Dear George Clooney

  To all of my family members

  – Nielsen, Fernlund, and Dixon –

  I’m blessed to have you in my life.

  This is a work of fiction. All references to real people,

  places, or events are a product of the author’s imagination.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my son, Oskar, and my husband, Goran, for being early readers and for giving excellent (and brutally honest) critiques. To the team at Tundra: Kelly Hill for another wonderful cover; Sue Tate, who expertly helped me get rid of the potholes; and especially Kathy Lowinger, who saw the diamond in the rough and who worked tirelessly to help me tell the story I wanted to tell and tell it well.

  Thanks also to my agent, Hilary McMahon, for her passion, kindness, and smarts.

  Author’s Note

  I’ve now managed to write two books in a row that feature single moms with erratic behavior. I must clarify that they are nothing like my own mom. Mom, you were a single parent, but you were, and are, a rock, and I love you more than I can express.

  The hair design school in this book is named after my dear friend Will Berto. Will, you left us far too early, but you live on in the hearts and minds of all of your friends. I love you and miss you.

  Finally – with the exception of the underwear-flushing incident – this is entirely a work of my imagination. However, if George Clooney would ever like to meet to discuss any aspects of this novel, I’ll drop everything and be right over.

  — 1 —

  FOR THE RECORD: I did not mean to send my two half sisters to the emergency room.

  What happened was this: Rosie – my whole sister – and I were in Los Angeles for our second annual Fake Christmas. Real Christmas had already been celebrated in Vancouver with Mom. Fake Christmas took place on the twenty-seventh of December with Dad. I called it that because everything about it, from the date to the tree to Jennica’s boobs, was phony.

  But the presents weren’t. They were real, and there were lots of them. Rosie got a talking doll and a fairy costume and computer games and the Playmobil grocery-store set she’d always wanted, but that Mom couldn’t afford. It came with tiny plastic cucumbers and apples and beans and bananas, which you could stack on a tiny stand, and four plastic people. Even I liked it, and I’m practically a teenager.

  I got an iPod Touch and two new pairs of Converse high tops. The first pair was a Chuck Taylor design, with roses and skulls painted all over the fabric; the second pair was black leather. They were awesome. I also got a skirt from Jennica, which I would never wear because I never wear skirts – only jeans and T-shirts – which you’d think she would have figured out by now.

  Lola and Lucy got a bunch of presents too, even though they’d already been given tons of gifts when they’d celebrated their own Real Christmas. Jennica didn’t want them to feel left out.

  I won’t lie, the gift-opening part of our visit was fun.

  The weird part had been the so-called surprise.

  My dad had picked us up at LAX that morning, looking tanned and buff. “I have a surprise for you girls,” he’d said as we got on the freeway. For a fleeting, insane, Pollyanna moment, I actually thought he was going to tell us he was dumping Jennica and coming back to Vancouver.

  But, instead, he drove us to Santa Monica, a beautiful neighborhood near the ocean. He pulled into the driveway of a sprawling, modern ranch-style house with a lush garden.

  “Like it? It’s ours.”

  I understood that by ours, he didn’t really mean ours.

  “Wow,” said Rosie, drawing out the word, her five-year-old self unable to keep the awe out of her voice.

  “What happened to the condo in Burbank?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged. “It was getting a little tight for the four of us. Plus it was a rental.”

  The new house was beautiful. It was big. The porch didn’t sag, the gutters weren’t broken, and I was pretty sure the roof didn’t need replacing.

  It was nothing like our house in Vancouver.

  I was trying to think of something mean to say when Wife Number Two dashed outside and hugged us.

  “Girls, it’s so lovely to see you!” Jennica said, and I was reminded all over again that she was a lousy actress. “I like your hair, Violet. It’s pretty when it’s a bit longer.” I made a silent vow to ask my mom to cut it short again when we got home.

  The twins were having their nap, so Dad and Jennica toured us through the house. All the rooms were on one floor, but it was a gigantic floor. I hardly recognized any of the furniture. “Our old stuff just didn’t suit this place,” Jennica told us, running her hand through her long blonde hair. “Plus this house is soooo much bigger than the condo.”

  They walked us through the living room, with its sleek modern couches in shades called mocha and taupe, and into the bright, airy kitchen with its stainless steel appliances. Then they showed us the bedrooms, at the far end of the house. The master bedroom was huge, with a king-sized bed and a walk-in closet that was as big as the room Rosie and I shared at home, but without the sloped ceilings. My dad’s clothes took about one-eighth of the space – the rest of the closet was stuffed full of Jennica’s things. She had more clothes than my mom, Rosie, and me put together.

  The twins shared the room next to Dad and Jennica’s. Jennica opened the door quietly so we could peek inside. “I wanted it to look like a fairy tale,” she whispered.

  The twins were fast asleep, sprawled out on two matching canopy beds, safety bars in place so they wouldn’t roll out. The canopies and duvets were covered in shimmering pink fabric. Princess Lola was written in silver above one bed, Princess Lucy above the other. A window seat was filled with pink and silver cushions. Stars and moons had been stenciled all over the ceiling. Built-in shelves held all their toys.

  “And here’s your room,” Jennica said, sweeping her arm toward the door at the end of the hallway like Vanna White on the “Wheel of Fortune.” The beige walls were bare except for a bland watercolor of a sunset that hung between the IKEA-brand twin beds.

  When the twins woke up, we unwrapped presents in the new living room, sitting on the floor by the fake tree. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon when we were done, so Dad took us outside. The backyard was even bigger than the front. It had a swing set, a playground-sized sandbox, and a kidney-shaped pool surrounded by a fence.

  Our yard in Vancouver had a rusted trampoline with a broken leg. And mud.

  “I didn’t know Jennica liked to garden,” I said to my dad, as I took in all the colorful flowers and plants.

  He laughed. “She doesn’t. The garden was here when we bought the place. Fortunately, our nanny has a green thumb.”

  I’d forgotten about the nanny.

  “It’s a bit too cold for swimming,” Dad said. “Why don’t you play in the sandbox?”

  As an almost-teenager, this hardly appealed to me, but Rosie and the twins loved the idea, so we dragged the lid off the sandbox and piled in. Lola and Lucy were so cute, it hurt. They were just under two years old, and they’d inherited the best of their parents’ genes: Jennica’s thick blonde hair and big brown eyes, and my dad’s chin dimple and megawatt smile.

  Rosie and I hadn’t been nearly as lucky in the genepool lottery. Despite having the same father and a very attractive mother, all we’d inherited was Dad’s mousy brown hair and his poor eyesight. He wore contacts; we wore glasses. I’d managed to get his big feet and ears, too, and his bulbous man-knees. All these things looked good on my dad, but transplanted onto a scrawny girl like me, it was seriously unfortunate.

  We played with the twins for a long time in that sandbox. They adored being with Rosie and me, and I would have loved them with all my heart if I hadn’t hated th
em so much.

  After dinner we hung out in the family room, which was just as big as the living room, but more casual. Dad was on the couch reading the paper, but when Lucy and Lola crawled up beside him, he put the paper down and scooped them both into his arms, calling them “my little starbursts” and tickling them until they were giggling uncontrollably, a mass of little limbs.

  Rosie sat nearby watching, her lips pursed.

  When Jennica took the twins away so she could give them their bath, Rosie launched herself at him. “Daddy!” she shouted, jumping onto his lap.

  “Ow!” Dad exclaimed. “Rosie, holy cow, you’ve gotten big! Sit beside me, okay? You’re too heavy for my lap.” He picked her up and placed her beside him. Then he picked up his newspaper and started reading again.

  Rosie’s bottom lip quivered, but she didn’t say a word.

  “Violet, I almost forgot,” my dad said from behind the sports section. “Do you mind going out and putting the lid on the sandbox? Our neighbors on both sides have cats.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. I got up and left the room. But instead of going outside, I snuck into Dad and Jennica’s enormous en-suite bathroom and had a pee and didn’t flush.

  At bedtime, Rosie made me guard the door while she put on a pair of pull-ups under her pajamas.

  “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she asked, her thumb slipping into her mouth.

  I pulled her thumb out. “Never.”

  “Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

  “All that.”

  The next morning after breakfast, the twins wanted to go back to the sandbox. I held on to their chubby little hands and led them outside, Rosie following a few steps behind. Dad and Wife Number Two stayed in the kitchen, drinking their lattes.

  We’d been playing for only a few minutes when Lola asked, “What dat?” She pointed at two big cat turds half-buried in the sand.

  FOR THE RECORD: I’m not proud of what I did next. But I also don’t think it called for the freak-out that followed.

  What happened was this: When Rosie started to answer, I clamped my hand over her mouth. “It’s chocolate,” I said. “Santa must have left it. Look, there’s one for each of you.”

  The twins reached into the sand. They picked up the turds. They popped them into their mouths. They chewed. They swallowed.

  They burst into tears.

  Dad and Jennica were outside in a flash. When she found out what had happened (thanks to Rosie, who couldn’t tell a lie save her life), Jennica wanted Dad to call 911. Seriously. He made her see reason, sort of, and the two of them drove the twins to the nearest hospital instead. Don’t ask me what she thought an ER doctor could do. Maybe give the twins some high-powered mouthwash.

  Rosie and I were left alone in the house for over two hours. We went into the family room and turned on the flat-screen TV.

  I knew I was in big trouble. I knew Mom would hear about it. And I knew I should feel bad about what I’d done.

  But I didn’t. I felt empty – like if you looked inside me at that moment, there’d be nothing there. Just a great big blank.

  About fifteen minutes into a rerun of Arthur, Rosie said, “You never made me eat poo.” Her eyes didn’t leave the TV.

  “No, Rosie,” I said, gently pulling her thumb out of her mouth and taking her hand in mine. “And I never would.”

  Jennica wouldn’t even look at me when they got home. That night I heard Dad on the phone to my mom, telling her about my “ongoing troubling behavior.” The next morning, I announced that I’d like to go back to Vancouver. Nobody argued. Rosie didn’t want to leave, but she was too young to travel by herself, so she had to come with me. I packed up all our clothes and all our new gifts, except for the skirt, which I stuffed under the bed.

  We were back in Vancouver in time for dinner. Fake Christmas had lasted just over twenty-four hours.

  — 2 —

  “Wash much?”

  I sighed. Thing One (otherwise known as Ashley Anderson) stood by my desk, smirking down at me, flanked by Thing Two (otherwise known as Lauren Janicki).

  “Shut your mouth much?” Phoebe snapped at her from the seat in front of me, like the awesome best friend she was.

  “Honestly, some people could care less what they look like,” Ashley said to Lauren.

  “Couldn’t,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Couldn’t care less. If you could care less, it means you could. Care less.” Yeah. I really said that. Honestly, there are times when I wish I could tear out my own vocal cords.

  Ashley’s big eyes got a little bigger. “Oh. My. God. You are such a geek!” Still smirking, she strutted away, followed obediently by her posse of one.

  Ashley was at the top of the food chain at Emily Carr Elementary. It didn’t mean she was the most popular. It just meant she acted like she owned the place, and for some reason, we all went along with it. She radiated confidence, with her long chestnut brown hair, blue eyes, actual boobs, and unique sense of style. Like today, she was wearing hot pink tights, a long white T-shirt cinched at the waist with a big belt, black boots, big hoop earrings, and blue glitter eye shadow. On someone else, for example, me, it would’ve looked ridiculous. On Ashley, it looked cutting edge. Lauren was a copycat version of Ashley, only shorter and a bit odd-looking, like all her features were squished a little too close together.

  Phoebe and I were a lot farther down the seventh-grade food chain. We weren’t at the very bottom; we weren’t like plankton, thank you very much. We were more like gazelles, or maybe field mice, which meant Thing One and Thing Two could eat us for breakfast whenever they felt like it.

  I glanced down at my T-shirt. Sure enough, there was a food stain, most likely spaghetti sauce. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it this morning. Truth is, I’d been dressing Rosie and me in our least dirty dirty clothes since we got back from L.A. because the washing machine was still broken and Mom and I hadn’t had a chance to get to the Laundromat yet.

  I subtly dipped my head close to one pit, then the other, to do a B.O. check. Thank God all I could smell was deodorant.

  “Do a couple of loads at my house later tonight,” Phoebe whispered to me. “Cathy and Günter won’t mind.” Cathy and Günter are Phoebe’s parents. Cathy is Chinese-Canadian and Günter is Swiss-Canadian. They’re both psychologists, and neither of them like being called Mom and Dad because it sounds “too hierarchical.”

  “I think I’ll take you up on that,” I said to her. I held out my fist, and we did the Obama bump.

  Phoebe had been my best friend since kindergarten, when the teacher made us bathroom buddies. Once I didn’t make it in time and I peed my pants. Phoebe helped me flush my soaking underwear down the toilet and never breathed a word to anyone – even after the toilet backed up and flooded the basement and the school tried to find out who’d clogged the drain with a pair of Elmo briefs.

  Now that’s loyalty.

  Phoebe also understood me better than anyone else, even my mom. Predictably, Mom flipped out over the Turd Incident. I’d been grounded for the rest of the Christmas holidays, including New Year’s Eve, which truly sucked since I had to turn down a whole bunch of party invitations – not. My mom never clued in that grounding me was pretty much a pointless punishment, since aside from hanging out with Phoebe – which I was still allowed to do, even when I was grounded – I had no social life.

  But when I told Phoebe what had happened, this was what she said: “Wow.” Then, “How big were they?” Then, “I can’t believe they actually …” Then, “I get that you were tempted. But I can’t believe you actually did it.” And, finally, “You took out your anger on the wrong people.”

  Then we’d dropped the subject and exchanged Christmas gifts. I gave Phoebe a notebook with a stick figure of a boy on the cover that said Boys Stink. Throw Rocks at Them. She gave me a Magic 8 Ball. It was as big as a baseball, and it could supposedly predict the future. You could ask a quest
ion, give the ball a shake, and an answer would appear, floating on a little triangle, in a small round window at the base of the ball. We asked it a lot of questions, including my favorite: “Will Ashley’s hair fall out in clumps this year?” The Magic 8 Ball responded, It is certain.

  It was an awesome gift.

  ——

  “Violet, look,” Phoebe whispered. “It’s your boyfriend.”

  Jean-Paul Bouchard had just entered the room. He’d arrived at our school in late October, from Winnipeg. He was seriously cute, but he was just as seriously not my boyfriend. One, because a guy like him would never even look at a girl like me, and two, because I had made a vow to myself post-Jonathan that I would never have a boyfriend because love is more trouble than it’s worth.

  We watched as Ashley subtly followed Jean-Paul’s movements through the classroom, like a hunter tracking its prey. She was talking to Lauren and Claudia and doing a good job of acting like she was giving them her full attention. But the moment Jean-Paul sat down, Ashley broke away from her friends and slipped into the seat in front of him. She turned around, flashed him a pearly white smile, and started chatting.

  “I hate her,” I murmured.

  “I want to be her,” Phoebe replied.

  And the two of us knew that it was perfectly natural to have both those feelings all at once.

  Phoebe had a Mandarin lesson after school, so I picked up Rosie from her after-school care program in the basement on my own. When I came in, she was sitting in a corner, sucking her thumb.

  “What’s wrong, Rosie?”

  “Isabelle tore my fairy wings.” She took her thumb out of her mouth and held out the wings from the costume Dad had given her. One of them had a small tear. “She did it on purpose.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why are you sitting in the corner?”

  “Because I bit her.”

  “Oh.”

  Alison, one of the daycare workers, joined us. “It’s the third time she’s bitten Isabelle this year,” she said to me, like Rosie wasn’t there.