“I’m not so sure about this friend of yours,” Lauren said quietly. “He has questionable taste.”
“Hey! I picked out the boots!” Christopher pointed out.
“You heard that?” Lauren demanded.
Crap. Did that mean he’d also heard the “more than friend” comment?
“Lauren, I can’t go to dinner tonight. You have to cover for me.”
Lauren was so shocked she almost drove off the road. “Wait a minute, what? Did we just drive through some sort of wormhole? Tess wants me to cover for her?”
“Oh my God! Can we not make a big deal out of this?” I demanded, glancing back at Christopher.
“It’s actually fine,” he assured me. “Sinatra and Pasta is at, like, six p.m. The karaoke party doesn’t start until nine. You can do both.”
“The karaoke party? That’s what you want me to cover for?” Lauren was clearly thrown. “But you don’t sing.”
“I do now,” I said, determined. Up ahead, the sign for Evergreen Lodge, shaped like—what else—a forest of evergreen trees, loomed. “Tonight, I wear heels and sing karaoke.”
Lauren took the turn so fast, the van’s tires squealed. “Oh yeah. Definitely a wormhole,” she said.
It was the longest afternoon of my life. Loretta insisted that we sit down for lunch with her, and then spent the entire meal grilling us about school and grades and friends and “significant others” until I felt like I’d been turned inside out. Lauren seemed to be taking it even worse, what with the third degree about this “ill-advised year off” she was planning to take. Loretta told her that if she insisted on backpacking through Europe, Loretta could at least provide her with a list of hotels where she could pick up “respectable” jobs along the way and “do something useful with her time.”
“I have a lot of friends in this business,” Loretta told her, touching her napkin to her lips, which were somehow still perfectly outlined and lipsticked. “We boutique hotel owners like to support one another.”
“Oh, Dad already gave me a list of contacts at all the Galileo hotels, just in case,” Lauren said with a confident smile. We both looked at Loretta, sure that this would appease her. But Loretta, instead, went very still.
One thing no one in my family ever talked about was the fact that my father had left Evergreen Lodge behind for a prestigious job at the international Galileo hotel chain. In his position as legal counsel for Galileo, he got to travel all over the world, which he never would have been able to do working for Loretta. But sometimes, like right then, it was pretty clear that Loretta wasn’t happy about it. Me and my mom; Dad and Loretta. Our relationships were definitely complicated.
“Fine,” Loretta said finally. “That’s that, then.”
Lauren and I exchanged a look, unsure of what to do next.
And then Loretta recovered and launched into all the ways that Lauren could get lost or assaulted or murdered and told her that she’d better pack pepper spray. By the end of the lecture, Lauren was holding a fork like a shiv and looked like she wouldn’t mind committing murder. Or maybe stabbing herself in the ear so she wouldn’t have to hear any more.
Mercifully, once we were done eating, Loretta let us go. She had meetings all afternoon and told us we could have some time to ourselves, provided we meet her for the Sinatra and Pasta dinner at 6 p.m. sharp. Lauren shot out of her chair like it was equipped with an ejector seat, and I went right back to our room to practice walking around in my new boots.
That had lasted all of about ten minutes. Then I’d opened up my laptop to look up the details of the Adam Michel signing in town on New Year’s Eve. I had heard about Adam’s autobiography ages ago on his Instagram, but hadn’t realized it was coming out this month. What were the chances that my favorite singer of all time was signing his book at the rinky-dink bookstore in Nowheresville, Vermont, on the exact week that I was here? It was like fate, and I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by.
The signing started at noon, but there was no end time listed. People were probably going to be lining up for hours beforehand, but how many books would he sign? How long would he stay to meet and greet his fans? I couldn’t imagine there were thousands of Adam Michel fans hanging out in Evergreen right now, but what did I know? Maybe people had traveled here for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Maybe there were people staying at this very hotel whose only purpose for being here was meeting Adam Michel. If I was going to check this one off my list, I’d have to get there early.
And I was totally going to have to plan out what to say beforehand, so that I wouldn’t just turn into an incoherent puddle of goo.
Once I’d made a note of the details on the bookstore website and closed my laptop, I was instantly bored. I had nothing to do. I could have read some more of Sense and Sensibility, of course, but there was no way I’d be able to concentrate right now. In just a few hours, I was going to be singing in front of dozens of people. In heels. And I hadn’t even picked out a song.
Would it be dozens of people? What if it was hundreds? What if the entire resort came to this thing? And people from town? And people from other towns? What if all the Adam Michel fans staying at the lodge showed up? How popular was this karaoke thing, anyway?
I looked around the room, my nerves forming a tangled web in my stomach. I had to find something to do. I couldn’t just sit around here all afternoon and freak myself out.
I located the remote under a pile of Lauren’s clothes and turned on the TV, but a quick flip through the hundred or so channels revealed there was nothing on worth watching. There was always streaming, but I couldn’t think of a single show I was dying to see. Grunting in frustration, I turned off the TV again and tossed the remote on my bed. The silence was deafening. I glanced at the clock. Only a half hour had passed since I’d escaped from that awful lunch.
“What the hell am I supposed to do for the next three hours?” I said aloud.
I knew I should decide on a song to sing. Maybe…practice? The very idea tied my chest in knots and made me feel silly. Suddenly the room felt way too small. I grabbed my phone and walked out into the empty hallway, my heart pounding so erratically it was like a wild thing with a mind of its own. Leaning back against the wall in the cool hallway, I texted Christopher.
Where are you?
In my room. What’s up?
What room#?
115
Can I come down?
Sure. Everything OK?
I think I’m having a heart attack.
Come now