Chapter 6
By the time I get home from Hayes’s house, I’ve already convinced myself I’m not going to his party tonight under any circumstances.
Pretending to be social and playing nice with Amber and a crowd of frat guys and sorority girls I have zero interest in isn’t worth my energy.
Even if Hayes is right and I do need to patch things up with my sister eventually, a few more days of space—and licking my wounds—won’t kill anyone.
And as for Hayes, he probably won’t even miss me.
Despite all his begging earlier, I doubt Hayes will notice I’m not there. With so many people around, he’ll be too busy playing host to care. Better for me to spend the night working on my NYU transfer application anyway. At least that feels like forward motion. Something real I can control.
I need to make sure everything is perfect. Every word. Every detail. I can’t afford to give them a single reason to say no this time.
When I walk into the apartment, it’s predictably quiet.
My mom usually works late on the weekends, juggling back-to-back clients at her downtown studio.
This town has no shortage of wealthy women looking for someone to read their chakras or decode their star charts, anything to distract them from their unhappy marriages and unsatisfying lives.
My mother wasn’t always like this, peddling New Age philosophies and alternative wellness to the wealthy and spiritually bored. Before she got pregnant with me, she was a fine arts major with an actual point of view.
She had vision.
Talent, too.
A few years ago, I found some of her old paintings stashed in the back of her closet.
A handful of oil canvases filled with dark, visceral images of haunted worlds.
Shadow-thin angels and bleeding red skies.
Devils cloaked in smoke. They unsettled me, but in the best possible way.
It was like she saw something the rest of us didn’t. Those paintings meant something.
But I guess meaning doesn’t pay the bills.
Amber’s bedroom door is wide open as I pass by, everything inside aggressively pink, like a cupcake factory exploded.
Last year, she convinced Mom to let her paint the walls, and now her ruffled bedding matches the same high-octane, bubblegum hue.
A glowing neon “A” hangs above her bed, and right beside it, a peppy poster chirps: Be So Happy That When Others Look At You, They Become Happy Too. I get a headache just looking at it.
Thankfully, she’s not inside.
Amber works weekends at Laguna Attire, a trendy boutique downtown, to fund her shopping addiction. They sell stuff I wouldn’t be caught dead in—bedazzled fringe jackets, low-cut neon bodysuits, glitter cowboy boots. Amber and her friends go absolutely feral for that crap.
Once I get to my own room, I shut the door and settle at my black lacquer desk, ready to dive into my transfer applications. Unbidden, my eyes drift to the corkboard hanging above, covered in photo memories of Hayes and me through the years.
There we are on the first day of fifth grade, holding chalkboard signs with our ages and heights—Mom’s idea.
Then making s’mores on the beach the summer after sixth grade, both of us in matching Camp Crystal Lake hoodies, deep in our Friday the 13th phase.
There’s the flag football championship game in junior high.
We won that night thanks to Hayes and his perfect spirals.
And our first high school dance, the only one we went to together because he got lazy and couldn’t decide who to bring as his date that year.
In the center is my favorite photo of all.
It’s me and Hayes, of course, but Mom and Amber are there too.
It’s from an old karate tournament, back when Amber was still halfway normal and took classes with us.
I’m clutching a trophy the size of my torso, grinning like my face might split in half.
Amber’s got her arm around my shoulder. I’d just won best all-around in the juniors’ division, one of the only times I ever beat Amber at anything.
Everyone’s smiling for the camera—except Hayes.
He’s smiling at me.
Next to the corkboard is a shelf lined with my most prized possessions. Front and center is Hayes’s Stranger Things Demogorgon Funko Pop, the one he gave me in sixth grade after I fell out of his treehouse and broke my wrist. Totally his fault. Pretty sure he cried more than I did that day.
Beside the Demogorgon sits the rainbow-hued Stephen King box set Mom got me for my last birthday. On the other end, my framed black-and-white print of David Bowie—the Labyrinth Goblin King himself. He looks unbothered and brilliant. I aspire to be both someday.
I grab my favorite chenille blanket and drape it over my legs, then open my clunky old MacBook. The thing weighs a hundred pounds and hums like a lawnmower as it boots up. It’s basically an ancient relic. One of Mom’s clients was going to donate it to Goodwill but gave it to us instead.
Once I’m on the now-familiar NYU admissions site, I pull up the two transfer applications required for Tisch. First is the Common App, the standard application everyone fills out: GPA, test scores, coursework. The easy stuff.
Second is the separate portfolio submission for the music school. That one’s trickier. It requires a song portfolio and performance résumé. Which would be fine, except I don’t have a single polished recording.
My résumé’s not much better.
Aside from high school choir and a few arts-heavy classes I squeezed into this semester at LHU, my so-called “musical career” mostly consists of singing in the shower.
I take a deep breath, trying to slow the panic rising in my chest, and decide to focus on the Common App first. Low-hanging fruit. No reason to have a heart attack just yet.
The academics section is a breeze. My high school GPA and test scores were well above the median when I applied last fall, even for a school as competitive as NYU. Grades have always come easy to me. It’s everything else that’s the problem.
I’m making decent progress, steadily moving through each section—until I reach “Parental Information.”
Damn.
It’s still blank.
I let out an annoyed sigh. I’d sent my mom the login weeks ago, and she’d promised she’d handle it. I know she’s not thrilled that I’m already looking to transfer, especially since my semester at LHU has barely started, but she’s going to have to get over it.
I debate calling her at work, but at this point, it might be faster to just do it myself. At least the parts I know.
I start to fill in the sections as best I can:
Name: Melinda Smith
Marital Status: Single
Occupation: Artist
(Because there’s no way I’m putting “Aura Healer and Crystal Specialist” on a college application)
Education Level:
The question stops me cold.
I have no idea.
Did she go back to school after dropping out when she got pregnant with me? Did she ever finish her degree?
I should be able to answer this. It’s the kind of basic information someone should know about their own mother, but I don’t.
Does that make me a shitty, self-centered daughter?
Possibly.
Unsure what to do next, I try calling. It goes straight to voicemail.
She must have a client. Even though there’s zero scientific proof, my mom is fully convinced that radio frequencies from cell phones interfere with her “psychic energy” during readings, so she always turns hers off.
With no other options left, I shut the laptop and head for her bedroom closet, going straight to the purple, cosmic-swirl storage bin where she keeps all her important papers.
Inside it, everything is filed into manila folders with tabbed labels scrawled in her messy cursive. There’s one for each of us:
Melinda.
Alysander.
Ambrosia.
I flip through the “Melinda” folder, quickly scanning the contents: bills, lease papers, credit card statements, something titled “Empath Degree.”
I bite back a laugh. God only knows what kind of shady online program handed that one out.
I’m almost to the end of the folder when something tucked way in the back catches my eye. A sealed, legal-size envelope. It’s soft at the corners, slightly crumpled, and marked with a single letter:
“S.”
I pause, fingers hovering. Then I slide it out.
I know I’m crossing a line. If the situation were reversed, I’d lose it if she went through my private things. But this is different. Because I know who “S” is.
“S” means Sonar.
My father.
I was barely a year old when he left, too young to remember him. No matter how many times I’ve asked, Mom never told me much about him, either. I know she gave up everything to raise us on her own and carried more than I probably realize, but none of that makes the questions go away.
He’s still my dad.
I have the right to know who he was. To know where I come from.
My fingers tremble as I tear the envelope open, an uneasy feeling curling in my stomach. I suddenly remember the Greek myth Hayes’s father told us about Pandora’s jar.
Pandora was the first woman, given a sealed container full of the world’s evils and warned never to open it.
But curiosity got the better of her, and the moment she lifted the lid, all the suffering, disease, and hardships of life escaped into the world.
I wonder if this is what she felt right before she opened it.
Whatever I find inside—good or bad—there’s no undoing it afterward.
Still, even knowing I might regret it, I dive in anyway.
The first thing I see is a small 4x6 photo tucked into the corner of the envelope.
A man in his late twenties. Handsome. Thick black hair, the longest lashes I’ve ever seen, and a grin like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
He’s standing in front of the Laguna Hills pier, head thrown back mid-laugh.
He looks like me.
I know instantly—this is my father.