Kody Keplinger: A Midsummer's Nightmare

I didn’t answer.

“Come on,” he said, standing up and pulling me to my feet beside him. “The kids just got back from the grocery store, and I know they’re dying to meet you.”

So they knew about me? I wasn’t warned about any of this, but Sylvia’s little brats were totally prepared? I knew Dad wasn’t much of a phone talker, but he couldn’t even spare a few minutes to say, “Oh, hey, I’m getting married and moving to Illinois!”

I hadn’t even been given a chance to say good-bye to the condo. To the chilly wood floor I used to sprawl across on hot days. To the shower curtain decorated with multicolored fish and one random mermaid. To the goddamn Velvet Elvis. It was like I had no part of it. Like it had never been mine.

Well, this house wasn’t mine, either. Maybe it was home to Sylvia and her spawn and even Dad—but it would never be home to me.

Before Dad and I could leave the kitchen, Sylvia’s voice came through the dining room, her heels clicking across the tile as she headed toward the archway.

“Thanks for doing the grocery shopping,” she was saying. “Greg and Whitley arrived a few minutes ago. Come in here and I’ll introduce you guys.” She smiled at me when she entered the kitchen, a plastic shopping bag dangling from her hand. “Nathan and Bailey are excited to meet you,” she told me.

A second later a short blond girl appeared in the doorway, followed closely by her dark-haired older brother. They both stepped into the kitchen, letting the bright sunlight from the screen fall across their faces.

I froze.

Holy. Shit.

This could not be happening.

I knew the boy in front of me. But the last time I’d seen him he’d been shirtless, hungover, and half-asleep. It was the boy who’d thrown the graduation party. The boy I’d run out on after getting drunk enough to go all the way with him.

I had a flash of his lips on my neck, his slurred voice asking, “Is this okay?” My cheeks burned.

“You,” he said, his brown eyes wide.

“Do you two know each other?” Dad asked.

“No,” I said immediately.

“We went to the same high school,” the boy answered.

Sylvia seemed ecstatic about this. “Oh, you went to Fairmont, too?” she asked, moving her hand to my shoulder. She was very touchy. “Greg, you never told me that.”

Beside me, Dad looked sheepish. “I thought the school was called Fairview…. Shows how good my memory is.”

“Oh, Whitley, if I’d known you two lived that close to each other, I would have asked your father to pick you kids up at the same time instead of letting Nathan take a bus last night.”

Nathan. So that was his name.

“I can’t believe you two went to school together.” Sylvia laughed. “What are the odds?”

“Small world,” I growled.

“Very,” Nathan said. He was smiling now, but I could tell it was forced. At least I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable here. Stiffly, he extended his hand to me. “Nice to finally meet you, Whit.”

“Whitley,” I corrected, reluctantly taking his hand and shaking it for just a second before letting go.

“And this is my daughter,” Sylvia said. She gestured to the blond girl—thank God, I didn’t know this one—who stepped forward. “Whitley, this is Bailey. She’s thirteen, getting ready to start high school in the fall. She’s very excited to have a girl around to hang with.”

“Mom!” Bailey snapped cheeks red.

“What?” Sylvia asked. “You are, aren’t you?”

Bailey turned to me, clearly embarrassed, and said, “Hi, Whitley. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah… you, too.”

“Isn’t this great, munchkin?” Dad said, stepping up beside Sylvia and putting his arm around her. “You kids will have a wonderful time together. Won’t this be a fun summer?”

Fun? Fun was not the word I would have chosen. Unbearable , awkward , torturous … Anything but fun .

This was a nightmare.

I was supposed to be at the condo, wasting time on the beach, just Dad and me, figuring out college and my life and spending time together. Instead, I was in a new house with new people—including a future stepbrother who’d seen me naked.

“Well.” I sighed, facing my father again. “It will definitely be interesting. That’s for sure.”

Sylvia asked Nathan to show me to my new bedroom. Talk about irony.

“This is it,” he said, pushing open the second door on the left when we reached the top of the stairs. “Right across the hall from mine.”

“Great,” I muttered, stepping into the room with my arms folded tightly across my chest. It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t very big, either. The walls were painted a boring shade of white, and they didn’t even have any paintings or pictures hanging on them, which gave the place an eerie psych-ward feel.

My gaze moved to the queen-size bed in the middle of the room. It wasn’t the bed I’d slept in at Dad’s condo, the bed I’d called mine for six years. This one was larger, with an oak frame and way too many pillows. The comforter was a neutral shade of beige, matching easily with the carpet and the curtains that hung around the only window. It was perfect and clean and pretty, just like everything else in my dad’s new life.

And I hated it.

The thing that stung—the thing that was most obvious to me—was that this room was meant to be a guest room. It wasn’t mine.

My bedroom at Dad’s condo hadn’t been fancy or anything. The old bed creaked, and the carpet really needed to be redone. A few photos of Dad and me were the only things that had decorated the walls (aside from one of his crazy bright paintings); I’d never taken the time to put up posters. But the room had been mine . No one slept there but me. Even during the school year, I knew Dad hadn’t used my room for visitors. He had a spare room for that. My room had belonged to me and only me.

This room didn’t. It never would.

“Did you know?” I demanded, turning to face Nathan. The anger over everything I’d learned in the past hour was finally boiling over. “The other night, did you know we were…?”

He sighed and calmly shut the bedroom door. “No. I mean—yes, I knew Greg had a daughter, but I never asked what her name was. I had no idea it was you.”

“Right.” I walked over to the window and stared down into the backyard, noting the fancy-looking patio strewn with lawn chairs and a table with an umbrella in the middle. I could also see the big-ass inground pool. The water was crystal blue, and a diving board stood at the far end. Just the kind of thing you’d see on TV. “This sucks.”

He didn’t say anything. He was so calm, taking this so well. I kind of wanted to punch him, to make him yell the way I wanted to yell. Couldn’t he see how fucked up this was?

I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fingers around the windowsill. My summer wasn’t supposed to start like this.

“I won’t tell them,” he said, breaking the long silence. “You don’t have to worry about your dad finding out.”

“I don’t really give a shit what you tell them.” I opened my eyes and turned away from the window, walking over to unzip my duffel bag.

Okay, that wasn’t true. I did care. I didn’t want Dad to know about the things I’d done. With Nathan or anyone else. No matter how angry I was at him, I still wanted him to see me as his little girl.

But I admit, I would have loved to see Sylvia’s face when she found out a member of her perfect little family had thrown a wild party and slept with a girl he barely knew. She’d be scandalized.

“Either way, you don’t have to worry about it. Obviously I’d be in trouble, too. So as far as I’m concerned, that party never happened.”