Chapter Text
West Covina High School
Home of Scholars and Champions!
Class of 2035
Emaline Whitefeather, Sophomore -- JV Softball, Varsity Water Polo, Speech & Debate
She’s whip smart. Articulate in a way that impresses her teachers and perplexes her peers. When she’s passionate about a subject, she’s at the top of her class. But when a class bores her, she barely skates by, earning just enough points to pass, much to the dismay of her teachers who won’t shut up about her potential.
She’s a heartbreaker. She falls in love fast and moves onto the next person just as fast. Boys. Girls. She’s an equal opportunity destroyer.
She refuses to conform to your standards of femininity. She doesn’t wear makeup, and the only part of her body she shaves is her legs when she needs to move faster in the pool. Despite her best efforts to downplay her appearance, she’s a natural beauty. Her long, sandy-brown, wavy (frizzy, she would say) hair cascades down to her waist. Most days she can’t be bothered to style it, so she stuffs it into a messy bun.
She’s taller than average (lanky, she would say) and her body is still catching up with her growth spurt. She’s lean from her athletic endeavors, save for her breasts, which popped up out-of-nowhere about a year ago. She doesn’t care much for fashion and opts for a team t-shirt or hoodie most days, with a tattered jean jacket or faux leather bomber thrown over it.
She’s fierce. Competitive as hell. Inspires equal parts fear and admiration in her classmates. She’ll throw elbows in a water polo match when the ref isn’t watching. She’ll murder her opponent with words in a debate match and then pump her fist in celebration, rushing off the podium before the judge can disqualify her for poor sportsmanship.
But she’s a secret softie. She coos at baby animals and blushes every time her secret crush - the one she’s harbored for years but denies up and down doesn’t exist - looks her way. She tears up watching rom-coms and listening to old school Adele. Though on the outside she wants everyone to think she’s a stone-cold badass, she’s never been in any real trouble. She doesn’t drink or do drugs or dabble in sex. Deep down, she’s still pretty afraid of those adult things. And Darryl isn’t the greatest at broaching tough topics, usually dissolving into a sputtering mess when he tries.
She can be devastatingly honest, yet guards her true feelings. She acts confident, but harbors insecurities. She’s precocious, yet still has so much growing up to do.
She’s full of contradictions.
In short, she’s a teenage girl.
She’s Emaline.
*****
“Did you put everything on the list?” Rebecca calls out from the hallway, her voice dampened by the walls of the linen closet. A rustling sound follows - she’s shuffling through their collection of reusable grocery bags, choosing the best selection based on size and sturdiness.
“Huh?” Nathaniel responds from the kitchen, twisting the faucet to stop the water and throwing a forest green dish towel over his shoulder. “Did you say something?”
The hall closet door clicks shut and Rebecca hurries into the kitchen, purse slung over her shoulder, grocery bags folded and tucked under her other arm. “I said, did you put everything you want on the list? I’m going now before I lose my caffeine high and, subsequently, my motivation.”
She’s let her hair settle into its natural texture today, without taming it with product and her trusted curling iron.
“You look pretty.”
She scrunches up her face and looks down with incredulity at her outfit - jeans and a plum-purple v-neck t-shirt. Standard Sunday afternoon zero-effort attire.
“Your hair,” he explains, stepping toward her and running a hand over the crown of her head.
“Don’t distract me,” she scolds, swatting his hand away. “If I don’t go now, I never will. Do you ever notice how people just park their carts in the middle of the aisle and linger? Like, it’s a can of tomatoes, this isn’t rocket science! Pick one and move on!”
He grins and shrugs. “Another reason I hate people.”
She smirks. “Yeah. You want one of those gross smoothie thingies from the kiosk?”
“Yes, please.”
“Ok. While I’m gone you’re gonna -”
“Already started,” he says, patting the towel.
“Thanks,” she says and hikes herself up on her tiptoes to peck him on the lips before dragging her feet all the way to the front door with all the drama of someone walking the plank to their death.
The door clicks shut and he’s still chuckling, bemused, as always, at how she can make the most mundane of tasks entertaining. He rolls up the sleeves of his navy sweater and returns to the kitchen sink, taking a sponge in hand and squeezing a dollop of dish soap onto it. This is their agreement - he’ll wash the skillet with the crusted-on cheese and grease in exchange for her braving the grocery store on a Sunday. But only a few minutes of scrubbing passes before there’s a staccato knock at the door.
Tap. Pause. Tap-tap.
Nathaniel wipes his hands on the dish towel and hurries to greet the only person whose knock he’s learned to recognize. “Em,” he says, conveying surprise with his tone at her appearance at their doorstep.
She’s wearing a maroon long-sleeve zip-up shirt with skinny jeans and sneakers, holding the dull, pale water polo ball at her hip. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, a yellow elastic headband keeping the stray flyaways out of her face.
“What’s fizzy, Uncle Nat?”
Nathaniel squints, searching his memory banks for the term. “Uh,” he stalls, scratching the stubble on his chin with his pointer finger.
“I’m messing with you! I made that up.” Emaline laughs openly at him, “You should see your face right now!”
“Oh, of course,” he huffs, pretending he knew all along. “So, is everything ok?”
She shifts, gripping the ball between two hands and holding it out in front of her. “Thought we could throw the ball around. Practice my lob shot.” She wiggles her eyebrows, her green eyes full of hope and anticipation, her energy magnetic.
“We’ve talked about resting your arm before games,” he says, trying to sound stern, pinning her with a look and crossing his arms in front of his chest.
She stomps her foot. “The game’s at night. I will get a full twenty-four hours of rest. I promise.”
He runs his hand through his salt-and-pepper sprinkled hair, wondering on a scale from one to meltdown how mad Rebecca will be for ditching his part of their agreement in favor of playing with Emaline. But as he contemplates this, Emaline innocently bites her lip and searches his eyes, waiting for his response, in a way that’s so quintessentially Rebecca he’s lost the battle with his conscience before it’s even started. The dishes will still be there later, he reasons.
“Please?” she adds, her voice syrupy sweet.
(As if he’s not in the palm of her hand at any given moment, dishes or not.)
“Alright, meet me in back.”
Emaline’s face lights up and she bounds past him, almost knocking him to the side in her wake.
“Don’t run!” he bellows after her, but she’s already out of earshot, sliding the back door shut behind her.
Nathaniel throws the dish towel in the general direction of the kitchen, officially abandoning his post. He hauls the three-by-three foot net - marked with a small square of red masking tape in the middle for accuracy practice - out of the garage and into the backyard, where Emaline is shuffling through her backpack. When he sets the net down, she hastily zips it back up and throws it on the ground nearby.
Nathaniel measures his steps, heel-toe, heel-toe, about eight paces out from the net, angling to the right. “Stand here. This is where you’ll want to take it.”
Emaline nods and takes her place where Nathaniel finished his count. She narrows her eyes and clutching the ball hard in her right hand. After a beat, she pulls back her arm. In the narrow breadth of time between preparing for the shot and taking it, Nathaniel steps toward her and whacks the ball out of her hand with a slap that echoes off the fence.
“What the hell?”
“You’re already too up in your head. Be aware of your surroundings.”
Emaline rolls her eyes. “Wow, you are so annoying.”
Nathaniel picks the ball up off the ground and hands it back to her with a smirk.
She takes a moment to reset and refocus. This time when she pulls her arm back she makes a show of looking back at Nathaniel, making sure he’s kept a distance, and then sends the ball into a high arc through the air. It hits the bottom bar of the net and ricochets off to the right. Nathaniel reacts fast and lunges to the side, stopping the ball with his leg.
She lets out an exaggerated sigh in frustration and puts her hands on her hips.
“That’s ok,” he says. He scoops up the ball and throws it back to her. “Try again.”
She catches it and turns toward the net, chewing at her bottom lip in concentration for several moments.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Stop,” she whines, drawing out the last syllable.
“It’s good to be focused, but you can’t disappear into your own world. I know it’s hard but try to just feel it. Let your muscle memory and instincts take over.”
“Instincts? What, like it’s in my blood or something?” She says it hesitantly, casting him a sidelong glance, with an expression that's unreadable.
“Uh, kind of, I guess.”
For a beat she holds his gaze but then her eyes drop, disappointed, and he wonders what he’s said wrong. Even with their tight bond, there are moments, moments like these, especially since she became a teenager, when she’s a total mystery to him.
Emaline straightens up and turns back to the net to take another shot. This time the ball hits the net just outside the red outlined box and she only has to side step a little to catch the ball. Quietly she does this, throws the ball again and again, until the regular rhythm of it becomes almost hypnotic. He feels a little sense of pride at her accuracy and how she’s finally relying on her muscle memory like he instructed. That is, until he notices the faraway look in her eyes and realizes it’s only because her mind is elsewhere.
A little unnerved by the extended silence, he says, “So have you talked to that girl you like lately? That one you pretend not to have a huge crush on?”
Emaline scoffs and pauses before taking her next shot. “I never should have told you about that.”
“Why don’t you talk to her?”
“I don’t know. She’s all like straight-As, blonde, math club, band girl. Not my type. Total wally.”
“Wally?”
The ball bounces back into her hands and she holds onto it, a smug smile playing at her lips. “Let me translate for you, old man. Basically, she’s a dork. A nerd. And I’m trying to be...not that.” She lobs the ball.
“Is that why your grades suck?”
She sighs and he knows he’s thrown her off-balance revealing his knowledge of her school performance.
“No,” she replies, with a twinge of annoyance, “my grades suck because school is boring. They don’t teach us anything we’re going to use in real life anyway. How often do you use geometry? Look, I’m going to Stanford to be a right-winger like you.”
“Not with those grades you’re not.”
Emaline stops, looks skeptically at Nathaniel, her brow furrowing like she’s working something out in her head. “You always said I could get in by milking my heritage.”
All one-sixteenth of it. He chuckles at the thought. “You still have to have decent grades to get those scholarships. If you buckle down now, you still have a two years -”
“Ughhh,” she groans, throwing the ball hard at the net. “You sound like my dads.”
“Ok, ok, I’ll stop,” he says, throwing his hands up in surrender.
Without warning, Emaline chucks the ball at him and he quickly grabs it out of the air. “See? Instincts,” he jokes.
“Let’s see what you got, old man,” she says, stepping to the side so he can take her place.
“I’m really not liking all this old man stuff today,” he says as he strides forward, palming the ball in his right hand.
To prove his mettle, he fires off a lob shot that hits directly in the center of the red square, sending the ball bouncing back straight into his hands.
Emaline rolls her eyes, as usual, and crosses her arms in front of her. “Lucky shot. Let’s see you do that ten times.”
He shrugs, no big deal, and takes another shot at the net. It hits the tape.
After his third shot, Emaline asks, seemingly out-of-the-blue, “Why don’t you and Aunt Becca have kids?”
Now it’s his turn to feel off-balance and he swallows hard, pausing for a moment before lobbing the next shot. He shouldn’t be too surprised by the question, he supposes. Between her natural precociousness and lack of tact, she always had a way of disarming people with her naked honesty. “Em, you really shouldn’t ask people questions like that. It’s private.” He feels obligated to say it, as the adult, but he tries to keep all accusation out of his voice.
She avoids his eyes, slightly embarrassed, and focuses on the net. “Sorry,” she murmurs.
He ponders her question and how he can answer her truthfully without delving into topics beyond her years. The honest answer is nuanced and partly influenced by factors that are too heavy, bordering on inappropriate, to discuss without Darryl’s approval. She’s still a child, after all, even though sometimes she can fool you into thinking otherwise.
“We just didn’t want kids,” he says, which is technically true.
Emaline nods and says nothing for several seconds, as she watches him take his shots. “When did you and Aunt Becca start going out?”
“What’s with all the questions?”
“Just curious.”
“About a year before you were born, I think. I was her boss,” he says, smiling at the memory. “Can you believe that?”
She doesn’t react and her eyes fixate on her backpack in the grass like it holds all the universe’s secrets.
“You’re fifteen so, wow, sixteen years ago,” he continues as he throws his last shot of the ten. “Hey,” he declares, “eight out of ten for this old man is pretty damn good! Now for my victory lap.”
He winds his arm back and right when he’s about to release the ball, Emaline yells, the sound exploding out of her, “I know you’re my dad!”
His arm falters and the ball goes flying over the net, missing it completely, rolling until it hits the fence with a thud. He turns toward her and she’s wringing her fingers together, tears in her eyes, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other. His stomach clenches at the sight, his mind racing, desperately trying to catch up with her.
“What?”
“You’re my real dad, aren’t you?”
“Whoa, whoa,” he says, holding up his hand. “Where is this coming from?”
“It all makes sense!” she cries, her voice becoming high-pitched and strained. “You got Aunt Becca pregnant but you didn’t want kids so you gave me to my dads.”
So much for avoiding heavy topics.
“Em, hold on a sec -”
“I think I’ve always known, deep down.”
“No, no, Em, listen -”
Ignoring him, Emaline rushes over to her backpack and unzips it, pulling out a few sheets of tri-folded paper. She returns and shoves it forcefully into his hands, with anguish, and begs, “Explain this.”
He quickly skims the first page. It’s a financial statement addressed to Darryl, an account with a mutual fund company registered to Rebecca N. Bunch-Plimpton & Nathaniel J. Bunch-Plimpton FBO Emaline H. Whitefeather.
“This is the 529 plan we set up for you as a baby.”
“Why would you do that?!”
“Take a deep breath. Calm down. It’s not -”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” A tear rolls down her cheek. “I’m not stupid. I can look in a mirror. And, I mean, why do you spend so much time with me anyway? Why do you love me? Because you’re a friend of my dad’s from work?!”
Before he can respond, they both hear the front door slam as Rebecca returns from her errand. Emaline wipes at her eyes and her eyes change from hurt to panicked.
Using the most calm voice he can muster, given his racing heart and sweaty palms, he says, “Em, we’re going to talk about this. Just let me talk to Rebecca for a second. I’ll be right back.”
Relieved for the distraction and excuse to diffuse the situation, Nathaniel hurries inside to find Rebecca hauling bags of groceries into the kitchen.
“Dishes,” she says in a scolding tone as soon as he approaches.
“We have a situation,” he says in a hushed voice, as if Emaline would be able to overhear.
“What?”
“Em’s in the backyard. She’s asking questions about you. Us.”
“What kind of questions? What do you mean?”
“It has become painfully apparent that Darryl has not told her about her...creation. And the circumstances around it.”
Rebecca’s eyes widen. “He hasn’t told her? Jesus Christ. She’s a teenager.”
“I know. I know. And she thinks I’m her biological father.”
“What?!”
“I know. It’s really bad. She found a statement for the 529 plan and I think it sent her down a spiral. She came over right after you left. I think she planned this whole confrontation.”
Rebecca squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, disbelieving. “Oh boy. This is not good. Really not good. We have to call Darryl, right? We are not equipped to handle this.”
“Right. It’s not our place,” he agrees, visibly relieved that this is, indubitably, not their responsibility.
“I’ll call Darryl. You go stall her until I can get him here.”
He exhales, grateful for her level-headedness at a time when all his insides feel twisted into knots.
“Hey,” she says, taking his hand in hers as her eyes dart all over her face, “it’ll be ok.”
He squeezes her hand and muses that he should be the one comforting her, knowing the fraught conversations that lie ahead.
“Thanks,” he whispers and she nods, compassion in her eyes.
With a renewed calm, he returns to the backyard, prepared to soothe Emaline the best he can until Darryl arrives. But when he slides open the door, she’s gone. The yard is painfully empty, unnervingly still. The water polo ball, scuffed and faded with memories, is the only evidence she had been there at all.