Shocking Pink

“Well, really.” She sniffed, sounding annoyed. “We’d have to have boys. You guys might be able to do without … well, you know, but not me.”

“Well, I could,” Raven said, her tone fierce. “Boys become men. Then they become like your dad or mine.” She made a sound of disgust. “No thank you.”

Andie looked at her. “They don’t have to be that way.”

“No?” Raven frowned. “Go ask your mom if I’m right.”

The girls fell silent for long moments, then Raven reached across and touched Andie’s arm. “I’m sorry I said that.”

“It’s okay.”

Raven propped herself up on her elbow. “Do either of you ever think about the future? Where we’re going to be? What we’re going to be?”

“College,” Andie offered.

“Together,” Julie added.

“But beyond that? Like, who do you want to be? And what do you want your life to be like?”

“That’s easy,” Julie said. “I want to be popular. I mean really popular. And I won’t feel bad about it. I won’t feel guilty about being pretty and having fun or about going out every single night if I want to.”

Raven sat up and drew her knees to her chest. “I want to be the one who says how it’s going to be. I want to be the one other people follow.”

Julie giggled. “You’ll probably be the first woman president.

They’ll put your face on a postage stamp or something.”

“This face? Please, I’d scare little children.”

“Stop that,” Andie said, frowning, feeling bad for her friend. “You’re gorgeous. The only reason the boys say those things about you is because they can’t get anything over on you. They call you freak ’cause they want into your pants and you won’t let them.”

For a long moment, Raven was silent. Then she cleared her throat. “Do you really mean that?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

Raven grinned. “I like that.” She inclined her head regally. “I accept your presidential nomination, Julie.”

Julie tipped her face toward Andie’s. “What about you? What do you want?”

Andie met her friend’s gaze. Tears choked her; she struggled to speak past them. “I just want my family back. I just want …” She made a strangled sound. “I used to think of the future and imagine myself married. To someone like my dad. I used to think that’s what—”

She bit back the words and sat up, wrapping her arms around her drawn-up knees. “I’d hear about bad stuff happening to other people, other kids’ families, but I never thought that could happen to me or my family. I thought we were … protected. Special.”

She turned to her friends. “How can he do this to Mom? How can he do this to me? And to Pete and Danny?” Her voice broke. “How?”

Raven scooted over and put an arm around Andie. “It’s going to get better.”

Julie did the same. “It really will. You’ll see.”

“No.” Andie shook her head. “I feel like nothing’s ever going to be okay again.”

“You’ve got us, Andie. That hasn’t changed.”

“That’s right.” Julie leaned her head against Andie’s. “We love you.”

Tears stung Andie’s eyes. She held out her hand. “Best friends.”

Julie covered it. “More than family.”

“Together forever,” Raven added, joining her hands to theirs. “Just us three.”

“Best friends forever,” they said again, this time in unison.

4

Andie passed the next two weeks in alternating fits and states of grief, anger, panic and betrayal.

Her father had completely moved out—his clothes and books, the plaques in his office, his golf clubs and tennis racket. Her mother had taken down every family picture in which he was included, she had emptied the pantry and refrigerator of the foods he and nobody else ate—the whole-grain cereal and Fig Newtons, his beer, the sprouted wheat bread and spicy brown mustard—not just throwing them out, but opening and emptying each one, then smashing the box or breaking the bottle.

Within days it had been as if he had never lived there at all.

Except in Andie’s memory. And in her heart. Andie had never realized the effect one person could have on a place, but her father had had a profound one on their home. The house was changed, it seemed empty now. Quieter. Sad. Even the smell had changed.

Her house didn’t feel like home anymore.

Even though she saw him on weekends, even though she knew he was trying to make up to her and her brothers, it wasn’t the same. She missed him being around. She missed the family—and the father—she’d thought she had. And, as angry as she was at him, as hurt, she still longed for him. She still longed to hear his deep voice call out that he was home at the end of the day, longed to hear the rumble of his laughter while he wrestled with her brothers, longed for the reassurance just knowing he was there had given her. A reassurance she hadn’t even realized she’d felt until now, until it was gone. She felt as if his leaving had ripped a huge hole in her life, leaving an empty place that ached so bad she sometimes couldn’t breathe.

Danny and Pete felt it, too. Either they were even louder and naughtier than usual or unnaturally subdued. Her mother hardly got out of bed. She was listless, uninterested in her children, friends, food or any of the other activities she used to throw herself into with such energy.

Andie had lost her father and her mother.

Andie did everything she could to help, to make her mother’s life easier. She never mentioned her dad, never expressed her own feelings of fear or despair. She helped with the house and the cooking and her brothers.

Raven and Julie had pitched in. They’d baked cookies, made beds and run the vacuum for her, they’d run to the grocery whenever Andie needed bread, milk or peanut butter. They were her constants, her anchors. With them she still laughed, with them she shared all her feelings, good and bad.

For the first time Andie understood the devastation Raven must have experienced when her mother left, for the first time she truly understood Raven’s fierce loyalty to their friendship.

Raven and Julie truly were her family now.

“Andie? Andie, are you okay?”

Andie blinked, realizing Raven was speaking to her. She moved her gaze between her two friends. They were sitting on Raven’s bed, listening to music and eating chips; both were staring at her, their expressions concerned. Andie averted her eyes, shocked at the tears that sprang to them, shocked that after two weeks just thinking of her father could still make her cry.

She forced herself to meet her friends’ gazes. “Mom and I … yesterday we went downtown to look for new … sheets for her bed. She doesn’t want to … sleep on the old ones.”

“I can dig that,” Julie said, shuddering. “I wouldn’t want to, either. It’d be too sad.”

“The thing is,” Andie continued, “we were in the car, at the stoplight by the McDonald’s, and I … we—” Her throat closed over the words, and she cleared it. She clasped her hands together. “He was in the car next to us. With her.”