He nodded, but still waited a beat, as if I might change my mind, before returning to the group. Meanwhile, I slipped into the back office, where I reached into my pocket, pulling out the two passes I’d picked up for the ceremony. You were allowed up to six, but it wasn’t like I needed any more. I slid them into my mom’s purse, which was sitting on her side of the big desk they shared, then went back out into the main room.
“...were supposed to meet me a half hour ago,” Bee was saying to her brother Ambrose, who had joined the group in my brief absence. Dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved blue button-down shirt, and tennis shoes, he looked freshly showered, as if just beginning his day at this late hour. Maybe thiswas why his sister, usually so pleasant, seemed annoyed. “It’s no wonder you can’t get a job if you’re incapable of getting places on time.”
“My watch is broken,” he said. “And then I had to get here, so...”
Bee’s cheeks were flushed. “You have aphone, Ambrose. And there are clocks!”
An awkward silence settled over the room, during which he spotted me and smiled, waving energetically, as if we were longtime friends finally reunited. His complete lack of caring for the trouble he’d caused would have been impressive if it didn’t seem so demented. I was still deciding how to react when my mom said, “So, Louna. How does it feel to be almost free from the compulsory education system?”
Now everyone looked at me. Even when I wasn’t working, I was working. “I won’t believe it until I flip my tassel,” I replied.
“Louna’s graduating tonight,” William explained to Bee. “High school.”
“Really?” She smiled at me. Beside her, Ambrose noticed William’s fancy stainless-steel tape dispenser—we were both suckers for office supplies—and pulled it toward him. “Congratulations!” Bee said. “What a milestone. I remember every minute of my commencement.”
“Me, too,” Ambrose said. I noticed that his hair, although damp, was in full effect, that one curl pushed away from his face but about to tumble down again.
“You didn’t graduate,” his sister pointed out. To us she added, “It was one of thoseleave-quietly-and-we-won’t-expel-you kind of situations. Classic Ambrose.”
“I was talking aboutyours,” he said, pushing the button on the dispenser. It whirred, spitting out a single piece of tape. “And it was never proven that I brought the cow in, if you’ll recall.”
My mother raised that one eyebrow. “Cow?”
“So what are you doing next year, Louna?” Bee said quickly, turning her attention back to me. Whatever had happened with farm animals, she didn’t want to dwell on it.
“I’m going to Rice-Johnson,” I replied.
“It’s a private liberal arts college, her first choice,andshe got a partial scholarship,” William added proudly.
“That’s great,” Bee told me, as Ambrose hit the switch again. Then again. Two pieces of tape popped out and he grabbed them, sticking them to his thumbs. “I went to Defriese. Majored in public policy. Ilovedcollege.”
“It’s just so hard to believe,” William told her. “I feel like she just started kindergarten. Time justflies.”
Oh, dear,I thought, hearing his voice grow tight as he finished this sentence.
“William, pace yourself,” my mom, also noticing, advised. “We’ve still got the whole night ahead of us.”
He nodded, even as he took out a folded tissue, dabbing at his eyes. If my mom and William were one person—and it often felt like they were, to me—she’d always been the head and he the heart. Sure, they were equally cynical when it came to their business and the main concept that underscored it. But if she could joke or reason away anything that made her feel, it was often because William took it to hearttwice as hard. This was especially true when it came to me. First day of kindergarten, first sleepover, first time my heart was broken; it was William who sympathy cried or clung to my hand just a beat too long before I walked out the door. And thank God for it. I loved my mom, but with just her I might have never known what compassion looked like.
“Speaking of later plans, we need to move this along,” he said now, looking at the notebook open in front of him. “To recap, we’ve touched on the latest with the venue and catering, and I’ll reach out to these top three of the five ideals for the rehearsal dinner to check on availability. Are the guest numbers still pretty firm for that?”
Bee, in pearl earrings with her hair pulled back in a daisy-patterned headband, flipped open the cover of her tablet and swiped through a few screens. Beside her, Ambrose picked up the dispenser and turned it upside down, examining its base. “Seventy-eight with wedding party and all out-of-town family.”
“And you have sent invitations?” my mom asked.
“Four weeks ago,” Bee replied, sitting up straighter. It was obvious she sensed my mom’s apprehension about this event and was eager to please her. “So far we’re at two hundred RSVPs, with a final estimate of two hundred fifty.”
My mom glanced at William, who gave her a smug look. Big weddings meant big money and, with Bee’s fiancé, Kevin Yu, from a family that owned a big pharmaceutical company, big attention. Personally, I wanted to know if she planned to change her name, switching from Bee Little to Bee Yu, buthad not found a way to work this into a meeting. Yet.
“You really think any place that you’d want to use can handle a party of seventy-eight on a Friday night only nine weeks out?” my mom asked, as Ambrose, apparently still fascinated by the dispenser, put it back on the table and pushed its button several times in a row:click,click,click.
“If there’s a possibility of a magazine spread, yes,” William replied, over the sound of the machine whirring, discharging tape pieces.
“You can’t make room where there isn’t any.”
“There’s always a way.”
In the midst of all of this, the machine started making a grinding noise. Then, a long squeak. We all looked at Ambrose, who reached out and hit the button again.
