around us as my heart stutters and struggles to keep pumping.
“That’s why you haven’t done the posters.” Artie’s voice is quiet.
I roll up the poster and turn to face my friend. “I didn’t know it…. I didn’t realize it until you just said it. It’s just —”
“Drop out,” Artie tells me.
“Like it’s that simple.”
“It could be.” Her eyes and voice are gentle, but I still feel them cut into me.
“I can’t — I can’t do that to Meg.”
“You have to do what’s right for yourself, too, Hayley. Don’t you?” Artie’s forehead wrinkles, like she’s confused, or maybe like she’s worried about me.
I know Artie’s trying to help, but somehow it just seems easier to suck it up and be the vice president than to have Meghan freak and deal with the fallout. I mean — it will be kind of fun. Parts of it.
The bell rings. “Are you going to put up the posters?” Artie asks. “Or should I take them home?”
I breathe once. Twice. “I’ll put them up,” I say at last.
Artie just nods. I wonder if she thinks I’m a wimp, or a dummy, or a martyr, or what. But “Okay” is all she says.
O ne time, in fourth grade, Artie and I were walking downtown, headed to get some ice cream, and a homeless man asked me for money. He told me that he couldn’t pay for his medicine. He told me that all he needed was a few more dollars.
I had a few dollars in the pocket of my shorts — enough for my ice cream.
“I’m diabetic,” the man said. And I gave him the money.
He turned to Artie. “I just need a little more,” he told her.
And Artie, who had the same amount of money I did, said, “Sorry.”
We walked around the corner and into the ice cream store. Artie went up to the counter and ordered a medium cone of black raspberry chocolate-chip. I got a cup of water and sat at the table, wondering if the man was really going to use my money for medicine. There was no way to know — not for sure.
Artie offered me a lick of her ice cream, and I took it. But that was almost worse, because the ice cream was delicious.
That’s the thing: Artie never really has a problem doing what’s right for Artie.
Sometimes, that seems harsh.
But sometimes, she’s the one eating the ice cream.
And I never really knew what to make of that.
“G ran?” Knocking softly, I poke my head beyond her bedroom door. “Did I leave my comb in here?”
“Sorry, darling?” Gran pulls off her reading glasses and looks up from the pile of brochures scattered across her bed. “Your comb?”
“I thought maybe I left it in your bathroom,” I tell her as I come to perch on the corner of her mattress.
“I haven’t seen it.” Gran huffs a sigh and scowls at the brochures. “Of course, things are so untidy that it may be beneath all of these.”
“How’s the wedding planning going?” I ask.
“Atrociously. Don’t let’s mention it.”
“That well?”
Gran places her reading glasses on the bedside table. “It was great fun the first time I did it. When I was marrying your grandfather, Gerard. But this time, it just seems like an unnecessary expense.”
I trace a finger over one of the pink embroidered roses on Gran’s bedspread. “You don’t want to get married?”
“What? Horrors! Of course I do! I just don’t want to pay for a wedding .”
“Well — it isn’t about the money, right?”
“That’s the sort of thing that people say when they have a great deal of money, and very little sense,” Gran says. “I happen to have a great deal of sense and little money. And I don’t see why I should spend heaps of money, time, and energy on something I don’t actually want.”
“When you put it that way …”
“If I’m going to spend a great deal of money on something, it will be your education, Hayley dear. Yours and Chloe’s. Or perhaps a house for your mother. But I’ve already had a beautiful wedding, and I don’t need another. This certainly isn’t my ‘princess dreams
James Kakalios
Tara Fox Hall
K. Sterling
Jonathan Maberry
Mary Balogh
Elizabeth Moynihan
Jane Hunt
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley
Jacquie Rogers
Shiloh Walker