“Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story if she didn’t.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m glad you agree.”
“No, I mean, yes, I want to go out. I want you to make up for my birthday.” If that’s the excuse we were going with, I was happy to play along.
I took a small step forward and then another, waiting for him to back up or stop me. But he didn’t. He did the opposite. He took a step forward as well. We were chest to chest and then forehead to forehead. I grabbed hold of the sides of his T-shirt. His hands went to my upper arms.
There was so much he needed to know about me. How could I let it get this far without telling him? He hated fakers. He was going to hate me. “Friday?” I asked. “Can we go out on Friday?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes still dancing. “I have something planned.”
“You do?”
“I’ve been planning it for a while.”
My heart raced. “Thank you.”
“You haven’t even seen it yet.”
“I don’t need to.”
He smiled. “Yes, actually you do. Friday. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay.”
We said these things like we were leaving, but neither of us did. We stayed in our hug, me soaking in his comfort, wondering if it was the last hug we’d share once he found out the truth I’d been keeping from him.
He leaned against his car, pulling me with him.
I met his eyes. It felt so good to be in his arms. His face, his beautiful face, was moving toward me, and my breath caught.
The front door opened and my dad’s voice asked, “Maddie, is that you?”
I could feel my face fall. I stepped back from Seth. “I better go. Thanks for everything.”
Seth brushed a hand along my cheek. “I’ll see you Friday.”
Butterflies tumbled through my stomach. Before I could analyze it too much, I kissed his cheek, then ran inside, past my dad, and into my room, where I collapsed on my bed with the happiest sigh in the world.
The next day, when I got home from school, Mom was in the kitchen, a bottle of cleaner in one hand and a sponge in the other. She scrubbed intensely at a spot on the counter. Right away I noticed a sparkle around her neck.
“Mom, that’s a beautiful necklace.”
She reached up, her fingers barely grazing over the diamonds as if they would break if she touched them too hard. “Your father bought it for me.”
“That was nice of him. How did he give it to you?”
“He handed it to me this afternoon.”
I held back a groan. Really, Dad, that was the most romantic way you could think of? This only proved Seth’s point—despite my best intentions, I couldn’t control people. My frustration was cut off by the look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s just, it’s too much. I’m worried that at the rate he’s spending money it won’t last us very long.”
“Mom, he’s being responsible. I think he wanted to do it to be nice. Because you said you wanted him to be thoughtful. Remember you said that?”
“Yes, I did. But I just meant roses or a nice card. I didn’t mean this.”
People were impossible to predict. Why didn’t A plus B equal C?
“I thought two million dollars would be plenty,” Mom was saying. “That it would last us a lifetime. When you told us that’s how much you were going to give us, it sounded like all the money in the world.”
“It’s a lot. You’ll be fine. I already paid off the house, too.”
She nodded but her worried face stayed firmly in place.
“So no more house payment,” I said, trying to make her see they were in much better shape than she thought.
“You’ll be here for us, right, Maddie? If we need you?”
Did she mean if they needed me? Or if they needed more money? “Of course. I’m here.”
“Good. Good.” She patted her necklace again and continued wiping a spot on the counter that was already clean.
My phone dinged with an email and I pulled it up. I gasped as I saw who it was from—Stanford. I clicked on it and in the seconds it took to load onto my phone my heart raced. It finally came up and I read through the words quickly.
“What?” my mom asked.
“Stanford. I got into Stanford.” Fear and excitement battled in my chest. I hoped excitement won.
All Mom said was “Wow. All the way up north.”
Her words gave fear the strong lead. “Did I get any mail today?” I asked.
“Are you still waiting on more college acceptance letters?”
“Just UCLA. Oh, and on something from Uncle Barry. Remember, I invested that money with him? He was supposed to send me over more documents to sign.”
“You’re right. He was.” She went to her purse on the counter and pulled out her phone. “Let’s call him and find out if there was a delay for some reason.”
“Okay.”
Mom pressed a button and put the phone to her ear. Her eyebrows shot down at whatever she heard on the other end. Then she was looking at her phone again, pushing more buttons, listening some more.
“What is it, Mom?” I asked after she repeated this process three times.
“There’s something wrong with my phone I think. It keeps telling me the number is disconnected.”
“Disconnected?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Let’s try mine.”
We did with the same results.
My heart was sinking. I didn’t want to think about what this meant. It was fine. Everything would be fine. So Uncle Barry had changed his phone number. We’d figure it out.
I left my mom searching through other contacts—his kids or his siblings or someone else who would know—and went to my room.
The words Blaire said to me the other day about being too trusting flashed through my mind. She was referring to Trina, but maybe I’d been too trusting of everyone. Curiosity got the better of me and I went online to research the car Trina’s father had sold me. I shouldn’t have. I was perfectly fine thinking I had gotten some sort of deal. But that wasn’t true at all. Not only had he not given me a deal, he’d charged me five thousand above suggested retail price. I slammed my laptop closed.
Maybe Blaire was right. I was too trusting.
My door swung open and my mom came in. Her face was tight with anger. “He cheated you. He’s a cheat.”
“I know. I just … wait, who?”
“Your uncle. He took your money and other investors’ money as well and he has disappeared with it. I’m sorry.”
My stomach dropped. “Disappeared? What does that mean?”
“That he probably moved far away so he wouldn’t get put in jail.”
I closed my eyes. Five hundred thousand gone. Just like that. I was so naïve. I really couldn’t control people. At all. Or read them. No matter how much research I’d done on them. Money made people different. It made them lie and steal. It made them give away secrets and manipulate. I couldn’t trust anyone. People looked at me and all they saw now was a bank account.
Every single person in my life. My brother for sure. Even my mom had been hinting at it earlier. If I couldn’t trust my own family, who could I trust?
Seth. I could trust Seth. He was the only one who didn’t know and still liked me, anyway. The only person who hadn’t changed.
I spent the rest of the week at school analyzing and avoiding everyone. Every person I looked at had the potential to use me. To want something from me. And any one of them could’ve talked to the reporter. Even my friends.
I avoided Blaire and Elise by hiding out in the back stacks of the library with my bagged lunch. I ducked around corners when I saw them walking down the halls, and stayed away from places I knew they’d be.
How did people with money ever know if people really liked them for them? I would just move far away and wouldn’t tell people I’d won the lottery. Like with Seth. That had worked out perfectly.
Friday night, I opened my front door before Seth could knock and threw my arms around his neck. In my loneliness this week, I had reaffirmed what I’d realized before. Seth was someone I could trust and that meant something. It was more than that, too; Seth was someone I liked. I needed him in my life. I was going to tell him that tonight and let whatever happened as a result of that admission happen. I smiled at the thought.