My parents were never much interested in money or clothes or any of the fancy-pants crap that’s ubiquitous here. I wasn’t the kind of kid who asked for designer stuff—it was never really my style, and even if it had been, I’m pretty sure my mom would have given me a lecture. Not just because we couldn’t afford more than the occasional splurge, but because my mother considered name brands and decorative stuff wasteful. Silly stuff for silly people. She was much more interested in using whatever money she and my dad saved to travel to interesting places or to donate to good causes. Experience over things, she used to say, and then talk about some social science study she had read that definitively proved money doesn’t buy happiness. I wish I could say I always agreed with her—I remember one fight we had over a two-hundred-dollar dress for the eighth-grade dance—but now I’m proud of how I was raised, even if it means I’m even more of a stranger in a strange land at this school.
Suddenly, my gratitude toward the Batman turns to fury. How dare he hijack my grade? Unlike the rest of the loaded kids here, I’m hoping to get a scholarship to college. I can’t just trust his promise of an A. And what if Mrs. Pollack found out we didn’t work together? When I enrolled, I had to sign an honor pledge. Technically, this could be counted as cheating and go on my permanent record.
Tomorrow I will have to gather the courage to talk to the Batman and tell him that we need to work together or I’ll have to ask Mrs. Pollack for a new partner. I hate that I have five hours of homework and still need to find time to get a part-time job. I hate that Scarlett is not here. I hate Theo, who just came home and, though I was sitting right there in the living room, didn’t even have the courtesy to say, “Hey, how was your day?” I even hate my dad, who, I decided after my mom died, is easier to love than to pity, for bringing me here, for leaving me to fend for myself. Even he is nowhere to be found.
My mom used to get mad when I used the word “hate.” She thought it was an ungrateful, overly entitled word, and no doubt she’d be furious at me for using it in reference to my dad. But then again, she’s gone, and he’s married to someone else now. Pretty sure none of the old rules still apply.
preaching to the choir. now please stop yelling. you’re giving me a headache.
CHAPTER 5
“Home, sweet home,” Dad said the first time we walked into his new wife’s house, and he spread his hands wide, as if to say Not too shabby, right? If our house in Chicago was low-ceilinged and squat and tough, what I thought of fondly as a wrestler of a house, this one is the prom king: tall and shiny-toothed and the effortless winner of everything. White couches. White walls. White bookshelves. It’s bad enough she’s paying my tuition. Now I’m terrified to add stain damage to my running tab.
No, not quite home, sweet home. It feels weird to complain about living in something out of MTV Cribs, and yet, I miss our house, which Dad sold to the Patels the first day we put it on the market. Aisha is now sleeping in my old room, which has been stripped of my vintage movie posters, and collage of book covers, and pictures of Scar and me making silly faces. Here, I’m tucked away in one of the many extra guest rooms, all of which are decorated so as to keep you from overstaying your welcome. I now sleep on an antique-style daybed—the sort of thing fit for a 1950s pinup girl to show off her garters, and not so much meant for, you know, actual sleeping. The en suite bathroom is equipped with monogrammed Tuscan soaps that look too expensive to touch, much less use. And the walls are decorated with the kind of abstract art that looks like the handiwork of a third grader. My only addition to the room,