Jamie was a liker of concrete answers. She liked crime shows that always found the criminal and punished them accordingly by the end of the episode, and she liked math because there were was always a logical answer at the end of the problem. However, Jamie was not in math class this Thursday evening; she was in driver’s ed.
Jamie was plain but pretty, with thin light brown hair, hazel eyes, and small features. She was sitting in the back of the class wearing comfortable sweatpants and her field hockey team hoodie. There were a couple of factors that went into this fashion decision. One was her habitual defiance to her parents’ belief that appearances are everything, and the other was that she was in the least interesting class imaginable, so she may as well wear the next best thing to pajamas. With her hoodie up and her face hidden, she could convincingly appear awake while she slept by leaning her head on her hand.
Jamie was in napping position when her driver’s ed teacher, Ms. Bosiac, began to tell a story about a stupid accident her ex-husband got in. The word ex-husband led Jamie’s mind back to a conversation she had with her mother a few months ago. She and her mother were having the kind of conversation they bonded the most over: complaining about Jamie’s father.  “I just can’t believe he had the nerve to tell you he was meeting with AA!” her mother exclaimed.
“He acts like I don’t even know him. Like I’ll just believe whatever excuse he throws at me” Jamie growled, offended and disgusted by her father’s lie.
“It’s so childish of him to pull the pity card on you. God knows he hasn’t met with AA in years. When is he going to get it together?!”
“Honestly Mom, I just wish he was honest, that’s all. The alcohol is his own problem, but all I want is for him to stop treating me like I’m an ignorant six year old and start telling me the truth.”
With a helpless sigh, her mother just apologized, “I’m so sorry he missed your State Championship game, honey.”
“You shouldn’t have to apologize for his behavior. But seriously Mom, why haven’t you divorced him?! You deserve better!”
The words had finally flown out. Jamie had been wondering if she should even say them at all. Jamie knew that it was not her place to tell her mother how to handle her marriage. She was supposed to hope that her parents stayed together at all costs. But that just wasn’t the case, and she enjoyed a wave of relief when her mother really knew how she felt. 
Her mother appeared hurt, but not shocked as Jamie had been expecting. Her mother responded, “Your dad is your dad, Jamie. You have to accept it. And I know it may not seem this way, but everyone has something. On the larger scale, we don’t have it so bad.” Though Jamie was not satisfied with this answer, she didn’t have it in her to press her mother for more. Jamie preferred the crime shows so much, where people actually got what they deserved.
Now, in her classroom seat, as Ms. Bosiac went on about four way stops or some other insignificant driver knowledge, Jamie was left to think about her mother and father.
Jamie’s father was a handsome man, even in his fifties. His small ice blue eyes only revealed the lower half of themselves in pictures due to the shadow of his long, dark eyebrows. He had a sculpted nose, a firm jaw-line, and between them he had a confident grin that formed two lines in his cheeks. People were drawn to him in a way that Jamie had never seen in anyone else. He could talk the Dalai Lama into a nuclear war. He was generous too, he donated his money to many public causes. His way with people definitely landed him his success as a corporate lawyer. However, where everyone else saw good people skills, Jamie saw manipulation. Where everyone else saw charisma, Jamie saw phoniness. Where everyone else heard exciting stories, Jamie heard lies.
She began to think of all of the reasons her mother might be staying with him. Money shouldn’t be an issue, she could easily get half in a divorce given his history with alcoholism and neglecting his children. It could be that she was worried about how his reputation would suffer from a divorce; the entire court of law in the state of Illinois would find out about Jamie’s father’s problems with alcohol. If that did happen, the people he worked with would lose respect for him, and his issues would probably get worse.  Jamie couldn’t keep from thinking, this isn’t a cross her mother should have to bear. Her mother could leave him and be happier without the constant stress and betrayal. There was another possible reason for her mother’s decision to stay with her father after all these years, but it was extremely difficult for Jamie to wrap her head around. She let herself dwell on the possibility for a second: the possibility that her mother still loved her father. It was particularly painful for Jamie to consider because she loved her mother, but she believed her father was a monster. She felt like her father manipulated her mother into loving him, which was a thought dark enough to bring Jamie to tears.
Luckily, Jamie’s class was almost over. Unluckily, her father was supposed to pick her up. She dreaded one on one interactions with him, where he had power over her as her father, even though she had no respect for him. Or when he was fake with her, talking in his soft voice about light topics like the weather, as if polite small talk would erase her ugly impression of him. She escaped these encounters with silence because it was easier to act as if she had not heard him. Being in the car helped; she could just look forward and not have to give his face the attention it was seeking. Unless he asked her the kind of question she had to answer, she let him talk or remain silent while she thought of other things. Picking fights with him every day would be exhausting and pointless. Silence seemed like the best way to carry on with the nuisance that lived under the same roof as her in her life.
When class got out, Jamie waited. She waited for twenty five minutes with Ms. Bosiac, who told her that she had to get home soon. Jamie called her father, and it went straight to voicemail as Jamie had expected. Her mother was at a charity dinner, so she knew she couldn’t call her. She decided to call the guy she had been talking to for a couple months, Brandon. He was only a year older than her, but he had the one thing that Jamie needed to have her independence: a license. She thought to herself ‘Please pick up, please pick up’ when she called him; she knew he wasn’t doing anything, but they weren’t technically together so she never knew what to expect. Brandon responded, thank god, and said he would be right over. Those couple words were enough to make her face heat up.
As Brandon pulled up, Jamie felt her stomach flutter at the sight of the big silver pick-up truck he drove. It was the exact opposite of her father’s small, slick cars. He rolled down the window and smiled at her with his big smile, the smile that had stolen her heart. His big smile exuded his fun-loving demeanor and great sense of humor that she found irresistible. She looked into his big brown eyes, the opposite of her father’s small and deceitful blue ones, but she had to look away. Though she would do anything to stare at them for hours, she was afraid that by looking for too long she would give too much away. She was beginning to worry that she had fallen for him a little harder than he had fallen for her. When she got in the car he poked, “What happened to your ride? Mommy too busy shopping?”
Jamie rolled her eyes and said, “Actually, my dad was supposed to pick me up. My mom’s at some charity thing.”
“Oh right, I forgot, your Dad is not only the man, he also donates to like a thousand organizations. He’s really awesome, you’re lucky to have a Dad like that.”
Somehow Brandon had twisted Jamie’s remark about her mother’s whereabouts into a compliment for her father’s monetary generosity. Brandon was under Jamie’s father’s spell; they had bonded over her father’s high school stories, football talk, their supposedly similar happy-go-lucky personalities. Jamie’s father had made it his business to get Brandon to like him before Jamie and Brandon got too close.
Jamie knew that Brandon was not one for deep conversation, and he would probably just make some poor little rich girl comment if she complained about her father, so she just said, “Yeah.”
“So Jamie, where are we going?”
Jamie thought for a second because she didn’t really want to go home. The second she went home, she would have to be tormented with the thought that her father would return home, probably drunk, any time. Being at home in general usually put her in a bad mood; just the possibility of having to deal with her father made her angry. So she replied, “Not my house.”
“Didn’t think so. What about the graveyard?”
What Jamie did not know, is that just a half hour earlier, Brandon was about to call his hook-up. He had way too much time on his hands since his baseball injury. Every day after school, he would procrastinate until he felt so restless that he could not do his homework. It felt like his brain was plagued with a buzzer sound when he got like that, like the end of a basketball game that would never end. He didn’t know how to turn it off, so he would call his old friend who had some hook ups to some narcotics.
Jamie had called him at the perfect time. He knew that he was starting to call his old friend a little too often, but somehow that only tempted him more. When his current conquest called him, he decided there may be another way to release his worked up tension.
Jamie, who wanted nothing more in the world than for Brandon to think she was cool, said nonchalantly, “Yeah, sure. There’s nothing else to do.”
He smiled his irresistible smile that he knew was irresistible and said, “You sure you’re not too chicken?”
“You know I don’t buy any of that ghost crap.”
Jamie was getting sick of another kind of crap. She wanted to know how he felt about her; he wasn’t easy like a math problem to figure out the answer to.  As usual, instead of being straightforward with her, he decided to tease her some more
“Well then I guess you won’t mind when I sacrifice you to the souls of the graveyard.”
Jamie scoffed and was about to ask how he planned to do that, but then she stopped herself, afraid of the answer. Instead she asked about another thing on her mind, “Is the graveyard where you take all of your damsels in distress?”
“Not all of them” he said, a little too matter-of-factly.
Keeping her laid back, cool attitude, she didn’t press him further on the other girls. She had known that he was famous for his reputation with girls before she started talking to him, so she couldn’t let that bother her now. Instead she asked,
“Where do your parents think you are right now? You’ve never even introduced me to them.”
“Oh, they don’t care, they’re too consumed with their own s***” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Well, I’m glad you could get me tonight.”
“Me too” he grinned. They were pulling into the graveyard.
“You know, I’ve never actually hung out here.”
“That’s because you’re too chicken.”
She gave in this time and replied, “Maybe. I guess I just needed a certain guy to protect me.”
He smiled, but there was a look in his eyes that she did not quite understand. Jamie hoped he wasn’t angry. “Are you going to give me a tour?” she asked innocently.
“Why don’t we just hang out on the back of my truck instead. The stars look amazing tonight.”
Jamie was convinced. This was all she had dreamed of the past few months. Romantically lying next to Brandon, breathing together with his big arm wrapped around her. In that moment, she would know how he felt about her, she would finally have her bad boy. All hers.
  It wasn’t as she imagined. There was not much sweet romance. Instead, the second they were both seated in the trunk of his pick-up, Brandon kissed her, hard. Suddenly, Jamie realized what that look in his eyes was before. It wasn’t anger, it was lust.
She let him. She let him do whatever he wanted. There were a couple of factors that went into this decision. For one thing, she wanted so badly for him to like her. If she didn’t let him, she was terrified that he might never want to hang out with her again.  Also, she was afraid of what would have happened if she had resisted. He could have refused to stop, and she wouldn’t have had much choice in their isolated spot in the graveyard. Then this would be a much worse memory.
When he was done, they lied down next to each other for a little while. Brandon could rest, and Jamie could pretend that he was falling in love with her as they laid under the stars. Abruptly he asked, “You ready to go home?”
“Yeah.”
They both climbed into the car. It was a pretty quiet car ride to Jamie’s house; they didn’t know what to say to each other. Jamie still liked him a lot, perhaps even more, but she didn’t know what to say to keep him interested. This was new territory for her. Brandon just turned on the radio and occasionally asked to make sure he was going the right way.
As they got closer to her house, she thought about how she would love a hug from a dad. Jamie wasn’t sad, she was just scared of the possibility that Brandon might lose interest, or that he may have never liked her the way she liked him. When they arrived at her house, her father’s car was in the driveway. Her mother’s car was not; she must have still been at the charity event. Brandon quickly kissed her goodbye and sped off. Jamie thought to herself, “I guess he’s not in the mood to say hi to my dad tonight”.
Jamie walked in her house and saw her father, passed out on the couch. When his eyes were closed and he was sleeping, she could imagine he was someone else. She could imagine that he was the kind of father who showed that he loved his daughter in a genuine way, the kind that could offer her a hug when she wanted one. Then he let out his infamous snore, a reminder of how ugly he was to those who really knew him, and she was reminded of her hatred for him.
She thought about the other dads at her last Daddy Daughter Dance when she was thirteen, just two years ago. They seemed like the kind of dads who would give their daughter the hug she needed. Jamie witnessed her friends with their fathers’, she saw their inside jokes and the way they would smile at each other. She remembered her jealousy, jealousy that her friends never had to put up with fathers who would go to the bar all day and night and lie about where they had been. Jamie’s mother instructed her to act as if she had a good relationship with him at the dance, to hug him and dance with him. Her parents’ obsession with reputation was just beginning to annoy her at the time, but she was obedient to her mother. That was the night that she gave up the idea that her father might change.  She looked at her father, who was mimicking those around him so that everyone would respect him for being a good father. He was too good at faking it, such a natural at deception, that she decided he would never change; he would always be a snake. And he would never give up drinking as long as he could get away with it. If he never got in trouble for it, then to him it wasn’t wrong.
So Jamie left her father asleep on the couch, walked upstairs, and imagined what it would be like to have a father that could comfort her right now. But she decided it was silly to dote on what she would never have, when there was someone she maybe still could have: Brandon.
She let herself dream about transforming him from a bad boy into the guy who loved her and only her. As she lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep, she told herself she could make him love her. His big, expressive brown eyes, his swoon-worthy laugh, his toned arms in the moonlight, she let herself believe she could have all of these things. Jamie fantasized about him almost all night, until she her heavy lids took over and she dreamed about him in her sleep.
When Brandon got home, he crashed on his bed and fell right asleep, relaxed and satisfied.