I take a deep breath. “I'm going to just be me, Dad. Not some publicist's version of me, not your version of me. I'm going to care about the things I care about, not the ones you do. As it happens, I don't care about being the next Paris Hilton. I can't think of anything worse, actually.”
“Bette—”
“My name is Bee,” I interrupt. “It has been for thirteen years. If you ever manage to figure that out, to accept it, then great. In the meantime, I'm finished with this conversation. If I worried you by running away, then I'm sorry. But I'm back now, and I'm going back to school on Monday, and I'll graduate in June, and then I'll be off to college. We just have to put up with each other for a few more months.”
Dad looks at me for a moment, and then unbuckles his seatbelt. He stands up and goes to pour himself a drink. The bottle clinks against the glass and I realize his hands are shaking. He's crying.
I bite my lip. I didn't mean that. That is, I meant some of it, but the truth is that I've missed my father this past week. If I'm honest with myself, I've missed him for years. And I was the one who pushed him away. I stand up and go to touch his shoulder. He turns around, knocking his drink over, and grabs me in a hug that's nearly tighter than I can stand, but not quite.
“I was worried about you,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “I was terrified.”
“I know, Daddy,” I whisper. “I'm sorry.”
He lets me go and sits me back down in my seat. “Buckle your seatbelt,” he says, wiping his eyes. “There might be turbulence.”
He goes back to pour himself another drink, and manages not to spill it this time. When he turns around, his eyes are clear. “You're right, Bette.” He breaks off, and smiles. “Bee. I should have listened to you. I just…you're my child. I was so used to telling you what you needed, to knowing what was right for you, that I figured all the publicity was just another thing I knew better than you.”
I look away for a moment. I think about how before I left, that would have set me off all over again. That I would have been pissed off that he would ever think he knew better than me, when it was so clearly wrong. But now I know firsthand that we don't always see clearly. And so, while part of me still bristles, I understand what he means. And I find I can forgive it.
“You're seventeen years old,” my father says ruefully. “Practically an adult.”
I laugh sadly, and turn back to him. “Practically,” I say. “But not quite.
Epilogue
So after all that, I'm back in LA. Cameras still follow me around wherever I go—worse now than ever before, actually, but at least now my father isn't calling them with instructions. I go out anyway, though. Dad may have been wrong about what I should have been doing, but in a way he was right—I needed to be doing something.
I'm not sure that shopping with Julia counts as doing something, though. We don't have much to say to each other, though of course we never did. Being back at school was weird at first. It's not like I was gone for that long, but when your father has told every newspaper with a Star Tracks section about your departure, it tends to seem like a bigger deal than it really was. I thought that if I heard, “What the hell were you doing in Nebraska, Bee?” one more time, I'd go back to locking myself in my house. But it's been a couple of weeks now and the talk has moved on to more interesting things, like Willow Smith's new hair product line.
Julia and I went to Book Soup today because Kanye West was doing a reading and Julia wanted to see him. I think it was her first time in a bookstore. Ever. I tried not to look for Jess, but I couldn't quite stop myself. It's not that I really thought he'd be there—what would he be doing back in LA?—but I thought if he was in LA, then he would be there.
But he wasn't there. After a while, I got better about not looking for him.
My father will be home in a few minutes. He's taken to spending a lot more