Author's Note: I'm really sorry for the switching tenses in chapters and within chapters. Every time I think I'm comfortable in present tense, I find myself slipping into past tense, vice versa. I promise to work at it

: Chapter 10 :

It was the last day of school. People were cleaning out their lockers and tossing yearbooks back and forth. I lost track of mine. I was sure that it would come back to me eventually. I never was a fan of all of this end of the year thing, with the trading of photos, yearbooks, and fake promises that wouldn't last in the summer. I could hear Maria Kilbourne worrying that her boyfriend was going to cheat on her when he's in Jersey this summer.

I pulled out some crumpled up notes and unstuck the photos that Karen had stuck onto the inside of the door. There was one of all of us, at the beach last summer, sand stuck to our hair and swimsuits. Hannah was beaming into the camera and Rick had his arms wrapped around Karen. Rick was always on the outskirts of our group but he used to hang out with us sometimes when he was still going out with Karen. I wondered if Hannah had already been flirting with Rick then, if they were already fooling around behind Karen's back. There was Myriah and Jackie, standing as close to each other as they possibly could without touching each other.

I was sitting on the sand with Jessica Ramsey. Now that was weird. She seemed foreign to me, now, now that a whole year had past, even though that summer I had foolishly begun to think that maybe it could be it. Then again, I was freshly sixteen and completely enamored with Jessica, the beautiful, nineteen year old ballet dancer. It was amazing that it even lasted three months. I thought about it with a chuckle. She was (and is, at least she seems to be, from the random e-mails we send back and forth every once in a while) incredibly nice. I kind of missed her.

I was suddenly engulfed in a wave of nostalgia. I wanted us to be back at the beach like we had been just a year ago. Then, my eyes snagged on Hannah and Rick and Karen, then on Myriah's too thin body, wrapped in a sarong like a brightly colored, Hawaiian print wraith. I realized maybe we had always been a little messed up, that things were never as great as we pretended. Maybe we were just sick of pretending now.

I hesitated with that photo but eventually dropped it into the garbage bag at my feet. We can always make new memories, ones that aren't laced with backstabbing and depression. The rest of the locker clean up went fast and easy and I shut my locker, ready to go home.

Karen wasn't talking to me. She wasn't doing it in a really malicious way or anything, to get me back for yesterday. I had the feeling that she was more preoccupied. She still smiled at me when we passed in the hallway but she definitely had something weighing hard on her mind. She approached me, now, though, but it looked like it was for some reason other than catching a ride home with me.

"I'm getting a ride home with Hannah, okay?" she said.

"When are they leaving again?" I asked, meaning Watson and my mom.

Karen wrinkled her face in thought. "Uh, Dad left this morning. Elizabeth I think is leaving at four. You can see her off, okay?" She left before I could answer. I wondered if maybe Hannah was going to tell her about Rick. I thought back to it. I really doubted it. Hannah was too weighed down in guilt; I could imagine her weighing her chances and how she would word it. No matter what, the fact that she led Rick on would come out.

I felt a sudden, incredible rush of pity for Hannah. I couldn't believe she actually found herself at blame for this mess. She appeared at school with a clean shirt, shining hair, and a completely fake smile on her face. Everyone was fooled because they wanted to be. Everyone had enough problems on their own without having to worry about Hannah. They wanted to believe that she was okay. Each smile and hug was like a slap to the face. The "You look great, Han!" and the "We have to hang out this summer!" were like little insults that I knew stung her; I knew this from the way her smile grew tighter and smaller as the day wore on. I saw through it all and wished I wasn't the only one willing. I needed to talk to her again.

"Do you have your car?"

I jumped at the question. I hadn't realized there was someone standing right behind me. I turned around. It was Margo.

"What?" I thought back to the question. "Yeah. Yeah I do. Why?"

"Nick ditched me to take out Melody," she said. "I need a ride home. Karen won't mind, right?"

I sighed. "It doesn't matter. She went home with Hannah."

That's how I ended up with Margo sitting in the passenger seat of my car as I carefully backed out of my parking spot and drove away. We drove in silence. I glanced at her without her noticing. She was staring straight ahead. I enjoy silence so even I didn't know why I suddenly said, "What are you thinking about?"

She glanced back at me. "I want coffee," she said.

"What?"

"I want coffee," she said, again. And suddenly, she grabbed the steering wheel and pulled it down.

"Margo! What the hell are you doing!" We crossed into the next lane and I thanked whatever higher power up there that I had stopped believing in that there were no cars in that lane.

"There's a good coffee shop this way," she said. I rolled my eyes.

"I ears aren't busted, Margo," I said. "You could have just told me."

"So you could make some excuse about how you had to get home soon?" She had a point there.

I hadn't been to this part of Stoneybrook except once when Watson took Karen and me out for pasta at a nice restaurant. It was a clean, quiet part of town where office buildings lined each side of the road, the lower level being privately owned restaurants, boutiques, and coffee shops.

"That one," Margo ordered, pointing to a café on the street with big windows and clean flowerbeds lining the windows. She forced me to parallel park, which wasn't exactly my forte in driving, making condescending, insulting comments at my lack of ability to straighten out properly.

"Look, I'm the one with the drivers license okay?" I barked.

Finally, we got out of the car. I pushed open the door to the café and was rewarded by a refreshing bust of cold air. It was air-conditioned, thank god. Even though it was only June, the temperature was already pushing 90 degrees.

It was one of those nice coffee shops that was frequented by business people carrying heavy black laptop bags. It was the kind where there was actually a hostess that showed you to your seat and coffee was served to you and everything on the menu pushed six dollars at least.

"Why are we here again?" I demanded as we waited for the hostess to notice us. We were a couple of sweaty kids so maybe they wouldn't give us any service.

"This is the only place in this god-forsaken town that actually serves strong coffee," Margo said. The café was relatively empty. There were a couple of businessmen chatting over cups of iced coffee in a booth in the corner, and there was a couple seated in a table in the middle of the café. The man's back was to me but the woman seated across from him looked vaguely familiar. She had blonde hair that touched her shoulders and square- rimmed glasses.

"Two?" A waitress had approached us, barely covering her withering, condescending expression.

"Yes two," Margo snapped. I rolled my eyes. I hoped she'd never consider a job as a stewardess. Or a salesperson. Or anything that might even indirectly involve having to interact with other people. We were led to one of the booths that were lined up along the windows. When I sat down, I could see that we had a great view of…the sidewalk and my crappy parallel parking job. The waitress slapped the menus down on the table and left.

"Yeesh, what a bitch," Margo said.

"Maybe if you were more polite," I shoot back.

"She walked up to us looking like she just smelled a decomposing animal," Margo said. "Like I have any motivation to be nice to profiling hostesses."

"You're just paranoid."

We silently open our menus and look at the drinks. I was right. The least fancy thing on the menu was an Americano but even that was four dollars. But it included free refills. Well, I knew what I was getting. Having decided, I shut the menu and looked around me. The couple was seated to my left. They were holding hands on top of the table, the man slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth across the woman's knuckles in a frighteningly intimate gesture for a public setting. Embarrassed, I studied the woman instead and tried to place her. She did look awfully familiar. Was she a former teacher? This was bothering me.

After a minute, I thought to look at the man and when I did, my eyes bugged out and I literally opened my mouth and sucked in air in surprise, like I was a fish gasping for air or something equally foolish.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Da-" I kicked Margo, cutting her off before she could say my name. I opened the menu and angled it so that my face was covered and I leaned forward.

"Hide me," I hissed. By the sounds of the chairs scraping across the ground, I guessed that Watson and the woman were getting ready to leave. Oh no. I chanced a look. Watson was getting up and starting to put on his jacket, his eyes scanning the café. He was going to see me any minute now. I knew it.

"Hide me, quick!"

Suddenly, before I realized what was happening, Margo had slid into my side of the booth next to me, pushed me against the window, and kissed me.

"Mmrpff!" was my muffled protest, but Margo punched me in the thigh and didn't stop. I had to admit, though, I was effectively covered from view by Margo. But of course I wasn't thinking about that at the time. All I could feel was this crazy rush of panic and…well, something else. I can't quite place it even now. I could hear footsteps approaching and I realized it must have been the waitress. I opened one eye and saw Margo, not even turning around, hold up one finger, as if to say "one minute." I caught the irate expression on the waitress' face before she walked away.

Just as Margo had started kissing me, she stopped.

"What was that!" I almost shouted. She looked back at me, eyes wide with excitement.

"You tell me," she said, bouncing up and down on the seat slightly.

Uh, what?

"What?"

"That was your dad, right?" she asked.

"Step-dad," I said, but it was an automatic response. My mind was still stuck on the part where Margo's thin, red lips had touched mine. I felt my face flushing. And I never blush.

"Yeesh, sorry David, but that didn't look good," Margo said. I wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about. She climbed over me, putting on knee on either side of my legs so that she was, in essence, straddling me. From where her black shirt separated from her jeans, I could see a flat, white strip of stomach and hip bones pushing the waistband of her pants. I blushed again then realized she was actually getting to the window. Margo had her face pressed against the glass, peering through it. I craned my neck to see what she was looking at. It was Watson and that woman climbing into a car together.

I saw the waitress approach again and she looked flat-out pissed off at the current situation. I meekly held up one finger like Margo had done earlier and the woman stalked off.

Finally, Margo climbed off of me and slid back into her side of the booth.

"Definitely didn't look good," she said, again.

"You're the one that did it all!" I said, my voice sounding embarrassingly shocked and squeaky high.

"Not that, you moron," she said. "I mean your dad. And Mrs. Engle."

"Mrs. Engle?"

"Karen's mom," Margo said, raising her eyebrow, giving me a significant look. "Your dad's ex-wife."

"That was Karen's mom!"

"Yeah, Karen's mom, Mrs. Engle, Seth's wife. Haven't you ever seen her before?"

I shook my head.

"Well, that's her," Margo said. "I've only seen her a couple of time when I was young but even I know what she looks like. And you're supposed to be Karen's stepbrother." She scoffed.

The waitress came back, seeing that we were in a less compromising position.

"You kids realize this is a café, right? Not a brothel?"

"Uh thanks," Margo said, all sarcastic. "I'll remember that; places with cheap décor, pseudo jazz, and tacky waitresses are cafes. Got it."

"Uh, I'll have an Americano?" I said, quickly, riding over the last half of what Margo said.

"Iced coffee," was Margo's order. I wouldn't be surprised if the waitress was going to spit in Margo's drink multiple times before bringing it out.

"Well? What do you think that means?" Margo asked, her eyes were wide and she sounded excited. "Are things going okay with your parents?"

I frowned in thought. "I think they are. Watson seems fine. Just a little busier in work than usual but he and my mom took a vacation together a couple of weekends ago."

"So nothing about how he might want to get back together with his ex-wife?"

"No," I shot back, a little more defensively than I thought I was feeling. The waitress came back with the drinks. I would have been a little more hesitant about drinking the coffee if I were Margo, but she didn't seem to care and knocked it back like it was alcohol.

"Look, maybe they were just discussing stuff about Karen and Andrew."

"While holding hands in a quaint little café?" Margo asked. "This far out in Stoneybrook where there's smaller chance that someone they know might recognize them?"

I changed the subject before Margo could build an even more convincing argument. Even though we chatted about more mundane things, I could tell both of us were curious as hell about what was going on, except Margo wanted to know as soon as possible and I wasn't sure if I ever wanted to find out.