Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have) by Sarah Mlynowski Page A

be concerned that my father is going to run into your mother on a street corner in Chicago?” I asked.
    “Your father’s email was sent at 7:03 A.M . I am confident that when my mother is on street corners, your father is fast asleep.”
    “So that’s a no.” I scratched Donut behind the ears.
    “Meow.”
    “Stop worrying.”
    “Right. Grip. Getting one.”
    LONELY IN CLEVELAND
    The cell rang. Private number.
    “Hello?” I said uncertainly.
    “Hi, April! It’s Penny!”
    “Oh. Penny. Hey.” I had just spilled Donut’s food all over the floor, and was in the process of sweeping it up. “Is everything okay? My dad’s in Chicago, right?”
    “Yes, he’s fine. Everything’s great! I was just thinking of you. Thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”
    Weird. Penny doesn’t generally call me to see how I’m doing. Or ever. “I’m fine. Thanks. Just . . . cleaning.”
    “That’s great. Good for you.” Silence, of the awkward variety. “So. How’s school?”
    “Same as usual.”
    “And Vi?”
    “Good too.”
    “And the car?”
    “Car’s great. Thanks again.”
    “My pleasure. I told your dad you needed a car. It wasn’t safe for you to be without one.”
    “He told me.” I realized it would be wise for me to go on and talk to her for a while so that she’d give a good report to my dad. I also realized—double weird—that she sounded lonely. So I said, “What are you up to?”
    “I’m trying to settle in. The house is a mess, of course. And it’s freezing here. Colder than Connecticut even. Strange to be back. And I’ve been trying to do some painting, but it’s hard to focus with all the unpacking I still need to do. . . .”
    As she kept talking, I tried to balance the phone against my shoulder with the broom, but ended up spilling more cat food on the floor. At one point she told me she missed me (what she actually said was, “I kind of miss cleaning up after you,” but I went ahead and read between the lines). If she missed me so much, then she shouldn’t have moved to Cleveland and dragged my dad with her.
    PENNY
    After my dad and Penny got engaged, my dad bought another place in Westport. Sorry, my dad and Penny bought another place in Westport. Since we were there every second weekend, Matthew and I each got our own rooms. I took the one next to my dad’s because it was the bigger one. I would have taken Matthew’s, which was on the other side of the stairs, if I’d known that, unlike Matthew, I was going to move in full-time. But anyway.
    Penny bought me a bed with a canopy. She’d always wanted one as a girl, and always wanted to have a girl with a canopy bed. So there you go.
    Penny couldn’t have kids. I knew this because one day in the car, I’d asked them if they were going to have a baby. Penny got all teary. Later, my father explained that Penny had fibroid tumors. She and her ex-husband tried for seven years, but they never got pregnant. They even tried in vitro a few times but it didn’t work.
    You’d think she would have been happier about inheriting a stepdaughter.
    She was probably excited about the idea of me—less so with the reality.
    A fifteen-year-old who you can share makeup with and see every two weeks sounds adorable.
    A fifteen-year-old who gets bombed with her friends two weeks after moving in with you full-time? Less so.
    PASS THE GUAC
    “We need to coordinate,” Vi said during taco prep. “When’s your big night? We have to make sure that it’s not the same as mine. That would be weird.”
    I grated some cheese. “It would?”
    “Hells yeah. We need to each have the house to ourselves.”
    I hardly ever had the house to myself. Vi was home a lot. As was I. We spent a lot of time together. I’ve never actually spent this much time with anyone . . . besides my family. Not even Noah.
    “Definitely,” I said. “So I was kind of thinking . . . Valentine’s Day.”
    “Really?” she asked with a raise of the eyebrow