It explained a lot of other things, too. Like why her parents always favored Melissa over Spencer. Why they were always so disappointed in her. Maybe it wasn’t disappointment at all—maybe they were snubbing her because she wasn’t really a Hastings. But why hadn’t they admitted it years ago? Adoption wasn’t scandalous. Kirsten Cullen was adopted; her birth mother was from South Africa. The first show-and-tell of every elementary school year, Kirsten would bring in pictures from her summer trip to Cape Town, her birthplace, and every girl in Spencer’s class would ooh with jealousy. Spencer used to wish she’d been adopted too. It seemed so exotic.
Spencer stared through the study room’s porthole window at the enormous blue modern art mobile hanging from the library ceiling. “Sorry,” she admitted to Andrew. “I’m a little stressed.”
Andrew furrowed his brow. “Because of econ?”
Spencer breathed in, ready to shoo him away and tell him it was none of his business. Only, he was looking at her so eagerly, and he was helping her. She thought more about that horrible night at Foxy. Andrew had been really excited when he thought they were actually going on a date, but had become dejected and angry when he found out Spencer was just using him. All that A and Toby Cavanaugh stuff had happened right after Andrew found out that she was dating someone else. Had Spencer even properly apologized?
Spencer began capping her multicolored highlighters and putting them back in their plastic sleeve, careful to make sure the markers were all turned the exact same way. Just as she slid the electric blue pen back in its place, everything inside her started to fizz, like she was a science-fair volcano about to bubble over.
“I got this application to Yale’s pre-college summer program in the mail yesterday, and my mother threw it away before I could even look at it,” she blurted out. She couldn’t tell Andrew about Ian or A, but it felt good to at least say something. “She said there was no chance in hell Yale would be letting me in to their summer program. And…and my parents are planning a Rosewood Day fund-raiser this weekend, but my mom didn’t even tell me about it. Usually I help her plan them. And then my grandmother died on Monday, and—”
“Your grandmother died?” Andrew’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Spencer blinked, thrown off track. Why would she tell Andrew her grandmother died? It wasn’t as if they were friends. “I don’t know. But anyway, she left a will, and I wasn’t in it,” she went on. “At first I thought it was because of this Golden Orchid mess, but then my sister was talking about how the will said natural-born grandchildren. I didn’t believe her right away, but then I started thinking about it. It makes perfect sense. I should’ve known.”
“Slow down,” Andrew said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand. You should’ve known…what?”
Spencer took a breath. “Sorry,” she said softly. “Natural-born grandchildren means that one of us is not naturally born. It means I’m…adopted.”
Spencer tapped her nails against the wood-grain patterns in the study room’s big mahogany desk. Someone had etched Angela is a slut into the surface. It felt weird for Spencer to say the words out loud—I’m adopted.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Spencer mused, stretching her long legs under the table. “Maybe my real mother would actually care about me. And maybe I could get out of Rosewood.”
Andrew was silent. Spencer glanced at him, wondering if she’d said something offensive. Finally he turned and looked straight into her eyes.
“I love you,” Andrew announced.
Spencer’s eyes popped out. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a Web site,” Andrew went on, unfazed. His chair creaked as he leaned back. “I love you dot com. Or maybe you is just the letter u, I’m not sure. It matches adopted kids to their birth mothers. This girl I met on the trip to Greece told me about it. She wrote me the other day saying it worked. She’s meeting her birth mother next week.”
“Oh.” Spencer pretended to smooth down her already perfectly ironed skirt, feeling a little flustered. Of course she hadn’t thought Andrew was actually saying he loved her or anything.
“Do you want to register for it?” Andrew began to load his books into his backpack. “If you’re not adopted, they just won’t find a match. If you are…maybe they will.”
“Um…” Spencer’s head spun. “Okay. Sure.”
Andrew made a beeline through the library for the computer lab, and Spencer followed. The main reading room was mostly empty save for a few late-night studiers, two boys hovering around the copier, no doubt contemplating whether to copy their faces or their butts, and what looked like a cult meeting—every single middle-aged woman was in some sort of blue hat. Spencer thought she saw someone quickly duck behind one of the autobiography shelves, but when she looked again, no one was there.
The computer lab was at the front of the library, surrounded on all sides by large glass windows. Andrew sat down at a console and Spencer pulled out a chair next to him. He wiggled the mouse, and the screen flickered on. “Okay.” Andrew started typing and tilted the screen toward Spencer. “See?”
Reconnecting families, announced flowery pink script at the top of the page. On the left of the screen were a series of pictures and testimonials from people who had already used the service. Spencer wondered if Andrew’s little Greece friend was pictured—and if she was pretty. Not that she would have been jealous or anything.
Spencer clicked on a link that said, Sign up here. A new page popped up, asking her to answer various questions about herself, which the site would then use to match Spencer with her potential mother.
Spencer’s eyes floated back to the testimonials. I thought I would never find my son! Sadie, age forty-nine, wrote. Now we’re reunited and best friends! A girl named Angela, twenty-four, exclaimed, I always wondered who my true mother was. Now I’ve found her, and we’re starting an accessories business together! Spencer knew the world wasn’t this innocent and naïve—things didn’t work out this easily. But she couldn’t help but hope all the same.