style="font-size:15px;"> After the pinky shake, Cherish tells me the details about the essay and it’s my idea to type it using our shared laptop. This way Mr. Roberts won’t be able to tell I wrote it and not Cherish.
“Does it need to be about two pages?” I ask without thinking. If I keep dropping clues, Cherish is going to call my bluff.
“Four actually.”
Four? I didn’t shred four pages! But I can’t argue or she’ll know.
“Thanks, Calli. You’re all right.”
“Whatever,” I repeat before she goes to the bathroom to get ready for bed. I almost smile myself when I think about what she said. You’re all right. It’s the nicest thing she’s said to me since joining our family.
I open the American history textbook. Writing a biography in exchange for things ending between Cherish and Dub? Not having to keep wondering about them? Never having to witness Cherish’s lips on his again? Definitely worth breaking the honor code for. God on the other hand? He’s probably adding another check mark on that tally sheet of my mistakes.
After an hour Cherish comes back to check on my progress. “You close to finishing?”
“Does it look like it?”
Uninvited, she sits on my bed wearing a pair of men’s boxers and a bright pink tank. Her face is freshly washed. She doesn’t look older than fifteen or as hard without all her eyeliner and lipstick. “How much longer do you think it’ll take?”
“You’re not helping.” I turn the page of the book and try to keep my focus, but it’s shattered when Mom comes to say good night.
“What a surprise to see the two of you together. I thought I heard arguing earlier.” Mom glances at Cherish and then at me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Cherish and I answer at once.
Mom makes a noise that sounds like “hmm.” “We decided to study together,” I add sweetly.
I feel ashamed when my mother beams at us.
A couple of hours later I yawn and I realize Cherish’s lights are no longer on and the whole house is dark.
My eyes feel heavy. I think I’ve stared at page 189 in Our American Journey for over thirty minutes. I try to focus on the many things this French guy did, like selling Louisiana for crying out loud. My father is a French guy too, but he’s pretty worthless in comparison. He has a flesh-and-blood daughter he chooses not to love.
Thank God I have Mom and Liz.
On my birthday this year, Mom slipped and said I was the best mistake she’s ever made. “What does that mean?” I asked her. Mom had never used that word before. Mistake. She’d always said I was her special gift.
Mom finally opened up about her relationship with my father. She explained how she’d come out after high school. Grandma wasn’t supportive and kept trying to set her up on blind dates with men. Supposedly Mom hadn’t given them enough of a chance.
Mom decided to humor Grandma after her first girlfriend broke her heart, and that’s when she went on a blind date with Pierre Gilbeaux. They ate dinner, drank too much, and here I am.
It’s weird to think about Mom making mistakes, and even weirder to think about being a mistake.
Mom and my father stayed in contact for a little while before they went their separate ways. He wanted to name me Clémence, but Mom talked him into Calli, meaning “lovely flower.” She thought Calli paired well with her name, Brandi. I’m glad she got her way, though it seems unreasonable that I got stuck with my dad’s last name.
There are four of us living in this house with different last names. Clovis (Mom). Gilbeaux (me). Donahue (Liz). Ogilvie (Cherish).
When I was only a couple of months old, my father moved back to Angers, France. Yes—Angers, France. I’ve seen a couple of pictures and he didn’t look red faced and ticked off, but he also didn’t look like I’d imagined. His body was small in comparison to my cowlike frame. His teeth weren’t crooked either. A large forehead was the only thing we had in common.
I stand up and stretch before I continue writing the essay. “François Barbé-Marbois owed his liberty and life to Napoléon Bonaparte.” At this point I don’t care that the sentences in the essay sound more like the textbook than something Cherish would create independently. I’m up to three typed pages, a big difference from the previous two pages Cherish had written.
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