The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,8
too-baggy jeans and funny novelty shirt. He liked artificially cheesy snacks and foreign zombie horror movies, just like me.
No question about it: I’d look forward to seeing him again.
“Incoming message for Kate Anderson!” Our home communication system squawked at full volume, jolting me awake. “An urgent message from your father: ‘Forgot to tell you I’m at the airport on a redeye flight to NYC. I’ll be back on Wednesday. Use the emergency credit card for food if you need it.’”
I responded with one of the preset, canned replies on the wall unit. “No problem!”
“Also, happy birthday! I just ordered you a cake. It should be arriving now.”
Canned reply: “No problem!” It didn’t exactly make sense, but I didn’t care.
The front gate squeaked, and one of Dad’s company’s delivery robots handed me a pink box, a padded envelope, and a bag of napkins and plastic utensils when I opened the front door. “Happy birthday, Kate,” it singsonged in a British accent. The Mary Poppins–like voice didn’t match the stark-black, faceless veneer of the delivery bot.
The only other person who remembered my birthday was my best friend Zoe because it was hers too. She was a year ahead of me and was a freshman at NYU’s Tisch School, studying theater. She’d messaged me that morning on my cell phone that I rarely used.
Happy birthday, bitch!
Bitch, you too!
have fun tonight!
Since she’d started college two months ago, we hadn’t talked or messaged much. Maybe it was the time difference. I imagined her hanging out with her new roommates, going to dive bars with fake IDs, snort-laughing her head off, and forgetting me. Kate who?
I put the box on the coffee table and opened it. A midnight delivery of ice-cream cake from Baskin-Robbins. No inscription, just a generic chocolate cake with mint-chip ice cream, which was my dad’s favorite, not mine. I hated artificial mint; it reminded me of toothpaste. I plopped down on the couch and pried apart the chocolaty cake layers, leaving the ice cream to melt in the box.
Then I tore open the padded envelope, hoping it was a present from Dad. But no, it was three books he had ordered for himself.
Rich Dad, Richer Dad.
Parenting Out Defiance.
And It’s Not Too Late to Raise a Winner.
Happy birthday, Kate.
Chapter Four
Nate
TGIF! Finally.
It had been a whole week, and I still hadn’t found a way to explain to Kate that my five-year-old sister had found the hidden wig and gave it some “style” by taking liberties, adding blunt layers with her Crayola safety scissors.
Not only that, but when I tried to tug-of-war it from her little hands, Lucy screeched, “No! I fix it!” and glued the cut hair back to the wig with pink, glittery Elmer’s. Honestly, aside from the sparkles and random hair chunks that kept falling out, the mangier, matted mess looked much worse, but in a good way. I just hoped Kate wouldn’t be mad that the wig had left my chain of custody and fallen into the hands of Baby Vidal Sassoon.
I took the wig with me to my mom’s car so that Lucy couldn’t do any more damage while I was at school. Mom worked from home on Fridays, which meant it was my day to drive the carpool. I absentmindedly threw the wig in the back seat of the Honda.
Zach was my first pickup. He was standing by his mailbox, on time as usual. Clyde Hill Academy had a dress code, but Zach always bucked the system and wore the exact same thing every day: black Starcraft T-shirt, faded brown cords, and ’70s-style metal glasses that he’d had since seventh grade, which were uncool then but somehow had gone retro and come back in style. He practically cannonballed into the seat behind me.
“What the hell?” Zach shouted, pulling the hairy, glittery mass from beneath his ass. As he tried to throw the wig on the floor, not-quite-dried strands of glitter hair clung to his fingers.
I glanced at him in the rearview. “Hey, it’s not mine. It belongs to a friend. Pick it up.”