Broken Beautiful Hearts(118)

“This isn’t funny, Frankie.”

No, it’s painful and pathetic, and I live with it every day.

Parents are supposed to understand their kids, or at least make an effort. Mine are clueless.

The doorbell rings again.

Crap. Lex is still standing in the hallway.

I make a dramatic show of peering through the eyehole and turn to Dad. “Happy?”

“These are critical life skills. As in, one day they might save your life,” he says as I open the door.

Lex stands on the other side, smoothing a section of her choppy hair between her fingers. It’s dyed a lighter shade than her usual honey blond, except for an inch of brown roots where her natural color is growing in. The inch is deliberate, like the smudged charcoal eye liner that looks slept in and makes her blue eyes pop against her coppery-brown skin.

Her eyes remind me of Noah’s.

Thinking about him feels like standing in the ocean with my back to the waves. I never know when it’s coming or how hard it will hit me.

“I was starting to wonder if you left without me.” Lex breezes past me. “Ready for your first day in the public school system, or, as my mom calls it, ‘the place where every child is left behind’?”

We haven’t seen each other since the beginning of the summer, but Lex makes it feel like it’s only been days. I spent the last three months trying to leave the old Frankie behind, avoiding Lex and Abel, my closest friends, in the process.

“How’s it going, Lex?” Dad asks.

“Pretty good.” She yawns. “Please tell me you have coffee, Frankie. The line at Starbucks was insane.”

“There’s a pot in the kitchen,” Dad offers.

“Thanks, Mr. Devereux.” If she keeps acting this cheerful, Dad will think she’s high. We’ve known each other forever, but when Lex developed a gross crush on my dad in seventh grade, it almost resulted in best friend excommunication.

“Don’t thank him yet,” I whisper. “His signature blend is burnt Maxwell House.”

“I’d rather go without food for a week than caffeine for a day.” Lex pours herself a cup of liquid coffee grounds.

Dad fishes a Velcro wallet out of his back pocket and lays two twenties on the table next to me. “Swing by the store after school and pick up some Diet Coke and anything else you want.”

I leave the crumpled bills on the table. “I won’t have time. Community service starts at three thirty, right after classes let out.” Thanks to King Richard, I already have a probation officer and a community service assignment. He called in a favor at the district attorney’s office, and my case was bumped to the top of the pile. “Lex is dropping me off at the rec center and picking me up when I’m done.”

I told Dad all this last night.

“You don’t mind?” he asks Lex. “You’re already driving Frankie to school in the mornings. I would take her myself—”

“But you can’t blow your cover. I totally get it.” She takes a sip of her coffee and cringes, but Dad doesn’t notice.

“You can’t slip and make a comment like that at school.” Dad gives us his serious cop look. “You both understand that, right?”

I ignore the question.

“Absolutely,” Lex says. “I mean … I absolutely won’t say anything.”

“Good.” Dad nods and looks over at me. “I would never send you to Monroe if I thought it would be an issue. The high school and the rec center are in the Third District—the nicer part of the Downs. It’s nothing like the war zone where I work in the First District.”

It’s weird to hear him describe any part of the Downs as nice. I guess it seems that way if you compare the run-down projects, abandoned buildings, and streets lined with liquor stores in Dad’s district with the neighborhoods near Monroe.

“People in one-D think I’m a car thief. If anyone finds out I’m a cop, I’ll have to walk away from my open cases and transfer to a district outside the Downs.”

Most people hear the word undercover and automatically think of DEA agents in movies—the ones who have to disappear without telling anyone where they’re going and move into crappy apartments so they can infiltrate the mob or the Hells Angels. But that’s not the way it works for regular undercover cops like Dad.

Obviously, he doesn’t wear a T-shirt that says I’M A COP. But he also doesn’t have to lie to the whole world about his job—just people who hang out in, or near, his district.

“Frankie? You understand, too, right?” He sounds irritated. That’s what I get for ignoring his question the first time.

“I’ve never told anyone about your job except Lex, Abel, and Noah. Why would I start now? Maybe you should lecture Mom. She still bitches about it to all her friends.”

Dad sighs. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just reminding you to be careful what you say.”

“Consider me reminded.” I glare at him, and Dad turns to Lex.

“Your parents don’t mind you driving Frankie to the rec center?”

“They’re fine with it.” They probably have no idea. Lex’s parents are never around unless they need her to pose for press photos.

“Does your father still have family in the Downs?” Dad asks.