He laughed. “How can you make arguments that contradict each other in the same breath?”
“It takes skill. Wait here!” Before he could say no, I ran away from the front door and shoved my feet into flip-flops.
“This is such a good idea,” I said when I rejoined George at the door. I grabbed his elbow and pulled him down the steps toward his Prius, which was parked in the half circle of gravel in front of our house. “Heather needs me. She was freaking out last time I talked to her. She’s probably chewed off all of her fingernails by now. Plus her fingertips.”
He held the passenger door open for me. “She’d be less nervous if you stopped talking about how you both have to get into Elton College.”
I slid inside and waited until he was settled in the driver’s seat to respond. “She’s always nervous—she panics when she takes a Cosmo quiz. And I have faith that we’ll both get in. So don’t sound all doubty when you see her, okay? That won’t help.”
He raised his eyebrows as he backed up. “Just to be clear, if doubty shows up as a vocabulary choice tomorrow, don’t pick it. And speaking of vocabulary, where are those notes of yours?”
“I forgot them. It’s too dark anyway.”
“All right then.” He drove onto the street. “Define effervescent.”
“Bubbly and delightful, like me.” It was too dark for me actually to see him rolling his eyes, but I knew he was.
He continued to test my vocabulary the entire way. Couldn’t stump me though.
I texted Heather when we were close to her house, and she was waiting out front when we pulled up at the curb. “Please come inside,” she begged us as soon as we got out. “Just for a few minutes. My mother’s been quizzing me, and I keep getting everything wrong, and we’re both freaking out.”
“You’re going to do fine,” George said. “You’ve got this.”
I texted the word hypocrite to his cell phone. He glanced down when it buzzed, shot me an annoyed look, then stuck it in his pocket. “Here,” he said to Heather, handing her the bag he’d taken out of the car with him. “I made you both care packages.”
“That’s so sweet!” Heather said.
“I forgot to open mine,” I said as we walked up the path to her house.
“You can look at it when you get home,” George said. “It’s not that exciting.”
“What’s that?” her mother asked as soon as she spotted the bag in Heather’s hand. She’d been standing inside the front doorway, watching us walk up, and greeted me now with a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hello, Ellie. Who’s your friend?”
I explained who George was.
“And you’re here . . . why exactly?” she asked with a smile that showed her teeth and made me feel sorry for George.
“I made the girls care packages,” he explained. “For good luck.”
“How nice,” she said icily. For some reason, she always seemed to think that every man she met was on the prowl for teenage girls. Especially blond, pretty ones like her precious baby daughter. “Heather, say thank you.”
If my mother ever tried to prompt me to say thank you . . . We were high school seniors, for God’s sake.
But Heather obediently repeated, “Thank you,” as she unrolled the top of the bag and peeked inside. “Oh, fun!” she exclaimed.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
Heather started pulling stuff out of the bag: a couple of brand-new number two pencils—
“With good erasers,” George said. “I tested them myself.”
“You need to get a life,” I said.
—and several different kinds of protein bars—
“For your snack break,” he told Heather.
—and a bunch of other snacks (candy and crackers) and a little stuffed rabbit—
“For good luck,” he said.
“Isn’t that supposed to be a rabbit’s foot?” Heather asked.
“With a whole rabbit, you get two feet,” George said. “That has to be even luckier, right?”
“Especially for the rabbit,” I said. “What else do you have in there?”
“An eye mask,” she said, pulling out a soft black cloth one.
“Won’t that make it hard to read the questions?” I asked George.
Heather giggled, and he said, “Very funny. It’s to help her sleep tonight.”
Mrs. Smith said, “I keep telling Heather that she absolutely has to get a good night’s sleep or she’ll regret it for the rest of her life. Speaking of which, I’m sure your mother wants you home early, Ellie. She does know you’re out with this young man, right?”
“He’s my tutor,” I reminded her. “This is basically an extended study session.”
But we took the hint and said our good-byes. A forlorn-looking Heather watched us from the doorway, her mother’s bony arm draped protectively across her shoulders.
“Heather’s mother is . . . interesting,” George said once we were safely back in his car.
“Yeah, you could say that. Here’s all you need to know about her: Once Heather and I went for a long bike ride. By the time we got back, Heather’s mom had already alerted the neighborhood security. She thought we must have been kidnapped because we were fifteen minutes late and Heather hadn’t answered her texts.”
“Oof,” he said.
“Right?”
“So what one story describes your mother?”
I thought for a second, staring out through the windshield at the headlights coming toward us. “From before or after?”
“Before or after what?”
“Marrying Luke.” I circled my hands through the air. “Things changed so much for us once she met him. I mean, here’s the story I would have told you about my mom back before: There was this kid who was being a jerk to me at school. She told the other kids I smelled bad and that I wore the same shirt over and over again without washing it. That kind of thing. Anyway, I told Mom, and she said to me that we should do some role-playing—she’d be me and I’d be the girl—and she’d help me figure out how to respond. So I would say the meanest thing I could think of to her and she would do something every time that would make me crack up—either say something funny, or speak in a crazy accent, or sniff her armpits—something weird and unexpected. Just fooling around like that with her totally changed the situation for me. It made the girl’s insults kind of silly and meaningless. When she’d say something mean, I’d think, ‘Oh, I’ll have to tell Mom this one and see what she says’ and somehow it didn’t matter anymore.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Best part? That same girl tracked me down after Luke got famous and tried to act like we’d always been friends. It was fun setting her straight.”
“I bet. So how would you say your mom’s changed since then?”
“Well, for one thing, she’s busy all the time—we’re never alone together. They have so many important events and trips, and then there’s Jacob, of course—that’s the biggest change of all. And I love Jacob. I love Luke. I love our lives. I love that we don’t have to worry about money anymore—worrying about money sucked. But . . .” I stopped.
He waited, not saying anything, just driving. And listening.
I said, “She was really present back then, you know? I mean, she worked long hours, but when we were together, it was the two of us and the world didn’t matter.”
“Yeah. It feels like whenever you gain something, you lose something at the same time.”
“That sounds like one of your SAT essay prompts.”
He laughed. “It does! I even have a literary quote for it. One I didn’t make up.”
“Let’s hear it.”
He recited it slowly, pausing a few times like he had to work to remember it all. “‘Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man behind a counter who says, “All right, you can have a telephone; but you’ll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at a price; you lose the ri
ght to retreat behind a powder-puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!”’”
“Wow,” I said. “What’s that from? And how do you remember all that?”
“It’s from a play,” he said. “Inherit the Wind. And I had to memorize it for my high school drama class.”
“That’s cheating.”
“No, it isn’t. Making up quotes is cheating. Memorizing them for a class isn’t.”
“‘The clouds will smell of gasoline,’” I repeated. “I love that.”
He dropped me back home with another reminder that I should go to bed early and a recommendation that I have a small amount of caffeine right before the test. “Studies show it really does improve your acuity.”
“Oooh, good SAT word,” I said. “Too bad I don’t know what it means.”
“You don’t?”
“Just joking.” I opened my door.
“Good luck,” he said as I climbed out of the car. “Let me know how it goes.”
I promised I would.
I followed his instructions and went to bed early, but my mother woke me up when she got home by coming into my room. “What’s going on?” I asked, raising my head from the pillow, groggily alarmed by the intrusion.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry! Just wanted to make sure you were sleeping.”
And then of course I couldn’t fall back to sleep for an eternity.
fifteen
I forgot about George’s care package until I was desperately searching for a pencil the next morning and remembered that he had packed some for Heather. I poked through the contents, which were identical to Heather’s bag, except apparently I didn’t rate a cute stuffed rabbit. I felt a little hurt. If anyone should have gotten an extra gift, it should have been me: I was his actual tutee. Heather was just my guest.
Once I’d taken the test and come back home, I texted him to complain.
No bunny in my bag. Why do you hate me?
Just thought Heather would appreciate the extra luck. How’d it go?
It went.
And that was all I said to anyone who asked me that question. I had gotten through it, it was done, and I didn’t want to think about it anymore until I had to.
Heather’s texts to me were less Zen.
I failed
You did not
I didn’t know what half the words meant and math was brutal
You always think you do badly on tests
Because I always do badly on tests
No you don’t
Yes I do
This is a stupid argument
Can I come over? My parents are making me crazy. They keep bugging me to try to remember the questions and what I answered and it’s not fun
Sorry Mom and L are taking me out to celebrate being done
OK
I felt a little bad not inviting her to come with us, but it was rare for both Mom and Luke to have a dinner free and I wanted to have them all to myself.
Except, of course, I wasn’t going to have them to myself: Mom had forgotten to ask Lorena ahead of time if she could babysit and she couldn’t, so we had to take Jacob with us.
“You sure he’ll be able to sit nicely through a fancy dinner?” I asked as I buckled him into his car seat.
“I’m bringing the iPad,” Mom said.
“He’ll be fine,” Luke said cheerfully.
Dinner was a disaster. The food took a long time to come, and the iPad had to be taken away from Jacob, because he kept turning the volume up on it. He screamed when Mom put it in her purse. Luke carried him out of the restaurant, but came back pretty quickly.
“Spotted,” he said, sitting down with Jacob on his lap. “People were coming at me with cameras.”
“At least Jacob’s not screaming anymore,” I said.
People had gathered on the sidewalk to peer in at Luke through the restaurant window, and the waiters were a little too attentive—every time we took a sip of water our glasses would instantly be refilled, and seven different people stopped by to ask us if we were enjoying our meal, including the chef. Diners at the tables near us kept glancing over, trying to catch Luke’s eyes. One guy actually came over to our table and said it was his fiancée’s birthday and could Luke just please come to the table to say hi to her, because she adored him and it would mean a lot to her. Luke did, as quickly as he could, and I guess it was kind of sweet to see how excited and flustered the girl got when he shook her hand and wished her a happy birthday, but I just wanted my family to be able to celebrate me in peace.
Luke asked the hostess to give the valets our car ticket and once our car was in front, we darted outside and piled quickly into it while flashes went off all around us and people called out to Luke, who waved and said a good-natured “Hey, guys” before jumping in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb.
And that’s when Mom told me that she had decided to accompany Luke to London, where they were shooting the show for three weeks in November.
I didn’t mind that she and Luke were going, and I didn’t mind that she planned to take Jacob: I’d miss seeing his little face, but I’d survive. (And given his behavior at dinner, I was in a particularly good place to accept the thought of his future absence calmly.)
No, the part that made me groan out loud was that she had arranged for Grandma to stay with me while they were gone.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “She’s crazy.”
Mom turned so she could look at me over her shoulder. “Don’t talk about your grandmother that way,” she said primly.
“You talk about her that way all the time!”
Luke laughed, and Mom turned her glare on him.
“Don’t pretend she doesn’t drive you nuts just because you want to inflict her on me,” I added.
“She’s a very good grandmother. And a very good mother, in her way—”
“Her crazy way.”
“She comes through when we need her, which is the best thing you can say about family.”
“Okay, fine, but I don’t need her this time. I don’t need anyone to stay with me. I’m almost eighteen.”
“Bad things happen when teenagers are left alone.”
“Not with me!” I said. “When have I ever done anything wrong? I’m the best-behaved teen in the entire world.”
“You can be a little mouthy,” Mom pointed out.
“Everyone needs a hobby. Seriously. You know I wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Luke said, his eyes briefly meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “It’s the crazies who stalk me. It’s not that hard to find out where I live and I don’t like to think of you all alone at night.”
“We have the best security system in the world,” I said. “And what could Grandma do if someone attacked us? Lecture them to death about the dangers of gluten?”
“We’ll just both feel better knowing she’s there with you,” he said.
I gave up. If they were in agreement, I wouldn’t win this one.
My birthday was a couple of weeks later. I turned down my mother’s offer to throw me a party in favor of a visit to a day spa in Malibu with Heather. We asked for a “couples massage” so we could be in the same room, and we giggled a lot whenever we glanced over at each other.
On our drive home, we stopped to get coffee at a Starbucks right off the Pacific Coast Highway. I glanced around the room as we got in line. “Oh my God! There’s Aaron!”
“I want to meet him!” Heather said, squinting in the direction I was pointing. “Is that him in the red shirt? Who’s he with?”
“His stepmother. Hold on—don’t lose our place in line. I’ll bring him over.”
Aaron and Crystal were sitting at a small table near a window. I called out to them and Aaron jumped to his feet and came running to meet me. He threw his arms around me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are y
ou following me?”
“Of course I am.”
“Next time, show up sooner.” He lowered his voice. “The she-wolf dragged me out on the pretense of needing caffeine. Turned out what she really wanted was to ream me out for being too messy to live with.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not unmessy. But it’s not like she cleans—we have people who do that for her. She just likes to yell at me.”
I squeezed his arm consolingly. “I want you to meet my friend,” I said, but Crystal beckoned to me so I went to greet her first. We exchanged an air kiss and I asked after Mia. She said, “She’s fine,” then abruptly stood up. “It’s getting late, Aaron. I have yoga in an hour. We have to leave now.” She headed toward the door. Aaron rolled his eyes at me behind her back and followed her to the exit.
I rejoined Heather in the line.
“Why didn’t you bring him over?” she asked plaintively.
“I was going to, but his stepmother said they had to leave. I promise you’ll meet him soon.”
“He looked really cute.”
“He’s even better up close.”
That week, the speech therapist told Mom that Jacob’s language delay and some of his behaviors “could potentially be consistent with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder.” Mom had taken notes at the appointment, and she carefully read that last bit out loud for me and Luke that night, so she could get the wording right.
Luke said, “‘Consistent with’? What does that even mean?”
“It means he’s autistic,” Mom said.
“She didn’t say that!” He sounded annoyed so I quickly jumped in.
“I think it means he could be autistic. But not that he definitely is.”
“Right,” Luke said. “This woman who sees him for less than two hours a week said there’s a possibility that he has a disorder that would just happen to significantly increase the number of hours we pay her each week—”
“She’s not like that,” Mom said. “And she admitted she’s not a diagnostician.”