He fiddles with the straw of his milkshake, glancing over at Heather, like maybe she’ll be able to form the words he clearly doesn’t want to say. The disappointment is already settling in my bones before he gets that far.
“I just … you know I believe in you. You’ve got a rare gift. But I just don’t think this is the right move—at least not right now,” he says carefully.
But I’m anything but careful, the words spilling out so fast that I can feel Heather wince. “Do you know how low their acceptance rate is? Do you know how hard it was for me to get in?” I demand.
I mean, I’m sure he does, but he also doesn’t. He must have figured out the application fees I fronted and the effort I put into rehearsing, sure. But he doesn’t know about the terror I felt through every single one of the six rounds of auditions that led to this. The second-guessing every sixteen- and thirty-two-bar cut I chose, every outfit I wore, even the angle and thickness of my eyeliner. He doesn’t know the sheer panic of doing a dance call in a room full of legitimate dancers, or the exhausting hour-long personal interview they put me through, not to mention the weeks and weeks and weeks I had to wait before finding out I’d made it through each stage to the final one. This has been a part of me for so long that it feels impossible to extricate it now, like it’s leaked into my bones.
“You’re only sixteen, Mills. You have a whole wide future ahead of you—”
“Any other parent would be proud of me,” I say.
This lands harder than I thought it would, his eyebrows raising so fast that his glasses slide down almost comically fast in unison. I hadn’t meant it to be a reminder that he was just one parent, but he clearly took it that way. And for a moment, I’m almost glad he did. It isn’t fair that he gets to be the be-all and end-all on this. That I don’t have another parent I can appeal to, anyone who might make him understand what this means to me and get him on my side.
I know that’s not his fault, it’s just him, but if anything, that only makes the frustration worse—knowing that I can’t justify it. That it has no real place to go.
“Of course I’m proud of you,” he says, so quietly I can barely hear him over the din of servers setting up for the night.
Heather grazes a hand on my shoulder. A warning. But I can barely feel it over the swell of everything else. “Then why are you holding me back?”
“I’m not—if I thought this was holding you back, I would never—”
“My mom would want me to do it. She’d be all for it. Wouldn’t she?”
I say it all in a rush, in that same witless, gut-driven way people in crime dramas pull a gun on someone. Heather’s hand slides off my shoulder. My dad’s entire face goes gray, turning to Heather and then to the floor, like he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to land.
The guilt feels like it’s crawling up my throat and strangling me. I should say something to make this right, but I can’t.
“Yeah,” he says. “She probably would.”
The response is so unexpected that my next question is more out of curiosity than any actual malice. I can’t help myself. It’s like the shiny thing all over again, and this time my dad’s feelings are the avalanche I don’t want to see.
“She’s a musical theater person, too, isn’t she?” I ask.
“She…” My dad’s mouth twists. “Yeah. But…”
He gets up from his stool.
“But what?” I persist.
Then whatever it was I felt tugging at me earlier is less of a tug and more of a pull. I’ve never asked about my mom, maybe, but I always just assumed I’d get some kind of answer if I did. Now that it’s clear I might not, there’s some irreversible part of me that has to know why.
“Millie,” says Heather lowly.
His eyes are misty. My dad’s kind of an easy crier—the type who tears up during the big climaxes of Star Trek movies, or when he’s telling one of his patented Dad jokes—but I don’t remember ever being the one to make him cry. It’s rattling enough that I don’t need Heather’s warning. My heart starts beating out warnings of its own.
“But she’s not here,” he says. “And I am. So. I’m sorry. But that’s what I think about it.”
The words are so riling that I can’t think of any way to respond except to hack through his happiness the way he just hacked through mine.
“Why isn’t she here?” It’s lava pouring out of me. The questions are so immediate that I know I’ve always had them—that I’ve been waiting until the moment felt right, for us to feel ready. Now that it seems like we might never be, they’re brimming to the surface so fast I feel like I’m choking on them. “Where is she, Dad? Why don’t you ever tell me anything about her? Is it to punish her, or to punish me?”
“Hold up,” says Heather, easing off the stool onto her feet.
But it’s too late. I’ve said it, and I can’t take it back. Not the words, or the way my dad looks like I’ve just slapped him across the face.
“You want the truth?” he asks. “I don’t know where she is. I wish I … but I don’t.”
Whatever thread he was following, he lets go of it just as quickly. He may be telling the truth, but he’s not telling the whole truth.
But it’s clear from the way his voice breaks on the next words that there’s no way to ask him for the whole truth without getting a whole lot else. “I’m sorry about that,” he says, not looking at me.
I know he is, but I don’t trust myself anymore. I’ve hurt him and I don’t like it, and if I stay I won’t be able to stop. So I tear out of the Milkshake Club, up the five flights of stairs, up to Teddy’s front door, and slam my entire body on it. If I don’t have the answers, and my dad can’t give them to me, then maybe someone will.
Teddy opens the door so fast that I almost trip into it.
“What are you—”
“I want to find them,” I tell him. “Her, I mean. My mom.”
“This is escalating very quickly,” says Teddy, clearly recognizing the full magnitude of the Millie Mood I am in. “Are you sure?”
This time I am. I walk in, shoving his door closed behind me, and hold out my hand for his phone. “Amanda Seyfried walked so Millie Price could run.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The apartment is so quiet the next morning I feel like I’m haunting it. My dad’s already left for his early flight, Heather will be asleep until at least noon, and Teddy will probably spend the morning sleeping off a post–Reese’s Puffs hangover. There’s nobody to tell me that I’m completely out of my mind when I decide to trespass into a major talent manager’s office before breakfast in pursuit of Potential Mom #1.
I haven’t decided what my next Millie phase is, so I settle on wearing one of my audition dresses with Heather’s boots and stuffing a notebook and a pen into a tote bag my dad got for subscribing to The New Yorker. Then I power walk the twenty blocks up to Check Plus Talent, using the adrenaline rush to pump me up for the admittedly harebrained thing I’m about to do.