Free The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

near the end that all the pieces came together in a way that made sense? I wanted to understand things, really understand them, in some way that was deep and solid, and yet my own niceness required that I keep skimming along the surface. I brushed my teeth, decided to go to bed, backspaced on that idea, and set my toothbrush down suddenly.
    I knocked on Dad’s bedroom door but there was no answer. I listened for sounds of him upstairs, but all I could hear was the technological twinkling of Sprout playing with her cell phone ringers. I walked downstairs and heard the kitchen drawer open (the Useless Gadget Drawer, as Dad called it), the sound of plastic spatulas and potato peelers and once-used candy thermometers all clattering together. The drawer shut. The water faucet went on. Dad stood at the counter in his black silk robe with a dragon on the back and poured a measuring cup of water into a bowl. The dishes in the sink had been done.
    “Chocolate craving?” I said. He was holding a telltale red box of brownie mix, head tilted back so that his eyes could see the small-for-him words of the directions.
    “You caught me,” Dad said.
    “Brownies,” I said.
    “Brownies,” he agreed, as if there may have been some dispute. He cracked an egg in with one hand. I saw that chocolatemight not have been what he was actually craving—on a paper towel was a small hill of pot, which he’d stir in later, I knew. I’d seen this routine before, would sometimes also smell the burnt-grass-mat odor coming from the outside deck as he smoked, the orange rolling papers called Zig-Zag open on the counter.
    He must have felt my eyes. “Those guys always get me so uptight,” he said.
    I didn’t say anything. As part of my relentless trek along the road of good choices, I never drank or did drugs myself; honestly, I sort of looked down at those people. When I was friends with Sara Miller in the sixth grade (definitely not a good choice), we once downed a can of her brother’s beer, and I guess she liked it so much she kept it up from then on. But I think she was just one of those people who drank self-destruction in her baby bottle. You’ve got a good life and you purposefully set out to mess it up…I never got that. Maybe I just never understood the point, the way other people seemed to understand the point. Some people understood the point so well, they made it a personal credo, the law of their independent nation, but it just seemed stupid to me, and maybe even weak. Like the world was just too big and bright and real for you, and you just couldn’t take it.
    So, that Dad did this—it bothered me enough that I didn’t know what to do with it. Inside, it felt as if someone had handed me something bad I didn’t want—a switchblade, some poison in a bottle—and there it was, in my hand. The only thing I could do was to shove it in some drawer or at the bottom of a garbage can, pile other stuff over it. I didn’t say anything when he folded the drugs into the batter. But I did say something else.
    “How are you doing, Dad, with Brie gone and all?” I said. Isat down at one of the tall chairs at the counter. Folded my hands in front of me and then unfolded them. I looked like I was giving him a job interview. I looked like Mom.
    “Who?” he said. “Kidding! I’m kidding . God, you should have seen your face. Like this.” He opened his mouth and eyes wide, wide open. “I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. You can’t let any one person have that much power over you, okay, Quinn? Remember that. I didn’t fail, here. I gave her everything I could give.” He licked the spoon. “Hey, kiddo, I need to change the subject here for a minute, okay? We gotta talk about this whole college thing.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “First, can I say that I think you’re going to do great things in the world? Your intelligence, it makes you a very powerful person,” he said.
    I smiled. I liked the thought of that. I liked that he saw me that