Doomed

  DOOMED

  TRACY DEEBS

  Contents

  Preface

  1 Day One

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14 Day Two

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21 Day Three

  22

  23

  24

  25 Day Four

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34 Day Five

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44 Day Six

  45

  46

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Tracy Deebs

  To Noor, the light of my life

  Preface

  My seventeenth birthday starts with betrayal.

  Lies.

  Mayhem.

  Fear.

  It ends the same way,

  but that’s a different part of the story.

  At least for now.

  1

  Day One

  My alarm goes off at seven, just like always, and I spend a few minutes staring at the ceiling, blinking at the cool early-morning shadows and trying to get my tired brain to work. I was up late last night—insomnia strikes again—so it takes a little while, but eventually I remember what day it is.

  November sixth.

  When it registers, I drag myself out of bed and grab my laptop. After logging in, I skim through my e-mails. There’s a happy-birthday message from Origins and another from my dentist, but the one I’m looking for—the one I’ve been hoping for—isn’t there.

  Big surprise.

  I shove the computer away, tell myself it doesn’t matter. But it does. I grab my cell phone before I can talk myself out of it, check the texts. Nothing there, either.

  It’s early, I remind myself. Only five in Alaska. But even as I lie to myself, as I make excuses for her, I know what I’m doing. Of course she’s awake. She hasn’t slept past 4:00 a.m. in years.

  It doesn’t matter. She’ll call. Or e-mail. Or text. Something. She always does … except when she doesn’t.

  Except when she forgets all about me.

  The thought has me staring at the phone before I decide, what the hell? There’s no law that says I can’t call her first. I dial her number. Wait, breath held, as it rings. There’s nothing wrong with jogging her memory, after all. She’ll hear my voice, see my name on her caller ID and—

  “Pandora.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Is something wrong?” Her voice is cool, collected. Not unwelcoming by any means, but she could be talking to anyone.

  “Everything’s fine. Why?”

  “I can’t think why you’re calling me this early. Don’t you have school?”

  “Yeah. In a few minutes.” I hate how stilted I sound, how I can’t relax. “I just—I wanted to say hi.”

  “Oh.” Her annoyance crackles down the line. “Well, then, hello, Pandora.”

  Silence stretches between us, and as I sit there, waiting for her to remember, waiting for her to hear me, I wonder when I’m going to accept that I just don’t register on her radar.

  “If that’s all you wanted, I need to go. I was dialing into a meeting when you called.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” I clear my throat. “I guess I’ll talk to you tonight?”

  She sighs and I can almost see her shake her head. “Call me if you need me, but when you do, please have something to say.”

  And then she hangs up, leaving me alone. Again.

  I try to shake it off. It’s not like I expected things to be any different. So what if I’m not as important as her job? At least I get to do whatever I want while she’s off defending Big Oil as they do their best to destroy the planet. She’s a corporate lawyer for one of the largest oil companies in the world, and right now she’s in Alaska, negotiating drilling rights that will strip away more of our natural wilderness.

  Last month she was in South America; the month before that, Dubai. And the month before that … I don’t even remember. I have trouble keeping up.

  It doesn’t matter, I tell myself again. I’ll go to school, hang out with Emily and Jules. Maybe after class we’ll hit Barton Creek Mall and shop till we drop. I’ll buy something fabulous … on my mom’s card, of course. Not that she’ll care, or even notice.

  In fact, there’s this great new body scrub I’ve been wanting to try out … I open my computer again to print out my birthday coupon from Origins. Except this time when I pull up my e-mail account, there’s another message there. One that reads Happy Birthday in the subject line. Only it’s not from my mom or any of my friends.

  It’s from Mitchell Walker.

  From my father.

  For long seconds, I don’t move. Don’t breathe. Which is ridiculous, I know, but I can’t help it. My dad’s been the bogeyman my mom has used to scare me for too long. There’s no way I can be blasé about an e-mail from him, even if it is just birthday wishes.

  A few minutes pass as I stare at it, wondering what I’m supposed to do now. Should I open it? Delete it? Just ignore it until my mother gets home at the end of next week?

  I roll the mouse over it, once, twice, but every time I get ready to click on this first piece of correspondence I’ve received from my father in a decade, my mom’s voice from long ago echoes in my head: “Your father is a very bad man, and I don’t want you to have anything to do with him. If he calls you, hang up on him. If he comes to the door, don’t answer it. If he sends you a letter, don’t read it. Promise me, Pandora.”

  I’d promised her—what else could I do when she sounded so distraught? I’d only been about seven at the time, and a letter from my father had set her off. She’s made me renew that same promise numerous times in the last ten years, and I always have, because doing anything else would make the glazed, frazzled look in her eyes turn downright nuts.

  And now here he is, in my e-mail, with birthday greetings. The very same greetings that she forgot.

  She doesn’t have to know, a voice whispers in the back of my head. I won’t have to tell her if all it’s going to do is upset her. I wouldn’t even have to lie—it’s not like she bothers to ask what’s up with me these days. I could just read the e-mail and then delete it, and she’d never have to find out. Besides, shouldn’t I get to have at least one of my parents acknowledge my birthday?

  I tell myself not to do it as all of my mother’s warnings coalesce in my head at once. But it doesn’t matter—it’s already too late. My name isn’t Pandora for nothing, and this, this is a letter from my father, from the man I’ve been curious about for as long as I can remember. There’s no way I’m not going to see what he has to say.

  I open the e-mail, skim the letter I find there. It’s relatively short considering it’s the only e-mail he’s ever sent me, but it has excitement thrumming through me anyway. I settle back and read it again, this time paying close attention to the details:

  Dear Pandora,

  I know it must seem strange to hear from me after all this time, but I wanted to wish you a happy seventeenth birthday. I’ve tried on numerous occasions through the years to get in touch with you—have sent cards, presents, letters on your birthdays—but they’ve all come back unopened. I suppose I should take the hint, but I couldn’t give up without trying at least once more to contact
you.

  I want you to know that not a day goes by that I don’t think about you and wonder how you’re doing. What you’re learning. What your friends are like. What instrument you play or if you prefer sports to music. It’s not much to go on after ten years of absence, but please know that you’ve always been in my heart and on my mind.

  I hope that you’re doing well and that you’re happy. I like to think of you the way you were the last time I saw you—hanging upside down from your jungle gym, swinging back and forth, laughing the whole time. I didn’t want to leave that night, but your mother insisted. And she was right, though it pains me to admit it even now.

  I know I have no right to ask this of you, and if you don’t want to know, delete this e-mail and you’ll never hear from me again. But for years I’ve hoped to tell you my side of the story. To fill you in on everything you don’t know about me. So I’ve typed up all the letters I’ve sent on your birthdays over the years, including for this one, your seventeenth.

  In these letters are the answers to any question I could imagine you asking. About me. About yourself. About your mother and her relationship with me. About why we’ve chosen to live our lives so far apart. If you want to know these things, click on the link I’ve included. If you don’t, ignore it and I promise I’ll never contact you again.

  Take care, sweetheart, and know that no matter what route you take, I will understand. And love you anyway.

  Your father,

  Mitchell

  I sit on my bed for a long time, trying to absorb everything he’s said. And everything he hasn’t.

  All the answers to my questions—and I have hundreds of them—are at the end of this link. All I have to do is click on it and I’ll know, finally, why he walked away from me and my mother. And why he’s never come back.

  Even as I tell myself that the reason doesn’t matter, that it’s too late and I don’t care anymore, my hand hovers over the mouse. Because the truth is, I do care, even after all this time. I couldn’t hold off on opening my birthday greetings from Origins—is there any way I can hold off on opening this?

  Without giving myself time to think about it, afraid if I do I’ll change my mind, I click on the link. And wait for the words that could change my life forever.

  2

  The words don’t appear. At least not at first. Instead, the link takes me to a blog, one that reads, Happy Birthday, Pandora, in the header. The home page is divided into three columns, two narrow ones along the sides and a wide one in the center. The center one contains the same letter as the e-mail, while the side columns contain pictures of the two of us.

  Pictures I never even knew existed.

  Pictures I’ve asked my mother about numerous times, only to be told that there were none. That my dad didn’t like cameras.

  Yet here they are, twelve of them. More proof that my mom has been lying to me all along.

  I look back at the message, kind of awed that my dad—whom I haven’t seen in ten years—did something like this. I mean, I know it’s not a big deal to set up a blog these days, anyone can do it, but still. It takes time and I’m amazed he made the effort.

  The pictures are small, so I click on the first one, and it explodes onto the screen. I’m a toddler, two or so, and my dad is holding me. We’re standing in front of a statue of Sam Houston, grinning wildly. I download the picture, save it. There’s another link below the photo, and when I click on it, it leads me to another letter, one that was written by him when I was a baby. He talks about what it felt like to hold me in his arms for the first time, what it felt like the first time I smiled at him. It’s a little corny, sure, but I don’t care.

  It’s too nice to hear that I was wanted. That someone loved me. It’s been years since my mom has done or said anything that made me think that might once have been the case.

  I click on the second picture, save it, then follow the link. Do the same for the third and the fourth. I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling as I look at each of the photos and read the words my father has posted for me. It’s a strange numbness mixed with exhilaration—sort of what it feels like to be on a Tilt-A-Whirl just as the ride begins to spin.

  My cell phone rings and I almost ignore it—what I’m doing is so much more interesting than anything a caller might have to say. But it’s Jules’s ring, and I know she’ll be mad if I ignore her. I’ve been picking her up for the past two weeks, ever since her car got totaled.

  I dive for the phone. “Jules?”

  “How far away are you? We’re going to be late. You don’t want a detention on your birthday!”

  Shit, shit, shit. I glance at the clock. That can’t be right—how is it eight thirty already?

  “I know, I know. I’m on the way out the door,” I tell her, fingers mentally crossed.

  “You mean you’re not even in the car yet?” she screeches.

  “I am. I swear, I am.” I hang up the phone, then dive for the jeans I left discarded on the floor last night. I yank them on before running into the bathroom and doing the world’s fastest teeth brush and face wash. And then I’m heading for the bedroom door—finger-combing my hair as I go.

  Except, as I’m walking out, my eyes fall on my computer. I can’t help it, even if it’s going to make me later than I already am. I run over and upload all the photos to my local Walgreens account superfast, so I can pick them up after school. It may sound lame, but I want something tangible to prove that these photos exist. To prove that my father really does care about me.

  I want to hold them in my hand.

  Those five minutes cost me, though, and Jules and I end up being tardy. We split off at the school’s front door, Jules running to her government class and me heading at a more sedate pace to AP English. Which was my big mistake, because while Mr. March isn’t a crazy man about punctuality—at least not like some of the teachers at Westlake High—he is big on accepting the consequences of your actions.

  And in this case those consequences are painful, because when I hit the door about five minutes late, he’s already formed groups to analyze scenes. And instead of letting me go to my regular group, made up of a bunch of my drama and Amnesty International friends, I get stuck with the other students who’ve had the misfortune of cruising in after the bell today.

  My new group consists of me; head cheerleader Tara McKinney (who wears about an inch of makeup every day and drives a Barbie-pink Hummer—Barbie pink!—need I say more?); Zane Connolly (the biggest nerd in the school, which is fine, except he has a crush on Tara and it’s painful to watch him try to get her attention); and the two new guys, Theo Jamison and Eli Sanders, who have been here about two weeks. I don’t know much more about them than what the school gossip mill says: they’re stepbrothers, they seem to hate each other, and they’re seriously hot, though in totally different ways.

  Theo is all dark and broody and gorgeous, despite dressing like a total prep. Piercing blue eyes partially covered by his shaggy black hair, superbroad shoulders beneath a navy-striped button-down dress shirt, and a really good face complete with strong jaw, full lips, and razor-sharp cheekbones. Plus he’s smart enough to be in all AP classes. Too bad I’ve never once seen him smile.

  Eli, on the other hand, is a total charmer. Bright green eyes, carefully styled blond hair, his own set of broad shoulders, and a killer smile that he uses to great advantage. Not to mention that he has awesome taste in music, if the band T-shirts he usually wears are to be believed.

  In the time they’ve been here, they’ve all but revolutionized Westlake’s social scene. Eli’s slid right into the spot of star basketball player and top dog to the popular crowd (big surprise), and though Theo has so far resisted the Dark Side, it hasn’t kept him from developing his own very large bunch of groupies. Watching girls trail them down the halls would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing. I’ve kept my distance on purpose—who wants to be confused with one of the adoring horde—and I don’t appreciate having to change that now.<
br />
  Especially when I look around and realize that every girl in the classroom is shooting hostile looks toward Tara and me. Which is ridiculous, since I didn’t ask to be put in this group. Plus, I look like hell—it’s not like any of them could consider me a threat. Yesterday’s jeans, the vintage but wrinkled Hendrix tank top I slept in last night, and hair that looks as if I stuck my finger in an electric socket. To say that I’m not at my best today would be woefully understating the problem.

  Still, as we slide our desks together I realize Eli’s looking straight at me. He smiles, and I melt a little at the sight of the dimple in his right cheek, even as I tell myself to get a grip. But it’s hard. I’m a sucker for a dimple and always have been.

  Being with them makes reading Shakespeare a million times more difficult, especially when I end up playing Desdemona. I’m totally the wrong person to cast as Desdemona. I don’t have an innocent bone in my body. Nor do I exactly look like your typical, wide-eyed ingenue.