Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange

to look up my dad?”
    â€œNobody asked me. I did it because I’m nice.” He looked very pleased with himself, which only pissed me off more.
    â€œI told you,” I said, seething. “I don’t want to find my dad. I don’t want to talk about my dad. I don’t give a
shit
about my dad.”
    Billy leaned away from me, but he didn’t look scared. “You didn’t tell me all that.”
    â€œI told you enough,” I said, flinging the yearbook back into his bag. “What did you expect to find in there, anyway? I don’t even know my dad’s name.”
    â€œDuh. Somebody who looks like you.”
    I froze for a second, almost tempted by the idea, but then shook my head.
    â€œNo way. Sorry, but he could look like anybody.
I
could look like anybody. What are we going to do, look up every guy with dark skin and dark hair, track them down, and ask them if they slept with my mom? Not cool, Billy D.”
    Billy’s shoulders slumped, and I could see he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Just like with his atlas, he’d decided the answers were in a book—like books were magical yellow-brick roads with dads at the end of every one. My palms began to itch. Billy had made me think—even for a second—like him, like there was a secret inside one of those books. He’d made me feel dumb and childish, and I wondered why the hell I was hanging out with someone so retar—
damn
, I couldn’t even
think
the word anymore.
Someone so … not like me
.
    I stood up and growled down at Billy. “My dad is not in some yearbook. I don’t need that or an atlas or anything else. If I wanted to find him, I could. I wouldn’t need your help. I don’t
want
to find him, okay?”
    Billy zipped up his backpack and stood, unfazed. “Okay. We can look at it later.”
    â€œI don’t want to look—”
    â€œAnyway, I have to go home. My tummy hurts from the cookies.” Billy’s eyes widened, and he pointed a finger at me. “Don’t tell your mom!”
    â€œTrust me,” I said, “I’m not telling my mom about this. I’ve asked her about my dad before, and she totally freaks out—”
    â€œNo,” Billy interrupted, one hundred percent serious. “Don’t tell her what I said about the cookies.”
    â€¢ • • X • • •
    After Billy left, I sat at the kitchen table pretending to write a paper for English. I stared at the notepad under my hands, but I didn’t see the words written there. My senses were all focused on Mom instead—the sound of her opening and closing the fridge, the smell of her shampoo, and the feel of her eyes on me.
    â€œHow’s the homework going?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œEnglish?” she asked, sitting across from me.
    I didn’t look up. “Uh-huh.”
    I was afraid to say anything more than a few syllables. Billy had opened up something inside me when he opened that yearbook, and even though I knew it would lead to nowhere good, all my thoughts were now focused on asking Mom a question—a question I hadn’t asked in a very long time. Of course, I had asked variations of it over and over as a kid, and she had given me answers that ranged from half truths to what I suspected were out-and-out lies. Finally, after a few heated conversations that had ended with her crying behind her closed bedroom door, I’d dropped it. I never meant to drop it
forever
,but the more time that passed, the harder it became to bring it up again. But Billy had set something simmering, and now it was at a full boil.
    â€œMom, do you
know
who my dad is?” I blurted.
    Her mouth fell open. “
Excuse
me?”
    â€œDo you—well …” I didn’t know how else to word it.
    â€œWhat exactly are you implying, Dane?”
    I stumbled over “I didn’t mean—” and “uh, uh, uh” and