by Piper Banks
Chapter Thirty
I didn’t see Nora at all over the next month. I knew from Hannah that Nora had enrolled at Orange Cove High School. Hannah said that Nora kept to herself, although Hannah had heard that Nora was working on the school newspaper.
Then, in early October, I came home after a Tuesday afternoon Ampersand meeting to find a battered-looking ten-speed bike parked in the driveway, and Nora again sitting on our front step.
“Hi,” I said. “Is that your bike?”
Nora nodded and stood. “I bought it at a garage sale. I got tired of walking everywhere.”
I hesitated, wondering why she was here. I’d forgiven Nora and truly wasn’t angry anymore. But I also didn’t want to start hanging out with her again. I hoped she wasn’t hoping for a reconciliation.
“So, what’s up?” I asked cautiously.
“I just came by to let you know that I’m leaving,” Nora said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m moving back to Boston to live with my mom,” Nora explained.
“What about her fiancé?” I asked.
Nora made a face. “They broke up. The wedding’s been called off. So I’m allowed to return home. For now, anyway. My mom’s never without a guy for long,” Nora said. She must have seen pity in my eyes. “Don’t worry; it’s fine. Maybe this time she’ll stay single until I leave for college.”
I nodded. I hoped so, for Nora’s sake. “When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” Nora said. “I’m all packed and ready to go. My grandmother’s thrilled to get her condo back to herself. She’s throwing a bridge party to celebrate. Anyway, I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”
“I’m glad. Good luck with everything.”
“Thanks. You, too,” Nora said. “And, Miranda?”
“Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth, thank you for being such a good friend to me at the beginning of the year. I haven’t had a lot of friends, so . . . well. I’m just sorry I blew it,” Nora said.
I didn’t know what to say. I knew what she meant, though. I thought Nora was someone I might have been good friends with, had our relationship not been so irreparably damaged.
“Bye, Miranda,” Nora said.
“Bye, Nora.”
Nora turned and walked over to her bike. She wheeled it around, mounted it, and then looked back over her shoulder at me. I raised a hand, and she waved back. I watched her as she biked down the driveway and turned into the street, until she was out of my view.
“I was thinking, Thanksgiving break is only six weeks away,” Dex said that night, as we talked on Skype.
“I know. I’m counting down the days,” I said, hugging a pillow to my chest.
“Me, too. Then I come back here, have four weeks of school, and then I’ll be home for three weeks at Christmas,” Dex said.
“Wow, three whole weeks,” I said. After so many months apart, three weeks sounded like a decadent amount of time.
“I know, I can’t wait. Please tell me you’re not going to London,” Dex said. “I don’t think I could handle the disappointment.”
I grinned, thinking that maybe it wasn’t so bad having a long-distance boyfriend, after all, especially if he was this excited to see me. Maybe absence really did make the heart grow fonder.
“No, I’m not. I was worried that Sadie would be disappointed when I told her I’m staying here for the holidays, but she was fine with it,” I said. “And Hannah’s really excited about our first Christmas together as a family,” I said. And for the first time, the idea that the four of us—Dad, Peyton, Hannah, and me—were a family of sorts didn’t feel completely artificial and forced. “She’s making all sorts of plans. We’re going to go up to Sea World one day. They have a whole holiday display with seals and polar bears and Santa.”
“Sounds great. Can I tag along?” Dex asked.
“You have to ask?” I said.
“I can’t wait to get away from here for a while,” Dex confessed.
“I thought you’d started to like it there,” I said.
“I do, most of the time. But I’m ready for a break. Especially from trig class, which is kicking my butt,” Dex said.
The doorbell rang. Willow sat up on her bed, blinking sleepily and yawning. She’d never been much of a watchdog.
“Was that your doorbell?” Dex asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“Do you have to go get it?”
“No, someone else will. Everyone’s home,” I said. “You’re still having problems with your trig class?”
“Right now, I’ll be lucky if I pass,” Dex said darkly.
“Are you serious? I’ll help. What are you working on now?” I asked.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Dex said. “I barely get to talk to you as it is. I don’t want to spend what little time we have talking about trig.”
There was a knock at my door.
“Miranda? Are you in there?” Hannah called through the door.
“I’m kind of busy right now,” I called back.
“Since when did Hannah start knocking?” Dex asked. “She usually just bursts in.”
“I don’t know. It’s a relatively new development,” I said.
Hannah opened the door anyway. She was frowning.
“Can this wait?” I asked her. “I’m talking to Dex.”
“It’s your mom,” Hannah said.
“My mom? What about her?” I asked.
“She’s here,” Hannah said.
Chapter Thirty-one
“Surprise!” Sadie said.
She was sitting in the living room, perched on a leather chair. Sadie looked great. Since she’d moved to London, she’d traded in her long hair and hippie skirts for a short, sleek bob and tailored suits. I thought she might have also lost a little bit of weight; her jaw seemed more defined, and her waist was slimmer.
Seated across from Sadie on a low white sofa were my dad and Peyton. They both seemed tense. Sadie had always had that effect on my dad, even when they were married, and Sadie and Peyton had never gotten along. Only Sadie looked relaxed, lounging in her chair, completely at ease. She had always loved surprising people.
“Mom!” I said, rushing over to her. She stood and enveloped me in a hug. I breathed in her familiar scent of perfume mingled with coffee.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her, finally stepping back.
“I came to surprise you,” Sadie said.
“It worked,” I said. “I’m definitely surprised!”
“And I have news,” Sadie said.
Sadie twinkled in Dad and Peyton’s direction, as if they were all in on whatever she was up to. But I could tell from their twin confused expressions that Dad and Peyton had no idea what Sadie was about to announce.
“If you’d told me you were coming for a visit, I would have been able to pick you up from the airport. I have a car now,” I said proudly.
“That’s just it. I’m not here for a visit,” Sadie said.
“You’re not?”
“Nope. That’s my surprise. I’m moving back to Orange Cove!” Sadie announced.
“Honestly, I thought you’d be happier about this,” Sadie said, later that evening. She and I were sitting in a booth at Go Fish, eating fried grouper sandwiches served with generous amounts of French fries and pineapple-laced coleslaw.
“I’m still trying to adjust to the news. You did sort of spring it on me,” I said.
“But you’ll be able to move home! Get out of the beach house and away from Peyton!” Sadie said. “I thought you hated living there. What is it with that woman and the color white? Everything’s white. The walls, the furniture, even the cat. Frankly, it’s a bit creepy.”
“Peyton likes white,” I said. “And I don’t think Madonna can help what color she is.”
“Who’s Madonna?”
“The cat,” I explained.
“Anyway, darling, aren’t you thrilled?
We’ll be together again! Just the two of us back in our bachelorette pad. Won’t it be wonderful?” Sadie enthused.
“Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
But the truth was, I wasn’t at all sure what to think. A little over a year ago, I’d been furious at Sadie when she took off for London and left me behind. Back then, I barely knew my dad and couldn’t stand my stepmother and stepsister. But over the past year, a lot had changed. My dad and I had grown a lot closer. And Hannah had become one of my best friends. True, Peyton and I didn’t have the best relationship in the world, but even that had gotten better over time.
And besides, I was still angry at Sadie. She’d deserted me. And now that she was back, she just assumed that everything would be the same as it was before she left. That I’d be perfectly happy moving back in with her. But I wasn’t at all sure that’s what I wanted to do.
“I was thinking that now that I’m back, we should make every Saturday night our bohemian night,” Sadie was saying, waving her fork around with enthusiasm. “We’ll throw big parties and invite all sorts of different people over, and have long, intellectual discussions about the important topics of the day. How does that sound?”
“Actually, Mom, I think we need to talk about this,” I said.
“About the boho nights? Okay, fine, although I think it’s a fabulous idea. We could even have theme nights. Art night, music night, interpretative dance night,” Sadie said. “And since when did you start calling me Mom?”
“No, not about the party nights. I think we should talk about my living arrangements,” I said.
“Why? You’ll move back home with me, darling. That’s where you belong,” Sadie said. “Now. Should we order dessert? Because I know we shouldn’t—I’m watching my weight—but I have to say, I’ve been dreaming about having a slice of authentic key lime pie for over a year.”
Sadie waved down the waiter. When he came over, she twinkled up at him.
“One slice of your fabulous key lime pie, and two forks, please,” she said. Then she looked back at me and said, “So, tell me all about the dashing young Dex. Is he coming home for Thanksgiving?”
That night, I took Willow for a walk on the beach. I didn’t tell anyone I was going out. Ever since Sadie’s surprise arrival, there’d been a weird vibe in the house. Hannah was in her room, talking on the phone, and Dad and Peyton were still sitting in the living room, having a low, murmured conversation. So Willow and I slipped through the house, unheard and unseen, and headed out through the back door.
The beach was deserted, although a full moon hung low in the sky, illuminating our way. Willow picked her way daintily across the sand, stopping only occasionally to smell something interesting that had washed up on the beach.
Even though I was caught up in my thoughts, I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful the pale sand looked in the moonlight, and how dark and mysterious the water was at night.
What am I going to do? I wondered. Everyone seemed to just assume that now that Sadie was back, I’d move back in with her. My dad was sad but resigned, and Hannah had shut herself away in her room. Even Peyton seemed oddly subdued, and I would have thought she’d be overjoyed at the news that I was on my way out of the beach house. Then again, Peyton and I had been getting along a lot better in recent months. Maybe we’ve finally gotten used to each other, I thought. Gotten used to sharing a house; sharing a family.
Willow tugged on her leash as she bowed her head to nose at a patch of seaweed. I waited while she sniffed it over thoroughly before deciding that no, the seaweed was not hiding a bacon sandwich.
What would happen if I just told Sadie no? I wondered. If I told her I was going to stay at the beach house, and live there until I graduated from high school. Would she be upset? Would she fight me over it?
The moon was casting a golden reflection down on the water that rippled with each passing wave. The ocean always reminded me of Dex, even at night. I expected to turn around on the beach and see him there, his eyes glinting, his mouth quirked up in a smile. Steady, reliable Dex, the one person I could always count on.
Willow tugged again gently at her leash. She’d spotted something in the distance—a bird? A plastic bag?—and was eager to investigate it.
“Okay, girl. We’ll go check it out,” I told her.
As we set off to hunt whatever it was, I realized suddenly that I was wrong. Dex wasn’t the only person I could count on. I had lots of people I counted on. Charlie. Hannah. Dad. Even Finn (although how much anyone could count on Finn for anything without having to bribe him first was open for debate).
And then there was me. I’d learned I could count on myself. I’d proven that to myself just this school year. After all, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. My boyfriend had moved away. Someone I’d trusted had deliberately set out to hurt me. My best friends hadn’t backed me up. My first article for The Ampersand had been a failure. I’d been plagued with feelings of jealousy and insecurity.
But even after going through all of that, I was still here. I was happy and whole and a stronger person than I’d been a few months ago. I was standing on my own two feet, moving forward, ready to face whatever it was that was ahead of me.
And if I can count on myself, I thought, nothing I face in the future can be all that bad. That was what being fearless meant.
“Bring it on,” I said out loud. “Bring it on!”
Willow paused in her hunt to look up at me questioningly.
“It’s okay, girl,” I said, patting her head. “I’m just letting the future know I’m ready for anything.”
Piper Banks lives in South Florida with her husband, son, and smelly pug dog. You can visit her Web site at www.piperbanks.com.