Chapter Twenty-Five
Twists of Fayte

"So you're going to meet his parents? You two have only been dating for a month – things must be getting serious." Mom combed her hands through my hair. The implied question was obvious. You two haven't had sex yet, right?

I folded my arms across my chest. I'd changed clothes six times, finally deciding on a pale pink sweater and an old pair of jeans. Mom had insisted on straightening my hair, but I drew the line at her doing my makeup. Her idea of casual was more than enough for a beauty pageant.

"Relax, Mom. Things aren't that serious." Yet, I added silently to myself. "And Luke's going to be here soon."

"Are you nervous? I remember Dominik's girlfriends would always be so shy and timid." Mom clucked her tongue. But really, she wasn't the greatest at the whole thing. One time, she'd asked a girl if she'd been the one who gave Dom the giant hickey on his neck. I swear her blush didn't go away the entire night.

"No, I'm not," I lied. I hadn't let Luke forget that I wanted to meet his mom, and he'd fought me the whole time. Completely unexpected, one day he'd picked me up before school and told me he talked to his mom. He said she'd said yes, but I wasn't supposed to expect anything special.

Before Mom could ask another question, I heard a car pull into our driveway. "Well, he's here. Gotta go." I ducked out of her grip and headed for the door.

"Be back by 11," she called after me. Like she'd care if I wasn't.

Luke seemed distracted when I got in the car. "You look nice," he said, pulling out of the driveway. "I told you not to dress up."

I tried not to roll my eyes. "I didn't."

The drive to town shouldn't have been too long, but we were stuck right behind an Amish buggy going up a giant hill. He didn't seem to be in the mood for talking, so I sat there and twirled his ring around my finger.

"Mom couldn't stand Thalia," Luke finally said. "She's actually…really excited to meet you."

I tried to hide my giant smile. I'd met the parents of a few boyfriends, and they were always way more welcoming when they'd hated their son's last girlfriend. "What about your dad? Is he…?" I left the question open.

"Some ass who ruined my mom's life and then abandoned us?" I was starting to figure out that he was really wound up about something. Come to think of it, he'd been off for the last few days. "I've never met him, and I don't want to."

I wanted to ask him about his three other brothers, but now was obviously not the time. "I've never met my dad either," I volunteered. He wasn't anything more than an abstract figure that sent giant child support checks every month.

He didn't answer. Instead, he accelerated and passed the buggy like a bat out of hell. And for the rest of the car ride, there was nothing but painfully awkward silence.

Shallow Lake wasn't a huge town, but there was a fine line between the people who had money and the people who didn't. Let's just say the Castellans obviously fell into the latter category. Their house was small and in bad need of a new paint job.

Luke parked on the side of the street and sighed. "Just don't say I didn't tell you so when this goes terrible."

"It's not going to be that bad," I protested, hopping out of the car and running to catch up with him without tripping over all the slushy snow.

He grabbed my hand, but I had the feeling it was more of a habit than a genuine gesture of affection. A girl could tell these things. It was going to be a long night.

"Mom, we're here!" Luke shouted as soon as we walked through the door.

I heard pots and pans clanging, then a woman stepped out into the hallway. She was short, 20 pounds overweight, and her blonde hair had obvious gray roots. She had a tight smile plastered on her face. I imagined her as being pretty…20 years ago. His mom was, well, old. "You don't need to yell, Luke."

I put a fake smile on my face and squeezed Luke's hand. "I'm Silena Beauregard."

"Are you related to the reporter on TV? I swear you look just like her."

So he and his mom were obviously not very close. "I'm her daughter," I said sweetly, digging my nails into Luke's hand. He was going to get chewed out later.

His mom smoothed some of the wrinkles in her shirt. "Well, I have a few things to finish up, and then we can eat." She turned on her heels and headed back into the kitchen.

"Told you this was a bad idea," he said.

"Well, maybe if you'd pull your head out of your ass, things would go a little bit better," I hissed, folding my arms across my chest. I gave him a glare that would make most people beg for forgiveness – something I'd learned from my mom.

"Whatever. You wanted to do this."

He led me to their dining room. The chairs were mismatched and the table had phone books shoved under one leg that was shorter than the others. I tried not to judge, really I did, but it was hard not to.

"Kind of different from your house, huh?" he asked, reading my mind. But the weird thing was, he didn't seem embarrassed or anything. "Mom's a nurse, and she works a lot just to get us by."

I didn't exactly know how to respond to that, so I didn't. It was obvious they weren't getting huge child support checks.

A few seconds later, the doorbell rang. "Expecting someone?" I raised an eyebrow as Luke bolted out of the room to get it. He didn't answer me.

I heard Luke's voice and another guy's, though I didn't know who it was. He sounded older. "Mom, the UPS guy needs help delivering something. I'll be back later." I heard the door slam, and then nothing.

Well, this was unexpected. I slumped into one of the chairs and shook my head.

His mom entered a few seconds later. "I'm sorry," she said quietly as she took the seat across from me.

"Something's been wrong with him the last few days."

She exhaled loudly. "Something's been wrong with him since the day he was born."

This family was just bursting at the seams with love.

Another one of those damn awkward silences started, and frankly, I was kind of sick of it, so I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. "I think it has something to do with Thalia."

Her eyes lit up, like Mom's did when she was on the phone with a friend and they were sharing secrets about whatever people over 40 talked about. "Everything's always got something to with that damn girl."

I took that as a sign that she knew everything. "I can't believe that she thought she could get an abortion and then keep living her life without ever telling him she got pregnant."

Luke's mom's face turned red. "She what?" Her voice quickly rose to a shriek.

So maybe I should have known that Luke probably hadn't told her. But hey, he hadn't told me not to tell her. And he'd basically dumped me here. "Yeah. Back in early December. She was pregnant, and she took care of it without telling him. He found out and dumped her right then and there," I gushed.

She took a few deep breaths and shook her head. She stood up and started pacing. "That bitch…he's so stupid thinking…but he never thinks…no, he's just like…" She was like a volcano right before it exploded, spewing out little bursts of lava.

Time to play the sympathetic friend – except, I'd never had to do it for a situation like…this. Oh well. If I wanted her to like me, the best thing to do was to calm her down about Luke and keep her going about Thalia.

I stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. "You sound like you need to talk."

She sat back down, and I took the seat next to her. I wondered how she'd feel telling a 15-year-old her life story, but it was obvious she didn't have many people to talk to. "Luke was the kind of kid who if you told him not to stick a fork in the light socket, he would just to see what would happen. I swear, we'd been to the ER at least 50 times before he turned six. And then he met…that damn girl, and she just encouraged it."

Everyone remembered those two in grade school – they'd been inseparable. The betting pool had already started about when they would first get together. It was weird, since at that age, most boys and girls avoided each other at all costs.

"Then she and her mom just packed up and left – no explanation, no nothing. And Luke would never admit it, but it crushed him. His first semester of high school, his highest grade was a C…minus. He started drinking and smoking, thinking I wouldn't notice, but hello? I'm a nurse. Every time something started going right, he found some way to ruin it. And then that bitch just walks right back into his life, and he's willing to forget everything and go back to her."

I took a deep breath. "You know, she really hurt him. I think it would help him a lot if…you know, acted supportive." Now I guess it was time for a confession of my own. "He's still talking to her – at least, he was a few weeks ago. And I can tell he still thinks about her…a lot. If she got down on her knees and begged for forgiveness, I bet he'd take her back."

"Oh, I think his dad is definitely trying to push him away from that. Of course, it would probably be more effective if he would actually own up to the fact that he's his father instead of-"

"Luke told me on the way here he doesn't know his dad," I interrupted.

"He thinks he doesn't." The tone of her voice told me she wasn't saying anything more about that issue. "Silena, you seem like a nice girl. So please, don't waste your time with my son."

I'd gotten a B on my English paper. Yes, a B. My dad had read that paper and told me it was flawless. Well, after the time I'd made him read it and pick it apart so I could rewrite it and make it better.

I swear, Mrs. M had it out for me.

So while everyone else was running to lunch, I headed up to the English room to ask how she justified giving me such a terrible grade. Except, I got there and she was nowhere to be seen. Her door was wide open and the lights were on, but it was safe to say the room was completely empty.

I wandered in, thinking that she might come back in a few minutes. A few minutes came and went, and I thought maybe she had some notes on her desk, so I guess I started…snooping. And though I didn't find any notes, I found a Shallow Lake yearbook from the 80s. It had obviously been a graduate's, because the first few pages were filled with notes and signatures.

What I was doing was probably wrong, but I shoved the yearbook into my binder and darted out of the room. Hey, she had given me the worst grade of my life. Maybe the yearbook would have some great insight into her terrible personality.

Or maybe I was just a nosy brainiac who didn't respect other people's privacy.

I waited until my study hall to look at it. I even checked the master schedule to make sure Mrs. M had a class 6th hour, just in case she got any ideas about sleuthing around to see who had taken it. Which was admittedly kind of paranoid, because I didn't even know if she'd realized it was missing yet.

Since Shallow Lake High had owned its own printing press since as long as anyone could remember for a reason no one could figure out, our yearbooks had always been in color. And back in the 80s when everything had been black and white, the seniors seemed determined to show off how amazing they were by wearing the brightest colors possible.

Just about everyone's picture had been signed. This was back when you got your yearbook before graduation instead of the fall of next year, which, by that point, you probably never wanted to see your graduating class again.

Then I saw something that caught my eye. And I decided it was a good idea to show someone else, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it. And who better than the person sitting all by themselves?

I walked across the library to Grover Underwood, who was frantically working on his late math homework. "Grover, look at this," I said, shoving the yearbook on top of his stuff and pointing to a picture. "Who does that look like?"

Grover squinted at the picture while I tapped my fingers impatiently. "Dean King…umm…I don't know. Who is he supposed to look like?"

"Think our class."

Grover looked for a few more seconds. "Uhh, I guess he kind of looks like Percy?"

"Kind of?" I said loudly enough that the librarian shot me a glare. "They look exactly alike."

I took the yearbook back and studied it for a second. Dean King's picture had little hearts drawn around it, and there was a big lipstick kiss mark next to it.

All of the sudden, it clicked. Percy looked like this guy. Assuming this was her yearbook, Mrs. M obviously had liked this guy. And Mrs. M had been obsessed with Percy. "Go get the library's copy of the yearbook," I ordered Grover. He did what I asked without asking questions.

I flipped to the last page as soon as he handed it to me. It had been a tradition since the first yearbook came out that the senior couples write their initials on the inside of the back cover and tape in a picture of themselves. No one knew who started it, but the seniors loved doing it.

Right in a giant red heart: GM + DK. A picture taken from the back of a couple holding hands walking down the hallway was next to it. I immediately flipped back to the stolen yearbook and looked at the M's.

Grover, who had been silently watching me, was the first one to speak. "Gorganna Medusen. That's Mrs. M."

We looked at each other for a second.

"You don't think that she…" I started.

"She can't be crazy enough to…"

"Kidnap Percy?" I finished.

Grover was silent for a few seconds. Then he looked at me, this determined look in his eyes. "We have to go to the public library after school."

"Why?"

"If anyone knows anything about those two, it'll be the Fayte sisters."

So that was how I ended up at the public library after school with Grover, both yearbooks tucked in my backpack. "You really think they'll know something?" I whispered as we made our way to the resource center. "I mean, half the time they don't even know what day it is."

The Fayte sisters had been running the library as long as anyone could remember. The three old women knew everything about everyone, and they loved gossiping.

Admittedly, Grover had been really smart to think of coming here.

"Hello, children. What can we help you with?" the sister sitting in the middle behind the desk asked us, peering through her thick glasses. She barely had any hair left, but the few curls she had were combed and spread across her scalp in a desperate attempt to hide it.

"We have a few questions about some people who graduated Shallow Lake in 1988," I said, feeling the need to whisper, even though Mrs. M wasn't anywhere to be seen.

"Oh, 88 was a great year," said the sister on the right. It was obvious that she was wearing dentures. "Well, until Ronald King…" She touched her heart. "God rest his soul."

"Such mysterious circumstances, too," the one on the left said. She was wearing way too much makeup. She looked like a clown. "One day he's fine, and the next he's in the hospital with a terrible case of food poisoning."

"It was awfully strange how the younger brother just got up and left. I don't think he was even at the funeral," Glasses said. "What was his name? Dean?"

Grover and I were both standing there in awe, amazed they were making our job so easy.

"And then Junius was able to step right up into the lead position of the company," Dentures added. "Oh, now he was such a nice boy. So well-mannered and giving. I helped him organize his campaign for mayor."

"We know," the other two said in unison.

"What about Gorgonna Medusen? Were she and Dean…together?" I prodded.

The middle sister swooned. "Oh, God yes. They even got engaged their senior year of high school. And it was such a pretty ring. A blue diamond with all these little opals, and…."

"Of course, we thought they were too young," the one who looked like a clown said. "But you know, if anyone could make it, it was them."

"And what happened?" Grover pushed.

"Well, no one knows," they all said together.

"What do you mean?"

"No one knows what happened to Dean after he left," the middle sister leaned forward, whispering. "It's like he just….disappeared."