“Are you excited?”
I shrugged. “I’m a little excited.”
“Oh come on, Dakota.” Marnie giggled. “Be more excited than just a little bit.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think this will be all that fun.” I admitted, looking in the mirror one last time. It was Sunday, the day that I was supposed to hang out with Caleb, which is what I was supposed to be incredibly excited for. Sure, I was a little bit excited, but I was also kind of nervous, even though it wasn’t a date or anything, we were just going to a movie.
I wasn’t even dressed fancy or anything, just a nice silver tank top with a layer of black lace, dark skinny jeans, and black bootie heels with my hair in natural waves down my back. I put on a thin line of eyeliner and mascara but that was all of the makeup I had on, so like I said, I wasn’t all fancy or anything.
Since Tuesday, I kind of got used to talking to Caleb for the most part. He came over to say hello to me at my lunch table a few times and I gave him a ride to school on Thursday for some reason that I forget. I’m not all buddy-buddy with him or anything, but at least I can breathe now when he’s around.
“Well, you look amazing so now you just have to handle yourself without having any panic attacks or anything.” Marnie advised with a small smile.
“Right,” I chuckled, fixing a stray hair by tucking it behind my ear.
“Okay, well I’ll go now and let you have your privacy for a little bit.” Marnie sighed. “Good luck!” She chimed, not even giving me a chance to say goodbye to her before she was gone out the door.
I was about to go say goodbye to Owen, who was in his room with some of his friends. I don’t know who was all there, but there were a lot of them in there because they were being really loud. However, I was interrupted by the shrill ring of my phone that was tucked safely in my pocket.
I pulled it out of my pocket to see that it was Caleb who was calling me. I assumed that it was him calling me to tell me that he was early or something, so I quickly answered with a chirpy hello.
“Hey,” He chirped back.
“I’ll be down in a sec,” I assured him in a breathy, nervous voice.
“That’s actually what I’m calling about.” He sighed.
“Um…. Okay.” I mumbled slowly in confusion.
“Yeah, it turns out that I have to babysit my sister tonight and I’m just finding this out.”
“Oh,” Was the only thing that I could think of to say.
“But we can reschedule, right?” He piped.
“Right, we’ll reschedule.” I assured him, sitting down on the edge of my bed. I was both disappointed and a little bit relieved that tonight was cancelled. Mostly disappointed, though, because throughout the week, Marnie had gotten me really excited about this whole thing.
“Great,” He sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow then?”
“Yeah, right. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I grumbled before he bid me a quick goodbye and then hung up.
I locked my phone and sat it down beside me, figuring that I should go tell my dad that I wasn’t going out anymore. I found him downstairs watching something on TV but I didn’t know what since it was on a commercial break.
“Hey, Dad,” I chirped, sitting beside him on the couch.
“Hey, kiddo, aren’t you supposed to be going on a date tonight?”
I shook my head. “Well, first of all- it was never a date and second, he just cancelled so I’m not even going.”
“Right, it wasn’t a date.” He chuckled.
“Dad,” I whined. “It really wasn’t a date.”
“Okay then.” He sang. “Go tell your brother to order pizza.”
“Why pizza?”
He shrugged. “I want pizza, obviously.”
“Then why don’t you order it?” I rolled my eyes at him.
“I’m in the middle of watching this show and I don’t know how many of the guys are staying for dinner.” He justified.
“You’re lazy.” I muttered, standing back up from the couch and walking for the stairs.
“And you’re whiney.” He called back teasingly as I moved up the stairs.
I laughed and rolled my eyes at his stupidity and then when I got to the top of the stairs, I walked over to Owen’s room, knocking on the closed door.
“Yeah, come in,” Owen called from the other side.
I opened the door and found guys splayed all over his room, watching the TV screen which was currently displaying some horror movie. I think it’s Children Of The Corn but I don’t like scary movies, so I really don’t know what movie it is. There’s a lot of people in his room though, like at least ten guys. They’re all from the team and I know this because I recognize all of them and it’s really weird, seeing so many of them in one room.
“What do you want?” Owen asked me.
“Dad wants you to order pizza.” I informed him. “So order pizza.”
“Why can’t he do it?”
I shrugged. “Because he’s lazy and he wants you to do it.”
“Alright,” He sighed.
“Wait, why are you even here?” Levi asked from where he was sitting on Owen’s bed.
“Oh yeah, didn’t you have a date tonight?” Todd wondered.
“Oh my gosh, it wasn’t even a date.” I snapped with a loud groan. “But no, he cancelled because he has to watch his little sister.”
“Haley?” Another guy from the team, his name was Eddie, asked with raised eyebrows.
I nodded from where I stood at the doorway. “Yeah, I think that’s her name.”
“He’s not babysitting her.” Eddie assured me. “She’s at my house having a sleepover or whatever at my house.”
“But it’s Sunday.” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but they don’t have school tomorrow.”
I sighed heavily when I realized that Eddie had no reason to lie about something so stupid, which meant that Caleb was the one who lied. There was really no reason to lie about it, though, because it wasn’t a date or anything, so if he was out with somebody else or something, it’s not like it would have hurt my feelings. My feelings are not hurt.
“Well, that’s awkward.” John sang when the room went silent.
I rolled my eyes at the ginger. “Not really, I don’t really care.”
“That’s good, what kind of pizza do you want?” Owen asked me, picking up his cell phone.
“Pepperoni’s fine.” I sighed, getting ready to leave the room.
“Wait, if you’re staying home then you can hang out with us.” Levi suggested.
“No she can’t,” Owen protested.
“Why not?” I pouted, even though I had no intentions of hanging out with a bunch of guys on a Sunday night.
“Because most of these guys find you attractive and that makes me uncomfortable.” He informed me stubbornly. “So leave.”
“Okay,” I blushed at that totally incorrect piece of information. “I’m leaving, loser.”
“Wait, how’d you do yesterday? At the dance thing,” AJ, another one of the guys asked me.
“We placed,” I sighed.
“That’s good?” John wondered.
I laughed and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s good. We got like, third place out of fifteen teams.”
“Oh, so that’s really good.” Eddie chirped. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah, well I’m going to go now.” I sighed, turning around and leaving the room before shutting the door behind me. I went into my room and locked the door behind me, getting on my computer. I decided that since I didn’t have anything to do and Owen was busy, that I’d have some time to continue my search.
I sat at my desk and Googled Annie Watkins. I grinned a little bit when I saw that there was only one Annie Watkins that lived in France- which is where Ancestry.com had told me that she lived, with the same birthday as my mom. That’s really the only thing I knew about her was her birthday and that’s only because my dad always gets really sad on that day and Derek eventually explained to me and Owen why that is. I know that Derek knows our mom’s name because he was thirteen when she left us. I think it’d be rather difficult to not know your mother’s name for thirteen whole years, but neither Derek nor Dad would ever tell me or Owen about her. Nothing, they would never even tell us her name, which is why I had to result to online searching.
After I found the right Annie Watkins, I found out that she had her own art studio there in France which was amazing because that meant that she had a website. When I went to that website, I spent a great amount of time looking at her pieces of work. She was a painter mostly, but there was also some photography. It was all pretty simple but really, really good and she was obviously kind of a huge deal in France, because she had three galleries around the country and one being in Paris.
After looking around the website, I was nearly in tears because for the first time in my life- I actually kind of felt a little bit close to my mother. To prove that it was the right woman, I read her biography thingy and it said that she was born in America- Alabama, to be exact, which is where we lived- and that she moved to Europe fifteen years ago, which is when our mom left. There weren’t any pictures of her but that would hardly help because I don’t know what my mom looks like because Dad and Derek took away all pictures of her before I was even old enough to know what had happened.
When I go through all of the pages of the gallery, and then the biography, and some other stuff, I find a ‘contact me’ page and click on it. There, she has a phone number, fax, email, and P.O. box listed. Immediately, I decided to write her an email. I could have called her, but it would be really long distance and I mean, what would I even say over the phone? That would be so awkward and I just didn’t want to do that.
I opened my Yahoo account and began writing the email.
Dear Mother,
No, that sounds stupid. I backspaced and started again.
Hey Mom,
Way too casual- backspace and restart.
Dear Miss. Watkins,
That’s really stupid because I don’t know if she’s married or not. Redo it.
Hello Annie,
When I’m finally satisfied with that part of the letter, I move on to the body of it. Have you ever written a letter to a long lost relative? Because it is extremely hard. I had no idea what to even say, I just knew that I had to say something. I stared at the blank white screen for a while until I hears a knock on my door.
“Who is it?” I called, minimalizing everything on my laptop. I was lucky that my desk faced the door, so if somebody just barged in, they wouldn’t be able to see my screen, but that wouldn’t happen anyway because I locked my door.
“It’s Todd,” He replied. “I brought your pizza.”
Oh great. I thought to myself. He’s probably going to ask me about the whole Caleb thing and I don’t want him to do that.
I hurried to the door and unlocked it, swinging it open. I wouldn’t have answered but I was really hungry and true to his word, he brought pizza. He had two plates, so I assumed that he expected to eat in here with me, which I guess I didn’t mind. I took one of the plates and stepped aside so he could come in. “Why aren’t you eating with everybody else?” I asked him, sitting down at the head of my bed. He sat down at the foot so we were facing each other and then started to eat.
“Most of the guys are gone and Levi is in Owen’s room talking to Nikki on the phone, which is something nobody should have to endure.” He paused because I laughed at that. Those two are really adorable to me, Nikki and Levi. “Anyway, I’m sorry about Caleb.”
I snorted softly. “I figured that you’d be happy about that.”
“Happy?” He echoed. “Why would that make me happy?”
“Because you’ve been pissy ever since he started talking to me.” I commented.
“Yeah, well that doesn’t mean that I want you to get hurt.” He defended, finishing his first piece of pizza.
“I’m not hurt.” I muttered. “We were just going to hang out, that’s it. I didn’t even want to go in the first place. I don’t even care.” I knew right away that the last part gave me away. I really did care and now Todd knew it. It’s true that at first, I didn’t want to go hang out with Caleb, but I really got excited about it for some reason.
I don’t know why I was so surprised that he cancelled though. I’m really not a great person at all so he had no reason to actually go through with our plans. I’m not even worth the time.
“Kota, don’t do that to yourself.” Todd sighed.
“I’m not doing anything.” I croaked, suddenly feeling a load of self-loathing on my shoulders.
“Okay, well eat then.” He suggested.
Suddenly, I looked up and glared at him. “That’s why you came in here then, isn’t it? To make sure that I ate?”
He sighed heavily. “Only partially.” He admitted.
“That’s crap.” I snapped. “It was two years ago for crying out loud.”
“I’m still worried about you though.” He informed me. “So is Owen.”
“This is so stupid.” I groaned.
“It’s not your fault, you know, that Caleb is such a dick.”
I shook my head and looked up at him. “I wouldn’t say that he’s a dick.”
“Well, I do.” Todd huffed. “Because you’re really great.”
I couldn’t help it- a tear down the corner of my eye and it dropped onto my cheek. I quickly wiped it away but I knew that Todd saw it because he pushed our plates of pizza aside- his half empty mine not even touched- and wrapped me in a hug.
“Why are you hugging me?” I sniffled.
“Because you needed a hug.” He justified, pulling away and scooting away so that he was sitting about a foot away from me.
“I didn’t need a hug.” I disagreed. “I’m fine.”
He grabbed his plate of pizza before standing to his feet. “Yeah, okay. Just don’t forget to eat.”
I rolled my eyes at him and watched as Todd backed out of the room, shutting my door behind him. I wiped away a few more tears before taking my plate of pizza over to my desk. I didn’t eat a lot, only a few pieces, but it was good pizza, I guess. I didn’t eat with Todd there because I just didn’t like to eat in front of other people because I’m weird like that. I give up for now on writing to Annie and just get on Twitter and some other websites for a little bit.
I was interrupted from a game of Snake by the ring of my phone at like, ten at night. I was actually really tired and planned on going to sleep soon with all of the excitement that had happened that day.
“Hello?” I yawned into the phone.
“Hey, Dakota.” Caleb chirped on the other end.
I frowned in confusion because I’m pretty sure that this guy stood me up just a few hours prior so I kind of took that as a sign that he didn’t want to talk to me. Which is fine, I liked our relationship better when he didn’t talk to me anyway. “What’s up?” I mumbled.
“Well, my mom just got home, so I’m not babysitting anymore.” He explained. “So if you wanna come over or something, that’d be cool.”
I raised my eyebrows at him even though he couldn’t see me. “You want me to come over?”
“Well, yeah.” He admitted.
“No, I don’t want to come over.” I huffed and I’m pretty sure that his intentions weren’t very good, with me coming over to his house so late at night. Obviously, he wasn’t asking me over to sit around and chat.
“But I thought that you… you know, like me?” He mentioned sheepishly.
I groaned softly. “Right, but the thing is that I never liked you, I liked who you were in my head. The celebrity you. The real you kinda sucks. I mean yeah, you’re nice and all but your morals are almost as fucked up as your intentions. I’m done with… you know, you. Just in general, I’m done with you.” I didn’t give him the chance to even reply before I hung up on him. I was just so mad and a tad bit embarrassed. Sure, I don’t know why he lied, but he lied so obviously, it was something that he didn’t want to tell me and there was no reason to lie to me because we were not together and apparently I was the only one on that bandwagon.
Well, at least my mind was completely Caleb free… hopefully.