Inevitable and Only(40)

“Hey, Dad,” I said, dropping my backpack by the front door. He was behind the front counter today, for a change. “Where’s Cassandra?”

“Where’s Elizabeth?” he countered.

“I don’t know. We’re not joined at the hip.”

“Defensive: adjective, derived from the verb ‘to defend’; behaving in a way that shows you feel people are criticizing you,” Dad intoned in Dry Professor Voice.

“So where’s Cassandra?” I repeated, ignoring him.

“Persistent: adjective, derived from the verb ‘to persist’; continuing along a path of inquiry even after it has been discouraged.”

“Annoying: adjective, meaning Ross Greenfield.”

Dad grinned. “That’s my girl.”

Despite myself, a bubble of happiness expanded in my chest.

“So, for real,” he said. “Where’s Elizabeth? I just got a complete leather-bound set of Tolstoy, published 1927. I promised I’d let her sniff it and maybe even touch the covers when it came in.”

The bubble burst. “I don’t know, Dad. I guess she went home with Mom and Josh.”

“Oh. All right, then.”

Pause.

“Well, Cassandra’s taking her driving test this afternoon, so I’m covering the desk for her.”

“Cassandra doesn’t have a license? She’s, like, thirty years old!”

“And no one gets a driver’s license in New York City till they turn forty-five and move to Connecticut.”

“But this is Baltimore. People drive places here.”

“Unless you’ve been trying to time-travel back to the 1400s for the past twenty years of your life.”

“Poor Cassandra. I guess she finally gave up on that.”

“Or else this is but the next step of her complex and difficult journey. Perhaps she’ll find a time-traveling device for her car. Speaking of cars …”

“No,” I groaned. “Do we have to?”

“Well, I know Elizabeth is quite eager to get her practice hours out of the way. You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

I pictured Elizabeth and Dad doing driving lessons without me, having more quality one-on-one father-daughter bonding time. The thought made my teeth itch.

“It’s fine,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to fall further behind.” How come I couldn’t even spend ten minutes with Dad without talking or thinking about Elizabeth?

“So, how are rehearsals coming along?” Dad asked.

“They’re fine. I better get home, I’ve got lines to memorize. Plus a ton of homework.”

“Oh, and I’ve been meaning to ask you …” He leaned over the counter and lowered his voice, even though there were only a few customers at the back of the shop. “How is the whole, uh, church thing going? Want me to take church duty next Sunday?”

I thought about Elizabeth smoking on the way home. About our conversation last weekend, about her mom and her grandparents. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, honey,” Dad said, visibly relieved. “You know religion makes my scalp crawl. It’s been one of the toughest things for me to accept about—this whole situation.”

Screw that. I was not going to have a heart-to-heart with Dad, of all people, about how tough “this whole situation” was.

“I have to go,” I repeated.

“All right, then. Dad-daughter driving lesson after dinner? We’re on?”

“Sure.” I picked up my backpack and banged out the door, just in time to see the bus pulling away from the curb. My luck. And it had started to rain, a heavy, cold, Baltimore autumn rain. I trudged down to the bus shelter, pulled the hood of my jacket up over my already-frizzing hair, and plunked myself down on the bench to wait.

The bench was stamped with big white letters: Baltimore—The Greatest City in America. Dad and I always made fun of those benches. For a while, the city’s motto was Baltimore: The City That Reads. Dad loved that one, of course, although I didn’t think it made any sense. As Raven was always quick to remind me whenever we’d pass one of those benches, “Thirty-eight percent of this city cannot read well enough to complete a job application. That’s almost twice the illiteracy rate in the rest of Maryland.” But Baltimore seemed to think that if all its benches shouted one thing long and loud enough, they could make it come true.

Maybe I should paint my own bench.

The problem was, I didn’t even know what I’d want it to say.



And then it was the second week of October, the week of Fall Festival, and the whole school went crazy decorating. There was an open house all day on Saturday and the school-wide Pumpkin Picnic on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Fall Ball that night. Oh, and parent-teacher conferences were slated for Monday. That was the administration’s brilliant idea to make sure students behaved themselves Saturday night. Mom’s idea, probably.

On Friday afternoon, all the teachers made us set up special displays in their classrooms for the open house. In biology, my last class of the day, we built scale models of the parts of a cell, strung DNA streamers around the room, and decorated each corner to represent one of the kingdoms of living creatures: bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals. We drew Protista all over the white-board because we’d run out of corners and DJ Derry said it would be against school safety policy to have us decorate the ceiling.