“Got it.” He folded his hands on the table. “I do whatever she says,” he told me.
“I do too. For twelve years now.” I shrugged. “That’s the way it has to be with her.”
“And I’ve heard it can get you into trouble.” He looked over at Justine and wiggled his eyebrows. “Not too much trouble. Just a little bit.”
“Right,” I said, smiling at Justine. Emmett was cute, and self-assured, and funny. Based on the three minutes we’d spent together, it was clear he was perfect for Justine. But I had to be sure. “So tell me more about yourself. Hopes and dreams. Aspirations. Favorite subject. Where you see yourself in ten years.”
“Whoa!” Emmett jerked his head back. “We haven’t even ordered yet.”
“We don’t have that much time,” I reminded him. “You’re leaving in two days. Remember?”
The waitress came over, and we ordered the cheese fries and coffees, and Emmett said, “I think I’d like to own a bookstore one day. In a beach town, but I’d keep it open year-round, and it would be, like, a place for people to go when they didn’t want to be home but didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
I nodded and looked over at Justine. She was smiling like a First Lady, all glowy and proud.
“What else can I tell you?” he asked me. And then the waitress brought over the coffees and he said “Thank you” like he meant it, and I just knew he was a good person.
“Have you ever had a pet?” I asked him.
“Um, weird question, Mia, but okay.” Justine sipped her coffee.
Sorry she’s interviewing you, she mouthed to Emmett.
“I got this,” he replied. “Yup, I have a toy poodle at my mom’s place. Murray. He’s chill. What about you?”
“I’ve never had a pet,” I said. “But deep down, I think I’m a dog person. So maybe one day.”
“We’re all dog people,” Justine added. “I can just tell, even though I’ve never had a dog either.”
“Do you play sports?” I asked Emmett.
He poured some more milk into his coffee. “Lacrosse.”
“That is so typical,” I scoffed. “Boston. Lacrosse.”
“I know, I know. But I like it.” He smiled. “So shoot me some more questions. What else do you want to know about me? I’m an open book.”
I sat back. “Will you dance at the prom?”
Justine gasped. “Mia! Stop!”
“What?” My cheeks burned. “I meant, like in general prom, not like our prom….” I knew I should stop talking.
“I always dance,” he said. “Sometimes I dance alone.”
We looked at him, and we all burst out laughing, and then the cheese fries came.
Emmett stared at them. “We just dig in?” he asked. “I want to make sure I’m doing this right.”
“Just dig in.” Justine laughed.
We sat there and ate the cheese fries, and I asked him more questions, and everything he said was nice, and genuine, and honest. And it didn’t seem like he was putting on a show, or trying to be something he wasn’t.
I looked over at him, and then at Justine, and then back at him. And I saw how happy she was—smiling, shoulders relaxed, affectionate with Emmett but not too PDA or anything. Just normal. It all felt calm and peaceful and fun.
And then I realized that if Emmett ever did anything to hurt Justine, I would have to crush him. Seriously. If he ever ripped this happiness away from her, I didn’t know what I would do. Something extreme.
I understood why Justine’d had to make Katie, why she’d had to get revenge on Seth.
Feeling hurt yourself was one thing. But watching your friend get hurt, watching someone hurt your friend—no. You couldn’t just stand idly by and let that happen with no recourse.
“It was so nice to meet you, Mia,” Emmett said when we were in the parking lot.
“Same,” I said. “Have a good trip back.”
We watched him get into his car, and in my head I said all the things I didn’t say aloud: Be good to her. Don’t disappoint her. Don’t disappoint me. Please stay as great as I think you are.
“He’s awesome, Justie,” I said as she drove me home.
“He is, right?” she asked.
“He really is.”
JUSTINE
“So this is it?” I asked Emmett.
We were standing in his driveway. Well, his dad’s driveway. It was one of those wraparound ones that were the coolest when you were a kid and you wanted a place to ride your bike. His dad lived in this giant house on the top of a hill in a section of town that I’d never really been to. He had a pool and a tennis court and a mini–movie theater in the basement. His dad took a car service to work in the city every morning. He seemed so scary. I wondered if Emmett lived like this at his mom’s house too, but it was a weird question to ask.
“I guess.” He shrugged. “I’ll try to be here next summer. If my dad’s around. Sometimes he’s, like, abroad for five months. I don’t really get it.”
I nodded and swallowed hard.
“We can still see each other, on weekends and stuff.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s not really that far.”
“It’s like three hours,” I whispered.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “We’ll make it work. I promise.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He moved back a little and kissed me.
“This was my best summer,” he said. “And one summer I got to sit front row at the Rolling Stones. So, ya know. I’ve had some good summers.”
“Really?” I asked, even though I knew he was telling the truth.
“Justine, all you’ve said so far today is really. Do you realize that?”
I covered my mouth. “Really?”
He shook his head and kissed me again. “I’m pouring my heart out here, and you’re making jokes. That’s the Justine way.”
“It was my best summer too,” I said, finally. “And I mean that. Really.”
“I’ll dance at the prom. Remember that.”
We heard the front door close and saw his dad walking toward us. We pulled apart and tried to make it look casual, like we were just standing out here talking about the weather or something.
“Call me when you get home,” I said, chewing the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.
Emmett nodded.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
MIA
A million things were so hard to believe.
Justine and I were starting senior year with boyfriends. Okay, mine did go to another school, and no one really knew who he was. But that didn’t matter. And Justine’s lived in Boston, but it wasn’t really that far.
We had made two thousand dollars this summer. All on our own.
I’d lost seven pounds.
I knew how to make smoothies. Really good smoothies.
We had humiliated Seth.
I was over him, too.
“So this is the last time I’m going to see you before school starts?” Dennis asked me.
We were sitting cuddled up on the leather couch in his den, watching some obstacle course competition show on TV, eating sunflower seeds. We weren’t really watching the show, but it was on. Background noise.
“I guess so,” I said. “It’s gonna be weird not seeing you every day.”
“I know. And to think I didn’t even want to do this job.” He shook his head and licked salt off his lips. “It all feels kind of crazy, right?”
“Yeah, but the truth is—I don’t think things are ever what we think they’re going to be, ya know? It’s like what we expect almost never happens.”
“Right. I barely even spoke to Justine before this summer.”
I laughed a little but tried to hide it. “You don’t talk to her much now.”
He nodded. “True.” Then he looked at me and pulled me up onto his lap. His mom had only gone out to the grocery store to grab some stuff for dinner. She could walk in at any second, but th
at only made it more exciting.
We stayed like that, cuddled together, kissing on the couch, for a few more minutes, and then we pulled apart a little and looked at each other.
It felt cheesy, to just gaze into each other’s eyes like that, but no one else was watching, so the cheesiness didn’t matter. And when your boyfriend has gigantic blue ocean eyes like Dennis does, you just want to look at them—look into them—for as long as you possibly can.
JUSTINE
“Do you realize what’s happening here?” I asked Mia over the phone.
“What?”
“We’re both starting senior year with boyfriends,” I said. It was hard to believe. Even though I knew it was true. Even though I said it out loud.
“It’s crazy,” Mia said. “Really. It feels crazy to me.”
“And I know what we’re doing with the money,” I told her.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah. I have the perfect plan.”
“That’s what you always say!” Mia screeched.
“Right. And have I ever steered you wrong?”
She laughed.
I said, “I can’t tell you what it is yet. You just have to trust me.”
“You always say that, too!”
“Do you want to make sure we’re not invisible? Like a foolproof plan that everyone notices us?” I continued. “On the first day of school.”
“Ummm…” Mia laughed her nervous laugh.
I sat back in my desk chair. It had been a summer of accomplishments, but we had one more thing to do.
“I’ll take that as a yes. We’re doing this.”
JUSTINE AND MIA
“You’re sure?” the guy behind the desk asked us. “I mean, usually this type of thing is for, like, corporate parties, bachelor weekends, marriage proposals. I’ve never gotten a request like this before.”
“We’re doing it,” we said at the same time.
“All right, more power to ya.” He looked up at us after we handed him the money. He typed all our information into the computer.
One of his best, most experienced people, Carl, was on his way in to take us, and we’d be all set.
The whole thing—from start to finish—would take about seven minutes. That was it.
But it would be worth it.
We both got a text.
Alexis: Still wish I was going with you guys, but I get why it’s important that I’m here. I’ll record everyone’s reactions.
We thanked her again and again, but we still felt a little guilty.
“Whatever, she was getting massages in the Catskills all summer” was how we validated it to ourselves. But also, we needed her. We needed her report. We needed her to document it.
Carl arrived. “Ready to go?”
We nodded.
We hopped in and followed all his instructions, and then we were off.
“Right on the football field?” Carl asked us.
“Yup,” we said at the same time.
Alexis: Holy crap. You guys. OMG everyone is looking up. Mr. Eckson is muttering to the teachers. I think you need some kind of permit to do this.
Just FYI for next time. LOL. Yeah, right, there will be a next time!
“There’s always next summer’s earnings.” We high-fived.
Alexis: The whole school is outside right now. Literally every person in the school.
We high-fived again.
“I’ll admit—I’ve never done this kind of thing before,” Carl said as we got closer.
“Neither have we.”
It got noisy then, really noisy, and it was hard to see what was happening, exactly. We felt a loud thump. Kind of a bumpy landing.
So much of life was like that.
And then Carl asked, “You ready?”
We looked at each other then. And smiled.
After all we’d accomplished that summer, we were ready. More than ready.
“Thanks, Carl.”
We put our sunglasses on and got out, like it was nothing, like it was something we literally did every day. We held our heads high and walked toward school.
“Who is that?” we heard someone say. We didn’t look to see who it was. We didn’t care.
“No clue,” someone else replied.
We kept walking.
“They took a helicopter to school?” some kid said.
“Is that Mia Remsen and Justine Swirsky?” a girl asked. It sounded like Adia Montgomery, but who knows for sure?
“Mia Remsen and Justine Swirsky took an f’in’ helicopter to the first day of school?” another girl squealed. Laurel Peck. We were sure of it.
“They just landed on the football field. Is that allowed? What the—?”
“They are crushing senior year, and it hasn’t even started yet,” Mike Kim said.
We kept walking.
There was no reason to look anywhere but straight ahead.
We had made it.
First of all, thank you to my extraordinary husband and the love of my life, David Rosenberg, for helping me every single day with ideas for this book, raising our daughters, and offering more encouragement than anyone should ever need. I adore you, and I am beyond grateful for everything.
To my daughters, Aleah and Hazel, you are the shiniest, sparkliest, sunniest parts of my world. I love you more than any words can ever express.
To David and Max, my BBFs (best brothers forever), thank you for everything.
To Alyssa Eisner Henkin, thank you for believing in this book way back in 2007, when I simply wanted to call it Stalkers.
To Caroline Abbey, thank you for making this book better than I could have ever imagined. You pushed me to work harder, to stop repeating myself, and to think of these characters in a more thoughtful, careful way. To Elizabeth Tardiff, thanks for the fabulous jacket. Barbara Perris and Barbara Bakowski, your copyediting skills are terrific.
To Mom and Dad, thanks for giving me life and an AOL account.
Bubbie, Zeyda, and Aunt Emily, thanks for all the love, enthusiasm, and support.
To the Rosenbergs, thanks for always asking about the books and helping to promote them.
Many thanks to Rhonda, Melanie, Maddy, Kathleen, Rich, Alex, and the whole BWL community—my home away from home for the past eleven years.
Finally, thank you to my girls (you know who you are) who helped inspire this book. The memories of sitting on America Online back in the day, waiting for people to sign on, make me smile…and also cringe. I wouldn’t be who I am without your friendship. I am so lucky to have all of you in my life.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
*
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender Page 17