Page 42 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
Slowly but surely the cabin starts to come together, becoming the place Mami always knew it could be. Fresh, turquoise tiles for the kitchen backsplash. New curtains in the bedrooms. The living room now fully coated in Eggshell Breeze.
Everythingshouldbe calm.
Except Maya’s pissed.
Infiltrating the Seo-Cookes’ home isn’t the gold mine she thought it would be. Either they aren’t planning on cheatingthis year, or they’re way better at covering up their tracks than we anticipated. Stella and Henry train every day, just like us, but there’s nothing off about their routine. It’s more cardio heavy than ours, but that’s just because they’re more athletically competent than we are.
Neither of them even seems to have much time for scheming. Mr. Cooke’s influence is strong even though he’s never home. While he’s off schmoozing, he keeps everyone else on strict regimented daily schedules, color-coded down to how long they’re allowed to use their laptops and catered specifically to their “interests.”
Henry spends most of his afternoons watching old football games or running drills in the backyard while Stella bounces between SAT, biology, and AP English prep sessions. Julian has it the easiest of his siblings; the only things on his schedule are seven a.m. yoga and tennis practice at noon. Mr. Cooke gave Julian a “Princeton-approved reading list” last summer before he’d even applied. The stack of books—includingThe Catcher in the Rye—sits untouched on his bedroom desk.
All my peeking into empty rooms and craning my neck to eavesdrop on whispered conversations hasn’t yielded much valuable info. Surprise surprise, they’re not keeping top-secret plans out in the open where anyone could see. The most useful things we’ve found are that they’re all allergic to poison ivy and that they always leave their back door unlocked. The floor map Julian drew for me on my first day will come in handy if Maya and I follow through on our idea to lure a raccoon into their kitchen.
“You’re sure that’s it?” Maya asks during morning training. Her chin is balanced on my bent knees, her hands holding down my ankles while I struggle to do a crunch that she deems acceptable.
“Y-yes,” I grunt as I pull my body up. My body collapses before I can lift myself high enough. She gives me a thumbs-down—that attempt didn’t count. I still have twelve more togo.
The closer we get to the games, the more on edge she becomes. Fighting rodents and fixing leaky faucets has taken its toll on her. Her body is a map of cuts, bruises, and bite marks—thankfully the possums didn’t have rabies. Though it did cost us a very pricey trip to the emergency room.
Despite our bargain, I pitch in and help with the renovations whenever I’m home. I’m productive enough at Julian’s, and the responsible brother in me won’t let her bear the brunt of two loads on her own. A helping hand isn’t enough, though. Even without me working on my application at home, she still ices me out, pushing me further and further away every time I come home without a smoking gun. The cabin gets better every day, but no amount of paint or photos mounted on the walls will shake the looming, growing fear that soon enough, it might not be ours anymore.
And I can’t help the twisted sense of guilt that washes over me whenever I come home from the Seo-Cookes, our cabin slightly different each time. The guilt of knowing that restoring the cabin to its former glory should be bringing us together.
But I’m spending my time with the enemy instead.
“Maybe they’re gonna play fair this year,” I offer, still sprawled out on the ground and struggling to catch my breath.
She scoffs, leaning back and letting go of my ankles. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
I don’t. My conversation with Julian the first day at their house basically confirmed that they’re up to something. They know to keep their guard up when I’m around and to leave Julian in the dark. They don’t trust each other as much as I don’t trust them.
“We’re running out of time,” she says.
Now that she’s not holding me down, I abandon the crunches, propping myself up on my elbows instead. “Ten days is plenty of time.”
All it would take is a matter of hours to take them down if we found proof. Even if we didn’t report them to Old Bob, it wouldn’t take much to try to avoid whatever they’ve been plotting. Though the panic is setting in, letting it get the best of us just gives them the upper hand.
“We can’t rely on this, Maya.”
She doesn’t respond. Her mouth crests into a stern, unreadable line as she pushes herself off the ground. “We’re done for today,” she says before heading toward the cabin.
Any other day I’d rejoice over cutting training short. Instead it feels like I’ve done something wrong. Like I’m being punished for a mistake I didn’t even realize I’d made.
Struggling through crunches with no one to watch or spot me isn’t worth the extra energy, so I follow her. She’s in her room with the door locked and her music on full blast. An effective “stay away unless you want to get bit” sign. Andy,who finished his own set of crunches half an hour ago, is on his second bowl of cereal. I plop down into the chair opposite him, pulling my sketchbook out of my bag. Most days, I don’t head to Julian’s until a more humane hour of the day. Might as well try to keep my mind occupied by being productive in the meantime.
The cabin sketch feels like a beacon of hope in all this uncertainty. It’s not a guarantee that I’ll land the mentorship, but even if we lose our cabin, I'll still have this. Losing our past doesn’t mean I’ll lose my future too.
Or Andy can spill cereal milk all over my sketchbook and I can lose that too.
“What the hell?!” I shout, only narrowly pulling my sketchbook out of the way before the milk can soak more than just the top page.
“Shit, dude, I’msosorry.” Andy sets his half-empty glass down on the counter. “Here, I can—” He goes to wipe the page with the hem of his shirt.
I must’ve been a god-awful person in a past life. That’s the only thing I can think of to explain this disaster of a winter break.
“It’s fine,” I tell him through gritted teeth, pushing his T-shirt away.
There’s no saving the sketch now. Wiping away the milk turned it into a mess of smudged charcoal, Mami’s and my smiles melting into blurred lines. My heart pounds up my temples, through my skull, until I feel the overwhelming urge to scream. For once, I felt like I was actually creating something special, something that felt like me. And I wassoclose to finishing. I know I can start over again, try something new,but I can’t shake off the fear that the spark I’d felt with this piece was fleeting.
