Save the Date

by Morgan Matson

  “Don?”

  “Don,” Mike confirmed.

  “Really?” my mother asked, not sounding upset by this, but intrigued.

  I gave her a look. “You’re upset you can’t write about this, aren’t you?”

  “Well . . . ,” my mother said and then laughed. “I mean . . . it just would have been such a nice ending to the Sophie plotline.” She shrugged. “Ah well.”

  Silence fell, and we all looked at the paper sitting on the counter. There, folded inside, was the way my mom had chosen to end the Grants’ story.

  “What do you think?” my mom asked as she picked up the paper, unfolded it, and turned to the comic section. “Should we do this?” She looked at each of us in turn, and I nodded.

  My mom held it, and the seven of us crowded around her. I knew we could have taken turns, or passed it around, but nobody did. Without having to talk about it, I could tell that we all wanted to experience this moment together.

  My dad was on one side, next to Mike. J.J. was next to him, with Danny on his other side, and I was in between Danny and Linnie, with Rodney holding down the other end and my mom in the center. I looked around at all of them for a moment. I wasn’t sure when we would be here like this again—all of us, together, in the same house. But maybe to be here with them, in this moment, was enough.

  “Ready?” my mom asked. We all nodded. And then she took a breath and opened the comics to the place that Grant Central Station had always occupied, the top left-hand corner. She held the paper open so we could all see.

  And then we leaned forward to read it, together.

  SEPTEMBER

  * * *

  CHAPTER 30

  Or, Once Upon a Time in Connecticut

  * * *

  ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE everything?” my dad asked for what had to be the millionth time. “You didn’t forget anything?”

  “I’m sure,” I said, but even so, I glanced into the back of the car just to double-check, though all I could see were suitcases and boxes. It was absolutely packed to the gills—which made sense, since the car was packed with all the stuff that not one but two people would need for a year at college.

  “I don’t like the idea of you driving halfway across the country all by yourself,” my mother said, shaking her head, and Mike straightened up from where he’d been arranging boxes in the backseat.

  “Hey,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What about me?”

  I looked over at Mike and smiled. We were standing in the driveway of my dad’s new town house. He’d found it at the very beginning of May and was totally moved in by the first week in June, the weekend before the new owners took over.

  It had been really hard saying good-bye to our house—seeing all the furniture vanish from the rooms, the pictures from the walls. But we’d all been there to clear it out together, which had helped a lot. Even Danny had come back from California, as opposed to just sending someone to do it for him, like J.J. and Rodney had been betting he would. But it had been all of us saying good-bye to the house, sitting on the floor of the empty family room, eating pizza off paper plates, since we no longer had furniture or dishes. Linnie and Rodney had even brought Waffles with them. They’d adopted him after the GMA interview—they both felt guilty that our interview had damaged his chances of anyone else taking him. And though they’d tried to change his name, he steadfastly refused to answer to anything other than Waffles.

  My dad’s place was much smaller than our house had been, but there were still enough bedrooms for all of us to be there together, if you counted the pullout couch he’d gotten for the basement. He’d already gotten started on his new garden and had shown me the plans for it. I didn’t mind being there, not the way I’d thought I would. It didn’t feel like home—at all—but there was a piece of me that figured maybe it shouldn’t. We were all still figuring out what this new family arrangement of ours looked like, so maybe nothing would feel like home until we got used to the fact that things had changed, that they were different now.

  “He has a point, El,” my dad said, smiling at my mom. “She’s not actually going to be driving alone. Our capable youngest son will be with her.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” my mom said, shaking her head at him.

  “And I drove myself last year,” Mike said, sounding exasperated—but not actually exasperated, more like he was enjoying being fake exasperated around my mom.

  “But you’re a much better driver than Charlie,” my mom said to him in a fake whisper.

  “Hey!” I said, and my mom and Mike both laughed. I still wasn’t quite used to it—Mike and my mom, getting along. They weren’t back to where they’d been before, but the incremental progress they’d been making nonetheless felt major.

  I dropped my purse onto the driver’s seat and straightened up. It was a gorgeous morning—the sun shining down onto the driveway, the sound of birdsong in the trees, the leaves not even beginning to think about turning yet. “You sure you don’t miss this?” I asked my mom as I gestured around. “I mean, trees . . . birds . . . nature?”

  “I have nature,” my mom said, shaking her head at me. “In case you’ve forgotten, I live near a gigantic park. And we have all three of those things.”

  I caught my dad’s eye, and he shook his head. Doesn’t count, he mouthed to me, and I smiled.

  My mom, to our collective surprise, had moved to New York City and had gotten an apartment that absolutely did not have enough bedrooms for all of us. But Danny was already looking into hotels and apartment-sharing sites so that when we were all in town again, we could stay there, in the city, together. She hadn’t let herself enjoy retirement very long—when I was staying with her the week before, she’d told me one morning, at what was quickly becoming my favorite diner on the Upper West Side, that she was playing around with a new comic strip, about a woman starting over after a divorce. But she’d promised me—and then all of us—that the protagonist of her new strip would be fictional. And that she would have no children.

  My things that weren’t coming with me to college had been split between my parents’ places—but due to her lack of space, more of it had ended up at my dad’s, and that’s why Mike and I were both leaving from here. Well, that and the fact that we could park a car here, and it was the car we’d be sharing at school.

  I’d decided, after everything, to go to Northwestern, where I would get to study journalism in one of the best schools in the country. It was a three-hour plane ride from the East Coast, which seemed like the right amount of time and distance. And with my parents in two different places and my siblings all over the country, I liked the idea of being closer to at least one brother. And since it was the brother I actually knew the least, I figured we could use some time to fix that. Siobhan was thrilled, since we’d only be four hours away from each other. She’d already mapped out the route from Ann Arbor to Evanston and was planning a road trip to come to me in just a few weeks.

  Mike and I didn’t have to be on campus until next week, so we were using the drive to Chicago to go on what J.J. had dubbed the Sibling Tour. We weren’t taking the direct path there—tonight we were heading up to visit Linnie and Rodney (and Waffles) in Boston, and then we were meeting J.J. in Pittsburgh. We were going to a Pirates game, and just this morning, he’d e-mailed to tell me that he’d paid off the scoreboard programmer so that at the game, it would read GOOD LUCK AT COLLEGE, CHARLIE. Then, a few minutes later, he wrote me again and told me to delete all our correspondence about this so he could disavow any knowledge of it when people started asking questions.

  And then Danny was going to meet us in Chicago, which Mike and I were both relieved about, since we didn’t have time to drive to California and then back again. Danny seemed basically the same—he was dating someone new, and he assured us all that she was great. But things had shifted between us, subtly, over the summer. I would call him out on things, more often than not, when I disagreed with him or what he was doing. And to my surprise, he
handled it well, even occasionally taking my advice. It felt as though we were more like equals now and, in a weird way, getting to know each other for the first time.

  But I hadn’t seen him in a month and was looking forward to seeing him in Chicago, as the best way to cap off the sibling tour. I was a little bit sad that we were doing it this way, as opposed to all of us being in the same house, together. But this was what life looked like now, and maybe that was okay.

  I did miss us—I missed all seven (eight with Rodney) of us in the same house, with all our systems and traditions and jokes firmly in place. But I was trying to accept that this was just a new thing. Just like Linnie and Rodney had formed their own family, we were all learning what this new version of us would look like. And I knew it was going to be hard—especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But I had a feeling—at least, I hoped—that we would find our way through it. It wouldn’t be Grant Central Station anymore, with four panels and reassuring humor, things always working out for the best in a tidy way. But maybe that was actually a good thing.

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I pulled it out and looked at it.

  Bill

  How’s the trip going? Hit the road yet?

  I smiled at that, then put my phone back in my pocket, planning to respond when my family wouldn’t be watching. It hadn’t played a part in my decision making, but the fact that Bill would only be twenty minutes away was definitely an added bonus. To my surprise, we’d stayed in contact after the wedding, and even though I hadn’t seen him, we’d been talking—either texting or e-mailing or having hours-long phone calls—all summer. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was going to happen with us. I was hoping something might. But at the very least, I was glad to have a friend in the Chicago area.

  “So,” Mike said, looking down at his phone, then back at me. “We should probably hit the road. We told Linnie and Rodney we’d be there before dinner.”

  I nodded, realizing that he was right. The car was packed and I had the directions programmed into my phone—now the only thing to do was go.

  “We’ll see you at homecoming?” Mike asked my dad as they hugged, and my dad patted him on the shoulder. “And you said you were coming at the end of October?” he asked my mom.

  I tried to smile as my mom nodded, but this—the fact that there wasn’t just one plan anymore, one way where I would get to see both my parents at the same time—I definitely wasn’t used to yet. Bill had told me that it would just take time, and I was trying to believe him.

  “Call me when you guys get to Linnie’s,” my mom said, hugging Mike. “And drive safe,” she called after him. He nodded as he headed for the passenger seat, and I realized that he was giving me a moment to do my good-byes with my parents alone.

  I turned to them and immediately felt a lump rise in my throat. I tried to tell myself I was being ridiculous, that people left for college all the time, and I’d be seeing my dad in a few weeks.

  “Learn lots of stuff,” my dad said, and I noticed his voice sounded a little hoarse. “But also remember to have a good time.”

  “But not too good a time,” my mother cautioned. “Don’t stop going to classes like that semester J.J. decided he was on strike.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I assured them. My dad gave me a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes, then pulled me into a hug.

  “Proud of you, kiddo,” he whispered to me, and I brushed away a tear that had fallen as I stepped away.

  “Call me at least once a week,” my mother said as I hugged her, trying for stern but not really pulling it off. “Have fun,” she said to me as she stepped away, giving my hand a squeeze. “Have the most amazing adventure.”

  I nodded, brushing my hand over my face as I tried to pull myself together. “I’ll do my best,” I said, and my dad smiled. “And . . .” I took a breath, not even knowing how to put this into words. How was it that you only fully realized what you had when it was gone? And I knew there would be new friends, new experiences, maybe even amazing adventures ahead of me. But I felt like I needed, for just a moment, to appreciate what I was—what we all were—leaving behind. “Thank you, guys. For everything. For . . .” I shook my head, not able to find the words for what we’d all had together. “Thanks,” I finally finished, and my parents both nodded—and it looked like they understood what I’d been trying to say.

  I smiled at them both, then made myself turn and walk toward the car. I got into the driver’s seat, and Mike looked over at me. “You okay?”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. “I am.” I started the car and was about to drive forward, when I turned around and looked through the back window to see my parents standing there, closer than I would have expected, watching us go. I lifted my hand and waved, and they waved back.

  Then I turned around and looked at what was in front of me. I took a deep breath, shifted the car out of park, and drove forward.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © GINA STOCK

  MORGAN MATSON is a New York Times bestselling author of The Unexpected Everything, Since You’ve Been Gone, Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour, and Second Chance Summer, which was the winner of the California State Book Award. She received her MFA in writing for children from the New School. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her at MorganMatson.com.

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster, New York

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  ALSO BY MORGAN MATSON

  Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

  Second Chance Summer

  Since You’ve Been Gone

  The Unexpected Everything

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Morgan Matson

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2018 by Meredith Jenks

  Reverse-side jacket and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Eric Sailer

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Book design by Lucy Ruth Cummins

  The illustrations for this book were rendered in ink.

  Jacket photographs copyright © 2018 by Meredith Jenks

  Inside jacket cartoon illustration copyright © 2018 by Eric Sailer

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Matson, Morgan, author.

  Title: Save the date / Morgan Matson.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Summary: When seventeen-year-old Charlie Grant’s four older siblings reunite for a wedding, she is determined they will have a perfect weekend before the family home is sold, but last-minute disasters abound.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017047401 (print) | LCCN 2017058854 (eBook) |

  ISBN 9781481404570 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481404594 (eBook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Weddings—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. |

  Family life—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M43151 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.M43151 Sav 2018 (print) |

  DDC [Fic]—dc23
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  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047401