Page 6 of Caught in a Bad Fauxmance
Andy frowns. “So, you don’t like this family because of something that happened when you were kids?”
Boiling down a decade of anger and resentment to “something that happened when we were kids” makes the matter seem petty. But the Seo-Cookes were never just rivals. They were bullies, all of them. Well, not their mom,butespeciallytheir blowhard dad. Paul Cooke: entrepreneur extraordinaire—which, no joke, is how he describes himself on his business card. We used to have one on our fridge, with a minor alteration. Paul Cooke: asshat extraordinaire.
“We don’t like them because they suck,” Maya insists, which doesn’t really help us seem less petty.
“They do suck,” Dad whispers under his breath, throwing the car into gear.
We tear down Fulton Drive fast and furious. There are no cars on the road and the fear of running into the Seo-Cookes again is still running high, so we’re willing to make risky exceptions. The lake comes into view, calm and gleaming in the afternoon sun. We finally spot other familiar faces—an older couple that has an unhealthy obsession with fishing and the family of four that always wears the type of bald eagle camo T-shirts that make me nervous. If I look closely enough, I can make out the outline of the Seo-Cookes’ three-car garage through the thicket of trees. I slump back against my seat, body heavy with the burden of what running into Julian means.
“Oh my God, are you bleeding?” Maya shifts as far to the opposite end of the backseat as she can, keeping her white cotton shorts out of harm’s way.
I look down at my mess of a left arm with a sigh. In all the chaos of trying to get out of the grocery store ASAP, I’d forgotten that I didn’t make it out without injury. Blood dribbles down my forearm, staining the sleeve of my shirt and the stretch of the backseat we’d been arguing over two hours ago.
Well, at least our last trip to Lake Andreas won’t be boring.
CHAPTER TWO
Our cabin, like most of what we’ve seen of Lake Andreas so far, is nothing like what we remembered. We pause as we take in the gray, shabby home that makes me want to sneeze before I’m even out of the car.
“It just needs a fresh coat of paint,” Dad says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. One of the windows’ shutters creaks menacingly as we approach with caution.
“And an exorcism,” Maya mumbles, jumping when the screen door suddenly slams open.
Dad waves her off, whistling a tune under his breath as he gestures for us to get out of the car. He’s unusually cheerful for someone whose son is bleeding in the backseat.
The front steps buckle ominously under my weight. I skip the last few by jumping to the safety of the landing, prepared to warn the others to tread lightly when a crash does that for me.
“I swear I didn’t mean to!” Andy shouts as he pulls his foot out of the hole he created in the first step.
Dad’s good mood deflates as he helps Andy shake off the scraps of wood sticking to his gym socks.
The cabin’s interior hasn’t fared much better than the exterior. The nostalgic smell of Christmas morning cinnamon buns and nightly hot chocolates is long gone, replaced by an overwhelming stench of mildew and stale air. The cabin’s been empty since our last trip four years ago, with the exception of a family from Maine that Dad rented it to. They lasted six months before skipping out on the rent and disappearing to who knows where. Dad headed up that weekend to make sure they didn’t leave the place trashed. The cabin was intact, but whatever damage they did was enough to make him swear off renting for good.
“Those are new,” I mumble as I take in the unsettling number of animal heads mounted over the fireplace.
“You can blame the Maine family,” Dad says as he lugs two armfuls of bags into the foyer.
“Creepy,” Andy says as he runs a finger along a buck’s dusty antler.
“Very,” Isabel echoes, stepping out from the kitchen. “Don’t leave me here alone again. Those eyes have been following me since I got here.” She points to the mountain lion at the center of the pack, forever mid-roar.
Dad apologizes with a hello kiss and a slap to her butt that makes her giggle and us groan. We love Isabel, but watching Dad act like a horny teenager will never not be weird.
“Dios mío, nene!” Isabel exclaims once she gets a look at me. She pulls herself out of Dad’s arms to force me onto thecouch so she can examine the wound more closely. “¿Que pasó?” She stiffens for half a second. “Did your dad try to fight one of those supermarket robots again?”
“No,” Dad replies indignantly before coming to sit down beside me. One hand rests on my shoulder while the other holds up my sleeve so Isabel can dab the dried blood with a paper towel. “We had a little run-in at the grocery store.”
“With what, a bear?” She gestures for Andy to grab her purse from the dining table.
“Worse,” Maya mutters, throwing herself onto the couch. “Our neighbors.”
Isabel pulls out a bottle of peroxide and a sleeve of cotton pads from her bottomless purse. “From that big house over there?” She juts her chin in the direction of the Seo-Cookes’ cabin. My protests are swallowed by a hiss as Isabel tightens her grip on my arm, pressing a peroxide-soaked pad to thecut.
Maya drops the suitcase in her hand, whipping around to face Isabel. “You saw them?!”
She nods, cocking her head toward the dining table this time. “They dropped that off on the porch about an hour ago.”
There’s a bottle of champagne on the table, wrapped up in a bright red bow.
