“I don’t care,” Cookie said, then turned to Oliver. “What movie would you like to watch?”
Izzy had not figured on her cousin joining them. He’d probably want to watch something childish, like one of the Lego movies. “I thought we’d watch up in my room,” she said. “We can stream it on the computer.”
“There’s more space down here in the living room, and the TV is bigger,” Pauline said. “Unless Oliver wants to watch up in his room. Which room is yours, Oliver?”
Oliver seemed as surprised as Izzy that her friends were being so nice to him. “I have the little bedroom. But sometimes I sleep in my dad’s room. To keep him company.”
“What a good kid you are!” Pauline said. Then she and Cookie exchanged sad-eyed looks, which Izzy found incredibly aggravating. Did they really think that helped anything? In Izzy’s opinion, it probably just made the kid feel worse. She knew it would make her feel worse.
But surprisingly, Cookie and Pauline did not seem to be having that effect on Oliver. He actually smiled at Pauline. “We could watch an Indiana Jones movie if you want. Raiders of the Lost Ark? I brought it with me.”
No, no, no! Izzy had been wanting to watch the new Ghostbusters with Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon.
“Great idea, Oliver!” Cookie said. “I haven’t watched Indiana Jones in ages.”
Pauline and Cookie polished off several slices of pizza while they recounted their favorite scenes from the movie.
“Oh my God, that snake scene is so scary,” Pauline said, wriggling in her seat.
“Most of the snakes weren’t poisonous,” Oliver said.
“Does Indy get bitten by a snake?” Cookie asked. “I can’t remember.”
Oliver shook his head. “Nah. But one of the crew members really did get bitten by a python while they were making that scene.”
“Really!” Cookie and Pauline said together, their eyes wide.
Who cared about the stupid snake scene? Were they going to spend the whole evening hanging out with her cousin? That’s all she’d done for the past three weeks! She’d been looking forward to her friends’ return so things would get back to normal again, and now Oliver was wrecking that too.
Finally Izzy interrupted the Indiana Jones conversation. “Cookie, you were starting to tell us before about that guy at your camp.” Not that Izzy really wanted to hear Cookie brag about some boy who’d probably fallen in love with her hair, but at least it was a subject Oliver wouldn’t be interested in. Maybe he’d get bored and leave them alone.
Cookie only hesitated for a second. “Oh my God, you would not believe how cute Tyler is. Wait! I’ve got a picture!” She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped around on it. Which was annoying because, of the three of them, Izzy was the only one who didn’t yet have her own cell phone. Her mother thought twelve (and a half!) was too young to begin an addiction to electronics. Like a smartphone was marijuana or something.
Cookie handed the phone to Izzy. There was a picture of a kid with brown hair and a big nose. What, Izzy wondered, made this ordinary boy seem so special to her friend? Izzy thought his crooked smile made him look untrustworthy, but she knew what her response was supposed to be. “Cute,” she said, and handed the phone to Pauline.
“We got together the fifth week we were there,” Cookie said. “At first he was going out with this girl, Amanda, but then one day during free swim at the lake he was sort of flirting with me, and Amanda got mad, so she stopped speaking to him, and to me too, of course, but I didn’t care because it was like suddenly I was going out with Tyler. I mean, we didn’t actually say that, but…”
“But what?” Pauline hung on every word that tumbled out of Cookie’s mouth.
Cookie glanced at Oliver. “Well, you know. He kissed me.”
Pauline sighed. “Really? What was it like?”
Izzy wrinkled up her nose. She couldn’t help it. The idea of swapping spit with some sweaty boy just didn’t appeal to her, and she couldn’t imagine it ever would.
“What are you making that face for?” Cookie asked her.
“I don’t think we should be talking about kissing in front of Oliver,” Izzy said. “He’s a little kid.”
Oliver kicked her under the table. “I’m only two years younger than you, Izzy. I know about kissing.”
“Two and a half,” Izzy corrected him. “And I doubt you know very much about it.”
“I’m not giving him details,” Cookie said. “It was just…very nice. We kissed a few times. But then I heard he kissed another girl too. Liz Baker.”
“Jeez, is that all anybody does at that camp? Kiss everybody?” Izzy decided she was never going to camp, ever.
“No, we did lots of stuff. Swimming and archery and hiking. We put on a play and rode horses. It was a lot more fun than walking around downtown Coolidge all summer or swimming in that muddy river.”
“I like the river,” Izzy said, though in fact she’d only gone swimming there once all summer. She thought she might actually like to go to a camp where you rode horses, but she knew that ever since her dad had left, there was no extra money for things like that, so there was no point wishing. If she asked about it, she’d probably get the lecture again about how they were a one-income family now, and then her mom would start in on how the house needed a new roof, and did Izzy have any idea how much that cost. No, she didn’t. How the heck was she supposed to know about stuff like that?
Pauline was impatient to get back to the subject at hand. “So, did you break up with him? When he kissed that other girl?”
“Well, I was really mad, of course, but he apologized for it. I’m not sure if we’re still going together or not. He said he’d email me, but then I heard he told Liz that too.”
Just as Izzy suspected: untrustworthy. And yet Cookie didn’t seem that upset about it. In fact, telling the story had her so excited, she bounced in her chair.
“Your summer was a lot better than mine,” Pauline said.
“Didn’t you meet any cute boys in London?” Cookie asked.
“There was one boy who lived in the same building we did, but I was too nervous to talk to him.”
“Oh, Pauline!” Cookie said sympathetically.
“Are you kidding?” Izzy said. “You got to spend the whole summer in London, and you’re bummed because you didn’t talk to some stupid boy? Didn’t you walk around the city and see cool stuff? You told me you were going on that big Ferris wheel thing.”
“The London Eye. Of course we did, but I was with my parents the whole time. What fun is that?”
More fun than playing Boggle with your nerdy, freaked-out cousin.
“Did you go into Boston this summer, like last year?” Cookie asked Izzy.
“Just for a few days right after school got out,” she said. “Dad was pretty busy.” She could have stayed longer, but she didn’t want to. The summer before, she’d stayed for a month, and it had been awful. She’d hardly spent any time with her father—just that one Saturday when his girlfriend, Emily, was busy with something or other, and Izzy had suggested to her dad that they watch some DVDs of old Saturday Night Live shows together. That had been an excellent day, almost like old times. But most of the month, she’d had to hang out with Emily and help her get ready to become Wife Number Two. She’d accompanied the constantly babbling woman to look at flowers and wedding cakes and bridesmaids’ dresses, one of which Izzy had been forced to wear for the big event last Christmas.
Izzy was uncomfortable around her father now that he was all lovey-dovey with Emily. It seemed like he’d erased her mother from his memory, as if she’d never existed. And if her mother never existed, where did Izzy fit into the picture? It was as if her dad and Emily—whose last name was now Shepherd too—were riding a tandem bike, and Izzy was dragging along behind them on a tricycle. She couldn’t keep up, and after a while she didn’t even want to. Izzy hoped that someday, maybe when her stand-up routine was perfected, he’d pay attention to her again.
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“I just had a great idea!” Pauline said. “My dad is going into Boston for a meeting at UMass on Friday morning, and he’s staying overnight at a hotel. If we went in with him, we could sleep over at your dad’s and go school shopping on Newbury Street!”
“Can we, Izzy?” Cookie asked. “I need some new stuff, and I can never find anything in downtown Coolidge.”
Really? They wanted to go all the way to Boston just to shop? Sometimes Izzy hardly recognized Cookie and Pauline as the same girls she’d been giggling with since kindergarten.
“My dad might be busy or something,” Izzy said, stalling for time. If they all went in, it would probably be obvious to her friends that her dad didn’t care about her anymore. How embarrassing would that be? On the other hand, Izzy had felt Pauline and Cookie pulling away from her even before they left town for the summer. It felt as if they were outgrowing her or something. Like they were getting older while she was still the same little kid she’d always been. If she wanted to keep her friends, she figured she’d have to at least pretend to grow with them. If that meant staying in Boston overnight with her dad and Emily and traipsing in and out of clothing stores, she supposed she could do it.
“Can you call him and ask?” Cookie said. “It would be so much fun!”
Izzy nodded. “Okay. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“What should I do while you’re gone?” Oliver had been sitting there so quietly, Izzy had almost forgotten about him.
“It’s only overnight,” she said. God, couldn’t she get away from the kid for one day without him trying to make her feel guilty about it?
“Maybe you could come too,” Cookie said.
“No!” Izzy hadn’t meant to say it so loudly, but really? Couldn’t she have one day off? “I mean, my dad’s place is not that big. And anyway, your dad would miss you,” she told Oliver. Actually, she wasn’t sure that Uncle Henderson would even notice he was gone.
But Oliver nodded. “That’s true. I should stay here with Dad.”
Once again Pauline and Cookie pulled long faces.
“Let’s watch the movie now,” Oliver said.
Since they were being so cruel as to plan to leave him behind for twenty-four hours, there was obviously no question about who was watching what movie with whom. Izzy let them start Raiders of the Lost Ark without her while she cleaned up the table. By the time she came into the living room, the three of them were stretched out on the carpet, Oliver nestled snugly between the two girls who’d been Izzy’s best friends her whole life.
She plunked herself down right next to Pauline, as close as possible to the huddle of bodies on the floor. Pauline leaned into her gently, a kind of welcome. Nothing else was going to change, if Izzy had anything to say about it.
Pauline sat in the front seat, next to her father, as they headed into Boston, but she stayed turned around, straining against the seat belt, for most of the two-hour drive. “I’ve got my mom’s debit card, but she’ll kill me if I go over a hundred and fifty dollars,” she said.
“I’ll kill you if you go over fifty,” Mr. Wong said. “You already have too many clothes.”
But they all knew Mr. Wong was just teasing her. He was generous with both his daughters, even if he pretended otherwise. Meanwhile Izzy’s mother had given her fifty dollars and made her promise she’d only buy sneakers with the money. “See if you can get your dad to kick in a few bucks too,” she’d suggested. But Izzy didn’t like asking her father for money. Maybe he’d give her some, but in case he didn’t she’d stuffed twenty dollars of birthday money into her purse to beef up her mother’s offering.
As the SUV cruised into Back Bay, Izzy felt a headache creeping up her stiff neck and advancing over her skull. The other two girls stared out the window at Beacon Street, where Izzy’s father and Emily lived. You could hardly find a prettier street in the city, but to Izzy the stately brownstones—one butting right up against the next, each fronted by a tiny, well-tended yard—seemed dark and claustrophobic.
She wondered if she’d have the nerve to show her dad the comedy routine she’d been working on. Maybe if she had a chance to get him alone, but how likely was that?
You know, they call Boston the home of the bean and the cod, but is that really a selling point? Beans and fish? Personally, I’d rather live in the home of the pizza and the ice cream pie. You couldn’t really tell if it was funny until you said it out loud a few times. How would Ellen DeGeneres say it? Maybe it was funnier if you stayed with the idea of a vegetable and a fish. The home of the eggplant and the tuna fish. Ugh, no.
“So, what’s your stepmother like?” Cookie asked Izzy.
Her what? Oh, right. “Emily’s okay. She talks a lot.”
“She’s a high-school teacher, right?”
Izzy nodded. “She teaches drama and directs the plays.”
“What does she look like?” Pauline wanted to know.
“I don’t know. You’ll see. Pretty, I guess. Young.”
“How young?”
Izzy sighed. “Ten years younger than my dad. Or maybe twelve—I forget. She was a graduate student when he met her.”
Izzy’s father had been a teacher at Shelburne College in Coolidge, where her mother worked as a nurse, but after their divorce he’d jumped at the chance to become director of graduate admissions at Emerson College in Boston. And Emily had been one of the students he admitted, in more ways than one.
“I don’t think I’m going to find a parking place near your dad’s house,” Mr. Wong said. “Is it okay if I drop you girls off?”
“That’s fine,” Izzy said. “Dad said he and Emily would both be home this morning.” Which was odd—Friday was a workday for her father, and changing his routine for anything but an emergency was not like him. It made Izzy nervous.
The three girls jumped out of the double-parked car, grabbing duffels and backpacks. They climbed the wide front stairs of the old building, which had been divided into condos. Izzy rang the doorbell for her father’s apartment, and they were buzzed inside.
Izzy’s friends didn’t come into the city often, and they were jumpy with excitement. “I’m definitely living in a city when I grow up,” Cookie said. “This is so much cooler than a plain old house in Coolidge.”
Izzy didn’t agree, but she led them into the elevator and punched the button for the third floor. Personally, I’m not that in love with beans and fish, Izzy repeated to herself, practicing saying it the way Ellen would, or Jerry. Besides, what’s the big deal about being the home of a vegetable and a fish? When the elevator doors opened, her father was waiting for them, Emily peering from behind him. The two of them were grinning that same shaky, unreliable smile Izzy had recognized in Cookie’s photo of her camp boyfriend. Yup, something was definitely up.
“Ladies!” her father boomed. “Come right in.” He usually at least gave Izzy a quick hug, but today he ushered them all through the door and into the apartment. After giving them a slight bow as if they were a group of visiting dignitaries, he shooed them down the hall to the guest room. Emily walked ahead of them and disappeared around the corner.
“Put your bags in here and meet us in the kitchen,” Izzy’s father said. “Emily made hot chocolate and muffins to sustain you for your shopping trip.”
“Gluten free,” Emily called from the kitchen. “I hope that’s okay.”
They dropped their bags on the floor, and Cookie bent her head toward Izzy. “I forgot how nice your dad is. It was sweet of Emily to make us a snack.”
Izzy was on high alert and didn’t respond. The three of them walked down the hall and into the airy, remodeled kitchen and climbed onto stools at the counter. Looking out the tall windows, Izzy noticed unhappily that some of the leaves on the magnolia tree in the front yard were beginning to turn yellow.
With her back to them, Emily poured the hot chocolate into three mugs. And then, the minute she turned around with the plate of muffins in her hands, Izzy understood. The answer to the day?
??s puzzle; the reason everything seemed wrong. So much for telling jokes—there was nothing to laugh about now. Izzy looked up into Emily’s eyes, and Emily nodded.
“So, we have some news for you, Izzy,” her father said.
“She guessed. Didn’t you, Izzy?” Emily said, putting a hand protectively on her swollen belly. Cookie and Pauline took in loud, excited breaths.
“You’re having a baby,” Izzy said. It wasn’t a question. She just wanted to state the fact out loud, to hear what it sounded like.
“We certainly are,” her dad said proudly, as if the news hadn’t hit Izzy like a punch in the nose. He put an arm around Emily’s waist. “Early January. We’re starting the new year with a bang!”
“You’ll have a baby brother,” Emily said. “Isn’t that amazing?” She kept rubbing her stomach as if reassuring the baby that everything would be okay, that this so-called sister of his was not actually a hateful creep who’d drop him on his head first chance she got.
“Oh my God!” Cookie said. “That’s so cool!”
“Izzy, you always said you didn’t like being an only child,” Pauline reminded her. “Now you won’t be!”
No, Izzy thought, the new baby would be the only child. Izzy would be nothing. She was practically nothing already. Her father almost never came to Coolidge to see her anymore, and when he called, he could never talk for more than a few minutes. Now that he and Emily were going to have their own little family, Izzy would probably never see him again. Maybe this would be the last time.
She bit the inside of her cheek and concentrated on the pain so she wouldn’t cry.
Meanwhile, Emily chattered to Cookie and Pauline about how hard it was to find maternity clothes that didn’t make her look like a hippo.
What did she expect? thought Izzy. “All pregnant women look fat.” The words were out of her mouth before she thought them through.
“Isabelle!” Her father looked at her as though she had horns and a tail.
Emily just laughed. It annoyed Izzy how hard it was to make her mad. “You’re right, Izzy. I might as well stop complaining and get used to it. I’ve got about four months to go, and I’m only going to get bigger.”