive.” I smile as I say this, remembering our first conversation and how surreal it was. “Honestly, Russ, I guess I don’t know what she’s like. Not really. I mean, how can you truly know anything without spending time with someone?”

Russ kneels down in front of me, so I have no choice but to look up at him. “She’s not just
someone
,” he says, searching my face for a clue about how to deal with all this.

But I don’t have one.

My mother yells up the stairs for Russ to answer the door. He still rests his eyes on mine. “Jenny, sometimes, with sisters, you don’t have to know
everything
to know everything.”

Then he pats me on the shoulder and darts out of my room.

I dial Alexa’s number with Russ’s words lingering in my mind. My ear is pressed so hard to the phone it will probably leave a red mark. I still don’t know what to say.

Outside, I hear the crunch of gravel on the driveway. My dad is probably getting ready to go to work, precooling his car so it’s icy when he gets in. There are two rings and then I hear her.

“Hey!” Alexa’s voice is chirpy.

“Hey,” I reply in a dark tone that foreshadows the bad news to come. I want to get straight to the point. “Alexa, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but—”

She cuts me off excitedly. “Whatever bummer you’re about to unload, just wait.”

“No, Alexa, listen to me—”

“Jenny, shut up for a sec.” Her grin is nearly audible.

From downstairs Russ shouts, “Jen!”

And then, as if there weren’t enough chaos, my dad beeps from the driveway. Suddenly I remember I didn’t close the windows on my car. It’s one of Dad’s big pet peeves. I can just hear him now: “What if it rained and your seats got wet? What if someone stole the radio?” Never mind that it was clear last night and the radio isn’t worth borrowing, let alone stealing.

“Jenny!” my mother yells from the bottom of the stairs.

“Hang on, Alexa.” I keep the phone to my ear and walk to the top of the stairs to deal with whatever frenzy is happening.

My mother has one hand on her hip and the other over her mouth as though she’s just tasted something very spicy. The twins, all set for camp, are backed up to the wall with their eyebrows raised. Russ looks up at me helplessly.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, covering the phone with my hand.

Russ points to the window that looks out onto the front porch, which I can’t see from the top stair. Slowly, I make my way to the window. Outside on the gravel, my dad is staring at something at the end of the driveway. When I look in the same direction, I see a girl standing in front of a red taxi, holding a cell phone.

I swallow hard and then my hands start shaking. “Alexa?” I say into the phone.

The girl in the driveway looks at me and nods. “Here I am!”

NINETEEN

Once I’m on the stoop, I’m hit by the sheer force of seeing Alexa for the first time, and by the stony look on my dad’s face. Alexa drops her oversized black bag on the ground and throws her arms around me in a big embrace. I hug her back, still shaking, while Dad continues to glare at me from his position on the uneven gravel.

“Can you believe it?” Alexa’s eyes are everywhere—looking at me, taking in the house, and pausing on each one of my family members as they emerge from the doorway.

“It—it’s a…,” I stutter, wondering what to say. “I didn’t…”

Dad clears his throat, sidestepping Alexa and coming straight at me. “Was I unclear last night?” He’s seething as he leans down to talk to me. Alexa stands there, her mouth twisted in a knot of confusion.

I can feel everything around me—the stones poking through the thin rubber of my drugstore flip-flops, the hot air prickling up my back, the stares from my siblings as they watch this unfold. “Dad, I—”

“You deliberately disobeyed me,” he says, anger spilling from his mouth into the air.

I feel like a dog who went astray, and my own anger roils inside. “I was going to! I tried—”

Alexa steps forward to say something but my dad turns his back to her and touches my shoulder. “You
tried
? You don’t
attempt
to make a phone call. You just do it. Really, Jenny, I’m disappointed in you.” He storms off without an introduction to Alexa, and I’m left to pick up the pieces of her surprise visit.

My mother says hello, nicely but not in the most overjoyed way, and the twins tentatively shake her hand. Russ gives her his standard wave and a “hey” and then it’s just the two of us. Me and Alexa. Alone together.

When we get upstairs and settle in my room, Alexa’s words zoom out fast. “I was all set to come tomorrow, you know? Like we planned. Then I just got this feeling that I had to jump on a train, right now. So I shoved my stuff in here.” She kicks her black bag. “I don’t know. Maybe I was worried that you were going to chicken out.”

“Chicken out? It’s not a drag race,” I say, joking. My mind is speeding, like when I wake from a dream and have a great idea for a painting, only I can’t grasp exactly what it was. I wonder if I should demand that Dad hear me out while I explain that I didn’t deliberately go against him. How was I to suspect Alexa would show up without notice? It’s not anything I’d ever do, so it never dawned on me.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say as I nervously twist my watch around and around on my wrist. The whole time I was outside with Tate this morning, she was already on her way here. While I was eating my cereal, she was watching the scenery slide by, each blur of green bringing her closer to me. The only way I could have stopped her was to have called her right away after Dad asked. But given how impulsive Alexa is, would that have even worked?

“You really don’t like surprises, do you?” She turns to me and we just stare at one another for a long time, letting the visuals sink in. Alexa grins as she tilts her head. She has long straight hair the color of the inside of corn, and it’s parted to the right side. No matter what I do, my hair automatically parts itself down the middle.

“Not really.” This is the understatement of the year. But I can’t exactly say I loathe being shocked when she’s just shown up a day early. I also feel the urge to groan about how much trouble she’s gotten me into, but instead I focus my attention on Alexa’s magenta Indian print top. “I like that color. I use it to paint.”

“I’d love to see some of your work,” she says. And then when I flinch, she adds, “When you’re ready.”

“You have much thicker hair than I thought,” I say, and realize it sounds a little strange. Then again, the whole thing is strange.

“That’s funny,” Alexa says, looking at me from my shoes all the way to my ears. “Do you do that a lot?”

“What?” I can’t believe I’m standing here in my bedroom, having a face-to-face conversation with her.

“Picture how things should be before they actually happen?” Alexa says offhandedly.

“Sort of, I guess.”

In my life drawing class last year, I learned how to approximate muscle tone on the paper or canvas. It’s useful, but not as much as getting a feeling for what’s in front of you. I take a deep breath. The sunlight through the window hits Alexa’s back, giving her an outline that glows. That’s what I’d draw right now. Her semihalo.

“I’m so not like that,” Alexa says. She sounds proud of this, like it’s the way to be. “It’s a waste of time.”

Suddenly I feel as if I’m being criticized. I don’t reply, but that doesn’t stop Alexa from saying more.

“If you live in your head too much, it can take the place of the real thing.” Alexa takes off the magenta top to reveal a tight tank top underneath, which highlights her athletic build.

“Well, my dad doesn’t like surprises, either,” I say, marveling at the fact that I just pointed out a similarity between him and me.

Alexa shrugs. Her body language is definitely more animated than mine. I hadn’t thought that I’d notice our differences this much. “Good to know,” she says, and smiles.

When I close the bedroom door behind us, I wonder how much there is for us to know, and if most of it will be good.