The Undoing of Thistle Tate

by Katelyn Detweiler

  Margaret Ferguson Books

  Copyright © 2019 by Katelyn Detweiler

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Printed and Bound in May 2019 at Maple Press, York, PA, USA.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Detweiler, Katelyn, author.

  Title: The undoing of Thistle Tate / Katelyn Detweiler.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2019] | “Margaret Ferguson Books.” Summary: Seventeen-year-old Thistle Tate, a bestselling author with glowing reviews, diehard fans across the globe, and more, struggles with secrets that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect world.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018036658 | ISBN 9780823442393 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Authorship—Fiction. | Fathers and daughters—Fiction.

  Single-parent families—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Fame—Fiction.

  Dating (Social customs)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D48 Und 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036658

  Ebook ISBN 9780823443178

  v5.4

  a

  To Carebear and Denny, the reason I can and do write.

  To Danny, the inspiration behind this love story and all love stories to come.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Acknowledgments

  one

  Fifteen-year-old Marigold Maybee remembered everything and nothing about the moment she almost died.

  It could have been five seconds; it could have been five hours.

  Metal crashing and glass smashing, screams and sobs and sirens, so many sirens. Violet, her mom, was next to her on the road, under the blue January sky. Marigold could feel her own hand wrapped around her mom’s cold, stiff fingers.

  “Be brave, Marigold,” her mom said then. Marigold wasn’t sure how she knew exactly, but she was certain she hadn’t heard the words with her ears—she’d heard them inside herself.

  “I’ll try, Mom,” she whispered. “I want to be brave.”

  Marigold took a deep breath, squeezing her mom’s fingers tighter.

  And then she opened her eyes.

  —EXCERPT FROM LEMONADE SKIES, BOOK 1: GIRL IN THE AFTERWORLD

  I have lots of dreams, but I’ve only ever had one nightmare and it’s always exactly the same.

  I haven’t had the nightmare in a while—a good thing, I’d thought, a wonderful thing. But I was wrong. Because it came back with a vengeance tonight, making up for lost time.

  If it were up to me, I’d choose a common, run-of-the-mill nightmare every single night instead—spiders crawling all over my skin or a zombie attack or stumbling off a cliff. Anything else would be a treat in comparison.

  But it’s not up to me.

  And so here I am again: heart pumping ten beats too fast, tears running down my cheeks—the nightmare still gripping me like it never wants to let go.

  I sit up, turn on the lamp next to my bed, and take deep breaths.

  I’m not surprised I had this dream, not tonight. Liam was here earlier, lying next to me on the bed watching National Lampoon’s Vacation, our legs and arms so close but still never touching. His pick, because he loved the Christmas Vacation one and figured this would be just as funny. But there’s a scene, less than sixty seconds long, where the Griswold family is in the car, fighting about getting lost in the middle of nowhere—when boom, just like that, they’re off the road, crashing through signs, nearly flipping over. It’s a comedy, so everyone is fine, of course, besides the car. But just seeing it, hearing it…

  The nightmare is fading now, but there are still tears in my eyes.

  That’s how it goes: I’m sobbing and then—a crash. Shattering glass. I’m in a car, I suddenly realize, a car that is colliding hard and fast with something else. After a few seconds of dizzying explosions of noise, everything stops. It’s quiet and too bright and I am alone.

  And then I wake up, crying, as if I’ve just somehow managed to crawl out of the car alive, as if it all really happened, exactly like this.

  Dad says I wasn’t even there when my mom died in the accident fourteen years ago. But that’s all he’ll say. I asked about it a lot, back when I was younger.

  I look at the clock now—a little after two in the morning.

  I won’t be falling asleep again.

  I pick up a book from my nightstand. The words blur and I put it back down.

  I stand up, moving over to the window, my hand reaching for the bucket of yellow Ping-Pong balls I’ve had on the sill for as long as I can remember.

  Liam. My best and only friend. I want him to come back. He sleeps here some nights, but only when we accidentally fall asleep in the middle of a particularly long Netflix binge.

  I pull the curtain aside and push up the window. I toss one, two Ping-Pong balls at Liam’s closed window and wait. We live in Philadelphia where the houses are crowded close together, so there’s only a few yards of space between us, a narrow area of ground that leaves just enough room for a thin brick wall that separates our properties.

  I could call, of course, or text. But this has been our preferred system of communication since Liam moved here the summer we were both four. A few more seconds and there he is—his black hair sticking up in bird wings all over his head, eyes squinting at me in sleepy confusion. I give a shrug.

  He knocks his fingers twice against his window, code for coming now.

  I get back into bed and pull the covers up to my chin.

  Liam has a key so he can walk our old hound dog, Lucy, when my dad and I are away, and I soon hear the soft click of the front door opening and closing.

  He comes upstairs and opens my bedroom door. I reach my arms out and, without any words, we’re hugging. It’s maybe the best hug of my life.

  Then again, every hug with Liam feels like the best.

  He eventually pulls away, settling himself next to me on the bed.

  “Missed me already?” he asks, his deep brown eyes peering at me.

  “I had the nightmare again,” I say. “It felt so real, Li. I mean, it always feels real. But this time it’s like…every part of my body remembers my mom’s accident. And it wants to make sure my brain remembers, too, even if I wasn’t actually there. Maybe there’s more to it, there’s something I’m supposed to understand from the dream…”

  “It’s just a dream, Thistle.” Liam leans into me, wrapping an arm tight around my shoulder. I scoot over the last few inches between us and let my head fall onto his chest. It’s warm and familiar and it’s mine—but it’s not
. Not mine. Not really. “I think you’re reading too much into it. Every time you dream it, it feels like the worst time, but that’s just in the moment. It’ll fade. By tomorrow morning you’ll barely remember it.”

  I nod, even though I know that’s not true. I always remember.

  He’s wearing a Phillies pajama set, which is adorably dorky, but it looks good on him, his dark olive skin seeming even more radiant against the clean white of the red-striped shirt and shorts.

  Stop, Thistle.

  Now is not the time to reflect on his attractiveness. Not when he’s this close to you on your bed. Not when you woke him because your terrible nightmare was maybe the worst of your life.

  “I grabbed something for you on my way out,” he says, shifting to reach into his pocket. “My mom bought more of those chocolate-covered caramel pretzels from Reading Terminal Market that you love. I swiped one for you.” He hands me a balled-up napkin and I slowly unwrap it, let the pretzel fall into my hands, sniff it, and poke at it with my tongue.

  “Just eat the damn thing, weirdo.”

  “This is a sacred moment. It can’t be rushed.”

  “Mhmm.” He pulls away and stands up, walking to my bookshelf. I pop the pretzel in my mouth as I watch him, and my night is suddenly feeling impossibly better.

  “Let’s not watch anything else that might have crash scenes in it, okay?” he says. “And besides, I’m more in the mood right now for good old Sorcerer’s Stone. ‘Harry—yer a wizard.’ God, I love that moment. Hagrid is the freaking best.”

  I smile. The dream is still there, but it’s fading. This, Liam and me, is what’s real.

  “I was inspired by your pajamas,” he says, grinning at me as he pulls the book from the shelf. “They are seriously enchanting.”

  It’s only now that I realize I’m wearing ratty red pajamas with various Quidditch-related items scattered across my body: Snitches and Bludgers and Beater’s bats, Hedwig, and Harry’s spectacles, too, for good measure. It’s too late to do anything but laugh, and besides—it’s Liam. He comes back to the bed then, and props the book up against his knees.

  “Chapter one, ‘The Boy Who Lived,’ ” he says, clearing his throat loudly—too loudly, maybe, given my dad is just a wall away from us. Though Dad never seems worried about how late Liam and I stay up together—he knows we’re just friends.

  I know we’re just friends, too. That we’ll always be just friends.

  I snuggle in closer.

  He starts reading about the Dursleys and life on Privet Drive, and I don’t know how far along he gets before my eyes close, but they do.

  I fall asleep again after all, because Liam is here.

  * * *

  He’s gone when I wake up.

  Hopefully I wasn’t a creep while I slept—accidentally kissing him, accidentally whispering I love you. We do love each other. But not like that. Or at least he doesn’t.

  I’d learned that the hard way when we were twelve: we’d decided to practice kiss, just once. I don’t remember whose idea it was now, but I do remember how scared I felt, how worried I was that he’d notice my sweaty, clammy, disgusting hands. It lasted for five seconds, tops. Just a peck.

  “Too weird,” he’d said, jumping back as if I’d held a match to his skin. “Way too weird. I mean, you’re like my sister. I can’t kiss you. It’s wrong.”

  The words had stung, but I’d made myself laugh and agree. And now I’ve spent the last five years trying—and failing—to convince myself that it will never happen again. That it’s silly to keep thinking about it.

  I put on some old overalls and a green T-shirt and head downstairs for breakfast. Lucy is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, tail thumping against the wooden floorboards. She’s getting old—she was my Christmas gift the year my mom passed away—and her back legs are too stiff to climb the steps. She sleeps downstairs in the office now, instead of on my bed. I rub her ears for a moment before we both head into the kitchen.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Dad says, not bothering to look up from the stack of printed pages spread across our kitchen table. He has a highlighter in one hand, coffee in the other, and a red pen tucked behind his ear. “I had oatmeal and almond milk delivered yesterday, if you want that. Some fruit, too.” He’s back to work then, likely already forgetting I’m right here.

  I nod, not that he can see me, and pour some Chocolate O’s—a weekend-only treat—into a bowl and carry it over to the table. I swirl my spoon around and watch the milk turn grayish brown.

  “Dad,” I say quickly, before I can stop myself, “I had that nightmare again last night. About the accident.”

  He puts his mug down, but he doesn’t look up. I’m staring at the shiny pink peak of his bald spot.

  “I’m sorry to hear that—I was hoping you might have outgrown it.” He sighs. “But it’s just a dream. You know that, Thistle.”

  “Maybe if I knew more about Mom, I wouldn’t keep having it.”

  It’s an old, familiar, worn-in conversation. We both have our part to play. Me: Tell me more about the human who is half of my DNA. Dad: Not right now. Maybe later.

  I want to know more about my mom so maybe I can actually miss her. Miss her, Rose Lockwood Tate, specifically—not just the idea of having a mom. Dad hates to talk about her—not just the accident and her death, but her life, too. I know he’s still sad, fourteen years later, even if he’s smiling. Even if he pretends our life as a duo is good. But still. I’m her daughter. If we don’t talk about her, then she’ll be completely gone. So I keep asking, keep trying. I need to.

  “You know the important stuff,” he says.

  “Which amounts to almost nothing.”

  He finally looks up, staring at me with his light brown eyes. My eyes are blue. Like Mom’s. I know from photographs that I look exactly like her. “That’s not true,” he says. “We just really need to focus on the big tour starting Tuesday, and the deadline, and…”

  I tune him out then, as he probably anticipated I would. That was his goal. Eventually he stops talking, and I finish my soggy cereal, and it’s like our chat never happened.

  “I’ll be out in the garden,” I say, dropping my bowl in the sink.

  “I’m sorry, Thistle. I’m distracted.”

  “That’s okay.” He’s not a bad dad. He’s really not.

  I head outside to our tiny backyard with my even tinier garden. My mom grew up in this house, spent her whole life here except for college and then a few years in an apartment when she first moved in with Dad. This was her garden. It died along with Mom, until I was old enough to take over. Now it’s my favorite thinking spot, out here with the beautiful flowers in an array of colors—all except for yellow or orange or gold, not anymore. It’s my own miniature world that I’ve created. A perfect balance of order and chaos.

  It’s a gorgeous day in mid-October, the kind of balmy weather that almost makes you believe summer isn’t actually over and winter may never come. I zone out weeding, the sun warm on my back.

  “There you are,” someone says from Liam’s yard, startling me from my trance.

  It’s his mom, Mrs. Caruso. I can’t see her, but I know she must be on their back patio for her morning coffee. She insists on going out there even in the winter, bundling up to savor her brew under the sun and the sky. She grew up outside the city, in a small rural town somewhere, and she takes any snippet of nature she can find here.

  “Your father told me he ran into you early this morning—that you were slipping in the front door just as he was coming down to start the coffee. You slept at the Tates’, I take it?”

  “Yeah,” Liam mumbles. I crawl over closer to the brick wall, holding my breath to be as quiet as possible. “Thistle…she was upset about something, so I went over to cheer her up. I was reading to her and we accidentally fell asleep.”

  “It seems to
me this has been happening a lot lately. You go over to hang out, and suddenly it’s six in the morning and you’re tiptoeing back up the stairs here. Sleepovers were one thing when you were kids, but now?” I can hear the accusation in her voice, picture her raised eyebrow without needing to see it for myself.

  “It’s not like that. It’s no big deal.”

  “Hm. It’s not like that?”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  Even though I know this, it still makes me feel warm and fuzzy to hear the label out loud. Unlike me, Liam has other friends, people from his prep school. And I’m the best.

  “Good lord, Liam. Please. You live and breathe for that girl. Don’t act like I’m stupid.”

  I gasp. You live and breathe for that girl.

  “No more sleepovers, and no more sneaking out after eleven.”

  I wait for Liam to deny it. She’s like a sister, Mom! Don’t be gross. Nothing will ever happen between us. Ever.

  But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything.

  He just stomps across the patio. The kitchen door opens and then slams shut.

  He didn’t deny it.

  For the first time since that kiss five years ago, I feel it, and it’s magical—better than flowers, better than Harry Potter and chocolate-caramel pretzels:

  Hope.

  * * *

  I float inside to wash up.

  He didn’t deny it. Liam. Didn’t. Deny. It.

  But then my dad calls out to me from the office—“Sweetie, could you come in here for a minute?”—and I deflate. Instantly.

  We have a rule in the Tate house: I never have to work on weekends. Not even when there are deadlines. And no work means not setting foot into the office, unless it’s to check on Lucy.

  It’s like, for forty-eight precious hours a week, my nemesis Marigold Maybee doesn’t exist.

  “Thistle? It’ll just take a sec. Good news! Very good news.”

  “Yeah?” I’m leaning on the door frame, my feet still squarely on the hallway side.