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“You know, I might not see him,” I started logically. “He’s a senior. There’s no way we’ll have any classes together and—”
Schy bulldozed right over that idea. “Of course you’ll see him. Southeast isn’t any bigger than Hillsburg. You’ll probably bump into him as soon as you enter the school.”
Next to me, Bridget let out a dreamy sigh. “I just love his name. Have I mentioned how much I like his name?”
“Only about a million times,” Adam mumbled, picking up his cheeseburger and taking a ferocious bite.
“I like it too,” Schy decided. “It sounds good with Grace. Ryder and Grace. Should be easy for Adam to make a song for you two when you hook up.”
I flushed even more scarlet and opened my mouth to shoot down that idea, but Bridget chimed in, “Aww. Are you really going to write a song for them? That’s so sweet.”
A pickle slipped out the back of Adam’s burger and plopped onto his plate. His eyes grew as he sat up straight. “Uh…yeah. Sure. I guess I could.” He glanced toward me. “If you want.”
“No, I don’t want,” I muttered. “Because we’re not going to hook up.”
My adamant tone surprised everyone. They pulled back in their seats with raised eyebrows. I curbed the urge to apologize, but honestly, I didn’t want to discuss the topic anymore. It still made me intensely uncomfortable and mortally embarrassed.
Schy huffed out a disgruntled sniff. “Geesh, Gracie. Deflate our hopes, why don’t you. I just thought it’d be nice if one of us actua
lly went on a date before we graduated high school.”
“Yet another stigma society puts on teens,” Bridget spoke up, “making us think we’re losers if we don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend by a certain age. Why can’t we just focus on who we are and what we want to be?”
Adam, Schy, and I exchanged glances before we burst out laughing.
And just like that, things smoothed back to normal. We laughed, and ate, and gossiped through the rest of the meal.
Almost two hours later, we finally departed the restaurant. A freezing wind greeted us as soon as we stepped outside. I pulled my dad’s old logging coat—as I called it—more snuggly around me.
I’d taken up wearing it since an afternoon about four weeks earlier when Mom had packed a box full of memories from the long-forgotten possessions stacked on the top shelf in the hallway closet.
Still avoiding the task of cleaning out my room, I’d volunteered to pack the bathroom. I’d just stepped out into the hall for a break when I’d found her holding the jacket to her chest and rubbing her fingers over the woolly material. It was black and red plaid, ugly as all get out, but she’d caressed it as if it were fine silk.
When she’d caught me watching her with a sketched eyebrow, she’d smiled. “It was your father’s. Ratty old thing was his favorite coat.”
Immediately, my confusion had melted away and sympathy had filled me. Feeling as if I needed to share the moment with her, I’d shuffled a step forward and reached out a tentative hand to touch the fabric too. It was as scratchy and coarse as it looked, but I’d smiled anyway.
Mom had thrust the entire bundle at me, catching me off guard; I’d almost dropped it before my fumbling fingers had wrapped around the bulk. “Here,” she’d said. “You take it. If you have a son someday, maybe the style will be back in fashion and he can wear it.”
But I’d decided, forget someday. I was going to wear the coat myself. After a good laundering—actually, after about three times through the wash—making it smell mountain spring fresh, I’d switched out my regular coat for it.
It swallowed me whole. The arms were so long; they covered my hands down to my knuckles, and the girth was wide enough for two of me to fit inside.
But at least it was warm, the warmest coat I’d ever worn. I found myself wearing it everywhere despite how much I had to look like a poor orphaned waif. Mom always watched me with half a smile and watery eyes whenever I stepped out of the house with it on, so I kept wearing the huge thing despite fashion or reason.
Bundled in my dad’s coat on that frozen night of my going away dinner, I shivered. The thick bulky fabric couldn’t even protect me from the icy wind that swept up. I huddled closer to Bridge, who bumped into Adam, who already had Schy plastered to his other side, seeking warmth. Together, the four of us shared our body heat as we raced toward Bridget’s old sedan. We drove to Adam and Schy’s house with the heat blowing full blast.
Yet still, the ever-present doom of my approaching future kept me chilled the rest of the night.
Chapter 4
I would always remember that worried look on my mom’s face, the way she had bit her bottom lip and eyed me as if she had bad news to disclose, when she had come into my bedroom one night three months ago, slipped the door closed, and sat gingerly on my bed.
Totally freaked me out. I thought she had cancer or something.
When she had said Barry had proposed, she had looked nauseated with worry. But I had been so happy I had screamed and hugged her, repeating, “I’m going to get a dad. Wow. I’m really getting a dad.”
Okay, yes, I already had a dad. But he’d been dead for thirteen years. His name had been Daniel. I was three when it happened, so I don’t remember him. At all. Mom says I was a major daddy’s girl, and I like to think that was true as a way to, you know, apologize to him for completely forgetting his face, and his voice, and his smell, and all that.
