Life and Other Complications Read online

  We come here often enough that you would think we would be decent bowlers. But we’re not, except for Caroline. The Ballentine has its own bowling lanes, making bowling one of the few things Caroline can do when she’s grounded to the hotel. As evidenced by her bowling skills, Caroline gets grounded a lot. The girl can bowl. The rest of us are terrible. Today, Ben struggled to break his personal record of 50. Natalie managed to get gutter balls with the bumpers in. Luke got a strike, in the wrong lane. Kyle threw the ball so hard I’m impressed he didn’t leave a dent in the floor. And I dropped my bowling ball on my foot.

  The ball smashed into my toes and I had to work to swallow the choice words that wanted to come out of my mouth.

  I sank into a chair. “I’m fine.”

  “Tell that to your face,” Caroline said.

  “Bowl,” I told them.

  But Luke headed toward the snack bar, and Caroline started to sit down with me. Only Natalie beat her to it. Nat’s face was pale and exhausted. Caroline and I exchanged a glance. She went back to bowling, leaving Natalie to rest in the chair next to me.

  “What can I do?” Natalie said.

  “You could distract me,” I said.

  And then regretted that choice when she said, “Have I told you about the fundraiser for Critter Connection?”

  By the time Luke came back with a bag of ice, Nat’s color was better, and she got up out of her chair. I’m not sure that she should have, but she went back to bowling. And Luke and I didn’t try to stop her.

  “Shoes this ugly should at least have steel toes,” I told him as he sat down in Natalie’s vacated chair and picked up my injured foot.

  “Dropping bowling balls on your feet isn’t part of the game.”

  He carefully eased off my shoe and sock. A bruise was already starting to form across three of my toes. I winced when Luke touched them.

  “Nothing feels broken,” he said.

  I guess that’s a good thing. But I did have the thought that broken bones would have gotten me out of prom.

  Luke covered my foot with the bag of ice, and I jumped from the cold. But within a few seconds, I had to admit that it felt better.

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  Luke nodded.

  As comfortable as I usually am with him, it felt strange sitting there with my foot in his lap. Strange enough that I started talking. “Natalie is planning a fundraiser for homeless guinea pigs.”

  “We have a lot of homeless guinea pigs around here?” he said.

  “We won’t by the time Nat’s done.”

  He smiled at me.

  “What kind of fundraiser?” Luke said.

  “A Sound of Music sing-a-long. And I volunteered you to do ‘Edelweiss’.”

  He gave me a look.

  “They need someone who can sing and play guitar.”

  Luke shook his head. “Be glad I like you.”

  “Always.”

  The lights dimmed, the disco ball started turning, and a pre-recorded voice came over the loudspeaker. “It’s time to rock the house!”

  The bowlers burst into cheers. The preliminaries were over. It was time for the main event.

  I didn’t bother with the shoe. I just put my sock back on. Then Luke and I were joining the flow of people as they left their bowling balls and headed toward the back of the building.

  The rock half of the Rock n’ Bowl consists of a small, carpeted stage. There’s a karaoke machine set up on one side. The lyrics show up on a screen at the performers’ feet. It’s a simple setup, but a ridiculous amount of fun.

  A farmer in a plaid shirt and blue baseball cap started us off with “Friends in Low Places.” Then Caroline led the crowd in serenading her with “Sweet Caroline.”

  Like Caroline, I have a standard song: “I Will Survive.” I’ve never liked disco. But I still sing that refrain out like an anthem, because I need the reminder. And tonight, as always, my friends welcomed me off the stage like a hero.

  Kyle was slaughtering “Wanted Dead or Alive,” when Natalie slipped up beside me.

  “Did you ask Luke?” she said.

  I nodded. “He said yes.”

  Natalie beamed. “I knew he would do it if you asked him.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that me asking hadn’t made any difference. But Natalie got her words out first.

  “Luke would do anything for you.”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant. But Natalie was turning back toward the stage where Luke was stepping up to take the microphone from Kyle.

  Luke hadn’t said yes because I was the one asking. He was doing it for Natalie. Wasn’t he? But then why had he said, “Be glad I like you.”

  I was confused. And what was happening on the stage didn’t make it any easier.

  Luke always sings Beatles’ songs when we come to Rock n’ Bowl. Typically, he sticks with the crowd-pleasers like “Twist & Shout.” But tonight, his warm voice sang, “I Will.” It was a Beatles’ song I didn’t know, a song all about love. And what was stranger, was that as he sang, Caroline and Natalie both glanced back at me. I didn’t know what to think. Obviously, he wasn’t singing to me. He wasn’t even looking at me. But as he sang the refrain, even Kyle and Ben were glancing back at me.

  Caroline must have said something to the others. She gave them the idea, and now they can’t help but read too much into it. It’s just a song. A song he wasn’t even singing to me. If Luke had feelings for me, he would have said something before now. I literally see him every day. And he’s never said a word about thinking of me as anything other than a friend.

  Luke was still up on the stage singing. But the people beside me had changed. I wasn’t with my friends anymore. I had backed up until I was framed by strangers.

  The thought of Luke being in love with me is absurd. I know that. I just wish Caroline would stop talking about it.

  Monday, May 23

  Today was my first pre-trial deposition. I told Luke and Caroline that I was going to Boston for a mentoring program. I know that at this point one more lie shouldn’t matter. But it does. It weighs on me.

  Mrs. Miller drove me to Boston with a tight mouth and a death grip on the steering wheel. I knew that she didn’t want me to talk to her. Just like I knew that Mr. Raleigh would.

  I wasn’t ready to do this. But we were already driving into Boston. Mrs. Miller dropped me off at the justice building and drove away. I don’t know where she went or if I even wanted her to come with me. I just knew that I was alone as I went through security and rode the elevator up to the seventh floor.

  Mr. Raleigh was waiting when the doors opened.

  “Good morning, Alyson,” he said. “Your foster mother won’t be joining us?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’re going to be right down here.”

  Mr. Raleigh led the way past cubicles and offices, to a small conference room at the end of the hall. A woman I didn’t know was already in the room.

  “Alyson, this is Ms. Snyder, your court-appointed advocate,” Mr. Raleigh told me.

  “Hello, Alyson,” Ms. Snyder said.

  “Hi.”

  Ms. Snyder gave me a concerned look. “Have they explained my role?” she said.

  I nodded.

  Usually, when a minor testifies, they’re accompanied by a parent. But if their parents can’t be impartial, or they don’t have a parent at all, the court assigns an advocate.

  “Can we get you all anything?” Mr. Raleigh said. “Water, coffee, soda?”

  “Coffee, two sugars,” Ms. Snyder said.

  “Water, please,” I told him.

  Mr. Raleigh ducked his head out of the conference room door to pass on our drink orders and then told me, “Have a seat.” He pointed to the chair directly in front of the small camera set up on the table.

  I sat down. Mr. Raleigh took the chair across the table from me. Ms. Snyder settled into the seat in the corner. Her presence was supposed to be a comfort to me. But all I could think abou
t was that she was one more person who had to hear this story.

  There was a light knock on the door. Then a young man brought in Ms. Snyder’s coffee and my bottle of water.

  “Thank you,” I managed.

  “Thanks, Tim,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Go ahead and close the door behind you.”

  The sound of the door shutting echoed like a gunshot.

  “Just relax,” Mr. Raleigh said. “All we’re going to do is talk.”

  I wrapped my hands around the cold plastic bottle of water and worked to pull in a steady breath. There was a window behind me looking into the hall. People passing by could see us, but they couldn’t hear us. Only Mr. Raleigh and Ms. Snyder would hear my words. And whoever watched the video.

  “Ready?” Mr. Raleigh said.

  I wasn’t. But I nodded. Because dragging it out for another ten minutes wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

  Mr. Raleigh hit a button on the camera and then opened his notes. “Please tell us your name and age for the record.”

  “Alyson Anne Bennett, 17.”

  “Do you know Mr. Richard Wallace?” Mr. Raleigh said.

  I nodded.

  “Please answer with words,” Mr. Raleigh said.

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “How old were you when you met Mr. Wallace?”

  “Six.”

  “Do you know the date?”

  I shook my head. “No. But I was almost done with kindergarten. So, maybe May.”

  “And where did you meet Mr. Wallace?”

  “At the grocery store.”

  “Tell me about that,” Mr. Raleigh said.

  My mother was a cashier at a Shop and Save grocery store. But we never went to her store. She didn’t want the people she worked with to know that she used food stamps. She said it wasn’t their business. She liked this store better anyway. It was in a nicer part of town.

  The night I first saw Rick Wallace, I was supposed to be counting out apples. Mama wanted six, like I was six. I had five when the bag slipped out of my hand and the apples rolled all over the floor. I was scrambling to catch them, when I saw Rick Wallace for the first time. He was a good-looking man in a dark suit and a blue tie.

  The other men I knew were mad most of the time. But Rick was different, even in that first moment. He didn’t yell at me for dropping the apples or complain about getting his pants dirty. He just knelt down and grabbed a runaway. When we had all the apples back in the bag, he tied the top shut and handed the bag to me with a smile.

  “Thank you,” I said in my quiet voice.

  “You are very welcome.” He glanced over at where Mama was looking at melons. “Is that your mom?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s pretty,” he said. And then he stood up and walked away.

  Mama smiled when I told her that on the way home. She always liked it when men thought she was pretty.

  “When did you see him next?” Mr. Raleigh said.

  “Maybe two weeks later.”

  “And where were you?”

  “At the grocery store again. But this time, we were in the parking lot.”

  Mama and I were done with our grocery shopping and were trying to go home. But the car wouldn’t start. Mama kept trying to turn it on, but nothing happened. When someone knocked on her window, she jumped. But I didn’t. Because it was the nice man in the suit. The one who had helped me with the apples.

  Mama rolled down her window and he said, “Do you need some help?”

  “I don’t know,” Mama told him. “It won’t do anything.”

  “Bad battery?”

  “It shouldn’t be. It’s almost new.”

  “Would you like me to try and jump it for you?” he said.

  Mama let out a huge breath. “That would be wonderful.”

  So he went and got his car and pulled it into the space in front of ours. We watched him take off his suit coat and his tie and roll up his sleeves. With both hoods up, he hooked up the jumper cables. His car purred. But ours didn’t make a sound.

  He came back to Mama’s window. “It’s probably a bad alternator.” He pulled out his phone and made a call.

  “Joe, it’s Rick Wallace. I’ve got a car at the Shop and Save on Second Street. Looks like a bad alternator.” He listened and then said, “Thanks, Joe,” and hung up the phone.

  He leaned down to line his face up with Mama’s. “My mechanic will take care of this. But his tow truck is out on another job. Do you want me to call your husband to come get you?”

  Mama hesitated. “I’m not married.”

  She bought wedding magazines and looked at pictures of wedding dresses for hours. But she had never been married. I was a mistake.

  “Why don’t you take my car,” he suggested. “I can wait here for the tow truck.”

  Mama shook her head. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “You have a little girl who needs to get home to dinner. I’ll get your car to the shop and take one of their rentals.”

  Mama started to say something, but Rick spoke first.

  “It isn’t very often that I get to play the white knight. Please, let me do this for you.” His voice was warm and genuine.

  “He’s a nice man,” I told Mama. “He helped me with the apples.”

  Mama thought for another second, before she said, “You really wouldn’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” He smiled and reached out his hand. “I’m Rick Wallace.”

  She shook his hand. “Melissa Bennett.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Melissa. And who is the beautiful young lady in the back seat?”

  Mama glanced back at me. “My daughter, Alyson.”

  Rick looked at me and smiled like I mattered. “It’s nice to meet you, Alyson. Now let’s get you home.”

  Rick helped us move our groceries into his car and got my booster installed in the back seat.

  When Mama and I were both buckled, Rick gave her a card. “Call me tomorrow and we can set up a time to switch the cars back.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Mama said.

  Rick smiled. “I’m glad I could help. Goodnight, Melissa. Goodnight, Alyson.”

  We both waved goodnight to him. Then Mama drove us carefully home.

  “What happened when you got home?” Mr. Raleigh said.

  “We put away the groceries.”

  I could see our tiny kitchen, with the peeling paint and dark stains on the ceiling. Mrs. Miller would have hated it.

  “Mama made me dinner. But she didn’t eat. She went on the computer.”

  After a few minutes, she said, “That nice man who helped us, the one with the black BMW – he’s an investment banker.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I was glad it made her happy.

  I was happy too. Most of the men Mama dated pretended I was invisible. But Rick noticed me. He talked to me. I hoped so hard that he would bring Mama’s car back the next day.

  “And did Mr. Wallace bring the car back?” Mr. Raleigh said.

  “He did.”

  He brought the car back, just like he promised. And that night, he took Mama out on their very first date. She was so nervous that her high heels kept going tappity tappity. But Rick didn’t seem to notice. He smiled at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Usually, when Mama’s dates brought her home, they came all the way back to her bedroom and shut the door. But Rick told her goodnight in the hall outside our apartment.

  Mama said that she had finally found a good man. And it was all because of me.

  Tuesday, May 24

  “It’s over,” Caroline said when she walked into the mural room today.

  I was sitting on the ground painting grass around Pooh and Piglet’s feet. “What’s over?”

  Caroline dropped down to sit beside me. “Me, Dylan, this ridiculous attempt at a relationship.”

  “What did he do?”

  Caroline gave me a look of absolute incredulousness. “He mocked Ben
& Jerry’s.”

  Which was admittedly a more serious crime than what usually condemned her boyfriends.

  “That shows that he has bad taste, not that he’s a bad person.”

  “To my face,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “They aren’t your relatives.”

  “They should be.”

  I painted another strand of grass. “Six weeks. That’s a new record for you.”

  Caroline glared at me.

  I lifted my hands in surrender. “I’m just noting. Usually your boyfriends don’t make it past the one-month anniversary.”

  “You’re saying I should settle?” Her face dared me to speak such blasphemy.

  “You know what I think.”

  “Well you’re wrong. This has nothing to do with my father.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So things got hard and he left. That’s his loss, not ours.”

  Not a word.

  Caroline pointed a finger at me. “And that doesn’t mean I think every boyfriend is going to do the same thing. You are reading way too much into this. I just haven’t met the right guy.”

  She has. His name is Garrett. He worked at the hotel last summer. But I’ve given up trying to point out that he was perfect for her.

  I filled my brush with a lighter shade of green. “I guess this means you aren’t going to prom.”

  “Of course I’m going.”

  I paused, my brush poised in mid-air. “But you don’t have a date. And it’s in three days.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll find someone or go by myself.”

  “Or we could stay home and watch Hacksaw VII.”

  “You are not missing prom,” Caroline said.

  “But you’re devastated. You need a girls’ night.”

  “I can be devastated later.”

  I painted in two more blades of grass. “You can’t schedule being devastated.”

  “Of course I can. We have prom on Friday. Natalie’s guinea pig thing on Sunday. I can be devastated Saturday night.”

  I sighed. It’s going to be a long weekend.

  Friday, May 27

  Tonight was prom.