“And I really appreciate it.” I tilted my head more aggressively toward the doorway.
“Okay, okay. I’m gone.” He jumped up and swaggered out of the room, his to-do list lit up in neon over his head. Be there for little sister. Check.
Once Archie was out of my visual, I grabbed the guidebook and flicked on the library’s dusty side lamp. I tried to focus on the words, but Ian kept snagging my gaze. He hadn’t moved from his chair once, and he was still laser-focused on his phone, his hair flopping forward to shield his face.
Right after Christmas Ian decided to stop cutting his hair, and no matter how much my mom begged and threatened, he hadn’t let up. Now it was almost to his shoulders and a constant reminder of how unfair the gene pool was. My brothers all had my mom’s thick eyelashes and wavy dark hair. My grandmother’s fine blond hair had leapfrogged a generation, bypassing my dark-haired dad to land on me.
We all had the blue eyes, though, and even from here Ian’s were looking bluer than usual, accented by the heavy dark circle around his left eye, courtesy of me. The bruise looked really painful. And final. A punctuation mark on the end of a long, miserable sentence.
Suddenly, a smile split Ian’s face, and a mixture of emotions bunched up in my chest. Because here’s the thing about Ian’s smile: it was always 100 percent genuine. Ian didn’t fake anything for anyone—he never had. Get him laughing, you knew you were actually funny. Make him angry, you knew you were actually being an idiot.
I am such an idiot.
Panic bubbled in my chest, and I jumped to my feet, tucking the guidebook under my arm. I needed fresh air. Now.
As soon as my mom got swept into a conversation with the groom’s mother, I took off, hugging the side of the dance floor to burst through the doors and into the courtyard.
Outside, I paused to take a few glorious breaths. If I were writing a travel brochure for Ireland, I’d start with what it smells like. It’s a combination of just-fallen rain mixed with earth and something else, something secret. Like the extra sprinkle of nutmeg in the top secret French toast recipe my dad and I had spent Fourth of July weekend perfecting.
What if my dad finds out?
Before my mind could dig its fingernails into the thought, I started moving, walking down the stairs past a trickling fountain overflowing with rainwater. Strings of warm, twinkly lights crisscrossed over the courtyard’s path, the yellow bulbs making a cheery clinking noise in the spots where they overlapped. Puddles shimmered in the divots in the stone pavement, and the air ruffled in cool, sparkly perfection. How was it possible to feel so horrible in a place that was so beautiful?
I squeezed my fingernails into my palms, a dull ache blooming in my chest. Sometimes I didn’t know if I missed Cubby or if I missed the picture I’d put together in my head of the two of us. It was always the same. It would be mid-September, a week or two after everyone’s start-of-school jitters wore off. We’d be walking down the hall, him with his arm slung casually around me, lost in one of those conversations where the only thing that matters is the person you’re with. Whispers would follow us down the hall. That’s Addie Bennett. Aren’t they cute together? I know. I don’t know why I never noticed her before either.
Well, I’d gotten my wish. They’d be whispering all right. But not about what I wanted them to be.
Finally, I made it to an ivy-enclosed alcove on the far side of the garden—an outdoor version of my hiding place in the library—and I attempted to sit cross-legged, cold seeping up through my mom’s constrictive skirt. I pulled out my phone, and my heart bounced when I saw a new text message.
WHERE ARE YOU??????????????????
Lina.
Lina and eighteen question marks. I counted them twice to be sure. Aggressive punctuation was never a good sign with Lina. Normally, she texted like a nineteenth-century schoolteacher who’d gotten ahold of a smartphone: proper use of capital letters, restrained emoji use, and always a complete sentence. Multiple question marks was the equivalent of Lina standing up in the middle of a church service and yelling cusswords through a bullhorn. She wasn’t just angry; she was raging.
I hit respond, quickly typing out an exceptionally vague text. Sorry, can’t talk now. Wedding stuff
I was getting good at vague texting. And avoiding phone calls. The frowny face emoji looked up at me judgmentally.
“What?” I snapped. “For your information I have a great reason for not answering her calls.”
I wasn’t talking to Lina because I couldn’t talk to Lina. She knew me too well. The second she heard my voice, she’d know something was wrong, and I refused—refused—to tell her about Cubby over the phone. If Lina was going to judge me, I wanted to see it in person. There was also the issue of the sheer number of things I had to tell her. She didn’t know anything about Cubby, which meant I had to walk her through my entire summer.
I just had to make it to Italy. Once I got there I’d unpack the story and lay it all out, start to finish, nothing excluded. I knew exactly how it would go. First she’d be shocked, then confused. And then she’d be struck with a brilliant plan for getting me through my junior year while reassuring me that everything was going to be okay.
Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.
The first time Cubby ever spoke to me was four days after we moved to Seattle. I was making waffles. Bribe waffles, to be more specific, and I wasn’t having an easy time of it. Archie and Walter had been assigned to unpack the kitchen, and they’d somehow managed to turn it into one large booby trap. I’d taken a baking sheet to the head and dropped an entire carton of eggs when I tripped over a bread maker. But once my first waffle was on the iron, sending delicious spirals of steam into the air, I knew it would be worth it.
I took a deep, satisfied inhale. The waffles needed to be delicious. They were my ticket into the early-morning hangout Ian had expressly banned me from. No one yells Addiegetoutofhere to someone holding a plate of hot waffles. Not even when they’re trying to impress their new friends.
“You have batter in your hair.”
And there they were. The first words Cubby Jones ever said to me. Admittedly, not the most romantic introduction, but I was only twelve. I didn’t have a name for the way my attention funneled to Cubby every time he walked into a room. Not yet.
While I swiped at my bangs with a dish towel, Cubby stepped closer, sniffing the waffle air. The second he was within five feet of me, I pinpointed what was different about him. “Your eyes!” I crowed, abandoning my dish towel. Cubby’s eyes were two different colors.
His smile slipped off his face. “It’s called heterochromia. It’s just a genetic thing; it’s not weird.”
“I didn’t say it’s weird,” I said. “Let me look.” I grabbed his arm and yanked him in close. “Blue and gray?” I whispered.
“Purple,” Cubby corrected.
I nodded my head. “Yep. I like that one the best. If you were in a sci-fi movie, that eye would be the source of all your powers.”
Both of his eyes widened, and then he smiled, a slow, surprised drizzle that started at his mouth and went right up to his mismatched eyes. That was the moment I realized there were two different ways to look at boys. There was the regular way—the way I’d done my whole life—and then there was this way. A way that made kitchens tilt ever so slightly and waffles go forgotten in Mickey Mouse irons.
The sparkler send-off for the newlywed couple was a joke. Not only did my legally tipsy oldest brother attempt—and succeed at—catching one of the rosebushes on fire, but cameraman number two kept missing his shot of the bride and groom. This meant repeating the whole process over and over again until we ran out of sparklers and even the most camera-hungry wedding guests began to bray mutinously.
“Buses arrive tomorrow morning at six thirty sharp,” Aunt Mel yelled over her shoulder as Uncle Number Three carried her back into the hotel. The train of her dress dragged behind her, sweeping up bits of confetti and dried sparklers. The send-o
ff had been just for show. They were staying at Ross Manor tonight with everyone else.
“Finally free to go,” my mom said quietly, running a tired hand through her hair. Her mascara was smudged, and it made her eyes look blurry.
The rest of us followed behind her, slogging silently up the billiard-green staircase to our floor, then filed one by one into our closet of a room. Despite the fact that there were five of us, including two college football players who were roughly toddler-size versions of King Kong, Aunt Mel had assigned us what had to be the smallest room in the hotel.
Fuzzy floral wallpaper decorated the walls, and my brothers’ cots occupied most of the space, so all that was left over was a tiny corridor running along the base of the beds. And of course my brothers had filled that up with their never-ending supply of junk—candy wrappers, tangled-up phone cables, and more sneakers than should really exist in the world. I had a term for it: brother spaghetti.
I managed to claim the bathroom first and locked the door behind me, turning the tub on at full blast. I had no intention of actually taking a bath. I just needed to drown out the sound of everyone crashing around the room. Traveling with my family made my head hurt.
I yanked off the real estate dress, replacing it with an oversize T-shirt and a pair of black pajama shorts, then brushed my teeth as slowly as possible.
“Gotta pee, sis!” Walt shouted, banging on the door. “Gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee pee peeeeee.”
I yanked the door open to make it stop. “Cute song. You should trademark that.”
He shoved past me. “Thought you’d like it.”
I picked my way through the room, avoiding half a dozen sneaker land mines before climbing onto the bed and cocooning deep into my blankets. I couldn’t wait to sleep. Forget. It had been my main coping skill over the past ten days—ever since Ian had burst into my room to tell me how badly I’d screwed up his life. His life. Like he was the one who would have to spend the whole upcoming year avoiding Cubby and everyone who knew Cubby. My stomach twisted as tightly as the sheets.
“So what’s the strategy exactly? Wear my T-shirt until I forget it’s mine?” Ian’s voice pierced through my blankets, and I slowly uncovered my head. Was he talking to me?
My mom was stuffing her suitcase like it was a Thanks-giving turkey, and Archie lay with his face planted on his cot, still wearing his suit. Ian propped himself up on a mountain of pillows, one earbud in, his face pointed in my general direction.
“You gave it to me,” I said, aiming my voice for what a sitcom writer would mark as RETORT, SASSY. It was an exceptionally comfortable T-shirt with a black collar and sleeves and SMELLS LIKE THE ONLY NIRVANA SONG YOU KNOW written across the chest in block letters.
“By ‘gave it to you,’ do you mean you raided my T-shirt drawer and stole the softest one?”
Nailed it. “You can have it back,” I said. Ian is talking to me. Talking. To me. A flicker of hope sprang into my chest.
“Do you even get the reference?” he asked, punching his top pillow into shape. His hair was in a horrible attempt at a man bun, with bumpy sides and a large chunk hanging out the back. He clearly hadn’t watched the How to Man-Bun Like a Boss tutorial I’d forwarded him.
“Ian, I sat with you on Fleet Street and listened to the entire Nevermind album. How would I not know what it means?” That had been during Ian’s Nirvana period. We’d gone on three different Nirvana-themed field trips, including a trip to Kurt Cobain’s red-vinyl childhood home. I’d even agreed to dress up as Courtney Love for Halloween even though it required wearing a tiara and no one knew who I was.
“At least you know what it means.” Ian flopped grudgingly onto his side. He hesitated, then nudged at his phone, his voice slightly above a whisper. “When are you going to tell Mom?”
I groaned into my sheets. He was bringing it up again. Now? When Mom, Archie, and Walt were all within earshot. Not to mention that’s what the black eye had been about. One of Ian’s teammates had texted him asking about Cubby. And instead of waiting until after the wedding ceremony, when we would be alone, he’d shoved the phone in my face and whisper-demanded that I tell Mom. Our parents finding out was the worst thing that could happen. Why didn’t he get that?
“Ian!” I hissed.
He cut his eyes at Mom, then shot me a warning look. I growled in my throat and then slid down under the covers, forcing my breathing to calm. The odds of me not exploding on Ian were only as good as the odds of him not bringing up Cubby every chance he got. That is to say, not good.
Time to put a hard stop to this conversation. “Good night, Ian.” I slid even farther under the covers, but I could still feel Ian’s glare on my back, sharp as needles. A few minutes later I heard him rustle under the covers, the music from his earbuds filling the air between us.
How were we going to survive a full week together?
The next morning, I awoke to what sounded like the brass section from our school’s famously exceptional marching band rumbling with our famously unexceptional drama team. I opened my eyes a slit. My mom was untangling her leg from the alarm clock and lamp cords. “Damn hell spit,” she muttered. Or at least that’s what it sounded like she muttered. Walter was right. She needed a swearing intervention.
I opened my eyes a half millimeter more. Weak sunlight puddled under the curtains, and Archie and Walter and their extreme bedhead stood next to the door looking all kinds of ambiguous about the state of their consciousness.
“You both have your passports, right?” my mom asked them, finally freeing herself. They stared at her with blank, sleep-coated expressions, and she sighed before swooping in on me in a cloud of moisturizer. “Your cab will be here at nine. The gnomes will knock on the door to wake you up.” She pressed her cheek onto my forehead like she used to do when I was little and had a fever. “Promise me you’ll work things out with Ian. You two are the best friends you’ll ever have.”
Way to twist the dagger. “Love you, Mom,” I said, scrunching my eyes shut.
She crouched down next to Ian and mumbled something to him, and then the three of them cleared out of the room, banging loudly into the hallway.
It felt like only minutes later when a slamming noise sprang me out of sleep. I sat up quickly, disoriented, but not too disoriented to notice that the entire vibe of the hotel room had changed. Not only did it feel twice as big without Archie, Walter, and my mom, but the curtains were straining against full, brilliant sunlight. The room was silent, highlighting a distinct ruffling sensation hovering in the air. Had someone just been here?
“Ian,” I whispered. “Are you awake?”
He didn’t budge, which was typical. Ian could sleep through almost anything.
I rolled onto my back and lay still, straining my ears. The hotel’s silence was as thick as black pudding. Suddenly, the door to our room pulled quietly shut, followed by an explosion of footsteps down the hall. Someone had been in our room. A thief? A European kidnapper? One of the gnomes?
“Ian,” I said, tumbling out of my bed. “Someone was just here. Someone was in our room.” I reached out to shake his shoulder, but in a highly disorienting moment, my hand sank straight through him.
I yanked off the covers to find a pile of pillows. Had he pillow ghosted me? I spun around, checking the rest of the cots. Empty, empty, and empty. “Ian!” I yelled into the silence.
My eyes darted to the door, and what I saw elicited my first real bit of uneasiness. Instead of the two navy-blue suitcases that were supposed to be standing by the door, there was only one. Mine.
I hustled over to the alarm clock, but it stared up at me blankly. Of course. My mom had ripped it out of the wall. I needed to find my phone.
Not under the sheets, not under the complimentary stationery, not in the scattered brochures. Finally, I ran to the windows and flung open the curtains, only to get kicked in the retinas. The countryside was on fire—green and sunlight combining to create an intense glare. Apparently, Ireland did ha
ve sunshine, and it was blinding.
I stumbled my way to the door and burst out of the room, my bare feet making staccato echoes down the hall.
Downstairs I did a fly-by inspection of the breakfast room and lounge, but the only form of life was an obese orange cat who’d taken up residence on a velvet armchair. I sprinted out the front door and into the parking lot, and a wave of cold air hit me head-on. Irish sunshine must be for looks only.
The only vehicle in the parking lot was a lonely utility van parked next to a line of rosebushes waving frantic messages at me in the wind. Where’s Ian? Did you miss your cab?
I needed to pull it together. Even if I had overslept, it’s not like Ian would have left for Italy without me. Maybe he was just out for an early-morning walk. With his suitcase?
The distant sound of an engine starting pulled me out of my trance. I took off after it, the shuddering noise getting louder as I headed toward the side parking lot. When I rounded the corner, I skidded to a stop, giving myself a few seconds to process what I was seeing.
The tortured-sounding vehicle was technically a car, but it just barely qualified. It was tiny and boxy—like when a Volkswagen and a hamster love each other very much—with a splotchy paint job and a muffler dangling an inch or two off the ground. And striding purposefully toward it, navy-blue economy suitcase in hand, backpack slung over one shoulder, was Ian.
Adrenaline hit me full force. My legs got the message before I did, and suddenly I was charging across the parking lot, my brother in my line of target.
He saw me just before he reached the passenger door, but by then it was too late. I collided with him like I was the Hulk going in for a high five, which was to say, hard. His backpack went flying, and we both hit the ground, tumbling for the second time in twenty-four hours. It hurt in a white-hot, head-pounding kind of way.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, scrambling to his feet.
“What am I doing? What are you doing?” I yelled back, jumping up to shake off the fall.
Love & Luck Page 4