TMI (7 page)

She shivered. It wasn't pretty.

Meg had spiraled down into the closest thing to a panic Bailey had ever seen. Money was tight for the Farrells, Bailey knew. But until that night, she had no idea how tight. Creditors were threatening them. There was often no food in the kitchen. The cable TV had been canceled. Bailey always assumed Meg didn't like TV—except for
The
Vampire
Diaries
, of course. She had no idea how much Pauline's books for her night classes cost or that they'd lived upstairs last winter because they just couldn't afford to heat the entire house. She'd never suspected that Meg's aversion to shopping wasn't because she didn't like designer clothes. It was because she had to help pay the bills and couldn't splurge on an expensive pair of jeans.

Meg's blurts were like hurricanes—they formed slowly, blew in, wreaked havoc on everyone and everything around them, and then faded away.

Bailey's jaw clenched when she thought about the way Meg had worshipped her dad. He was the cause of their problems! His death left them poor. Meg should be mad and resentful and throw tantrums and definitely not live out the stupid plan he'd taught her, but she couldn't let it go. Even when she skipped meals, she never ever blamed—

Wait.

Chase asked her what Meg's dad had done to her and said that he'd seen her stabbing a picture.

That was it. After all these years, she'd finally cracked. Yes! Bailey pumped a fist in the air. Maybe now Meg would relax those impossibly high standards of hers and act normal. With a wry grin, Bailey figured she'd need lots of help with that. Meg didn't know anything about acting normal.

Her enthusiasm faded while she considered that.
God, it must be awful to be angry at someone you can't talk to anymore.

It
was
awful to be angry at someone you couldn't talk to.

Bailey hated her own dad too. Maybe not stab-his-picture mad, but close, and the only reason for that was because she'd never seen a picture of her dad. She didn't even know his name. Nicole had gotten pregnant with her while in her third year of high school. She was an accident.

A mistake.

She'd asked over and over, but Nicole refused to talk about her dad. Even Gran and Gramps wouldn't tell her anything about him. When she was little, Bailey used to have imaginary dads. She used to make them up—younger versions of Gramps. She saw Tim Allen in some movie and pretended he was her dad until she saw Rick Moranis shrinking his kids in a different movie. She'd tried to get Meg to play her game, but Meg said they were entirely too old for wishes that couldn't come true. Eventually, Bailey realized wishing for a dad hurt more than having than no dad, so she stopped playing too.

She left her bed and roamed around the room her grandparents had decorated with pink ruffles and stuffed animals when she was born, a room they then had redone in sunny yellow when she was in elementary school and again in a soothing green when she was fourteen. The soft green walls were still there, the stuffed animals that used to line her bed now replaced with lots of fluffy pillows, and the pink ruffles had long since been put away. The corner where her Barbie town house once stood was now home to a laptop on a sleek desk, which now showed more unread mail.

She leaned over, clicked the touch pad, and saw a notice from her favorite shoe store that new summer sandals were in and—

The next one had her sinking into the chair to read closely.

“Oh, my God.” She pressed both hands to her mouth to muffle her squeal.

Maybe she wasn't too old for pretend after all.

At the bus stop the next morning, Meg wore a hoodie because the weather was warm and she kind of hoped Bailey would threaten to take her shopping for something more fashion-forward. A few kids tossed a ball around. Right. Baseball practice had started. She heard the buzz of a leaf blower, smelled freshly cut grass. Spring had officially reached Long Island.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tried not to look at Chase. He was twenty feet away, laughing with some friends. She hung back, hoping he wouldn't notice her or ask her about the cell phone he'd left on her coffee table. It was a long time before she was able to sleep after he left her last night.
What
do
you
want?
What
do
you
want?
His words played on an infinite loop because she never answered the question. If she was brutally honest with herself, it was because she couldn't answer his question.

She didn't know.

Not anymore.

A year ago, even a few months ago, it would have been easy to tell him. She wanted a degree. She wanted a good, steady job with a decent salary. She wanted—needed—to be able to take care of herself. For years, that's all she'd ever wanted. Until they'd been assigned to that stupid research project. Ever since then, ever since he'd looked at her like she was the most beautiful work of art ever sculpted, she'd wanted more and couldn't have it. His magic eyes, the words heavy with promise that he murmured to her, the way his strong hands trembled when he touched her, the scent of sugar that always clung to him, though you had to be really close to notice it—all of it, all of
him
was a test she couldn't afford to fail.
Look
but
don't touch. Wish but don't hold your breath.

Because always—always—her father's words hunted down Chase's.

She'd finally told him to leave when she imagined his lips touching hers the way they had the night before their project was due. His eyes swirled green with hurt, but she refused to cave in. She would not risk her future again. He shook his head once and left without a word.

She thought about calling Bailey, but she didn't want to hear all the pro-Chase rhetoric she was sure Bailey would spew. Her mom got home at midnight. Meg heard her key in the door and sat up in her bed. But Pauline's steps were slow and heavy, so Meg let her go straight to the small room beside hers, where two minutes after the thud of shoes hitting the floor reached her ears, there wasn't a sound.

Meg hitched her backpack up and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She looked back up the street and still saw no sign of Bailey. When she turned back, she felt Chase's gaze burning through her. She wanted to turn and run, but he held her there with nothing but his eyes. Her lips lifted in that smile, that damn smile like he was the one who controlled them, controlled her. Maybe he did. With a last word to his friends, he strode over with a cautious grin.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“You okay? You don't look so good.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Chase's eyes popped. “No! I didn't mean you don't look good. You always look good. I just mean you don't look like you're having a good day—”

She shot up a hand to stop him before he backpedaled off a cliff. “Relax. I get it. I'm not mad.”

“Good. That's…um, good.” He looked at his feet. “I'm sorry if what I said upset you. That's not what I was trying to do.”

“It's okay. Forget it.” Please, dear God, please just let it drop. She looked at his shoes, at her shoes, down the street, anywhere but at him and his irresistible eyes. “Here's your phone.” She shoved a hand in her pocket and then pulled out the phone he'd left at her place.

“Oh…right. Thanks.”

She watched him scroll through the messages, including the one from Bailey, which she'd read and then changed back to Unread and would pretend to know nothing about. He shot her a worried look, but luckily, Bailey headed down the street.

“Hey, Bailey!”

Bailey stopped short, narrowed her eyes. “Um…hi, Meg. What's up?”

“Nothing's up.”

Chase gave half a laugh. “She's happy you're here to save her from big bad me. She's afraid of me. Isn't that right, Megan?”

She stiffened. “I am not afraid.”

“Liar,” Chase said without smiling. He turned and headed back to his friends as the bus turned the corner.

“Meg, did you guys have a fight or something?”

“Or something.” When Bailey's mouth opened, Meg quickly changed the subject. “Why are you so late? You almost missed the bus.”

Bailey bounced on her toes. “I was doing research.”

Meg's jaw dropped.

The bus stopped with a squeal of brakes and a belch of exhaust. The group still gathered on the corner shoved their way on board. “Meg? You coming?”

She followed Bailey to a pair of empty seats and slid beside her. “You were doing ‘research'?” she asked with air quotes. “On what?”

Bailey frowned. “On yearbooks. And what's with the quotey fingers?”

Meg let out her breath and slouched lower in her seat. She should have known. Bailey never willingly did anything resembling schoolwork without lots of whining and eye-rolling. “Yearbooks. Is this for your game?”

“No.” Bailey lowered her voice. “My dad.”

“What?” Meg straightened with a snap.

“I was reading my spam last night, and I got an email from that classmates site and signed up as my mom. And then I found her yearbook.”

Just under Meg's skin in the middle of her gut, there was the faintest crawl of envy. “You found him.”

“No, not yet. But I found her class. I'm going to find him, Meg. I'm going to find my dad.”

Meg shook her head. “Bailey, don't get your hopes up.”

Bailey turned to watch the houses go by—one minute and then two. “I thought you'd be happy.”

“I don't want you hurt, Bay.”

She turned, blue eyes arctic. “Megan, how could it possibly hurt me to find my father?”

“There's a reason your mom doesn't talk about him, Bailey. What if finding
him
makes you lose
her
?”

Bailey returned to watching scenery. “I honestly don't think she'd mind all that much. She's got John now.”

Meg sighed. “After school, come over. We'll look together.”

Bailey turned, smiled for a second. “Thanks. I'm kinda scared.”

“Scared.” That stunned Meg. “Why? I thought you wanted this.”

“I do. But I'm still scared. I mean…what if he hates me or already has kids and doesn't want me?”

Friendship demanded Meg lie. Her personal code of ethics insisted on the truth. “Um…okay. Look. You're smart to be scared. You don't know why Nicole kept you apart all these years. Maybe he's married with a minivan and soccer practices and golf buddies or whatever. But I do know this—it's not possible for anyone to meet you and hate you, Bay. It's just not.”

Bailey's lips quivered and she laid her head against Meg's arm. A few seconds later, she took her phone from her pocket, glanced at the screen, and hid a smile.

“Who's that?”

But Bailey merely shook her head, tucked the phone back in her pocket, and stood up. Meg let her by, frowning after her as they left the bus, feeling Chase's eyes burning through her back.

Ryder texted her!

Bailey hadn't heard a word the teachers in her first five classes had said. She'd spent the entire morning bouncing over Ryder's message.

She'd nearly caved when Meg had asked who'd texted her. But Ryder was special. Okay, true, she hadn't known him very long or…well, even met him in person, but Bailey could tell he was sweet and kind and smart and—and damn it—too special to risk sharing with Meg.

There. She'd said it. Or
thought
it at least.

She bit her lip, wondering how she was going to keep a whole boyfriend a total secret from her best friend.

No, no, no! He wasn't her boyfriend. They hadn't even met in person. He was just a boy. That's all. She would take things slow and not mess up this time. Maybe Meg would like him.

Meg hadn't liked a single one of Bailey's boyfriends. Ever. It was so ironic—Bailey wanted to catch boys, while Meg kept tossing hers back. Sometimes she wondered if Meg expected her to live her life alone so that they could live alone together, even though that wasn't really being alone.

She rolled her eyes at the silliness of it all and then skidded to a stop when she spotted her best friend twenty feet down the corridor. Meg would take one look at her and just
know
. It was like a freakish superpower. She couldn't be near Meg right now and keep a secret this big. She searched the corridor for a handy escape route when her cell phone buzzed.

Ryder:
Hey, pretty Bailey. RU at lunch? Am free for the next .5 hour. Can we chat?

Oh, my God, yes—absolutely! Bailey grinned and ducked into the closest girls' restroom to spend the lunch period with her guy.

Bailey
:
Hi! What's up?

Ryder:
Miss u.
COD
tonight?

Bailey enjoyed
Call
of
Duty
but had planned to work on her game. Oh! She smacked her forehead. She was supposed to meet Meg and go through her mom's high school yearbook.

Bailey:
I can't. Meg's coming over to help me do research.

Ryder:
I can help u. What RU researching?

Should she tell him? It couldn't hurt.

Bailey:
I'm trying to find my dad. Long story. Found mom's yearbook. Plan to look for pictures of her with guys.

Ryder:
Never met him?

Bailey:
Don't even know his name.

Ryder:
That really sucks. xo

Bailey:
I know.

Ryder:
I'll help. Send me info l8r. Then we play :)

Bailey:
Sure! We'll kick some enemy ass.

Ryder:
Looked at game ideas u sent me the other night. Think it may work, but gestures??

Bailey:
I know. Would B cool to play without controllers, but too hard.

Ryder:
Right. Try controller play first. U can design gesture interface later. Don't worry about coding. Just storyboard for now.

Bailey:
Good idea.

Ryder:
Hey, check UR email later. Sent you some more level ideas.

When the bell rang, Bailey hurried to class but did her best to avoid Meg. She didn't know how much longer she could keep a secret as big as Ryder. As soon as she got home, she checked her email and discovered Ryder had not only sent her tons of ideas for game levels but had also included his rules for achievements and respawning new lives.

Oh. These were good ideas. Bailey's fingers blurred as she added notes to her “Ideas” file. The game began as a classic puzzle design—simple rules, really, with a small battle capability. Ryder's ideas for achievements and spawning new lives—oh, that really took it up a few notches to a true adventure game. She read the rest of Ryder's list. Whoa, using military ranks for game levels was a really cool idea and maybe that could provide the foundation for the entire game universe—some sort of covert government branch whose mission is to change history. No, their mission can be to rewrite it so that certain facts are obliterated. She sent him a text message to pitch the idea. He replied with a lot of exclamation points and the :) emoticon.

She clapped and did a happy chair dance. This was going to be the coolest thing ever.

With her Ideas file open, Bailey grabbed blank sheets of paper from her printer, sharpened a brand new pencil, and started sketching her vision of The Foundation. She nibbled the eraser for a moment and sent another text.

Bailey:
What do you think of The Foundation as name for secret gov org?

Ryder replied with a single word:

Ryder:
Meh.

She frowned. Maybe it should be an abbreviation like CIA or something. Or a one-word mythological creature, like Pegasus or Cyclops. She could spend hours on the name alone. Okay, The Foundation wasn't the best name, but it would do for now. She drew corridors and cells and laboratories, and she leaned back to assess her work. Squinting at a shape that looked like a turbo engine on the south wall, Bailey had to face facts. Art was definitely out as a career choice. Unless—she leaned closer, used the eraser to smudge a few lines, and smiled. What if that shape
was
an engine? What if The Foundation were a ship? Yeah. Oh, yeah, a ship run by The Admiral. She could picture him—tall, stern, dressed in a white uniform, recruiting the lost. No, The Lost. Characters that time forgot.

Oh, wow, this was epic. She texted Ryder, sketched and erased and labeled and typed notes into the idea document until her eyes burned.

She never did call Meg.