The Big F Read online

  “Hi, Dani, you look cute,” Claire said, giving me a hug. How could she make “cute” sound bad? She had a gift.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She smiled and straightened out her pink sundress before wrapping her arm around Dr. Charming’s waist. He towered over her by almost an extra foot, and he looked like he probably shared Claire’s spray tan package at Tan-a-Palooza. They even shared the same dark-brown hair and eyes. He was obviously older than she was, probably by four or five years, and extremely good-looking. Almost too good-looking. Zoe and I have always agreed that it’s never a good idea to have a boyfriend who’s prettier than you are.

  “This is Marcus,” she said.

  He held out his massive hand, and I took it with the firmest shake I could manage.

  “Danielle, I’ve heard so much about you,” he said. Just glorious things, I presume. I nodded and smiled politely as he shook Mom’s hand. She and Aunt Rachel sent each other girly batting-of-lashes looks, and I pretended not to notice.

  “Whatever my sister has cooked up for us tonight smells delicious,” Aunt Rachel said, motioning toward the kitchen. “Shall we?”

  We all filed into our small pea-green kitchen. Mom instructed each of us to get our plates from the table, and she dished out the chicken and gross spinach noodles. Marcus kept up a casual conversation with Mom, reiterating how lovely her home was and how much he missed home-cooked meals from his mom. He actually seemed genuine, and I once again wondered what sort of hypnotizing power Claire held over everyone but me.

  Claire could get away with anything with a flip of her hair and a quick smile. Her mom was locked under her thumb, always believing Claire’s side of every story. Our feud started the moment I was brought into this world and Claire suddenly had someone to compete with for attention. The pinnacle of the Claire–Danielle feud came in my third-grade year, her fourth. We were both auditioning for the part of featured angel in our church Christmas pageant, and Claire knew how badly I wanted it. Before we auditioned for the part, Claire challenged me to a fizzy soda drinking contest. Being the girl who is always up for a good dare, I decided to take her up on it. Little did I know that every time I looked away from Claire, she was spitting out the soda. Long story short, I made a public, pee-filled spectacle of myself in front of all the kids auditioning. That year we watched Claire perform as the featured angel during Christmas Eve mass.

  Once we were all seated around our white tablecloth with a still-visible cranberry sauce stain from Thanksgiving and with our good napkins tucked neatly on our laps, the conversation began with innocent pleasantries.

  “Claire, I’m so glad you’ve brought Marcus here tonight,” Mom said. Claire took Marcus’s hand and smiled at him.

  “I’m glad he could finally meet you, Aunt Karen,” she said. “It’s just so hard to find a time when we aren’t caught up in all our work and can make it back to Ohio, but I’m so glad we made it tonight. His family lives here too—isn’t that a wonderful coincidence?”

  “How lovely! Makes traveling easier for both of you,” my mom said. “How is Teen Gleam going?”

  “So well! My boss is trying to get a new slew of mobile journalists in the Chicago area, so she’s promoting me from an intern to reporter,” she said. Marcus squeezed her hand.

  “She hardly takes a break,” he said.

  “How exciting!” Mom said. She looked at me as if to say “tell her how amazing that is,” but once again, I could only nod and smile. The crippling and suffocating feeling of my own failure took too much out of me in that moment. The little anxious voice in my head was starting to warn me that I should go to the bathroom or something to get away, but of course I did not listen.

  “Marcus and Claire have had a lot of excitement lately,” Aunt Rachel said with a devilish grin. I looked up from my plate then and saw Claire turn a little red.

  “Mom,” Claire said. “You know I’m keeping that a secret for a while!”

  “Sorry!” Aunt Rachel grinned.

  “Anyway,” Claire started, “is there anything new with you, Dani?”

  I shrugged and mumbled a quick “nothing” while trying not to give in to Claire’s fishing for questions about her big secret. I’d played this game a few too many times—I saw right through her.

  “You can’t leave us hanging like that, Claire,” Mom said. Claire made a big show of sighing and being bashful.

  “I wanted to wait until Uncle Peter and Noah were here, but I guess we could tell you all now,” she said.

  I stopped chewing. Was she pregnant? No, Aunt Rachel wouldn’t condone that and be jumping to tell Mom and me. If she wasn’t pregnant, there could only be one thing going on. Claire fiddled with her purse hanging off the side of the chair, grabbed something inside it, and came back up.

  “Marcus and I are engaged,” she squealed, holding her left hand out for all to inspect. Mom hopped up from the table to hug Aunt Rachel, and they did a little happy dance together. I sat there awkwardly, to the side of all the action, not sure how I should respond. I didn’t know what I felt in that moment. The feeling wasn’t jealousy, but it was nowhere near happiness. I mean, Claire was only nineteen. We’d grown up together our whole lives, and while I felt like I was just starting mine, she was ready to settle down with one guy forever and already had the job of her dreams. I couldn’t even pass my contemporary literature class.

  “That is so wonderful, Claire!” Mom said. She gave me that same look, demanding me to join in.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  After the jumping and screaming ended, we sat back down to finish the bits of spinach noodles we’d all pushed to the side of our plates to make it look as if we were eating them. Marcus and Claire kept smiling at each other, and Claire’s eyes would slide to mine every once in a while, to make sure I was watching them.

  “Aunt Karen, this chicken is delicious,” Claire said. “But I do know that you only make it for special occasions. Did Mom spill the beans before we came?”

  “Of course she didn’t! The dinner was meant for our guest. Well, for him and for Danielle. She’ll be leaving for her freshman year at Ohio State at the end of the summer, and I wanted to celebrate her graduation and success. Cheers, Danielle!” Mom said, holding up her glass. “And cheers to Claire and Marcus on their engagement.”

  I kept shoving more into my mouth, hoping that the excess food would soak up my guilt. Claire looked at me again, and I knew she could see it. She can taste fear, smell weakness, and hear my heart pounding with every lie. Her let’s-get-Danielle mentality was still intact, even if she brought her shiny new fiancé to dinner as a buffer. She hadn’t seen the rejection letter, but she didn’t have to. She knew something was up.

  “Actually, my younger brother is going to be a freshman at Ohio State next year too,” Marcus said. “Do you know where you’re living? Maybe you’re in the same dorm.”

  “Um,” I said, “I haven’t gotten my letter yet.”

  “Oh, I thought Bryan got his a couple weeks ago,” he said, shaking his head. Claire stared me down again, spotting the weakness.

  “I heard there’s actually a dorm shortage up there now,” Claire said. “Aunt Karen, I hope she didn’t get waitlisted for a dorm room!”

  “I hadn’t heard about that yet,” Mom said. “Danielle, did you get an e-mail about this? I want to call and ask them what the holdup is.”

  My armpit sweat was seriously soaking through my shirt, and my hands started to shake. The lie that I had bottled up so perfectly was bubbling and bursting inside me, and I felt like I could throw up. I’m a terrible liar, and now the one lie that had eaten me up for the past month was going to explode in front of my perfect cousin and her sexy new fiancé.

  “Mom, I think I accidentally threw the letter away,” I said, the lie somehow still able to come out even though my stomach crawled as the words left my mouth.

  “You should have a university account with all the info on it,” Claire said, handing me her sm
artphone. “Just log on and check.”

  The phone shook in my hands. “I don’t remember my log-in info now; I’ll just do it after—”

  “Just put in your e-mail and reset your password,” Claire said with more force.

  “Claire,” Aunt Rachel warned.

  I messed with the phone for a few seconds and then tried to hand it back to Claire. “Really, we’ll just do it later when—”

  “I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t know you have a room next year, Dani. Please, find it,” she said in her voice that was the subtlest mix of sweet and evil. Her eyes were hard, staring at me in the way that showed her premature victory. It wasn’t enough for her to come engaged and with a new job, she had to humiliate me too.

  “I-I don’t have a log-in,” I said.

  “But every student does,” she said.

  “I haven’t gotten mine yet,” I said.

  “That’s interesting, Dani, everyone else has theirs,” she said, her voice finally reaching its normal tone. Maybe it would do some good to have Dr. Charming see her at her finest moment of devilry.

  “Sometimes these things take time and—”

  “No, not really.” She smiled.

  “Claire!” Aunt Rachel hissed again. Marcus had started to put his arm around her to get her to stop, but she kept plowing ahead.

  “You never got accepted, did you, Dani?” she asked, that same horrible smirk on her face.

  “Claire, honey, sit down,” Marcus said.

  “What kind of accusation are you making, Claire? Of course she got accepted. I saw the letter last fall, and we’ve had it hanging on the fridge ever since,” Mom said. “I wanted to make a great dinner for you and your fiancé, and you come here and accuse your own cousin of something horrible—”

  “Mom,” I said.

  “She doesn’t lie,” Mom continued. “You know better than to think twice about Danielle’s character—”

  “Mom,” I tried again.

  “I would appreciate it if you would apologize to your cousin right—”

  “Stop!” I yelled. Everyone turned to me at once. Claire still had her arms crossed, and her face was bright red. Mom’s mouth stayed open as she looked at me, and Marcus looked like a bewildered puppy.

  “She’s right,” I whispered.

  “What?” Mom asked. No one moved, and the silence that hung in the air stung my ears.

  “I didn’t pass English, and Ohio State revoked my acceptance,” I said.

  Nothing can describe the feeling of your mother’s disappointment and your cousin’s vehement hatred rolling over you all at once. The tears were already falling down my face, and I knew that if I didn’t leave soon my sadness and embarrassment would explode all over the dining room, leaving no survivors in its wake. I took another look around the table before I ran upstairs.

  All the air seemed to seep out of my room, so to breathe again, I climbed out my window and onto the roof. I curled my arms around my legs, allowing myself to cry. Everything had finally fallen apart. Mom knew, Claire knew, and now I finally had to admit it to myself. I couldn’t pretend that it would work out or put off the discussion for another day. My failure was here, in my face, and ready to punch me in the gut repeatedly. I pulled out my phone and called the one person who can solve any crisis.

  “Zoe? Come pick me up? It’s an emergency.”

  She was on her way before I finished my sentence.

  FATE:

  the force or principle believed to predetermine events.

  “Would it make you feel better if we door-dinged his Beemer?” Zoe asked as we pulled out of my driveway. Though it was tempting, I knew I couldn’t punish Marcus for the horrid nature of my cousin. Surprisingly, the family stayed after our little battle royale to help Mom clean up. I watched them through the kitchen window after I shimmied my way down the front of the house. I actually have never had to sneak out of the house, but I’ve always known that my room would be epic for it, with the low roof and the rain gutter underneath my window. Up until now, I also never failed classes, but not having a future was making me a rebel, I suppose.

  “I don’t care what we do, I just want to get out of here,” I said.

  Zoe complied, speeding out of my cul-de-sac and onto the highway. As she drove, she subconsciously sucked on the tip of her thumb, probably nursing a new blister from her hot glue gun or another hole from a stapling incident. She has a bit of an addiction to crafting when she’s stressed out or fighting with her mom, and I knew it couldn’t be good when I saw her backseat. It looked like she stole the contents of Martha Stewart’s house and threw it in the car in time to make a quick getaway. Thankfully, for both our sakes, we didn’t press much out of each other until we pulled into the parking lot of our favorite diner: Moe’s.

  Moe’s wasn’t your average diner in the grimy, greasy way that is usually associated with diners. Moe’s tried its hand at sophistication with black leather booths and beige walls, making for a very minimalist-with-a-touch-of-quaint restaurant. Denton, Ohio, didn’t really scream cuisine capital, but the few places that we did have were nice. Denton’s marketability expanded with new restaurants and stores after the community college was built.

  We ordered a pot of coffee and an endless basket of fries to split from one of our favorite waitresses. When Moe’s was really slow, Laurie would join us, but people crowded the diner on this Friday night. Even though school wasn’t in session, the Denton Community College kids that either lived with their parents or worked in Denton over the summer partied hard together every Friday night. Moe’s was just a pit stop.

  “So what did the wicked witch do this time?” Zoe asked, popping a fry into her mouth.

  I sighed. “She found out that I’d been lying about something. No, nothing you know about.”

  “A secret withheld from your best friend? This better be pretty damn good,” she said.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, it’s just … I didn’t really want to admit it to myself yet,” I said, looking down.

  “Are you pregnant?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Oh yeah, with all my sexual partners, I could feasibly be pregnant.”

  “Just saying, you’re being really shady about it,” she said. “What the heck happened?”

  I paused again, pouring myself some more coffee. “My acceptance to Ohio State was revoked after my final transcripts were sent in.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “What? How?”

  “I failed Franco’s AP lit class,” I said.

  Zoe’s face was still contorted. “Everyone and their dog was in that class. How did you fail?”

  “I didn’t turn in my most stellar work, okay? I couldn’t think of anything to write about for the final paper; everything came out like jumbled mess, and it barely even made it in on time. You know how I’m terrible at working under pressure. I didn’t think Franco would fail me for one paper, but he said that I showed a ‘distinct lack of progress’ throughout the class ‘without asking for help,’” I said, air quotes included.

  “How did you graduate high school without that credit?” she asked.

  “It was AP—an extra class to get me directly into the program at Ohio State. My mom thought it would be this great way to get me ahead of the game, but it just screwed me over. The grade made my GPA plummet, so they couldn’t accept me on merit either,” I said.

  “And you didn’t think to ask me for any help? Or your mom? She gets paid to help kids write letters, Dan,” she said.

  The same suffocating, air-compressing-in-my-lungs feeling started again, and I tried to focus on the salt and pepper shakers across the table from me. Breathe in four seconds, breathe out five. Hands flat on the table. Breathe in four, out five.

  “Hey,” she said, reaching over to take my hand. “I didn’t mean to stress you out. I’m just a little shocked that your mom wouldn’t have pulled some strings for you to get back in already.”

  I just shook my head, my voice fallin
g down my throat and lodging itself in my chest. If I tried to talk now, everything would come out in a sloppy and incoherent sob.

  Zoe tapped my foot under the table, urging me to look up from the salt and pepper and at her. “You could have told me about this, you know.”

  I nodded, keeping up with my breathing regimen throughout.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do. I could always take the semester off, get a job in town, maybe at Moe’s, and apply for the spring semester later. Or I could curl up in my bedroom and watch Netflix for the rest of my life while Noah made me PB&Js until I died. Either option sounded okay with me.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  A loud group of Denton Community College partiers flowed in through the door behind us, a few of the girls singing a horrible radio pop song in about three different keys. Zoe poured more coffee while I people-watched. At the back of the group was a tall guy walking by himself. He looked familiar, but I hadn’t had a chance to see his face yet. He played with his phone idly and looked at the group lazily, responding to his friends every once in a while.

  “Danielle, you’re hard-core staring,” she said, snapping my focus back to our conversation.

  “Sorry, I thought I recognized him,” I said. Zoe turned around with the subtlety of a five-year-old, and the boy decided to take that moment to turn his head our way. His eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were a color of blue that you couldn’t possibly forget. His face had changed, lost some baby fat, but Luke Upton was the same eleven-year-old boy who hid toads in my backyard playhouse and devastated me when he moved away.

  She smiled at him foolishly, and I let my frizzy bangs fall in front of my eyes. When she turned around, her smile was even bigger. “Well, now I don’t blame you for being a stalker.”

  “I’m not a stalker,” I hissed. Even though it was loud in Moe’s I felt the need to whisper, in case Luke could hear us somehow. “That’s Luke Upton, my old neighbor. I didn’t know he had friends here still.”