In Lakeview, the house had a basketball goal. I was going to be Liz Sweet.
The last time I remembered looking at the clock, it was 2:15. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, the room was barely light, and someone was knocking at my door.
I sat up, startled, and waited that moment until I remembered where I was. Then I pushed some pictures aside, sliding off the bed, and walked over to the door, pulling it open, so ready to see Dave’s face.
But it wasn’t him. It was my mom, and my dad was right beside her. They looked at me, then at the room behind me, their faces as tired as my own. “Oh, Mclean,” my mom said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Thank God. There you are.”
There you are.Like I’d been lost and now found. She opened her mouth to say something else, and my dad was suddenly talking, too, but for me it was just too much, in that moment, to even hear what came next. I just stepped forward, and then their arms were around me.
I was crying as my mom held me and my dad led us into the room and to the bed, easing the door shut behind us. My mom pushed aside those pictures, my dad the notebooks, as I lay down, curling myself into her lap and closing my eyes. I was so, so tired, and as she stroked my hair, I could hear them still talking, voices low. A moment later, there was another sound, too, distant but as recognizable as the waves outside. That of pages turning, one after another, a story finally being told.
Sixteen
“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. You didn’t need me.”
Deb turned around. When she saw me, her face broke into a wide smile. “Mclean! Hi! You’re back!”
I nodded, biting back a laugh as she ran toward me, her sock-feet padding across the floor. Partially, this was for her exuberant reaction, but also for the words, newly posted in my absence, on a poster on the wall behind her. NO SHOES! it read. NO SWEARING! NO, REALLY.
“I like your sign,” I told her as she gave me a hug.
“Honestly, I tried to do without the visual,” she said, glancing at it. “But there were scuff marks all over the streets! And the closer we get to the deadline, the more tempers are flaring. I mean, this is a civic activity. We need to keep it clean, both literally and figuratively.”
“It looks great.” It was true. There were still a few blank spots along the edge of the model, and I could tell the landscaping and smaller details hadn’t been put on yet, but for the first time, it looked complete, with buildings spread across the entire surface and no huge gaps left unfilled. “You guys must have been here every day, all day.”
“Pretty much.” She put her hands on her hips, surveying it along with me. “We kind of had to be, sinces, surveyideadline changed and everything.”
“Changed?” I said.
“Well, because of the restaurant closing,” she replied, bending down to flick a piece of dust off a rooftop. A second later, she glanced up at me. “Oh, God, you did know, right? About the restaurant? Because I totally thought, because of your dad—”
“I knew,” I told her. “It’s okay.”
She exhaled, clearly relieved, and bent back down, adjusting a building a bit. “I mean, May first was always ambitious, if I’m to be totally honest. I tried to act all positive, but secretly, I had my doubts. And then Opal comes up here last weekend and says we have to be all done and out, somehow, by the second week ofApril, because the building’s being sold. I about passed out I was so unnerved. I had to go count.”
I blinked, not sure I’d heard her right as she moved down the model, carefully wiping her finger along an intersection. “Count? ”
“To ten,” she explained, standing back up. “It’s what I do instead of panicking. Ideally. Although sometimes I have to go to twenty or even fifty to really get calmed down.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Andthen,” she said, taking another step before crouching to adjust a church steeple, “we lost Dave, which was a huge deal, especially since you were already gone. I had to go countandbreathe for that one.”
“What?” I said.
“Breathe,” she explained. “You know, big inhales, big exhales, visualizing stress going with it—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Dave. What do you mean, you lost him?”
“Because of the whole grounding thing,” she said. When I just stood there, confused, she looked up at me. “With his parents. You knew about that, right?”
I shook my head. The truth was, I’d felt so embarrassed about calling him, especially since he never showed up, that I’d not ever tried to contact him, even though I knew I should. “What ... what happened?”
“Well, I haven’t heard all the gory details,” she replied, standing back up and stretching out her back. “All I know is they caught him sneaking out one night last week with the car, there was some big blowup, and he’s basically under house arrest indefinitely.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Oh, and the Austin trip is off. At least, for him.”
