“No,” Halli said. “We’re better than this.”
As always, she had her standards.
She poured out the dregs of the old pot, then brewed up some new. While they waited, she told my mom what was on her mind.
“This isn’t going to work anymore,” Halli said.
My mom seemed genuinely confused. “What isn’t going to work?” Maybe she thought they were still talking about the coffee.
“Me working here,” Halli said.
My mother just looked at her.
“It’s time,” Halli said. “I’ll be leaving soon, so you’ll need to replace me anyway. A few weeks shouldn’t make a difference. And I need all my time to study. So I can’t work here anymore.”
My mom stared at Halli for another second more, and then the tears started to flow.
“Please don’t cry,” Halli said. “You can’t keep getting upset about all of this. You need to understand that things are changing. We both need to adapt to that.”
My mother covered her face with her hand and sobbed quietly behind it. But not so quietly that Elena and Will couldn’t hear it. Both of them looked up.
Will caught Halli’s eye and scowled. She gave him a guiltless gaze back.
Elena got up from her desk and came into the kitchen. She hugged my mom around the shoulders.
“What’s going on?”
“Now she wants to quit working here, too,” my mom cried. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Why do you want to quit?” Elena asked.
“It’s time,” Halli said. “I’m going to be leaving anyway.”
“But can’t you wait?” Elena asked. “My understanding is you still have to pass some test…?”
“I’ll pass it,” Halli said. “Then I want to leave.”
Elena and my mom looked at each other.
“Well, can’t you wait?” Elena asked. “Do your work here until it’s time to leave?”
“I wouldn’t be good at it anymore,” Halli said. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
My mother continued crying. Elena tried to calm her down.
“So, when do you want to quit?” Elena asked.
“Today,” Halli said. “Right now.”
Now Elena was mad. She’s been like a second mother to me all my life, so she probably felt she was entitled.
“Audie Masters, what is going on? Why are you doing this?”
Halli sighed. She stepped from the kitchen back into the office. Will was listening anyway, so she might as well make a general announcement.
“Look,” she said. “I feel I need to say something here. I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings, or make life hard for any of you. But I have my own things to do now.”
“What things?” Will and his mother said in unison.
“I’m tired of high school. I don’t need to be there anymore. I want to get on with my life.”
“What happened to Columbia?” Elena asked. “Your mom said you don’t want to go there anymore.”
“I don’t,” Halli said. “My mother was right—it’s too much pressure. I’ll do better at a small college like Mountain State. They said they’ll take me as soon as I graduate. So I want to graduate as soon as possible.
“But you need to understand something,” Halli said to all of them. “I’m not mad at any of you. We’re not in a fight. We don’t need to be angry with each other. Seasons end. And this season has ended for me. I want to try something new.”
“I’m your mother,” my mom said. “Does that season end?”
“No, of course not,” Halli answered. “But I’ll be eighteen in a few months, and I have some of my own ideas about how I want to spend my life. I’m not doing this to punish you. You’re a good mother—anyone can see that.”
My mom sniffled and ran her sleeve under her eyes.
Halli did feel sympathy for her. She knew it must be very hard to deal with a daughter who suddenly wasn’t herself anymore.
But Halli also knew she wouldn’t be able to fix this by staying around. She couldn’t make it easier by pretending to be me. The longer she did that, the more likely it was that my mom or anyone else might start noticing things were wrong: I didn’t know physics anymore. I didn’t know how to do the bookkeeping. I suddenly didn’t know so many things I’ve known all my life. How would it help the situation if people started wondering whether I’d had some sort of mental breakdown and couldn’t remember things anymore?
No, it was better to be ruthless about it, make a clean break. Hard for people in the short-term, but better for everyone overall.
“This isn’t about any of you,” Halli said, gazing directly at Will. He met her eyes and stared back. “The sooner I can help you understand that, the better.”
Will shook his head and looked away. Halli knew there was nothing else she could say.
She reached down under my desk to retrieve my backpack.
“I’ll see you at home later,” she told my mom. “I’ll make us some vegetable soup tonight—you’ll like that. And if your back still hurts, I’ll give you another massage. But I have to go study now. I’ll see you all later.”
And with that, she walked out the door.
Leaving my mom, Elena, and Will to discuss what on earth had just happened.
32
Halli enjoyed her run home from the office. So much to replay in her head, so much to think about for the future.
She changed into sweatpants and a fresh T-shirt, then spent about half an hour chopping up vegetables to make a soup—potatoes, turnips, parsnips, carrots, a lot of those greens my mom couldn’t figure out why she needed. Halli waited until it was all gently bubbling before she finally called the professor and told him what had happened.
The professor sighed. It was starting to be his main reaction to Halli’s reports. But he took the matter in stride.
“You were probably right to quit,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but these things are going to happen. What did her mother say?”
“Not happy,” Halli answered. She didn’t bother going into the long version.
“Still no sign of Audie?” the professor asked.
“I would have told you.”
“Yes, I know.”
Halli peered into the computer screen. “You look better today. Did you sleep?”
“I did,” he admitted. “You were right, what you said before. I need to stay sharp, for all our sakes. Thank you for badgering me.”
Halli shrugged. “It’s what Ginny taught me. She was always right about things like that. Hold on. I need to ask you something.”
She fished out of my backpack the smartphone Will had given her. She had no doubt he wouldn’t feel so generous toward her now, after everything that happened that afternoon. And she didn’t feel guilty about that. Instead she felt grateful that the whole transaction had come up while the two of them were still getting along.
Halli was always grateful to find herself in the right place at the right time. Especially since she’d also experienced plenty of the opposite.
“What do I do with this?” she asked Professor Whitfield, showing him the phone. “How do I make it work?”
He explained to her how to transfer my phone number to the new phone. And he also explained that there’d be an extra monthly cost.
“Oh. All right. I’ll wait.”
She was tired of waiting. She wanted to start making her own money—now. It was time to discuss some of her options with the professor.
“I’ve done some research,” she said. “It looks like there are several guiding companies near your college, and more in the surrounding areas. Do you know any of them?”
“Some,” he said. “Mountain State has an outdoor education program. A lot of our students go on to become guides, so the companies recruit on campus. I’ve met a lot of the owners.”
“Perfect,” Halli said. It was more than she’d hoped for. “Then you can help me find work. I can guide skiing, climbing,
hiking, kayaking—”
“Whoa, whoa,” the professor answered, laughing. “It sounds like you’re trying to make a full-time job out of it. Don’t forget about school.”
Halli stared at him blankly. “I won’t be going to school.”
“Yes,” the professor said, “to college. Remember, I’m offering you a scholarship. Of course it’s for Audie, really, but you’ll have to pretend to be her until she can come back.”
“No...” Halli started over. The professor obviously wasn’t getting it. “I’m taking this math test so I can stop going to school forever. I don’t belong there—at Audie’s school or yours. I belong outside. As soon as I leave here, I want to find work.”
But Professor Whitfield seemed to think it was Halli who didn’t understand. “The only way I can pay for you to come here,” he said, “is if you enroll as a physics student. Just as Audie would. You’ll have to sign up for classes. And you’ll have to attend—but only until we find Audie again,” he hurried to add.
Halli closed her eyes. If this was the professor’s plan, it wasn’t going to work. She needed freedom—not another new set of rules. And certainly not a new set of classes where she’d be expected to understand physics and any other subjects I was interested in.
“We can help you,” Albert piped in from behind the professor. “It’ll be like algebra. I can tutor you on the side.”
I don’t want that. Any of that. But Halli simply nodded. Arguing with them wasn’t going to get her where she wanted, which was out of Tucson, into Colorado. She needed Professor Whitfield’s college, and she needed his money. For now.
“You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t understand before. Now I do.”
“It’ll be fine,” Professor Whitfield said. “And it won’t be forever. Audie will come back.”
“Of course she will,” Halli said. She gave him a confident nod. “I have to go study now. Albert, please send me more worksheets.”
“Will do,” he called toward the screen.
“Everything all right?” the professor asked Halli. He must have seen something on her face.
“Mm-hm, fine. I need to go check my soup. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She clicked off the call and closed the lid of my laptop.
And sat in my chair staring at my wall. Imagining the giant map of the world she’d been mentally projecting there for the past several days.
Her plan wasn’t going to work. Colorado wasn’t going to work. She’d been fooling herself all along.
She heard the front door open. Great. Not even a moment to herself.
“Audie?” my mom called. “We need to talk.”
The last thing Halli needed right now was some big, dramatic, heart-to-heart talk with a mother she didn’t care about.
Halli pasted on her smile. “Coming!”
33
I had mother troubles of my own.
“We expected more from you, Herr Schroeder,” Halli’s mother was saying to a head that hovered above her tablet. The head was bald, with crooked teeth, and it looked worried. “Are you aware of your competition?”
“Ja, Doktor Markham, but as I explained—”
“No more excuses,” Halli’s mother said. “You either have it for us by the end of the day, or your contract is cancelled.”
“But it will not be ready—”
“Then consider it cancelled now. You’re relieved of your duties, Herr Schroeder. We won’t be using you again.”
Halli’s mother punched her finger against the side of her tablet and disconnected the call. Herr Schroeder’s head disappeared. I still wasn’t used to the 3-D effect of those comm calls. I was staring at the air when Halli’s mother looked over at me and caught me awake.
“Halli, dear,” she said sweetly, “how are you?”
I looked around the room. Just as I suspected, there was someone else in there. A nurse I hadn’t seen before was messing around with one of the monitors behind my bed. Of course Halli’s mother felt the need to perform in front of her.
“How are you feeling?” she asked me. “You gave your father and me quite a scare.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just thirsty.”
Halli’s mother snapped her fingers at the nurse, then pointed at me.
“Yes, Dr. Markham,” the nurse said. She quickly stopped what she was doing to help me take a few sips of water.
As soon as it looked like I was done, Halli’s mother ordered the nurse to leave us.
“But Dr. Rios’s orders were to—”
“Go,” Halli’s mother said.
The nurse nodded and fled the room. I wondered if Bertrise would have been that intimidated.
“So,” Halli’s mother said, turning to me, “what is all this about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why was I forced to leave one of the most important negotiations in the history of your father’s and my company, and fly over here in the middle of the night to supervise the care of my attention-seeking daughter?”
“Attention-seeking?”
“Well, you’ve certainly gotten that, haven’t you?” she asked. “History reporters clustered outside the hospital, people calling us day and night—I told you that you represent us now, Halli. You were supposed to be discreet and dignified when you came over here.”
The woman was just so hard to like. I understood every single harsh thing Halli ever had to say about her mother. I could add a whole list of my own.
“So tell me, Halli,” she said, “what were you doing locked in some room with a young man I’ve never met?”
This was laughable for two reasons: first, I only wish the door had been locked. That would have kept everybody out, and I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.
Second, Halli’s parents had ignored her for the first sixteen years of her life, and Halli had ignored them for the past year as they tried to barge back into her life. Halli could have had eighty boyfriends at the same time all around the world, and I doubt she would have introduced a single one of them to her parents.
I chose to say nothing. I believed that’s what Halli would have done—just stared blankly back at her mother and chosen silence.
“I’m waiting,” Halli’s mother said.
“I have nothing to say.”
She glared at me through squinty eyes set in a puffy face. She smelled a little like wine. Her makeup had melted into her greasy face. Her teased hair looked flat and unkempt. Her business suit was wrinkled. She looked like she really had flown all night.
But since I’d now flown twice on one of their company’s private jets, I knew very well how luxurious it could be. She could have slept in a real bed, eaten gourmet food, taken a shower—brushed her teeth, for goodness sake—generally done a lot better job taking care of herself so she wouldn’t look as hagged out as she did right then.
It felt good to have those thoughts about her. Secret, mean thoughts. They even made me smile.
But at the same time, it was hard to look at that woman and not miss my own, pretty mother. To imagine what it might be like to have her there with me now, holding my hand, showing me genuine concern, and not acting like my being in a hospital was some hatched-up scheme to inconvenience her and gain a bunch of publicity for myself. I mean, come on.
“Where’s...everybody else?” I asked. I didn’t want to name names, so I left it open-ended.
“If you mean Jake,” Halli’s mother said, “he’s lucky he still has a job. We fired him at first, but once he explained things...” She flicked her manicured hand. “The mess you’ve gotten us into.”
“What mess is that?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter. It was hard to be confident and Halli-like when I was slouched down in a bed. Plus, after days of being immobile, I wasn’t feeling all that spunky.
Halli’s mother listed them off. “Reporters, board members, business competitors who would love any hint of scandal. You may enjoy all the attention, young lady, but your father
and I have carefully nurtured a certain reputation over the past seventeen years—for ourselves and for our company. We don’t appreciate being dragged into the spotlight by some uncontrollable teenager.”
I suddenly felt very tired—tired of her voice and tired of the insults. That woman was exhausting enough to deal with when I felt strong. It was time to ask myself the most basic question for dealing with my current situation: What would Halli do?
“As you may recall, Regina,” I said, using Halli’s mother’s first name, the way Halli always did, “I came to London to inspect the facilities here so that I could become more involved with the company. I am a forty-nine percent shareholder.”
Halli’s mother didn’t like me reminding her of that.
“You may also recall,” I said, “that it wasn’t me who invited that reporter along—you did. I didn’t invite Jake, either—you did. I didn’t create any scandal—Jake did. I was minding my own business—”
“With some young man whose parents run a very questionable history organization—”
“Where is Daniel anyway?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to him.”
Halli’s mother smirked. “I’m sure you would. But once Jake explained the situation to us, we took appropriate measures.”
“Then it’s true,” I said. “You won’t allow him to visit me.”
“We need to contain this situation immediately,” she answered. “Any more publicity needs to be carefully managed. You’re not in control of this anymore, Halli. We are.”
Before I could say any more, the doctor came in. I’d seen glimpses of her over the past few days as I faded in and out, but this was the first time I really got a good look at her.
She was tall, fit-looking, with thick black hair cut in a perfectly straight line falling just above her shoulders. And even though I distinctly remembered her speaking English to me with some kind of slight accent, this time she spoke in a language I didn’t understand.
“Beni terk annene sormak ister misiniz?” She gave me a meaningful look.
I gazed back at her in confusion. Then she said something else I didn’t understand, in what sounded like the same language.
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