“What?” I said, suddenly exhausted.
“You don’t want to do any of that, do you?”
He had a genuinely curious look on his face. I tilted my head at him. “Do you want me to get you meat or not?”
“Yeah, I do. The question is, what do you want to do?”
I walked to the next station and started selecting food at random. A few slices of bacon, some sausage, some corned-beef hash.
“Okay. To answer your question, no. I don’t want to do any of the things my grandmother has planned.”
“But you’re going to anyway?”
“Yep.”
Christopher motor-boated his lips and looked off in the direction Loretta had disappeared. “Ya know, maybe your new year’s resolution should be to not always do what’s expected of you. You need to live a little.”
God, this was humiliating. We’d had such a good time last night, and now he was going to leave this conversation thinking I was totally lame. “You sound like my sister,” I said.
“Well. Nobody wants that,” he joked.
I moved to the next station, even though both of the plates I was carrying were so full they couldn’t exactly handle any more food. I was feeling antsy suddenly, and irritated. I turned to face Christopher, and he almost collided with me, saving himself by leaning heavily on his crutches.
“Look, she’s my grandmother. She just wants to spend time with me. Is it wrong to do what she wants me to do? Is that so bad?”
“No, but you’re on vacation, right? You should also do some things you want to do,” he said. “And not just when you’re on vacation. It’s fun to be spontaneous once in a while. To, like, prove people wrong. Like you did with your sister last night.”
“How did I prove my sister wrong last night?” I asked.
“You didn’t go off to your room and act like a loner. You hung out with the coolest guy in the whole lodge.” He spread his arms wide with a proud smile on his face—and almost knocked himself over. Some guy passing by with a glass of orange juice had to reach out to steady him. “Thanks, man,” Christopher said, and blushed.
We looked at each other and laughed.
“Anyway, my point is, maybe your new year’s resolution should be to make next year all about you,” Christopher said.
“That sounds selfish,” I said.
He grabbed a croissant from the buffet and pointed it at me. “Or is it genius?”
* * *
• • •
“It’s such a shame we couldn’t find you anything,” Loretta said to me as we walked out of the third and final boutique on Main Street in downtown Evergreen. The second the biting-cold air hit my face, I felt like curling into a ball under a blanket and staying there for days.
“Loretta! Come on. You took her to all the middle-aged lady boutiques,” Lauren said, then tipped her head back to watch her groaned-out breath steam toward the sky. “We need to take her to the cool stores.”
“What stores are the cool stores?” Loretta asked, tugging on her leather glove. She raised one expertly plucked eyebrow in a way that was so enviable, I wanted to stop everything and beg her to teach me the secret.
“What about Tags?” Lauren said, gesturing down the street toward the bottom of the hill. “Or that new place, what’s it called? I saw it last night….” She tapped her leg with one hand as she thought back. “Sweets and Treats?”
“That sounds like a bakery, not a boutique,” I pointed out.
“Exactly,” Loretta scoffed. “And besides, no granddaughter of mine is wearing anything from that store.”
She started walking up the street, her stride purposeful, making it clear that the two of us were expected to just fall in line. Lauren knocked me with her elbow to get my attention, then whispered, “I totally already went into that store.”
I rolled my eyes, but laughed. We followed our grandmother, keeping a good distance so we could talk.
“Why doesn’t she want us to go there?” I whispered.
“I don’t know, because it’s awesome,” Lauren said. “We could definitely find you something cool for New Year’s Eve there. Do you want to ditch her and go?”
“What? No! We can’t just bail,” I said, eyeing Loretta warily.
“I’m not saying we just turn around and walk away,” Lauren said, leaning in, her long hair brushing my shoulder. “But I could fake sick, and then you could say you have to go home with me to keep me company or something.”
“What if she comes with us?” I asked.
“We’ll insist she go to this stupid dish exhibit. She’s been so looking forward to it.” Lauren grabbed my gloved hands. “Come on! Let’s just do it! Live a little for once! I swear they have really nice stuff there and it’s not all too short or too sexy or whatever. It’s stuff even you’d like!”
I narrowed my eyes. Why did that feel like an insult? I glanced over at Loretta, who had stopped before a crosswalk and was looking at her phone. She didn’t even seem to notice that her granddaughters weren’t right at her sides. Maybe we could do it. Maybe…
“Girls!” Loretta snapped. “Don’t dawdle.”
“Ugh! Dang it,” Lauren blurted out. And we scurried to catch up.
As we crossed the street, a huge banner across the window of the independent bookstore on the other side of Main caught my eye.
MEET POP STAR ADAM MICHEL! DECEMBER 30!
I grabbed my sister’s arm, and she stopped in her tracks. “Oh my God. Oh. My. God!”
She looked where I was looking. “That’s what I was trying to tell you! He’s signing his new book. How crazy is that?”
“Beyond crazy.” My knees were actually shaking. “I could meet Adam Michel. Like, actually talk to him.”
Lauren looked me up and down. “Are you going to pee in your pants?”
I let her go. “Leave me alone. This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She shrugged. “Fair.” And we kept walking. Though I actually felt light-headed. Adam Michel was coming here. For real. The Adam Michel. My Adam Michel. I seriously couldn’t believe it.
The American Arts Museum was in the middle of the next block—a big white building with columns and a huge banner advertising Great American China Collections 1765–Present. Just the sight of it took the excitement right out of me. I felt like I was going to fall asleep looking at the banner. Next to me, Lauren began to cough rather convincingly. How did she get so much phlegm into her throat out of nowhere?