“I’m right here,” he said, shrugging me off with a huff and looking at me with total confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I— I was supposed to pick you up! What do you mean, what am I doing here?”
“Oh!”
I spun around to see a total stranger standing in the doorway. The woman wore a black sleeveless blouse and blue pencil skirt and sparkly blue stud earrings. Her shoulder-length dark hair bounced into curls at the ends, not a flyaway in sight. She looked like she’d come straight out of an office somewhere.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out who this stranger was.
“Elle!” she exclaimed, a broad smile stretching over her face. “We weren’t expecting you!”
I scoffed. Was she serious?
“You weren’t expecting me?” I repeated. “Oh, I’m so sorry for coming here to my house. And who the hell are you?”
I knew exactly who she was, but the whole “we weren’t expecting you” thing was so goddamn rich I didn’t even try to hide my indignation.
She gave a light laugh. “Of course, silly me. I’ve just heard so much about you, I feel like I already know you! I’m Linda. I’m your dad’s—”
“Yeah, I know.”
I kind of didn’t want her to finish that sentence.
“What I don’t know,” I went on, “is what you’re doing here.”
“She picked me up from camp,” Brad said, like it was obvious—which, now that he was pointing it out, I guessed it was. But the why wasn’t so obvious.
I scowled at him. “No. I was meant to pick you up from camp.”
“You’ve just been so busy lately,” Linda said kindly, and oh my God, if she didn’t stop pottering around the kitchen like that, I was going to scream. “Your dad keeps talking about how much you’ve got on your plate right now, so I offered to help out and pick up Brad from camp a couple of days. Didn’t he tell you?”
I thought about the string of messages Dad had sent me yesterday that I’d been too preoccupied to look at and said nothing.
“Speaking of having a lot on your plate, can I fix you one?”
“What?”
“Nachos,” she explained, gesturing at Brad’s plate. “Do you want some?”
“No, Linda. I don’t want nachos.”
She shrugged and carried on cleaning up, running water at the sink.
“I can do the dishes,” I told her.
“It’s no trouble. Besides, I made the mess! I’m so sorry for the confusion about pickup today for Brad. We really didn’t mean to worry you.”
We. No, there was no “we.” The only “we” was me, Brad, and our dad. Not one that included this…this…his…whatever the hell she was.
“I’ve been managing just fine without your help, Linda.”
“Well, I…I know that, Elle.” She turned from rinsing dishes to give me an awkward-looking smile.
Good, I thought bitterly. She should be uncomfortable. This was my house, not hers. She was the intruder here, not me. “Your dad’s always saying how much you take on and what a good job you’re doing of it all, but since I could be around to help out…We thought it’d give you more time to hang out with your friends. Work through that bucket list I’ve heard so much about! Brad was showing me the race-day videos—how amazing! You and Lee must have such wild imaginations to come up with something like that. And all that money you raised for charity!”
What do you know about the bucket list? Don’t talk about me and my best friend like you know anything about us. I don’t need you to help out. You’re not doing me any favors.
But I bit my tongue, swallowing every mean retort back down.
Brad looked at me with awe in his eyes. “I wish I could’ve been there to see it, Elle. Levi and Noah really went for it! And when Lee got slimed!” He burst into laughter.
I softened a little. “Wish you could’ve been there to see it, too, buddy.”
(Dad and I had quickly made the decision that Brad absolutely should not have been there—I’d be too busy to look after him all day at the water park, and he’d only want to get involved; that the go-karts were strictly fourteen-plus had given us an easy excuse to talk him down before he asked.)
“Can I come back to the beach house this weekend, Elle?”
“Maybe. I’ll talk to the guys. But I promise you can come back soon. And hey! It’s almost Fourth of July! You’ll be there for that! We’re throwing a huge party, since it’s the last year we’ve got the beach house. Dad even said you could bring a couple of friends along. Huh? That’s gonna be cool, right? Being at a grown-up party with college kids?”
Brad rolled his eyes. “You’re not in college yet, Elle.”
But he did look totally thrilled at the idea.
I glanced at Linda, wondering if Dad had invited her along, too. I guessed I couldn’t say anything about that. I just had to hope I wouldn’t run into her on the night.
She caught me looking and, instead of mentioning Fourth of July, just said, “I’m really sorry this is how we ended up meeting, Elle, but it is so good to finally meet you. Maybe, if you’ve got a free evening, the four of us could go out to dinner somewhere? Get to know each other better?”
“Like you said,” I told her, “I’m busy.”
* * *
• • •
As I parked at the beach house, after driving around for an hour trying to clear my head, my phone buzzed.
Don’t forget! Lee’s text told me. #9 tonight! Meet you at the mall.
Bucket-list item number nine: be part of a flash mob.
Lee had found one being organized for tonight online. If you signed up, you got sent an email with a video of the choreography, which had been pretty straightforward to learn. And with all the effort we’d put into organizing race day and scheduling other activities around my hectic schedule, it had been easier to take part in an existing one than to organize an entire flash mob ourselves.
I sighed. I hadn’t changed out of my work uniform and was still carting my outfit for the flash mob around in my backpack—and I’d been so caught up in Brad missing and the Linda drama that I actually had forgotten all about the flash mob. I grabbed my backpack now, heading inside. Quick change, then back to the city and the mall.