Zen and Xander Undone by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Author:Amy Kathleen Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Dartmouth

THE TRIP BACK HOME IS QUIET.

Xander is all red-rimmed and tapped out. She’s squeezing her fingers around the steering wheel like she’s checking to make sure it’s still solid. I think she’s even more freaked out than I am. John Phillips taught the Romantic poetry class where Mom and Dad met. All the time she was dating Dad, she was diddling the professor, and lying to Dad about it. She must have been. There’s no other explanation.

Doris kept insisting that nothing proves they slept together, but then Xander told her what I wouldn’t, that the statue she gave Phillips was worth six thousand dollars, that he’d given it to her in 1995. By the time we left this morning, Doris was as upset as we were.

I thought I knew who my Mom was, but now it’s like she’s a stranger.

“Hanover is practically on the way, you know.”

It’s been so long since Xander has spoken, I’m jolted in my seat. My back is killing me. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I’m sore and exhausted all through my body. “Fine.”

I knew she’d want to go to Dartmouth to look for Phillips. Why fight it?

Xander flips the turn signal when we reach the exit to Hanover. I hear a little sniff, and I catch a tear glistening in the corner of her eye. She dabs at it with her thumb.

“It’s going to be okay. She’s still Mom,” I tell her, even though I’m not sure I really believe this anymore. “Besides, your birthday is in a week. You’ll probably get another letter.”

“I know,” she says, her voice scraggly. “I’m just emotional because of all the pot I smoked this weekend.”

It’s true, she smoked again last night after Doris went to bed. I asked her about it, but she just shrugged like it didn’t matter.

“You should be crying,” I tell Xander. “I don’t know why you have to always know everything.”

“I’m sorry,” she says through a voice that sounds slit down the middle. “I shouldn’t have started digging into all this. You were right.”

My anger shrinks away at this First Ever Admission of Guilt from Xander Vogel. I should record the date and time, because it’s not likely to ever happen again. She’s so dejected that I want to offer her an olive branch. “We’re committed now. There’s no use fighting about it.”

She chuckles. “You sound like Mom.”

We pull in to Hanover, a little New England town a lot like all the others, with handsome old houses and churches with white steeples, only this town has fresh paint over everything, and shiny windows, and well-kept lawns, and lots of pretty people walking pretty dogs. It’s easy to see that there’s a lot more money here than in our town, but I like our version of New England better, chipped paint and all.

We follow the signs to Dartmouth College. Xander brazenly parks in the faculty parking lot, and we get out and walk across the perfectly manicured lawn to the first big building we find.

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