LITMIR.BIZ

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screen. Nothing. Nothing but wrong leads and dead ends. She IM’ed Stef. Nothing. Called again. Left a message. Checked her cell. Her email. Her chat boxes. Nothing.

      Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

      She opened her cache and trashed the entire history.

      “Joy?” Her father’s voice spooked her out of her trance. The clock read 6:26.

      “Crap.” She jumped up from the chair. “Sorry...!”

      “It was your turn to cook,” he said as his keys hit the table.

      “Sorry sorry sorry,” she said as she clicked windows closed and shut off her screen. “I was online.”

      “For three hours?” Her dad appeared in the hallway, still wearing his coat. He didn’t look pleased.

      “Um...yeah.”

      “I think I should listen to the talk shows and yank that thing out of your room.”

      “I have to do my homework,” Joy said.

      He crossed his arms and leaned in the doorway. “Were you doing your homework?”

      “Um, no,” she admitted.

      “That tears a small hole in your argument.”

      “Dad...”

      “Never mind.” He sighed. “I hate to reward negligence, but I’m starving. Grab your shoes and let’s eat out.”

      “Saigon?” Joy asked hopefully.

      “You wish,” he said. “Subway or KFC?”

      Joy pulled on her coat. “No fried foods,” she reminded him.

      “Subway it is.”

      In the car, Joy watched her father as he drove, noticing the deep wrinkles by his eyes: smile lines and worry. She debated telling him about last night and the glowing visitors at the door. Maybe tell him there’d been strange texts on her cell, a note in her locker, a man in the woods, that she’d called Officer Castrodad, trespassed on a crime scene, and confess that it had been a black-eyed boy and not a splinter that had sent her to the emergency room. That she was scared. That she was lonely. That she was going to fail history this semester. But she knotted her fingers in her lap and sat quietly in the passenger seat, unable to find the words, afraid to rock their fragile boat. Joy settled on feeling oddly proud that she had inadvertently forced Dad to eat something healthy for once.

      He had never talked about her eating habits while she’d been training for competitions, so she wasn’t about to start lecturing him now. Besides, she could have said something a year ago. Six months ago. Looking at him forty pounds later, it was clearly too little, too late. Like quitting gymnastics or dropping her blog or Joy’s mother leaving—when some things went unsaid long enough, they got way too big to talk about now.

      They ordered dinner and sat down, chewing and slurping soda noisily through too much ice and not enough syrup. Joy debated life’s tiny cruelties as she stabbed her straw to the bottom of the cup.

      “So Monica has a new boyfriend?” her dad said into the quiet.

      “Fresh out of the box,” Joy said. “Name’s Gordon.”

      “Sounds old,” he muttered.

      “He’s our age,” Joy said while thinking that she didn’t really know his age, and that he had looked older in the half-light. It had been an Under 18 Night, but of course, everybody knew that some older guys came to hook up with younger girls. She’d have to remember to ask Monica about it. They hadn’t talked that much lately.

      “How about you?” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

      “How about me?”

      Her father took a huge bite and had to chew and swallow first. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

      “Dad!” Joy cried.

      “What? Can’t a father ask?”

      She sucked noisily at the last drops of her drink. “I think there might be some law against it.” It was easier to hide behind banter armed with a straw. She fumbled it around the ice some more.

      “So, no guy?”

      “No guy,” she quipped. “Not even one stashed under the bed.”

      Dad groaned. “That’s not funny.”

      Joy wrinkled her nose. “It’s a little funny.”

      “That’s a little funny like being a little grounded.”

      “Hey!” Joy said. “Seriously, Dad, no guy. I’ve got no guy, I have no beau, I have no boyfriend—there, I said it. Happy?”

      “Okay, okay,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I wanted you to know that if there was a guy, I’d want to meet him,” he added. “I’m your father and if some boy wants to date my daughter, I would have to meet him...if there was a guy.”

      Joy popped her cup down on the laminate. “What’s all this about guys?”

      “Nothing,” he said testily. “Just making conversation.”

      “Because you’re hardly one to talk seeing as we’re both dateless wonders....” Joy’s voice trailed off as she saw her father’s face: a mix of hope and guilt. “No,” she whispered, the truth finally dawning. “You have a date? Last Saturday—the late night—you had a date?”

      “I had a date,” he confessed.

      “I thought you were out playing poker with guys from work!”

      Dad scoffed. “When was the last time I played poker with the guys?”

      “Is she...?” Joy tried to make the word fit her mouth. “Your girlfriend?”

      He raised a hand to whoa. “Now, hang on—no one said anything about ‘girlfriend’—just friends. Friends who went out on a date to...find out if there was something more.”

      Joy watched her own fingers play with a balled-up napkin, recycled brown paper twisting over her knuckles.

      “So this was just a friends thing?” she asked. “Not a date-date?” Her father looked as rattled as she felt. She twisted the napkin tighter, a matching feeling in her chest. It had been an innocent question! They never talked about stuff like this. Why here? Why now? She didn’t want to be having this conversation. In this restaurant. At this table. They were in public, for Pete’s sake! Other people were watching, listening, like the old guy behind the Plexiglas sneeze guard wearing the white paper hat—he knew as much about her father’s love life as she did!

      “Is this the real reason for your late nights at work?” Joy asked.

      “No, no. No more office romances for me,” he said. The words hit her like a slap. Joy knew her mom and dad had met at the office. She stirred her straw around the hurt. “Just trying to get ahead at work. You know what they say, ‘If you can’t be a yes-man...’”

      “‘...be indispensable,’” Joy muttered. It was cruel to use one of her mother’s old sayings right then. “So what’s her name?” she asked hollowly.

      “Shelley.”

      “Shelley?” Joy repeated. “As in Michelle, or is her name really Shelley?”

      “I don’t know,” her dad admitted, chewing. “I didn’t ask.”

      “How could you not ask?” Joy said. Had they been talking on this date, or doing something else? She scrubbed that mental image. Ew.

      “Well, are you going to ask?” she said.

      “Is it important?”

      “Yes. No,” Joy snapped. “I mean, are you going to see her again?”

      “Well, not just to

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