Chapter Sixteen
Chapter
sixteen
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” THE voice of my grandma pulled my head away from my laptop in surprise.
“Not much,” I answered, closing my computer.
I couldn’t tell her what I was really doing—a deep internet search for Cheryl. At least not until I had some solid leads. I didn’t want to get her hopes up. And so far, my leads were anything but solid. I’d taken the picture of Cheryl I’d found in the yearbook the day before and reverse image searched it. It brought me to the Facebook page of a woman around my mom’s age named Alice who had labeled the picture as mom in high school. Her last name was not Millcreek; it was Slater. I sent a DM that I knew would go to her “other” box and probably never get seen, telling her I thought her mom knew my grandma and that I’d love to ask her a few questions. I’d pressed enter, then stared at the chat screen like she was going to answer me back immediately.
So yes, Grandma scared me with her question. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I am trying to decide what to wear for my date with your grandpa tomorrow.”
Unless she was referring to his ghost, which I was 99percent sure she wasn’t, I knew grandma was having a bad memory day. Bad memory days were hard because if we tried to correct her, she would get confused and upset. Sometimes even angry. Usually, it was best to just go along with her.
“I’ll help you find something in a minute. Can we have a chat first?” Because if her mind was in the past, maybe it was a good time to get her words out, to talk about it. I held out the headphones for her.
She sat down next to me. “You’ll have to take me to my house before the date so he knows where to pick me up.”
Even if I did take her to her house, which I couldn’t because other people lived there, she wouldn’t recognize it. After the fire, it had to be torn down and rebuilt. It was a completely different house.
“Yes, for sure,” I said, helping her put on the earphones. “Tell me about your very first date with Grandpa.” I’d cut this section about my grandpa and add it into a later interview when we’d reached this portion of her history.
“We were in the same math class together in college. I was better, by the way. I think Lawrence just talked to me because he was hoping he could get some free tutoring.” I’d heard this story many times, but it made me smile every time.
“Not cool, Lawrence,” I said.
“That’s how I made my money, though. Even with his baby-blue eyes, he was not getting my brain for free.”
“Way to be a feminist, Grandma.”
“He had to take me to dinner first,” she said, ruining my feminist comment.
“You gave him free tutoring after he bought you dinner?”
“It wasn’t free if I got food out of it, now was it?”
“You have me there.” I adjusted the headphones on my ears and reminded myself to watch my filler words. “What about your first date with Andrew Lancaster? Did you have one of those, or was he just your surfing instructor?”
“Andrew. I haven’t heard his name in a long time.”
I didn’t remind her that she literally said his name a few daysago.
“He was teaching me to surf. We were sitting out there in the water on our boards waiting for a wave, and he said, If I catch the next wave, will you go out with me? And I said, We are out. He shook his head and said, To dinner. I said, And if I catch the next wave, will you go out with me? He gave a grunt and said, And what if neither of us do? Which was a real possibility, by the way, because the waves that day were terrible and I wasn’t a great surfer. But then he said, And if neither of us catch a wave, we should go out. ”
I controlled my laugh this time, kept it civilized. “That’s socute.”
“He was pretty cute.”
“Was this before or after you convinced him he could paint?”
“You knew he could paint?” she asked. “Have you seen his paintings?”
“Some of them.”
“They’re amazing.”
“They’re pretty cool. Which one of you caught the wave that day?” I asked.
“He did. I got tossed by it.”
“Do you remember what the surfboard he painted for you looked like?”
Her brows came together in thought. “I don’t remember, but it was really beautiful.” That wasn’t helpful at all.
“Did you know he turned into a really famous painter around here, Grandma? Did you ever go to any of his showings?”
“Probably. Ask Lawrence. His memory is better than mine.”
Grandpa had been gone for a long time. I hardly remembered him. But it made me sad that she had to remember she missed him over and over again.
“YOUR GRANDMA TEXTED ME.”
I had just walked into the conference room in the library and sat down when Jensen said that to me from across the table. We weren’t the only two here. Ava sat beside him, and Nolen was at the whiteboard writing down our assignments for the day.
“What?” I asked. Did he not understand I never wanted to speak to him again?
“Your grandma texted me.”
My curiosity got the better of me. “What did she say?”
“Asked me to come over. Had some old movies she wanted to show me.”
“I told her we broke up,” I said. “You know she has memory issues. Just ignore her or block her.”
“You want me to block your grandma?” he asked, like that was the most hurtful thing anyone had ever suggested he do.
“Yes, it’s super easy.”
“You would know,” he said, like I was going to deny I had blocked him.
I didn’t. I said, “Yes, I would. ”
“Whatever,” he muttered. “I’m not blocking your grandma.”
“You responded to her, didn’t you?” Jensen always had to play the nice guy even in the midst of screwing someone over.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because we broke up, Jensen.”
“So I’m supposed to be mean to your grandma now? That’s part of the breakup rules?”
“She won’t remember if you don’t respond.” I made a mental note to take his number off her phone when I got home.
“I told her I’d come by.”
“You did what?” I asked even though I heard him perfectly fine. “No.”
“She invited me, Finley. I’d feel bad not going.”
“ That’s what you feel bad about? That?”
He rolled his eyes, like me still mad over him sitting in this room was ridiculous. “I’ll just say hi and tell her we broke up.”
“You think it will be different coming from you? That you have this magic power to make her remember? Don’t go to my house, Jensen.”
“You don’t have to be there.”
“I’m serious.” And I was getting more serious, more angry by the second. “Don’t go to my house.”
“Calm down, it’s fine.”
“ Excuse me? Don’t be an—”
“Hey, look what I found.” The voice came from the chair to my right.
I swallowed down the end of my sentence and looked over to see Theo, an excited look on his face, holding out his phone.
“What?” I was so confused. First of all, seeing him here in my class, was disorienting. Second, I hadn’t talked to him since the library incident two days ago and I was still kind of irritated with him. Plus, my irritation with Jensen was seeping out of my pores at the moment.
I had no idea where he’d come from or how long he’d been there. I’d obviously been so focused on my conversation with Jensen that I hadn’t noticed him come in. I looked around the table; a lot more people had come in during our talk as well and they were all silent, pretending to look at phones or search through backpacks or write in notebooks, but it was obvious everyone had been listening to us.
“Look.” Theo waved his phone under my nose, like he didn’t care that the entire table was in our business. Had he heard the whole exchange with Jensen?
I glanced down at his phone. The Facebook page I’d found the night before of Cheryl Millcreek’s daughter was pulled up.
“Should we message her?” he asked. His expression told me he was invested. Yet he wanted my permission before reaching out toher.
“I already did,” I said.
“You already messaged her?”
I nodded. “I found that last night.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” he teased. “Gotta get to class. Talk to you later.” He paused for a moment, meeting my eyes, his expression seeming to ask if I was okay. I was not okay, but I gave him a slight nod. With that, he got up and walked toward the door like that was the most natural interaction in the world.
The late bell rang out a sharp tone. When the room fell into silence again, Jensen said, “He’s just doing that to bug me.”
I leveled him with a stare. “Doing what?”
“Talking to you,” he said. Someone on the other side of the room giggled. I could’ve sworn someone else said “I agree” under their breath.
Ava backhanded him on the arm. “Not everything is about you, dude.”
“But this is. I guarantee it. You should be careful because he’snot.”
If only he knew just how careful I was being. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. “You’re the person I should’ve been warned about, Jensen. I think I’m good.”
“Oh!” someone to my left said, as though that was the worst insult I could’ve given.
Jensen sighed like he was the one who should be frustrated over this interaction. “Do what you want, Finley.”
I balled my fists near my thighs but did not respond how I wanted to. I’d already had too much of an audience for too much of my drama lately. I wasn’t going to feed the gossip machine.
Nolen stood at the head of the table. “Okay, I know we’re in the entertainment industry, but let’s keep the drama to a minimum during class. Yeah?” He looked at me like I had somehow caused all the drama.
My clenched fists became tighter on my lap. Do not make any comments, none at all, I told myself. You will just end up looking like the bitter ex-girlfriend. I probably already did.