Page 60 of Faker
“How awful.”
“If she didn’t have kids to support, she would still be living there probably.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It’s true. She always worked, always had a job. Supporting herself was never a problem. Maybe if my dad had been a harder worker like her, or more ambitious, we could have stayed. She would have been happier.”
“Your mom loves you and your sister. Part of being a parent means making sacrifices for your kids. She may have been sad at first, but I bet having two wonderful daughters means more than living in Hawaii.”
“You sound like a therapist.” I rest my head on his shoulder. When his arms slips around me, I moan. I’ve never felt thiscomfortable talking about these tough moments of my childhood with anyone before. “You know that coconut shell I keep on my desk?”
I feel him nod against the top of my head.
“She gave it to me when we moved from Hawaii. She knew I would take the move pretty hard, so she wrote a note on the inside for me to look at whenever I felt sad.”
“What does it say?”
“‘For my beautifulanak, who’s as sweet and strong as this coconut.’”
“That’s perfect.”
I can hear the smile in his voice. It sends goose bumps across my skin.
“She has the other half. She said she held on to it her first few months of living in the Midwest, to remind her to be strong for me and my sister. It’s like my security blanket, reminding me to be strong like my mom whenever I feel weak.”
“You’re never weak, Emmie.”
“So wrong. You have no idea.”
“Can I ask you something else?” A deep sigh follows his frown when I nod. “How long until your classmates finally called you by your real name?”
“Most never did.” I wince at the memory of kids calling me Pocahontas and Lilo in class and in the halls of my middle school, my face blank as I tried to ignore it. But another part of me feels joy. Tate remembers me telling him this at the hospital, and it stuck in his mind.Istuck in his mind. I’m important to him.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. All through middle school. High school was better. I made friends with people who were nice enough to call me Emmie.”
“Jesus. Little fucking assholes.”
“It was a learning experience. I ignored them. Or pretended I couldn’t hear them.” I clear my throat. It was years ago, but every time I think about middle school, the feelings of embarrassment and hurt crash over me in waves.
“It still bothered you though, didn’t it?” he says softly.
“It hurt to know they wanted to be mean to me, make me feel like an outsider, just because I looked different. I was this dark Lilo-girl from a place they only knew about from a Disney movie.” I bite my lip. “I cried about it sometimes, but never in front of them. Always hidden away in the auditorium or the girls’ bathroom. I never wanted to give them the satisfaction.”
I’ve never told anyone how I used to cry alone in middle school. Tate is the first and only to know.
He grabs my hand, and I swear I feel tingling where our skin touches. “Forget them. They didn’t know you. They didn’t deserve to know you. They were probably jealous of you.”
I scoff. “You don’t have to butter me up.”
He cuts me off. “I’m not. I swear I’m not.”
I roll my head on his shoulder. With his fingertips against my cheek, he pulls me closer. His gaze is gray and intense.
“I know for a fact they were jealous. They saw you, this beautiful girl from Hawaii who looked different from them, and they didn’t know how to handle it. So they acted like jackasses.”
There’s an achy pulse in my chest at the kindness of his words. Again, he frowns. Again, it sends my heartbeat into a tizzy.
