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  By five-thirty, we had joined Dylan and the Moms in the back yard to put the finishing touches on the party.

  Dylan and Autumn were going as a football player and a cheerleader. I didn’t consider this much of a stretch considering they were a football player and cheerleader, but Dylan had a twist up his sleeve. They were a football player and cheerleader who had encountered a crazed serial killer who had marred their perfect good looks with a chainsaw.

  Of course, Autumn still looked perfect. A red gash cut between her perfect, perky boobs but her face makeup was flawless, with bright red lipstick that would make each scream in terror that much sexier.

  Dylan was far more committed to his character, and Bry helped him with some stage makeup to recreate a head wound that marred one-half of his handsome face.

  By seven-thirty, the first guests began to arrive. Many came after trick-or-treating, so they threw handfuls of candy all over every one as they entered our magical kingdom. Halloween-themed music played from the speakers Dylan had set up around the backyard, which covered everything from Doctor Demento novelty tunes to top-40 hits by Michael Jackson.

  Dylan and his zombiefied football players busted out the choreography to Thriller, much to the delight of all the guests.

  The other Leftovers joined Bryan and me by eight. I could barely see Charlie under her costume, which I figured was by design. She was able to navigate just under the radar of her tormenters as she followed Olive around as closely as I followed Bryan.

  Dylan was the perfect host as he came over to greet us and thank my friends for coming. It was the highlight of the evening for several Leftovers. Olive, Charlie and I weren’t that interested in making friends with the people who made our lives hell on a weekly basis, and those same people were content to allow us to pass without incident as honorary members of their race for just one evening.

  Bryan assimilated a little easier. More and more girls were gravitating toward him as the old shell of junior high geek shed and revealed an elegant, beautiful boy underneath.

  It probably didn’t hurt that he wore nice clothes and drove a great car.

  Either way, several had him in their crosshairs for the party, which meant he was sticking to me just as closely as I was sticking to him.

  The Moms kept an eye on things but weren’t intrusive. By nine-o-clock, when a group decided to play spin-the-bottle, they gave us enough privacy to earn cool points among the revelers.

  One of the cheerleaders, Cindy Crawley, pulled Bryan into the circle so he, by default, dragged me there, too. They passed out packages of crystalized rock candy that popped when you ate it, and proceeded to have a fairly PG-rated makeout session courtesy of a discarded bottle of soda.

  Every time that bottle spun, I freaked out that someone I didn’t like – or worse, didn’t like me – would point that bottle right toward me. It happened almost right off the bat, when one of the senior football players ended up having to kiss me much to the jeering delight of his friends.

  One quick peck and it was over.

  When I spun the bottle, I was even more freaked out I’d land on Dylan. After what happened with the first boy, the last thing I wanted was for Dylan to be the object of ridicule among his peers for having to kiss the awkward fat chick who had a face full of acne in between her ribboned pigtails.

  Instead, thankfully, I landed on Bryan. I filled my mouth with candy and planted a kiss on his lips long enough for us to get the popping effect.

  This was my job as his beard. I had to make him look as straight as possible to fit in.

  And he had to make me look desirable.

  From the loud applause when we broke apart, I was pretty sure that we pulled it off.

  When Bry spun the bottle, he landed on Dylan, which caused a bit of a hullabaloo amongst our juvenile little group. Everyone insisted that the two had to kiss, but I knew Bryan would never risk it. If he kissed Dylan, Dylan and all the other boys present would think it was a joke… until they saw Bryan flush from the experience and possibly become aroused.

  He had only one kiss before, with an equally shy classmate in junior high. He was mortified by undeniable reaction his traitorous body made with an instant erection, which had scared the other boy silly and their experimentation was over before it even begun.

  “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” they all chanted, but I could tell by the panicked look in Bryan’s eyes that he would have rather been carried away by a horde of flying monkeys than kiss Dylan Fenn in front of all our friends. His hands trembled as he opened up the package of candy and filled his mouth.

  When he finally leaned over, he grabbed me instead. Much to my surprise, he even attempted to French me right there in public, but I was so unprepared by this public display I was frozen solid.

  To the rest of the group, however, it looked like a real kiss, just like the one Cindy had laid on him when it had been her turn. Everyone hooted and hollered, especially when he took my hand and pulled me away from the circle for some private time in a darkened corner of the backyard.

  “Shit, that was close,” he said. “Sorry about that,” he offered as he looked at my candy coated lips. “I just couldn’t risk it, you know?”

  “I know,” I said. I wasn’t mad, just a little embarrassed. “I guess that puts off the gay rumor for another month or two.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Guess so.” He sighed as he glanced back at the circle, where everyone was having the time of their lives making out with their friends with no real risk. “Every day in high school is like Halloween,” he said. “We’re all wearing masks. We’re all in disguise.”

  I nodded. It was true.

  Bryan stayed behind to help us clean up. He didn’t leave until eleven-thirty, which was when the Moms, Dylan and I were ready to leave the rest of the cleanup to the following day. I was beat as I hung up my blue gingham dress and put away the ruby slippers my mom had painstakingly made using tiny red sequins and her hot glue gun.

  Someone knocked on my door and I answered with a yawn. It was Dylan, who had likewise shed his costume, and stood there in pajama bottoms and a robe.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he replied.

  We stood silent for a long moment. Finally he handed me a giftwrapped box. The paper was purple, for Halloween, with tiny little skulls and bones over it. I laughed. “What’s this for?”

  “Two things. I wanted to give you something to say thank you for helping me with the party. It wasn’t your kind of thing and I appreciate all you did to make it work. Kids don’t see that,” he added. “But I wanted you to know that I did.” He paused. “Sorry about Rusty.”

  He referred to the senior who had made it very clear he was repulsed by me when he had been forced by the Soda Bottle of Fate to kiss me. I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  “It was still shitty,” Dylan said with the shake of his head. “Guys are jerks.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You got lucky when you found Bryan,” he said. “He’s not like all the other guys, is he?”

  I shook my head. If only he knew. I glanced back down at the gift in my hand. “You said there were two reasons?”

  He nodded. “Early birthday present,” he grinned. Impulsively he leaned over and kissed my cheek, holding it just a beat longer than necessary. “Night, Roni.”

  “Night, Dylan,” I said softly as I watched him disappear down the hall.

  22: Daughters

  October 26, 2007

  “This is stupid,” I reiterated as Bryan fussed over my makeup.

  “No offense, but you grew up to be a massive buzz kill,” he said. “It’s Halloween. It’s supposed to be fun.”

  I glanced in the mirror and saw a bloated version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Janet Weiss staring back at me. I held the lab coat I was wearing with a white-knuckle grip so it wouldn’t expose my bra and shorts underneath. The only thing worse would be wearing a black curly wig, a corset and garters, thigh high fishnet sto
ckings and platform heels.

  But thankfully Bryan had called dibs on Frank-N-Furter first.

  We were going to a midnight showing of the RHPS in Hollywood, and had, by some stroke of madness, decided to go in costume. Dylan and I were Brad and Janet, Bry was Frank-N-Furter and Olive had opted for Riff Raff.

  I was mortified when Meghan peeked into the bedroom to tell me she was on her way out to her own costume party.

  Unlike me, she looked completely the part as a Gothic vampire. She didn’t even need a wig with her dark hair. Bryan had applied her makeup to give her professional looking fangs and blood, which had endeared him to her just a little bit more.

  In the weeks following that first “date” with Dylan, Meghan saw my social circle widen. She met Olive and Bryan within the week, which had been particularly harrowing for me given my history with Wade and his blatant homophobia. Since they knew I was paranoid that Wade would make good on his threat to take custody, they “toned down” their natural tendencies so that their sexual orientation did not become an immediate issue, and Meghan didn’t really acknowledge their sexuality either way.

  In fact she took to Bryan immediately, especially when she realized he could speak her language about fashion. They bonded over haute couture, and he had even taken her to his studio to show her one of the projects he was working on for a major studio production.

  Meghan, who had always dabbled with art, found all this terribly fascinating. She likewise took to Olive, who showed her some of the things she had created. By the time Halloween approached, she had accepted my friends as part of our world.

  I was still persona non grata for the most part, although she seemed to be a bit more curious than angry about the decisions I made and the friends I had. I knew that she liked my friends because she kept her snark minimal as they interacted, which made life a little easier on me.

  Her relationship with Dylan had been a little trickier. After almost two months, she had thrown her worst at him and he had deflected effortlessly, somewhat earning her respect. She still wasn’t too crazy about my ‘dating,’ though Dylan and I were moving at such a glacial pace, I wasn’t sure it exactly qualified. We had shared chaste kisses here and there, but I couldn’t bring myself to act on anything given our past history.

  I needed to know that Meghan would not be adversely affected by my choices.

  Now that he knew I was ‘dating,’ Wade was interjecting himself more and more into our lives, to remind me – endlessly – how I had failed our family with these very same people. He decided it was his business what kind of relationship I might be having around his daughter. He called me on a weekly basis, chastising me and berating me until I had to hang up the phone.

  “He’s an abusive asshole,” Bry told me. “Tell him to call your lawyers and leave you alone.”

  But I hadn’t wanted to do that. We were co-parenting and I wanted to keep the lines of communication open for Meghan’s sake.

  Despite his threats, his relationship with Meghan didn’t change much. He usually only took her on weekends that neatly fit his own little schedule, blowing her off at least twice in as many months.

  Meghan blamed me, of course. I was an easy target because I was the one who was around. As the weeks wore on, it would be my friends that ingratiated me to my angry daughter, as was the case when she opened up my bedroom door to ask Bryan to fix her fangs.

  “Is Erin picking you up?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Meghan responded, as if it were a question almost too stupid to answer.

  Bry looked over her shoulder at me and mouthed, “Of course,” which made me smile.

  Parenting was a lot less painful when you had other people around to buffer the blows.

  “We’re going to be late,” I informed her. “Show starts at midnight.” Midnight was also her curfew on the weekends, but she had already made plans to sleep over at a friend’s. “If you need me, you’ll have to call the cell.”

  “Whatever,” she said with a roll of her eyes, before heading out the door.

  We met up with Olive and Dylan at the packed theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Both Dylan and Bryan had stocked up on the necessities. We had newspaper, noisemakers, lighters and toilet paper for the audience participation portion of the show.

  We belted out the songs along with the people performing live, with Olive and Bryan dancing in the aisle.

  Olive and Bry wanted to head to Santa Monica to eat, but I wasn’t going out in normal public in my underwear. Dylan offered to drive me back to my place, so we parted ways with the others and made it back to my condo just before three in the morning.

  As I turned to tell him that I was going to go change, I ended up walking right into his arms. My lab coat fell away as he fitted me to his body. His eyes were dark as they looked down at me. “Alone at last,” he said before he bent to kiss me.

  I indulged the kiss and even wrapped my arms around his neck to bring him closer. No one had ever been able to make me feel like Dylan did. In a world where I felt so awkward and out of place, I fit perfectly in those two arms. It was getting more and more comfortable as the weeks wore on.

  He broke the kiss before I did. “Hey,” he said softly. “I got you something.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  He chuckled. “That too, but we’ll start with this.” He pulled a CD from his pocket. “I figured your cassette must have worn out by now.”

  I laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “Listen for yourself.”

  We went into the dimly lit living room and I placed it in my media player. Pretty soon the sounds of 1985 wafted from my speakers. He pulled me back into his arms so that we could dance, just like we had winter of sophomore year. “Want to play spin the bottle?” he murmured against my ear.

  “I guess that’s better than strip poker,” I teased.

  “I like your idea better,” he grinned. I got lost in those dark brown eyes and his mouth drifted lower to brush against mine. This kiss was not chaste at all. I melted as he parted my lips with his tongue. My mind quickly calculated the probability of my holding off hitting the sheets with Dylan Fenn for one more night.

  They were slipping by the second as his hands slid down my bare back to cup my ass beneath the lab coat.

  Our steamy kiss was interrupted when my cell phone rang. My phone never rang past midnight, so that spelled trouble. Dylan and I broke apart as I reached for the phone on the table. My eyes widened when I spotted name on the caller ID.

  “Meghan?” I asked as I answered the call.

  My question was met with a sob. “Mom?” she said, before dissolving in fresh tears.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. This drew Dylan’s concern as he stepped closer.

  “Can you come get me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said immediately. “But why can’t Erin bring you home?”

  She sobbed even harder and instantly my maternal instinct kicked in. “You are at Erin’s, right?”

  “No,” she answered in a small voice.

  We made it to the Flying Feather Inn in less than fifteen minutes. Dylan had to drive because I was beside myself.

  “Calm down,” he kept saying.

  “Calm down?” I screeched. “She’s sixteen!”

  He sighed as he pulled into the parking lot. “She called you because she had no one else she could call. You blow up at her and you’ll never earn that trust back again. She doesn’t need a warden. She needs a mom.”

  In true Meghan fashioned I rolled my eyes. I was out of the car practically before he could put it in park.

  I stomped into the lobby of the no-tell motel wearing nothing but my bra, shorts and a lab coat, but I didn’t care. I searched frantically for my daughter. When my eyes fell on her ravaged appearance, my heart immediately softened. My strong, confident daughter sat on one of the sofas hugging her knees to her chest like she used to do when she was five. Her eyes were still black-rimmed from her heavy makeup, but
a lot of it had poured down her face with her tears. I ran over to her immediately. “Baby,” I said as I took her into my arms without another word.

  She fell apart the minute my arms closed around her. She sobbed, smearing makeup all over the stark white lab coat. She clutched me like she was afraid she might drown in her tears. When she uttered, “Mama,” I thought my heart might actually shatter.

  Dylan joined us, sitting on the other side of the sofa beside her. “What happened?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him. She was embarrassed. “I just want to go home,” she wailed softly into my chest. I nodded as I encouraged her to stand so we could lead her back out to the car. I sat in the backseat with her while Dylan drove us home. He walked us to the door, where Meghan slinked through, shoulders slumped.

  “Maybe I should go,” he said softly.

  My eyes met his. “No. Stay.”

  He nodded quietly and followed me inside.

  We were sitting on the sofa when she finally emerged, her costume abandoned and her face scrubbed clean, her dark hair tied into two girlish pigtails. We beckoned her to the sofa, where she slipped in between us, turning into my open embrace.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” she said in a shaky, broken voice as her arms locked around my neck. She was clearly distraught. She hadn’t hugged me like that since she was twelve.

  “I take it you didn’t have a good time at the party,” I said softly as I stroked her dark hair.

  “There was no party,” she confessed.

  Dylan and I shared a glance. “Why were you at a motel, Meghan?” he asked softly.

  She slid him an embarrassed glance. “It’s too humiliating.”

  He rested his arm along the back of the sofa. “Honey, we’re here in our underwear. What could be more humiliating than that?”

  She laughed in spite of herself. Then she groaned. “I didn’t go to Erin’s party because I went out with my boyfriend.”

  My throat closed. “Boyfriend?”