I almost said, “You’re not the boss of me,” like I’ve said hundreds of times since I could talk. But this time, I didn’t. I just said, “Okay. Be there in a few.”
* She makes really good chocolate chip cookies.
* She knows every Taylor Swift song by heart.
* Sometimes she’ll help me with my homework if I bribe her with a painting.
* She has three of my owl paintings hanging in her room.
* She calls me Pooh and I call her Pooh and no one else is allowed to do that.
* I can browse her bookcase anytime. Well, as long as I ask first.
* She’s not afraid of hard things, like becoming a junior lifeguard.
* She knows how to make me feel better. Usually.
* She hates pickles, which leaves more for me.
Miranda and I spent the afternoon at the amusement park at the end of the boardwalk. It was a lot of fun. She used some of her allowance on tickets so we could go on rides and play games. The one downside? I got sunburned because I forgot to put on sunscreen. If only I had a list of beach rules memorized, like Emma.
When Mom got home later that night, we talked about our day over a dinner of tacos and rice. Yes, she actually brought home ingredients to make a meal. Amazing.
“Mom,” Miranda said shortly after we’d started eating, “I really think Juliet needs a phone.”
All of a sudden, I wanted to take back every mean thing I’d ever said about my sister.
Mom sighed. “Girls. We’ve talked about this.”
Miranda continued, “I know, but she forgot to leave a note this morning when she left the house. I came home and didn’t know where she was. It was pretty awful.”
Wait, never mind, every mean thing I’d said about her is completely true!
“Where’d you go?” Mom asked me.
“To help Emma with something,” I said. “She came over and we had to hurry because she needed to get to work soon. I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note. I forgot, that’s all.”
“Juliet, I’m getting worried you’re making a nuisance of yourself with that family,” Mom said. She picked up her glass of water. “I feel like you’ve been spending every spare moment over there.”
Great. More of this from Mom, too? I felt anger rising up inside of me like a big wave about to hit land. “Mom, what am I supposed to do? Sit around here by myself? Sometimes, being alone is fine. But I shouldn’t have to do it all the time. I feel like you moved us here and then …”
“And then what?” she asked.
“Basically deserted us,” I said quietly, staring at my half-eaten taco.
Mom put her water glass down hard. “That is not fair. You know I have to work. I have to work so I can pay for your art supplies and the cable TV you love to watch and this dinner we’re eating. What do you expect me to do?”
I tried to stay calm as I answered, but my voice shook a little and I had to blink back tears. “How about letting us stay in the town where we know people? Lots of people. And where we have a mom and a dad?”
She put her face in her hands for a moment before she got up with her plate in hand. She looked so angry, with her lips pursed and her cheeks red. “You need to understand that I’m doing the best I can. And someday, when I’m able, I’ll try to explain to you why I felt we had to move here. But in the meantime? I would appreciate it if you give me a little slack, please.” She moved toward the kitchen and then turned around. “I’d like both of you to stay home tomorrow, please. Do some laundry. Clean the kitchen. Read books. Take naps. Just … chill. I’ll be home late because I’m going out after work. I’ll leave you money to order a pizza. Got it?”
“Okay, Mom,” Miranda said, staring at me like I’d just caused the sky to fall.
All I could do was nod.
“I’ll be in my room,” Mom said. “Good night.”
After she left, Miranda leaned in and hissed at me, “Why’d you say that?”
“What?”
“That she moved us here and deserted us? It wasn’t very nice.”
I didn’t want to argue anymore. I didn’t want to feel like I was wrong and everyone else was right, because that feeling? It’s horrible.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I got up from the table.
I rinsed off my plate and put it in the dishwasher, along with Mom’s, since she’d left it in the sink. There was still some taco meat on the stove, so I scooped it up and put it in a plastic container.
I thought back to taco dinners with Dad. Whenever he made them, he always heated up a can of corn, too, because he liked corn on top of the lettuce with the tomatoes. I used to make fun of him whenever he did it. I felt my stomach tighten up at the thought. I shouldn’t have done it—made fun of him like that. I bet Emma never made fun of her dad and the way he did certain things. She probably loved everything about him, the way I should have loved everything about my dad when I had the chance.
Now it was too late. He was there and I was here and whenever he had tacos with corn on them, he probably cheered because I wasn’t around to make fun of him.
Miranda came into the kitchen, her eyes kinder now. She probably wanted to have some sisterly heart-to-heart talk, tell me how I needed to give Mom a break, but I wasn’t in the mood.
“See you tomorrow,” I said as I walked past her toward my room.
“Pooh?” she asked.
I stopped but I didn’t turn around. “What?”
“I had fun this afternoon.” She paused. “And I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much this week.”
Trying to figure out what to say with all of my mixed-up feelings felt like trying to clean up a gallon of spilled milk with a single napkin. Hard. So I didn’t say anything except “Good night.”
I went to my room, shut the door, and picked up the Vincent van Gogh book. I wanted to read about someone else’s sad life for a while. That would make me feel better. It almost always did.
* He was 27 years old when he did his first painting.
* He used peasants as models.
* When he ran out of money to pay the models, he started painting more landscapes and flowers, and even himself.
* Some of his best work, including The Starry Night, he painted while staying in a mental hospital. He painted The Starry Night as he looked out the small window of his room just before the sun came up.
* He mostly traded his artwork with other artists for food or drawing supplies. It wasn’t until after his death that he became famous.
* It sounds like he loved his brother Theo more than anyone else in the world. They’re buried next to each other in a cemetery in a small town in France.
* Theo was with him when he died and said Vincent’s last words were “La tristesse durera toujours.” In English it means “The sadness will last forever.”
It felt like Mom had grounded us, and I didn’t understand why. Was it really because she didn’t want me bugging the Renton family? I wished she understood that they didn’t mind. And if it made me happy to be there instead of home where I wasn’t very happy, why not let me be happy?
I was angry and confused. When I finally left my room the next morning, I found Miranda in the kitchen, making blueberry muffins. Not with fresh blueberries. Muffins from a box.
“I ran to the market and thought I’d make these,” she told me. “Just add an egg and some milk and that’s it. So easy, right?”
She was way too chipper for nine o’clock in the morning. “Do I really have to stay here today?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned against the counter.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m not going to lie to Mom for you.”
“Well, can we at least go to the beach?”
She pointed to my very pink arms. “I think you got enough sun yesterday. Should probably stay inside today.”
“But I don’t want to,” I moaned.
“Let’s clean up the kitchen after I
put these in the oven,” she said. “Then we can paint. I’ll paint with you, how’s that?”
Normally, painting made me happy. But the way I felt, I just didn’t see it happening.
“Mom is being so unfair,” I said. “She’s, like, punishing us for no reason. And what’s with her going out after work tonight?”
Miranda set the whisk down and turned to look at me. “You know what, Juliet? If you want to be miserable, go to your room and be miserable by yourself. I don’t want to be around you when you’re like this. It’s not fun.”
“Well, I’m sorry I can’t be happy all the time like Emma, who has a big happy family she gets to live with while I’m stuck here with you!” I screamed. And then I stormed out.
I lay on my bed next to Casper and cried. I thought of Vincent and his last words—The sadness will last forever. Sometimes, it really did feel that way.
* * *
A while later, Miranda knocked on my door.
“Come in,” I said. The tears had stopped. Now, I mostly felt numb.
“Here,” she said as she set a plate with two muffins next to my bed, along with a glass of milk. “You’ll feel better after you eat something.”
She picked up the birthday photo from my nightstand and stared at it for a minute before she set it down. “I miss him, too, you know. And I get it. It’s hard, leaving everything we loved, but we have to try and make the best of it.”
I scooted up and leaned back against the headboard. Then I picked up a muffin and bit into it. It was warm and soft and tasty. “I know,” I said after I swallowed.
“I cleaned up the kitchen,” she said. “Let’s get dressed and go to the beach.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’ll slather on sunscreen before we leave.”
“Will you help me build something in the sand?” I asked, thinking about my list of things I wanted to do at the beach.
“Like what?”
“A sea turtle?”
She shrugged. “I guess we can try. It may just look like a big lump in the sand, though.”
“No,” I said. “We can do it. I know we can. It’ll be the best thing ever.”
* * *
It was not the best thing ever. More like the hardest thing ever. Even though I’d printed out some pictures of sea turtles made out of sand and brought them with us, we couldn’t get the mound of sand to look like the back of a turtle.
I groaned as I lay back onto the cool, wet sand, exhausted and frustrated. I closed my eyes, the sun too bright for me to do anything else.
“Do you want to call Emma?” Miranda asked. “See if she wants to come and help us?”
“Pretty sure that would be against Mom’s rules for the day,” I said.
“I hope you can see I’m trying to make you happy,” she said.
I sat up with a sigh. “I know.” I stared at the sea turtle in the making. “I think we need a big piece of cardboard or something. To smooth it out better.”
“We could go home and cut up a moving box,” Miranda said. “Or we could go get an ice cream cone and see if they have something we might be able to use while we’re there.”
“Ice cream?” I asked. “We haven’t even had lunch yet.”
She gave me a half grin. “Maybe today should be backward day. You remember those, right?”
How could I forget? They were amazing. Mom would have a meeting or something and leave Dad in charge.
Even though I remembered it all really well, it was comforting when Miranda kept talking. “Dad and cooking are not friends,” she said with a smile. “So when he was in charge of dinner, he’d put it off and put it off—”
“Until we were starving,” I said.
“So he’d give us dessert first,” Miranda said, “to buy himself more time to make something.”
The first time he set bowls of ice cream in front of us before we’d eaten a healthy meal, Miranda and I were shocked. And ecstatic. I could still see his face so clearly when he exclaimed, “It’s backward day! How about that, girls? A special new holiday.”
“Backward day,” I mumbled, staring out at the beautiful blue ocean.
“It’d make Dad proud,” Miranda said.
I got to my feet and brushed sand off my legs below my shorts. “Yes, it would. Let’s go.”
Emma and her mom were in the shop along with Thomas. It was a little after eleven, so they’d just opened. We were the only ones there.
“Hey,” Emma said, her hair pulled back into a short ponytail. She leaned the broom she’d been holding against the wall. “Looks like you guys have been having a lot more fun than me this morning. Digging a hole to China, maybe?”
“That probably would have been easier,” I said. “We’re trying to make a sea turtle in the sand. We wondered if you might have some cardboard we could use? We need something big to smooth the shell out better.”
Thomas started moving toward the back room. “I’m on it. Let me get you some different-size pieces. Some curved, some square. Be right back.”
“We also came to get ice cream,” Miranda said.
“Worked up an appetite, huh?” Joanne said, her eyes practically twinkling. “Let me know what you’d like when you’re ready.”
Both of us strolled along the cases, checking out the flavors.
“Mom,” Emma said. “Can Juliet sleep over tomorrow night? We wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz.” She tried to talk like a Munchkin. “Follow the yellow brick road. Follow the yellow brick road!”
I laughed.
“Fine with me,” Joanne said.
Emma turned back to me, talking fast. “I’d have you stay tonight but I have plans with my friend Lenora this afternoon. Hopefully, tomorrow night’s okay?”
I glanced at Miranda, wondering if she’d make up some excuse as to why I wouldn’t be able to. But she didn’t say anything.
“Can I let you know tomorrow?” I asked. “I’ll have to ask my mom.”
“Yes,” she said. “Call me. Text me. Email me. Whatever.”
“I don’t think I have your email,” I said. “Do I?”
A look crossed over her face. A funny look. A really funny look.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said as she reached back and nervously tugged on her tiny ponytail. “You don’t. I’ll have to give it to you sometime. Remind me, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Miranda pointed to something in the case. “Can I get a scoop of that red velvet, please?”
“You bet,” Joanne said. “Have you decided what you’d like, Juliet?”
“I’ll just have vanilla, please,” I said.
Anything else was too complicated at the moment. Because all I could hear inside my brain was, “What if Emma wrote you the email? WHAT IF EMMA WAS ACTUALLY SOME KID?”
* It is a little fishy that I got a reply from Some Kid so soon.
* Except Emma was with me—how could she have gotten my message?
* Maybe she read over my shoulder when I wasn’t looking. Maybe she pretended to write a message, but the whole time she was actually watching me write mine!
* OR maybe she asked her sister to get the bottle for her. She did text someone right after we left the beach.
* Why would she do it, though? Maybe just to make something exciting happen instead of a whole lot of nothing?
* If it’s true, she’s a really good actress. When I showed her the email that she might have written, she looked shocked.
* But one thing that’s never made any sense to me—why did she have two bottles that day? What if she was specifically looking for someone like me? Someone who was so desperate for friends, she’d believe any old silly email that came her way?
With the help of some simple pieces of cardboard, the turtle actually turned out all right. Better than terrible, at least. I mean, let’s be real, it’d never win a contest—but at least it looked like a turtle. Sort of. The legs were too small and the head was too big, but
when we finally finished, we stood back and admired our handiwork.
“I’m glad we didn’t give up,” Miranda said as we stood there.
“Me, too,” I said.
And that was that. We went home and collapsed. Ate pizza for dinner. Went to bed early because there was nothing else to do. I read for a while, but it was hard to focus because I kept thinking about the funny look on Emma’s face when I told her I didn’t have her email address.
It reminded me of the time my sister got caught lying about being at a basketball game when she was actually at a friend’s party. Miranda had left the twenty-dollar bill Mom had given her on the kitchen table. So, wanting to make sure Miranda didn’t go hungry (because watching teen boys play basketball apparently makes you ravenous?), Mom went to the game to give it to her. But Miranda wasn’t there. And Mom was furious.
The next morning, over breakfast, Mom asked her, “How was the game?”
Miranda said, “Fine.”
“Who won?” Dad asked.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know,” she said, fidgeting with her napkin and blinking really fast. “I left a few minutes before it was over.”
I’d heard my parents talking the night before, so I knew Miranda was lying. But even if I hadn’t known, I think her face would have given it away. She looked … nervous. And that’s exactly how Emma looked when I’d corrected her on the email address. Like she was hiding something.
But why would Emma do it? That’s what I didn’t understand.
* * *
When I woke up Saturday morning, I immediately got up and made scrambled eggs and toast. Along with the plate of food, I put a cup of coffee and one gardenia in a little vase on a serving tray and took it into Mom’s room.
I softly nudged the door open with my hip. Sunlight streamed through the blinds. Mom was awake, sitting up in bed, looking at her phone. As soon as she saw me, she smiled. “Juliet, oh my gosh, what have you done?”
After I put the tray down, I sat on her bed. “I know it was a hard week. New house. New job. Moody daughter.”
She reached out and touched my cheek. “You know, it occurs to me you have every right to be moody. A lot has happened.”