The dog lunged toward me, and I heard the guy say, “Bert!” as he pulled him back, and then the soft sound of disappointed dog whimpering. But I was only half paying attention to this. My eyes were scanning the front of Dr. Rizzoli’s house, my hopes starting to nose-dive. All the curtains were drawn. There were no lights on that I could see, no cars in the driveway, and most telling of all, there was a layer of green summer leaves covering the front steps. Either Dr. Rizzoli was out of town, or he hadn’t left the house in a while. Why had I just assumed that he would be here, waiting for me, willing to correct the mistake and let me go to my program after all?
I stared at the house, telling myself that I could still do this, that this wasn’t over yet. I could get his number and call him and get him to change his mind . . . but even as I was forming this plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work. All the adrenaline and righteous anger that had gotten me here was fading, and I was left with the reality of the situation: Dr. Rizzoli had e-mailed Johns Hopkins and gotten me pulled from the program. He’d meant to do that, and he wasn’t about to undo it because I asked him nicely.
Feeling like I was about to cry—something I very rarely did, usually only at movies—I turned around and started walking across the street, back to my car, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Uh—so, see you around?” the guy called after me, and I could hear the nervous, hopeful note in his voice. Under other circumstances, I probably would have responded to this. He was really cute, after all, even if he had no idea how to walk a dog. But not today. Not with everything that had been my life currently in pieces at my feet.
“Probably not,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead as I pulled open my car door. “I don’t live around here.” I got in and shut the door but didn’t start the car yet—mostly because I had no idea what I was going to do now, or where I was going to go.
The guy turned and started walking back the way he’d come, and I looked for maybe a moment longer than I should have, watching as Bertie took off at a run, the guy stumbling a few steps behind, trying to catch up.
I made myself turn away, then picked up my phone. I unlocked it, then stopped. If I let myself think about the bigger picture—like what this actually meant for my future—I knew I would start to spiral out. I needed to think about my next immediate steps. Small pieces that I could manage. I looked down at my phone and saw the text from Palmer was still open—and Bri had responded, saying she’d be at the diner if she could haul Toby out of bed.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I wasn’t going to figure it out without coffee.
ME
I’ll be there too. See you in 15.
Then I let out a long breath and started the car. I glanced back once, to see if the guy and his dog were still there, but there was only an empty road behind me.
• • •
We had always called it “the diner,” though according to the menus, it actually had a name—Glory Days’ Diner. I had never heard anyone call it that, though it did explain the high percentage of Bruce Springsteen songs on the mini jukeboxes that sat on the tables in the booths. We’d been going there since eighth grade, and we’d especially spent a lot of time there before we were invited to any parties, when we all wanted to be out of the house on weekend nights but didn’t actually have anywhere to go. Now we had the booth we always sat in and knew the waitresses who tolerated us and the waitresses who flat-out hated us and who the nice managers and busboys were.
It was the place we always defaulted to and where we sometimes went to the parking lot to have either screaming fights or giggle fests. I’d made out with guys in the darkness of the parking lot, guys who tasted like milk shakes and French fries. And it was where we’d all gathered the morning after Palmer slept with Tom for the first time, getting every detail over shared plates of pancakes and waffles.
It was early enough that I was able to get parking out front. I climbed the seven steps and pulled open the metal-handled door, walking past the candy machines and the arcade games, one of which, Honour Quest, Bri had become obsessed with two years ago. The PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign was facing out, so I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and scanned the restaurant. Our normal booth was taken by a family—screaming kids and parents ignoring them as they read the paper. I looked around for our second-favorite booth and saw Palmer sitting in it alone.
I made a beeline over to her. I was still feeling jangly and on the verge of panicking, but somehow knowing I would be able to talk about it with her was making things seem a little bit better. “Hey,” I said, sliding into the booth across from her. There was what looked like a half-eaten plate of waffles and what I was assuming was a vanilla Coke—Palmer’s usual—sat in front of her.
“Hi,” she said as she looked at me, surprised, her blue eyes wide. “You got here fast. Did you speed?”
“Not exactly,” I said, taking a menu from where they were stacked on the table, opening it, then putting it back immediately, realizing I didn’t even have to look. I got about four things at the diner, and this was not a place to experiment. There were things that were safe to get—all breakfast foods, mozzarella sticks, burgers, sandwiches. And then there were things that you should never, ever order at a diner, despite the fact that the menu was the size of a small phone book. Palmer loved to dare people, and last year she’d challenged Toby to get the seven-dollar lobster. When it had arrived, it had looked so suspicious that she’d called off the bet immediately, before anyone got food poisoning. “I was over on Sound View,” I started. “And—”
“Morning, Andie,” Tom said as he approached the table with a smile. Then he looked at where I was sitting and his face fell. “Does this mean I’ve lost my seat?”
“Afraid so,” Palmer said, patting the spot next to her. “Scoot in, babe.”
We had a very particular seating arrangement at the diner. Palmer and I sat across from each other, closest to the jukebox, Bri next to me, and Toby across from her. When one of us wasn’t there, Tom got to sit across from Palmer, but if we were all there, he had to pull a chair up to the end of the table. He didn’t really complain about it, maybe because he understood that this seating arrangement had come before he had. Tom had, over the last three years, pretty much become a de facto member of our group, but he was always really respectful of the fact that we were still a foursome and seemed to have a sixth sense for when we needed girl time.
Tom slid next to his girlfriend, kissed her on the cheek, and then turned to me. “So what’s going on?” he asked. He looked down at his own plate, which had about two bites left on it. “Pancake?” he offered, and I shook my head.
I’d known Thomas Harrison—he always did a bit about how nobody could ever tell if he had two last names or two first names—since third grade. I’d never really thought about him all that much. He was the quiet, neatly dressed kid who sat in the middle of the classroom and was in every single play in elementary and middle school—usually the character part, but occasionally the lead. If I’d thought about it, I would have assumed he was gay, based on nothing other than the most superficial of reasons and the fact that I’d never seen him with a girl.
But on the third day of high school, I’d been at my locker trying to figure out what I’d done with my biology book when Palmer had grabbed my arm. “Who is that?” she’d whispered, her voice higher than normal.
“Who is who?” I asked, trying to look around Tom Harrison, who was carefully placing his books in his locker, for whoever it was Palmer was talking about.
“Him,” she’d whispered, her nails digging into my arm, and I saw she was looking right at Tom, her cheeks flushed. They’d started going out a week later, and they’d been together ever since.
“Well,” I started, leaning forward, ready to tell them what happened. My mind had been spinning the whole drive over, unable to attach to anything concrete that would help me figure out the next step. I hoped that in the course of telling them, something mi
ght hit me. “So this morning my phone rings at seven a.m., and . . .” I stopped suddenly, noticing that while Palmer was wearing normal clothes—jeans and a tank top—Tom was wearing a collared shirt underneath a brightly pattered red-and-white Christmas sweater. The collared shirt wasn’t that unusual—Tom usually looked like he was attending something slightly more formal than the rest of us—but the sweater was. “Tom, why are you dressed like a holiday card?”
Tom opened his mouth to reply as Carly, one of the waitresses who tolerated us, appeared at the table, pen already poised above her order pad. “Ready, doll?” Everyone Carly waited on got a nickname. She always called Toby “Freckles,” which Toby was less than thrilled about.
“Can I get the number one with crisp bacon and a Diet Coke?” I asked.
“White or wheat?” Carly asked without missing a beat.
“White, just the tiniest bit toasted. Like, more warmed than toasted. And hash browns instead of home fries.”
“Gotcha,” Carly said as she turned to go.
“And can you make the bacon really crisp?” Palmer interjected, leaning slightly across the table. “Like, more crisp than you would think. Cook it to an amount of crispness you think that nobody would ever want, and bring that out, and it’ll be perfect.”
“Sure,” Carly said, but still in the same tone that she’d taken my toast order, so I wasn’t sure she’d actually listened to any of this.
“Thanks,” I said to Palmer once Carly had departed.
“I’m just trying to save us all some time,” she said with a grin. “Remember the Bacon Incident of last May?”
Tom shuddered. “I do.”
I rolled my eyes and reached over for Palmer’s water glass to take a sip. “It wasn’t an incident,” I said, then focused back on Tom. “But why are you celebrating Christmas in June?”
“The holidays . . . just aren’t the holidays without a Country Table ham,” Tom said to me earnestly. “This year, that’s what I want for Christmas.”
I just stared at him for a moment. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s for an audition,” Palmer explained, and I could hear the pride in her voice. It was one of the reasons that they worked so well together. The two of them were beyond supportive of each other, and they both still seemed to think they’d won the lottery by being with each other. If they weren’t Palmer and Tom, it would have been pretty insufferable. “In New York,” she added.
“Oh,” I said, feeling like things were starting to make more sense. Tom had gotten an actual agent when someone had seen him in last fall’s production of You Can’t Take It With You. Now he went into New York City pretty frequently to audition, clutching the headshot we’d all helped him choose. He’d booked some regional commercials, but so far, nothing national. “But why are you dressed like that now?” I asked. “Aren’t you hot?”
“A little bit,” he admitted, taking a sip of his water. “But I really want to get into character. Like, why does David—I’ve decided his name is David—care about ham so much? Why does he want a ham for Christmas? Is something else missing in David’s life? Probably, right?”
“And the sweater helps you come up with answers to these questions?”
“It can’t hurt,” Tom said, taking another long drink.
“Anyway,” Palmer said, turning to me. “So you got a call this morning at seven a.m. . . .”
“Right,” I said. “It’s a Baltimore area code, so of course I answer, and—”
“We’re here!” I turned to see Bri arriving at the foot of the table, with a grumpy-looking Toby in tow.
Tom sighed. “I’ve lost my seat again, haven’t I?”
“Fraid so,” Palmer said cheerfully as Tom slid out of the booth and went off in search of a chair.
“Hi,” Bri said as she slid in next to me. “Sorry we’re late. I literally had to drag Toby out of bed.”
I looked across at Toby, who was now slumped against Palmer, wearing what were unmistakably Bri’s clothes, nice ones, looking like she was about three seconds away from falling asleep again. “Hey, Tobes,” I said.
“It’s so early,” she moaned, rubbing her eyes. “And why does nobody at this table have coffee?”
“We’ll get you some coffee,” Bri said, already looking around for a waitress. “You big baby.”
“Babies don’t need coffee,” Toby said, burrowing her head into Palmer’s arm, who gave her hair a distracted pat. “Because people actually let them sleep.”
“You needed to get up,” Bri said firmly. “You have to be at work in an hour, and I’m not taking the blame if you fall asleep and crash into a Monet.”
I frowned. “Wait, what?”
“Here you go,” Carly said, returning with my food and Diet Coke, not even batting an eye at the fact that two new people had arrived at the table, while one had vanished. “Get you anything, Freckles?”
“Coffee,” Toby said, sitting up a little straighter. “And waffles?” she asked, looking at Bri. Toby almost never ordered anything just for herself. She always wanted someone, usually Bri, to share stuff with her and was forever asking if we should get something “for the table.”
“I’d have waffles,” Bri said, nodding. “Can I get a black tea?”
“Coming up,” Carly said, disappearing again. I looked down at my plate—I was thrilled to see that the bacon looked practically black—and realized how hungry I was. I had just speared a bite of my scrambled eggs when Tom appeared again, hauling a chair and looking out of breath.
“Sorry,” he said, his face now matching his sweater. “I’m back.”
Bri frowned at him and gestured to his outfit. “Okay, what’s going on here?”
“That’s David,” I said, as I crunched into a piece of bacon, “and he really wants a ham for Christmas.”
“The holidays . . . just aren’t the holidays—” Tom started, but Palmer interrupted.
“Tom has an audition this afternoon,” she explained, then turned back to me. “But Andie was about to tell us what’s going on with her.”
“Wait, who wants a ham for Christmas?” Toby asked, sounding more awake than she had yet this morning. “I mean, that’s just weird.”
“Exactly!” Tom said, leaning toward Toby. “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself.”
“Andie?” Palmer interrupted, loud, and everyone turned to me.
I set my fork down, took a restorative drink of my Diet Coke, and told them about what had happened that morning. When I finished, my eggs were looking decidedly cold, and Bri and Toby’s waffles had arrived.
“But I don’t understand how they could do that,” Palmer said as she leaned across the table toward me. “Are they allowed to cancel your acceptance like that?”
“Apparently,” I said, and I could feel my heart start to race again. “Which means I have nothing. No plans. Nothing lined up. I mean . . .” Topher’s words from the night before were suddenly ringing in my ears. Everything good had been gone when he’d started looking a month ago. Which meant I was so, so screwed.
“This Dr. Rizzoli guy sounds like a dick,” Toby said.
“Totally,” Bri agreed.
“I mean,” Toby huffed as she angrily speared a bite of waffle. “To not even give you a heads-up?”
“It’s not cool,” Tom agreed from his end of the table. “Um, are you going to eat all your bacon?”
I pushed my plate across to him, wondering if Tom was really hungry, or if he was trying to get in character as pork-loving David.
“Wait, but that means you get to be here!” Toby said, brightening. “That’s great!” I shot her a look, and she shrugged. “I mean, not so much for you. But it’s great for us.”
“It’s not great!” I said, my voice coming out louder than I’d expected it to, and the family in our normal booth glanced over at me. “Everything is wrecked. I’m never going to be able to find anything good now, which means there will be this gap on my résumé. During the summer I nee
ded something the most.” I could feel my heart start to pound harder, like just saying these things out loud had made them more real.
“She’s spiraling,” Toby whispered.
“I see that,” Bri whispered back.
“Andie,” Palmer said, nudging my foot with hers underneath the table until I looked up at her, “tell me about the cute guy with the dog.”
“That’s not important!” I snapped.
“What did he look like?” Palmer asked, leaning forward, nudging me again.
“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to think about the guy right now when there were many more important things I had to deal with. I had a feeling Palmer was just doing this to try and distract me, so I could calm down, but when she nudged me harder, this one bordering on a kick, I relented, knowing if I didn’t answer her, she’d just keep on doing it. “Fine. Um—dark hair. Glasses. His shirt said something about droids. . . .”
Both Bri and Tom looked up at that. “Star Wars?” Bri asked, looking impressed.
“I like him already,” Tom said decisively.
“Can we focus here?” Toby asked, raising her voice. “If Andie’s in town, that means we’re all here for the summer, for once.”
I looked around the table and realized this was true. Last year Bri had spent all of July visiting relatives in India, terrified she was going to lose her memory because of the side-effects warning on her anti-malarial medicine. (We’d probably had more fun with that than we should have, making up things that hadn’t happened, pretending she should know what we were talking about, then acting overly concerned when she got confused. Bri, understandably, hadn’t brought us back any souvenirs from that trip.) And the year before that, Palmer had spent the first half of the summer doing a service program, building houses in New Orleans, and come back with a drawl she didn’t lose until November.
“You know what that means you’ll be here for, right?” Palmer asked me, raising her eyebrows.