I squeeze my eyes shut, begging shamelessly now. “Please. Promise you won’t get married without me.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and relief crests over my body.
When things inevitably fall apart, she won’t carry the pain and humiliation of a failed marriage when a breakup would suffice. Us Beekman women don’t all need to make the same mistakes over and over.
“We can be there in six hours,” I promise. “Seven tops.”
Chapter 4
What Are You Doing on My Jeggings?
Fifteen Years Ago
I think Iwas the only one who saw the boys when Mom pulled into the driveway.
The two of them were standing in the street in front of the brick house next door. The taller one was wearing a faded green jersey with a star on the front and holding a hockey stick. He had tan skin and dark hair that he was pushing out of his face when he yelled “Car!” at the shorter boy standing in front of a torn net.
That was when they stopped playing to look into our car window while my mom turned off the ignition. I knew the look on their faces well: theAre those new kids?look. It was the small-town equivalent of a celebrity sighting. I’d seen it enough times to know I’d never again be as fascinating to them as I was at that exact moment.
But then the shorter boy tilted his head and smiled—big and warm. He had the kind of smile that crowded out the rest of his pale face. It made me too aware of myself. Between the crusted drool on my chin from my seven-hour Dramamine-induced nap, the ginormous pimple on my forehead, and the once cute-messy bun that at some point in said nap hadmigrated across my scalp into something just regular-messy, I had no choice but to look down. He rubbed his buzzed head and looked away too.
My mom twisted over the center console to look at Laurel and me. “You’re going to love the house,” she said.
We’d been driving for an eternity. That’s what Laurel kept saying.An eternity.But we’d finally made it to Lewellen, Minnesota.
“He sent me pictures of the place,” she told us. “There’s a big farmhouse table in the kitchen with a bell. Should I ring the bell for dinner every night?” Mom met my eyes in the mirror. She was happy, and I could see she wanted us to be happy.
But Laurel wasn’t happy. “Who cares about this house? It’s not like any of the stuff in it is ours.”
Dad had gotten a position at the nearby college as a photography and film professor and was renting a two-bedroom house “fully furnished.” I understood this to mean that the pull-out trundle and teal-painted dresser Laurel and I would be sharing were astranger’spull-out trundle and teal-painted dresser, but Mom didn’t like when we reminded her of that.
Mom closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “Don’t say that to your dad, Laurel. It’s rude.”
“How is that rude? It’s literally…”
Their argumentative jibber-jabber faded into the background like rain on a windshield. I looked for the boys again when I swung open the car door, but they were already gone.
Laurel sighed theatrically at the creak of the front door, and Dad spun clear of her, knowing his best chance at a warm reception was with me.
“My girls,” he said, squeezing me hard enough that my legs lifted off the ground. Laurel’s eye roll was so big, it got thewhole neck and shoulders involved, and when he finally approached her, it was with a cautious, one-armed back pat that made her flinch.
Finally, he kissed Mom. It was one of those too-intense kisses I didn’t like. He always kissed her like that after they fought, like he was a battle-worn soldier returning from war. It seemed so strange to act like that when the war was only ever between the two of them. The kiss was a stark reminder that we were in this furnished house in this tiny town I’d never heard of because my parents were “dating” again.
Mom had sounded excited about it when she first told Laurel and me. Laurel wasnotexcited and made her opinions on the subjectveryclear. I, on the other hand, hadn’t known what to say, but only because I hadn’t understood what it meant.
Melanie Todrick, who was the fastest runner in seventh grade (until she got boobs), used to tell me all about her dates with ninth graders during Drop Everything and Read time.
“We go to Jamba Juice and talk about track,” she answered, smacking her gum. “Or about summer camp, if they don’t run track.” She braided the ends of her long, shiny hair when she talked, and I wondered if older boys liked that about her. I always wore mine in a ponytail. “On dates, you have to get to know what the other person likes so you can decide if you want to go on more dates. Like to the movies.”
I couldn’t imagine my parents had anything left to learn about each other. For as long as I could remember, they’d argued and then made up. Argued. Made up. Until they stopped making up. I wasn’t confident a movie and a Peanut Butter Moo’d smoothie would change things, though maybe old-people dates were different from Melanie Todrick’s.
Pangs of anxiety fluttered beneath my ribs as Laurel and I waited in the driveway for our parents’ kiss to end. The air was sticky and hot from the summer sun beating down overhead, and I could already feel beads of sweat building over my sunblock.
Suddenly, Laurel was right beside me.
“We’ll be okay if this doesn’t work, Charley. I promise,” she whispered.
She walked into the house before I could say anything back, but for the first time since Mom told us about dating Dad and moving to this town, I was grateful to be sharing a trundle bed with Laurel. My sister’s unshakable confidence had that effect on me.
