“Um, what it says, I guess,” I’d mumbled. This was all harder to say than I thought it would be. “I like you a lot, Zach. I really do. I like hanging out with you, and talking with you—you’re one of my best friends. But the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing, it’s just not, I mean, I don’t feel . . .” My voice trailed off and I heaved a sigh, wishing I could explain it better.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” He drummed the steering wheel with his thumbs angrily. “I knew you’d been acting differently lately, but then you just kept telling me everything was fine.”
I was quiet. There wasn’t really anyone else—just the hope of it. Someday, maybe.
Unfortunately, he took that as a yes.
“I knew it!” he said. “Who is it? Third?”
That made me laugh out loud. Dating Third would be like dating Kevin Mullins. Well, okay, maybe not Kevin Mullins, but still. “No,” I told him, shaking my head. “It’s not Third. There really isn’t anyone else—honest.”
I’d hoped we’d still be able to be friends, but now I don’t know. Zach was pretty steamed when we said good night, and I could tell he was hurt, too. So much so that I almost regretted saying anything. Part of me wanted to give him a hug and tell him I was kidding, just to put a smile back on his face. Zach has the best smile.
This stuff is all so awkward! You like somebody, you don’t like somebody, they like you, suddenly you like them back, they kiss you, and you don’t like them again. Or they kiss you and you do like them but they live three thousand miles away! Sheesh. Does life always have to be this complicated?
I didn’t get to talk to Courtney about anything while she was here, either. I had to practice every second I wasn’t in a game at the tournament, and before I knew it, the weekend was over and she was back on a plane to L.A.
Mrs. Hawthorne pulls into the hotel parking lot. “I’m going to sit right here and wait,” she tells us. “Do your best, girls. A sincere apology can go a long way.”
There’s a surprise waiting for us when we knock on the hotel room door, though.
“What do you want?” says a familiar voice as the door opens a crack.
We stand there, frozen with shock.
Stinkerbelle is back in town!
“Annabelle?” says Emma, gaping at her.
“What do you want?” she repeats crossly, after none of us responds.
“Uh, we want to talk to Sophie,” I finally manage to croak.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble already?”
“What are you doing here?” Emma stammers. “The wedding’s not for two more weeks.”
“Wedding? From what I hear, there isn’t going to be one.”
My friends and I exchange a glance. Getting past Annabelle Fairfax is going to be a problem.
And then it hits me—if Stinkerbelle is here, Tristan must be too! And all the Berkeleys. She wouldn’t just come on her own. Or would she?
As if reading my thoughts, she steps out into the hall and closes the door behind her. Leaning back against it, she crosses her arms over her chest. “Keep your voices down,” she whispers. “Everybody’s sleeping.”
I look at her in surprise. “You’re all here? Crammed into that room?”
“No, you idiot.” She gestures at the hallway. “We’re spread out all over. I’m sharing with Sophie now.”
“When did you get here?” asks Megan, looking pleased for the first time all day. Simon is probably here too, of course.
Stinkerbelle shrugs. “A couple of hours ago. Cousin Sarah and Cousin Philip thought it would be fun to surprise you.” She snorts. “Turns out we’re the ones who’re surprised. We’ve come all this way for nothing.”
We stand there awkwardly for a moment. Nobody quite knows what to say.
“Can we please talk to Sophie?” I ask again.
“And the reason I should let you do this is?” she replies coldly.
“We’d like to apologize,” Emma tells her, whipping out her best “I am Dorothy, the small and meek” impression from The Wizard of Oz. She means it, though, you can tell. “We treated her terribly, and it was wrong of us, and if she leaves now before we get a chance to tell her that, we’ll never forgive ourselves and she’ll never know how badly we feel about everything. Plus, it’s Gigi’s life we’re talking about here. And Sophie’s grandfather’s. Please?”
Mrs. Hawthorne was right—sincerity goes a long way. Annabelle regards her sourly for a long moment, then relents. “Oh, well, if you put it that way, fine, I guess.” She opens the door again, and we follow her inside.
The room is dark, and Sophie is lying on the bed by the window with her back to us. I can tell she’s awake, though. We tiptoe over and stand there, like relatives gathering by a hospital bed. None of us quite knows what to do.
“Uh, Sophie?” says Emma finally. “Can we talk to you?”
No response.
Emma presses on. “We are all so sorry about what happened. Really, truly, sorry. Can you ever forgive us?”
“Please,” adds Megan. “For Gigi’s sake, if not for ours. She hasn’t stopped crying since you and your grandfather left.”
This gets a response and Sophie peers at us over her shoulder. “Vraiment? Really?” She sounds worried. If there’s one thing you can say about Sophie Fairfax, it’s that she truly loves Gigi.
Megan nods. “She’s locked herself in her room and won’t talk to anyone.”
Sophie turns away again. “I don’t blame her,” she replies icily. “What your mother did is horrible.” She pronounces it the French way, “hoar-EE-bull.”
We all nod.
“What we did was horrible, too,” I tell her, thinking about the piqueuse de mec prank and hoping with all my heart that my mother has gotten ahold of Mr. Goldberg and is going to be able to put a stop to it in time. “You’re completely right—we misjudged you from the beginning.”
“Me worst of all,” says Megan.
Emma shakes her head. “No, me.”
Thinking again about the prank, I jerk my thumb toward my chest. “Definitely me.”
Sophie starts to snicker. “You sound like the three Stooges or the three little pigs or something.”
“Are you calling us pigs?” says Jess in mock indignation.
“Would I be wrong if I did?” Sophie replies, sitting up and turning around.
Time to go for the goal, I think, and let out my best oink sound.
Emma quickly follows. Snort.
Snort snort—Becca ups the ante with two in quick succession. Jess produces a really loud, hilarious one, and Megan’s is so tiny it sounds like a sneeze. Stinkerbelle stands there, watching and listening openmouthed in astonishment as the five of us proceed to make complete fools of ourselves. It works, though. In the end, Sophie is laughing so hard, she’s practically crying.
“Are we forgiven?” asks Megan hopefully.
Sophie lifts a shoulder. “It’s a start.”
“We still have to talk to your grandfather,” says Emma, and Sophie stops laughing.
“That will not be so easy,” she tells us. “His pride has been wounded greatly. He takes his occupation very seriously, you know.”
“I know,” says Megan. “He’s an amazing chauffeur. He drove Gigi and me all over Paris.” She sits down on the bed next to Sophie. “Back at the house, you know how you said you wished you had Gigi as your grandmother? Well, I’ve never met anybody I’d like to have more for a grandfather than yours. He’s wonderful.”
Sophie starts to tear up at this. Megan does too, and pretty soon we’re all blinking back tears and sniffling, except for Stinkerbelle.
“You lot are bonkers,” she says. “Crazy. Completement fou. I’m going back to bed.”
And she flounces over to her side of the room and dives under the covers.
We try and keep our voices down as we wipe our eyes and blow our noses, but it’s hard to stop giggling, especially when one or the other of us lets out another little snort.
We sober up pretty quickly once we get to Monsieur de Roches’ hotel room, though.
Sophie knocks on the door.
“Oui?”
“C’est moi!” she replies.
“Entres,” he tells her, and Sophie turns the door handle. We file into the room after her. I can tell by the look on her grandfather’s face that we’re the last people on earth he’s expecting to see.
“Sophie?” he says, giving her an inquiring glance.
“They came to apologize, Papie,” she tells him. “They want to talk to you too.”
He rises from the chair by the window where he was sitting. There’s no hint of his Santa-like twinkle now. His expression is stern. “Oui, mademoiselles?”
Megan takes the lead this time. “Monsieur de Roches,” she says. “I know you love Sophie very much, and I know that my friends and I were unkind to her and that hurt you greatly. We were wrong, and we’re sorry. I also know that what my mother did and said was, well, horrible.” She pronounces it the French way, too. “She shouldn’t have spied on you like that, no matter how afraid she was of losing Gigi. It was wrong. But I also know how much my grandmother loves you, and how happy she’s been ever since she met you. I would be so sad”—she pauses, casting about for the right translation, and Sophie whispers “complètement desolée”—“I would be complètement desolée,” Megan continues, “if something were to hurt her chances at happiness.”
“Like some boneheaded things a bunch of girls like us may have said, for instance,” I offer.
Monsieur de Roches looks over at Sophie, who translates rapidly. When she’s done, I detect a glimmer of a smile for the first time since we came into the room.
“I see,” he says. “And what does Gigi have to say about all this?”
“We don’t know!” Megan bursts out. “She’s locked herself in her room and won’t come out! All she’s done since you left is cry her eyes out!”
“Vraiment?” He frowns, then looks over at Sophie again and rattles something off in French. She nods, and he turns to us. “Well then, girls, what are we waiting for? L’amour triomphe de tout!”
“Love conquers everything,” Sophie repeats with a grin as we follow him downstairs to the waiting car.
By early evening Sophie and her grandfather have returned to the Wongs’, the rest of us are all home with our families again, the wedding is back on, and the Cooking with Clementine fiasco has been avoided.
My mother had to pull a lot of strings to make it happen. It was too late for a re-edit, so she made the executive decision to scuttle the whole episode.
“It’s my show,” I overhear her tell Mr. Goldberg. “And my call. Yes, I realize there are financial ramifications, and I’ll accept full responsibility for that. You can take it right out of my paycheck.” She’s quiet for a moment, then continues, “Yes, I understand that the network won’t be happy. But I’ll be even less happy if it does run, and you know what they say, ‘If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.’ Trust me, that’s never been more true than in this case.” She winks at me, and Stanley blows her a kiss.
In the end, she talks the network into replacing the episode with a rerun instead, and my stepfather makes sure she gets Mr. Goldberg to promise he’ll send over the master negative as well, just to make certain our prank never accidentally makes it on to the air.
After Chloe has been put to bed, my mother and Stanley call me into the living room.
“We just want you to know that yes, we’re angry with you, and yes, there will be consequences,” my mother says, “but we’re also very proud of you, sweetheart.”
“Facing up to your own faults isn’t easy,” adds Stanley. “Believe me, I know; I’ve got plenty of them. But it’s part of being a grown-up.”
I nod, waiting for the ax to fall. I’m grounded for life, right?
My mother surprises me, though. “In the end, despite the fact that what you and your friends did was incredibly thoughtless and stupid, we feel you’ve learned your lesson and that you deserve credit for your honesty and your desire to try and make things right.”
“Can you just please promise us one thing, Cass,” says Stanley.
“What?” I ask him.
“Enough with the pranks already, okay?”
I grin, relieved. “I don’t think that will be a problem. I’ve had enough to last a lifetime.” I give them both a hug. “Um, I know this probably isn’t the best time to ask, but do you guys mind if I go to the rink? Today’s been kind of intense.”
My mother looks at my stepfather, who shrugs and tosses me the keys to the minivan. “Go blow off some steam,” he tells me, and I do.
Mr. Kohler is just getting ready to close up when I pull into the parking lot.
“You know the drill,” he tells me. “Just make sure the lights are out and the doors are locked when you leave.”
I flip on a single spotlight, then plop down on a bench by the edge of the rink and reach into my bag. I’m startled to find that I grabbed the wrong one—instead of my hockey skates, I brought my figure skates instead. Feeling stupid, I put them on and lace them up. Apparently I have something—or someone—besides hockey on my mind tonight.
I decide I won’t bother with music. Sometimes I prefer to skate in silence. I can think better on the ice than anywhere else in the world. It’s my refuge, the one place I can go where the world falls away and I can be alone with my thoughts. And tonight I have just one: Tristan is back in Concord!
I circle the rink a few times to warm up, then put myself through my paces. I don’t bother with a hockey stick; tonight I just want to skate. I do speed drills and crossovers and even a few dance moves. Pausing to catch my breath twenty minutes later, I lean over and rest my hands on my knees, panting.
A noise in the stands brings my head up sharply.
“Who’s there?” I call out, figuring it’s probably Zach Norton. He has a key to the rink, too, since he’s equipment manager for the Lady Shawmuts. I really hope he doesn’t want to dredge up everything we talked about in the car again.
But it’s not Zach.
It’s Tristan.
He steps into the light and smiles at me. “Hullo,” he says.
I stand there, too stunned to reply.
“Your mother said I’d find you here. Mind if I join you?”
I nod.
“Yes you mind, or yes I may?”
I grin at him, still not trusting myself to speak. He sits down and laces up his skates, then steps out onto the ice and heads over toward me. We stand there looking at each other for a moment.
“I’m still taller than you,” he says. “Thank goodness.”
I have to laugh at that.
“May I have this dance?” he asks, holding out his hand.
We don’t need music; we make our own, humming the familiar waltz melody as we slip into the rhythm of the routine we performed together last year in England.
I love England, I think as we swoop and swirl across the ice. Especially a certain English garden, where a certain memorable kiss took place.
“I hear you had a busy afternoon,” he says.
Annabelle must have told him. Always trying to stir up trouble, especially when it concerns Tristan and me. Stinkerbelle isn’t here now though, is she?
One-two-three, one-two-three, step glide release, step glide step. The moves are still in my bones, imprinted by our long hours of practice.
“You know me, never a dull moment,” I reply lightly. “I had to make sure that the groom didn’t run off.”
He laughs.
One-two-three, one-two-three, step glide release, step glide step. We come to a stop and finish humming the final bars of the melody. As the last note fades away, Tristan doesn’t let go of me the way he usually does. Instead, he pulls me closer.
That memorable kiss in the garden?
This one is even better.
Emma
“Speak I must: I had been trodden on severely . . .”
&nbs
p; —Jane Eyre
“Emma! There’s a delivery here for you.” My mother’s voice floats upstairs. I’m curled up on my bed next to Pip, writing a letter to Bailey Jacobs. There’s loads to tell her, what with all the excitement around here lately.
“A delivery, huh?” I say to Pip. “Sounds intriguing.” His tail thumps in response and I scratch him behind the ears, then reluctantly set my pen and paper aside. “Guess I’d better go check it out—you never know, maybe Stewart sent me flowers.”
After the whole Sophie Fairfax meltdown at the prom and the brunch fiasco, things between me and Stewart have been strained, to say the least. I did manage to swallow my pride long enough to apologize for having jumped to conclusions about him and Sophie, and he was good enough not to rub my nose in a pile of “I told you so.” But he didn’t offer an apology in return, and there are still a few things I feel like I need to say to him.
Maybe tonight after graduation we’ll have another chance to talk. Our families are planning to sit together at the ceremony, since Stewart and Darcy are both graduating, and then we’re going to a party afterward at Chadwicks’.
Mostly I want to talk to Stewart about the future. Beyond telling me that he’s getting excited about going to Middlebury—he’s thinking of a double major in journalism and environmental studies, of all things, thanks to Mrs. Wong’s influence—Stewart and I haven’t really touched the subject of Us After High School. I’m not sure how I’m going to bring it up without sounding clingy or possessive; I still haven’t figured that out yet.
One more chance to get my Jane on, I think. I seem to be doing a lot of that lately.
But first I’d better check out this mysterious delivery.
It isn’t flowers.
“Rupert Loomis?” I exclaim, my jaw dropping when I see who’s standing in our front hall. “What are you doing here?”
He gives me a clumsy hug, starts to scratch himself, then stuffs his hand in his pocket instead and jingles his change vigorously. Out of the corner of my eye I can see my father watching in amusement. My father adores observing Rupert.