Gorgeous by Rachel Vail

know why I had chosen to give her a slight shove, which wouldn’t have knocked a sturdier person off balance at all: She had said she would play lacrosse with me in the backyard, so I hauled all the stuff out there, and it had been a really rough day because Jade was mad at me for embarrassing her by laughing too loud at something she’d said in the cafeteria about the smell of tuna, so she and Serena were giving me the silent treatment and I just wanted to whip a ball around. Quinn had said yes and came out after I got everything out there, and then played for, like, five minutes, but then she said she had to go to the bathroom. I waited out there for about half an hour, and when I finally came in to see if she was okay, she was upstairs, reading a book. Apparently she’d had enough lacrosse. So I gave her a slight tap. I was just trying to explain, when Dad was yelling at me, that I had actually shown tremendous restraint by not breaking Quinn’s arms off, and maybe he could at least compliment me about that. But no.
    He had insisted, fake-calmly, that in the future I should just listen and then apologize.
    So that was my plan, when faced with the fact that I had totally ditched school and anyway still had no excuses.
    If he knew I also took the train and the subway and let somebody take pictures of me and then gave out our address, I’d be grounded until I was dead.
    “How’s school?” he asked. Ah, very tricky, I thought. Trying to get me to admit what I had done.
    Laying the groundwork for an excuse, I said, “Boring.”
    He nodded.
    This was like chess.
    “Any clubs or anything interesting?”
    “No.”
    “Other than the tennis team, right?”
    Unsure where he was going with that, I said, “Yeah.”
    “Uh-huh. Still loving that?”
    “No,” I said. “It sucks.”
    “Why?” he asked. Probing, probing. But I wasn’t falling for it.
    “Because it’s, like, all about the outfits now. Who has the nicest racquets, who got a new top, who’s wearing the same thing she wore to the last match. I mean, is it a team or a fashion show?”
    Damn! He was trapping me! Why was I mentioning fashion? I clamped my mouth shut tight.
    He nodded. Roxie had said her parents nod too much, but I had never noticed it about mine before. He was a total bobblehead. How annoying and distracting! Out with it already, Dad, I was thinking. Yell at me, punish me, just stop toying with me!
    “I need to talk with you, Allison.”
    Uh-oh. My real name. Here we go.
    “Something happened Monday.”
    I tried desperately to think of an excuse. I had to cut school because…It’s not my fault because… Nothing was coming.
    “You know what’s going on with Mom, and her job…”
    I shrugged. I knew she was fired, but not that much more in terms of specifics. Was he really going the guilt-trip route? Not his usual style.
    “Well, because of that, we’re in kind of a bind in terms of cash flow. You know what that means?”
    Okay, he was talking to me like I was an idiot kinder-gartner and it made me want to bop him over the head, but actually I didn’t know what that meant, so I shrugged one shoulder.
    He sighed. “We don’t have a lot of cash. I don’t want you to worry; we’ll be okay. It’s just that right now, we are in a bind.”
    “Okay,” I said, trying to figure out how this related to me cutting school Monday. My scalp was starting to sweat.
    “You understand?”
    “Yes, Dad! I am not the idiot you think I am! I follow. We’re out of money. In a bind. I get it. Move on!”
    His face turned a little red, but he took a breath and then another, the way one of his library books had suggested. I read them while he was playing the piano or watching sports on TV, so I would know what he’d be trying on me.
    “You won’t be able to go to Tennis Europe this summer.”
    His eyes focused on my beige carpet for a few seconds and then lifted to meet mine. They weren’t angry eyes, or accusatory. They looked sad, and kind of