When it was over, the announcer cut to a commercial. We all sat there without speaking—even Autumn—until Grandma Grace got up and snapped off the set. I waited for someone to start yelling.
“Well,” Mom finally said. “I guess that explains the quick recovery.”
Autumn’s eyes opened wide. “You mean you weren’t even sick? You pretended so you could protest against Grandma?”
I shrugged. I wanted to spout something about how Grandma Grace’s shop deserved to be shut down, but my nerve had disappeared now that I was sitting in the same room with her.
“Sunny,” my mom said, “I’m shocked. Totally shocked. I mean, I knew you were an animal lover, but to sneak out to a protest without telling me—”
“You never would have let me go.”
“—and to go on TV the way you did—”
It was now or never. I summoned up my courage and looked right at my grandmother. “I had to do it. What Grandma Grace is doing is wrong. I’m ashamed to admit she’s my grandmother.”
The look on my grandmother’s face made me turn away. Her shoulders sagged and her eyes filled with tears.
“Sunny Carson Beringer,” my mom said, “I cannot believe the disrespect you’ve shown to your grandmother, after all she’s done for us—”
I forced myself to say the next words: “She hasn’t done anything for me. I never wanted to move into her fancy house to begin with. It’s not like she actually cares about us or anything—”
“That. Is. Enough,” Mom said, just as Grandma Grace got up from the sofa and reached for her purse. “Up to your room right now. I will deal with you later.” She turned to my grandmother as I put on a show by stomping up to my room. I didn’t rush though, slowing down enough on the stairs to hear what was going on.
“Where are you going?” she asked my grandmother.
“Out. I need to clear my head.”
“I’m really sorry, Mom. I don’t know what’s gotten into her—”
“It’s okay, Rebecca, really it is. At least I know her true feelings about me.”
“This isn’t like her at all.”
Grandma Grace lowered her voice and so did Mom. I strained my ears but couldn’t hear a thing until my grandmother left the house, shutting the door behind her.
I threw myself down on my pink flowered bedspread, feeling very little like the triumphant hero. I closed my eyes and all I could see was the hurt look on my grandmother’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
There was a knock on my door a few minutes later. I buried my face in my pillow, refusing to look at my mom as she pushed the door open and walked inside. The footsteps stopped right next to my bed. “All right, Sunny. Out with it.”
When I didn’t say anything, Mom nudged my shoulder. “Come on, Sunny. Sit up. I want answers, and I want them now.”
I turned over. Mom stood in front of me with her arms crossed in front of her chest. “I am waiting for an explanation, and it better be a good one.”
I gulped, trying to think up something, quickly. Explaining things to Mom was one part of the plan I hadn’t thought through all the way. I’d figured Grandma Grace would kick us out immediately, and I could deal with Mom once we were on our way home. I knew she’d be angry at first, but she’d come around when it all worked out.
Getting from here to the happy ending seemed a lot further away than I’d counted on.
“Turning animals into fur coats is cruel,” I told her, avoiding her eyes. “You know how I feel about Grandma Grace’s fur store.”
“Did it ever occur to you to talk to her about it? Did you really think you’d get her to change her mind by going on TV?”
I shrugged. “You told me not to say anything, remember? After all, she let us stay in her great big old house just so you could go back to school.”
“So you thought talking to a reporter was a better solution? Did you ever, for a moment, stop and think about how it would make your grandmother feel?”
I shrugged again, feeling that same shooting pain in my side. What kind of a question was that? Didn’t Mom know that I couldn’t think about my grandmother’s feelings? As strongly as I felt about the fur issue, it would have put an end to the plan—snap! Just like that. “It’s not like it matters. She doesn’t care about me anyway,” I said, but even though the words came out of my own mouth, I no longer believed them.
“Now that,” Mom said, her voice softer as she dropped to the bed next to me, “is totally untrue.”
I couldn’t say a thing. Mom was silent as if we were both trying to figure out what to do next.
“You know, Sunny,” she finally said, “I really didn’t know how things were going to work out when we moved in here. I knew you girls didn’t have much of a relationship with your grandmother, and she’d always been so distant before.”
“See? That’s what I mean. Mostly we’ve been an inconvenience. Forgetting to take our shoes off, leaving our stuff around, and she has to cook for four now instead of one,” I said in a weak attempt to convince myself and my mom.
Mom wasn’t falling for it. “That’s where you’re wrong. Your grandmother has changed. She may like a neat house, but I’ve watched the way she takes an interest in both of you, the way she genuinely wants to know what’s going on in your lives. And she’s been trying to cook your favorite foods, and buy little things for you, and spend time with you.”
I turned my back on Mom, not wanting her to see me crying.
“What I don’t get is what you thought you’d accomplish with all this. Did you really think you’d change your grandmother’s mind about fur? You should know by now that she digs in her heels when she thinks she’s being attacked.”
“I had to do something,” I mumbled to the wall. “I couldn’t just keep quiet. Selling fur coats should be against the law.”
“But it’s not. It’s perfectly legal. So. You’ve gotten yourself into a big mess. Grandma Grace is steaming mad. The question is, what are you going to do about it now?”
Steaming mad. I ignored Mom’s question. Hope surged through me as my heart thumped a steady beat: We’re going home, we’re going home, we’re going home!
I turned back around to face Mom. I needed her on my side and I needed her to realize that going back to New Jersey would be the best thing for our family. Sitting up, I looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom, I really am. But if Grandma Grace kicks us out of the house, we’ll be okay. We can move back to New Jersey and you can go back to school there—”
“Whoa,” Mom said, putting her hand out in front of her. A look passed across her face, as though she’d just figured out the answer to a complicated riddle. “Hold on a minute. No one said anything about getting kicked out—”
“But—but, I thought you said Grandma Grace is really angry. I bet she hates me for what I did. And there’s nothing I can do to take it back—”
“Maybe not. But you can start by apologizing. Talk to your grandmother and explain why you feel so strongly about the issue. Tell her you didn’t mean what you said about her, and that you do care about her.” Mom put an arm around my shoulder. “You made a mistake, Sunny. But you can fix this.”
I shrugged out from under my mom’s arm. “No, Mom, she hates me!” I said, even though I didn’t believe the words myself. My whole plan was falling apart, evaporating into the air, and I didn’t know what I could do to put it back together. “She doesn’t want me living here anymore. I’m sure of it!”
Mom gave me a little smile. And then she said the last words I wanted to hear: “The only thing I can tell you is you’re not getting out of this one. It’s up to you to fix things and make it right between the two of you again. And if you’re hoping for an easy way out, you may as well give up on that idea. Grandma Grace would never go back on her word. She wouldn’t do that to me, and she’d never do that to her grandchildren.”
Tears seeped out of my eyes as I dropped back down on the bed, turning away from Mom as i
t all began to sink in.
Mom ran a hand over my hair. “You’ll start with an apology,” she said firmly. “And if you’re afraid to face your grandmother, then you can put it in writing. I’m sure she’s hurt by all of this, but one thing I’m learning about my mother is that underneath it all, she’s really a softie.”
I didn’t say anything. I could imagine my grandmother taking an apology letter and tossing it in the trash can the way she’d done with the anti-fur pamphlet. Finally, Mom got up and left my room, closing the door behind her.
That’s when the tears turned into ragged sobs, and I had to fight to catch my breath. What had I been thinking when I came up with my ridiculous plan? Had I completely lost my mind?
I’d been so mad at Mom for lying to me and messing up my whole life that I was ready to do whatever it took to get back home.
I’d forgotten, or ignored, the most important part: Grandma Grace wasn’t really Cruella de Vil. She would never take away Mom’s money for school and make us leave her house just because I made her angry.
Grandma Grace knew there were people who didn’t like what she did for a living. She knew they would protest against her and would speak to reporters on TV if they got the chance.
But she didn’t expect one of them to be her granddaughter. It would make people wonder about the person behind the shop and why she doesn’t get along with her own family. It’s the kind of thing people would gossip about, and I’m the one who caused it.
Not only had Sunny’s Super-Stupendous Plan to Get Back Home totally self-destructed, but now I was stuck living with a grandmother who might never forgive me for what I’d done.
***
I was still up in my room, lying flat on my bed drowning in the hopelessness of my situation when I heard the front door open and shut. Grandma Grace was home.
I didn’t want to get up from my bed. I thought maybe I could lie there for the rest of my life. But as voices floated up from the kitchen, I had a strong urge to hear what they were saying. I tiptoed into the hall and kneeled at the top of the steps.
At first, the conversation was polite chatter about where Grandma Grace had eaten and what movie she had seen. Then Mom said, “Sunny feels really badly about what happened.”
I held my breath and had to let it back out before Grandma Grace spoke. “I’ve been thinking about this for the last few hours. All through dinner and the movie, too. Why didn’t you tell me how Sunny felt about my selling furs?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t too hard to pick up on. All those looks every time you mentioned your shop, how she acted when I actually made her go inside …”
“Okay, so maybe I was oblivious to it. But still, she could have come to me and told me how she felt.”
“I’m afraid that’s my fault. I discouraged her from saying anything. I thought it would cause a lot of tension between the two of you, when you were working hard to build a relationship—”
Grandma Grace sighed. “Oh, Rebecca. What kind of a person do you think I am? Did you really think I’d be angry at my own granddaughter for expressing her feelings? I may own a fur store, but I’m not an unreasonable person. I can see the big picture.”
“Which is?”
“Family. Family is stronger than any disagreements we might have. I didn’t realize that, Rebecca, until you and the girls came to stay with me.”
Family. The word echoed in my heart.
Neither of them said anything for a minute.
“So, I’m trying to make sense of what’s happened,” Grandma Grace continued. “I can understand if Sunny feels strongly about the fur issue, but what I don’t get is why she would attack me personally on TV. I mean, she’s been harder to get to know, certainly, than Autumn, but I figured it was because she was older, more emotional. Was it all because of the fur store? Does she really hate me so much?”
My stomach clenched.
“Come on, Mom, you know she doesn’t hate you.”
“It sure felt like it, watching her up there on the TV screen.”
“Well, I think you were on to something when you said she was harder to get to know than Autumn. Sunny’s put up walls since we got here, and no, it’s not just because she wishes you didn’t own a fur store.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“If you have a theory on all this,” Grandma Grace said, “I’d love to hear it.”
“Sunny was a hundred percent against moving in with you to begin with,” Mom said. “I kept thinking she’d adjust, but ever since we got here, she has been thinking about how to get back home. I think Sunny was hoping she’d make you angry enough that you wouldn’t let us stay.”
I sucked in my breath.
“She thought I’d kick you out of the house?”
“Apparently.”
“I thought she liked it here in Bennetsville. She seemed to be adjusting well, making new friends …”
“I think this has more to do with Scott than anything else,” Mom said with a sigh. There was silence again. I balled up my fists, my fingernails digging into my palms.
“As you can see,” Mom finally said, “Sunny and I have some issues we need to work out, too. But, in the meantime, she’s gotten herself into quite a predicament and doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“And what would you like me to do?” Grandma Grace asked. “Tell her I forgive her and act like everything’s perfectly normal?”
Yes, yes, yes! I squeezed my fists tighter. Forgive me and move on!
“No, of course not. Sunny needs to learn from her own mistakes. Like I told her, she needs to find a way to reach out to you.”
“Exactly! I’m glad you told her that. You’re a good mother, Rebecca. You know that, don’t you?”
I turned and ran back to my room, not waiting to hear Mom’s response.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next morning I made a card for Grandma Grace. I painted a picture of daffodils, her favorite flower, on the front. On the inside I wrote:
Dear Grandma Grace,
I am sorry. I care about animals, but I shouldn’t have gone to the protest.
Your granddaughter,
Sunny
I put the card in an envelope and left it in the mailbox with the other mail. Well, that was that. I’d done what Mom said I should do, and now it was up to my grandmother to decide if she ever wanted to forgive me.
Over the next couple of days, Grandma Grace spent a lot of time out of the house. When she was home, she spoke to me politely, but she never said anything to me about the card. I tried to avoid her as much as possible. It felt like the floor was littered with broken pieces of glass and both of us were trying not to step on any of them.
Mom and I didn’t talk much either. She had said we had issues to work out, and I was waiting for her to bring them up. I guess I wasn’t the only one trying to figure out what to do next.
I didn’t feel like talking to Scott. Everything was too complicated to explain, and I knew Mom had already told him all about it, anyway. She’d taken the phone into the other room and closed the door when she called him, speaking so softly I couldn’t make out a word. Not that I needed to.
That weekend, I served a lot of leftover turkey to Ripple. I also spent a lot of time in the backyard, swaying back and forth on the hammock as the cold November wind blew through me. Now what? Now what? The words echoed in my head with each creak of the hammock, and I didn’t have any answers.
As I lay there staring up at the sky, I realized there was one more person I hadn’t been honest with.
Lydia Applebaum. The person I’d been sitting with at lunch for the last two weeks, and practically my only friend at Evergreen.
I wondered if she would be angry that I hadn’t told her the truth about my grandmother.
***
“Hey, I saw you on the news,” said Holly, as I took my seat in front of her in language arts class on Monday morning.
I nodded, and sat down. Holly had never said a word to m
e before. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned back around. Holly gave me a big smile. “Was it exciting to be in a protest? Were you worried about getting arrested?”
“It’s not against the law.”
“Cool,” she said, and then the girl who sat next to her started asking me questions until the bell rang and we had to be quiet.
Jessie, apparently, hadn’t seen the protest. She chattered away in art class in her usual friendly way, but when it was time for lunch, she waved and walked off without me. After I sat with Lydia that first day, Jessie never asked me about it again. She probably wouldn’t mind if I tried to sit with her, but she didn’t seem to mind if I sat somewhere else either.
As I walked past Jessie’s table a few minutes later, I noticed my seat had already been filled by a new friend, one of the other cheerleaders who had the straightest, blondest hair I’d ever seen.
I hesitated a minute before walking to Lydia’s table. I’d been up all night thinking about what to say to her, and I had this bad feeling that the words would get all tangled up when I tried to explain. Finally, I took a deep breath.
“Hi, Lydia,” I said in my friendliest voice.
She looked up at me. “Oh, hi,” she said. Cool, like an arctic breeze. Uh-oh. “So I was just wondering, Sunny. Why have you been sitting with us lately? Did your other friends dump you?”
Heat prickled along my neck. The other girls at the table stopped talking and stared at me.
“Well, no … not exactly.”
Lydia dipped her pita into hummus. “Because I was wondering if maybe they got mad because you didn’t tell them the truth, either.”
“I—I just wanted to sit with you. I thought we were friends—”
“Were is the correct form of the verb,” Lydia said. “You know, the funny thing about grandmothers is sometimes you forget what they do for a living. For example, if your grandmother owned the fur store your friend was planning a protest against, you might just forget to mention it.”
Sierra’s eyes got really big. Jalia clamped a hand over her mouth. I looked down at my sneakers, rubbing my toe against the dirty cafeteria floor.
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