Drive Me Crazy (18 page)

I wish to be, and have, real friends like Lana—and not the
pretending kind—for the rest of my life, forever.

I open my eyes, and the shooting stars have vanished. Even the moonlight on the ocean seems less bright, and the rippling phosphorescence has disappeared. It’s probably just my imagination, but it seems suddenly there are fewer fireflies, too.

“Thanks for coming to find me,” Lana says as we turn to head back up the beach.

“Well, I couldn’t leave you out here to get snapped up by mermaids, could I?”

She gives me a little shove toward the water. “You don’t think I really believe
that
part, do you?”

“Well . . .” I bend to scoop up a handful of ocean, my fingers leaving white glitter streaks behind. I toss it at her, and she squeals even though I miss. “You sure do have Grandpa Howe fooled!”

Chapter Thirty-One
Lana

W
e decide to stay in our little cottage three more days—days full of playing board games and walking on the beach, cooking, napping, dancing around the house, writing postcards back home, reading books together, eating cookies, and exploring little towns on the coastline. Grandpa Howe walks us to the End of the Road, and when Grandma Tess goes up and knocks on the door, the couple living there for the summer is happy to give us a tour. There’s been a lot of renovation done since he sold it, Grandpa Howe tells us, but it’s still amazing to see the rooms and the wide porch I’ve heard so many stories about. Grandma Tess gets so fired up, she decides to forget about wishing for a place to all be together in
California and wants to find one right here. So we follow other neighborhood roads, looking for
FOR SALE
signs and dreaming about the perfect vacation place. Best of all, we spend a lot of time around the table, or on the porch, or on a blanket, telling stories.

Cassie and I, of course, tell Grandpa Howe and Grandma Tess everything about the Magic Moment, which includes me opening up about my hard feelings around Mom’s sickness. This turns into a surprising conversation about fears, which includes Grandma Tess telling the story of how scared she was when Cassie’s mom was born, even surrounded by all her commune friends, and Grandpa Howe talking more about when Nana Lilia died.

“It felt wrong,” he says, “to be sad about our wonderful life together: my success at work and our beautiful family. After she was gone, though, all I could think about were those trips we’d postponed until retirement. All those adventures we never had.”

Grandma Tess suggests that sometimes adventure might be overrated.

“I’m still looking forward to many, many more, of course,” she says, “but it wasn’t until I met you that I really felt I had a home, Howie. I didn’t even realize I’d been missing one.” She holds out her hands like she’s giving us all a surprise. “Even the things you most want to turn out
a certain way often don’t. But that doesn’t mean that the ways they do turn out aren’t good.”

Grandpa Howe squeezes Grandma Tess around the shoulders and presses a kiss between her cheek and ear. “Even terrible losses can lead you to some nice gifts, I’ll give you that.”

“Best you can do,” she says, kissing him back, “is love yourself and the people around you as much as you can, in all the ways you can find.”

Under the table, Cassie gives my leg a little kick, and we smile at each other.

On the day of Mom’s surgery, Grandpa Howe wakes me up with chocolate chip pancakes cut in the shapes of stars and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar, which I know is a reminder about my wish, and how he hopes it will come true, too. Before I even eat, though, I call Mom and Dad. In part it’s to say one more time how much I love them before they head to the hospital, but I also want to tell them something else. Thanks to Cassie, I’ve learned that it is better to say things straight out, and it’s time for me to do that with my parents.

When I get them both on the call, I explain that I know they haven’t wanted me to be scared, but not talking about things has made them scarier. That, and it’s made me feel left out.

“It’s like you two have had this big secret together that you’ve wanted to keep from me,” I admit.

“Oh, Lana,” Dad says. “That’s not been it at all. You haven’t had many questions, so we thought you didn’t want to know. But we should have checked in more, and I’m sorry. You’re just so mature all the time; sometimes we forget.”

Mom cries a little, and Dad won’t stop apologizing, but telling them everything feels a lot better. Dad assures me that Mom’s procedure is a common one considering how serious it is, and isn’t so dangerous that she might die during the operation. He agrees to keep me posted all day on her progress.

“I’m scared too, of course,” he admits. “We still don’t know what the tumor is exactly, and whether it’s cancer or not, the recovery could take a long time. But your mom is strong, and I know we’ll all be together through it, which is what matters.”

Mom admits it’s been harder than she expected for me to be away while all of this has been going on. “You were being so brave about it, though, Lana. And I never want to stand in the way of your experiences, whether I’m sick or not. This trip is one of those, but perhaps my illness was one, too. I didn’t think about it that way before.”

Dad thanks me for telling them my real feelings and
helping them understand. I realize I feel lighter in my heart and my body. Maybe trying to avoid your fears instead of facing them might sometimes be worse.

“That sounded like a good conversation,” Grandpa Howe says when I’m done.

I give a grateful smile to him and Cassie, who’s come into the kitchen at the sound of our voices and the smell of pancakes.

“It might even top this breakfast,” I tell him.

Grandpa Howe ruffles the top of my head. “You know what? I’ll take that.”

“Well, in that case”—Cassie reaches for my fork—“I’ll be taking these.” She scoops up a bite of buttery, chocolaty, syrupy goodness and stuffs it into her grinning mouth.

Later that afternoon, when Mom’s safely out of surgery and resting well, and we find out for sure that the tumor was
not
cancerous, Grandpa Howe takes us all out for victory ice cream, and we head down to the beach. The water’s a little cold for me and Cassie to stand for very long, so we stretch out on our towels in the sun.

Right away, Cassie says, “I did something terrible, but I’m not sure how to fix it. I’ve been waiting to tell you until we knew your mom was okay.”

I squint at her. “Well, I think the last couple of days
have proved one of the best ways to make something better is to talk about it, right?”

She smiles out the side of her mouth. “Why do you think I’m bringing it up?”

We lean back on our elbows, watching the water, as she tells me about her friend Fiona, and what happened with Kendra Mack and Fiona’s diary. How Cassie and Fiona haven’t spoken since the whole mess, and Cassie knows the not-speaking is a big part her fault. She feels terrible about it but doesn’t know how to win Fiona back. At first Cassie was too embarrassed and mad at Fiona to even want to try, but now that she sees the whole situation differently, she’s worried it’s too late.

To me, though, it doesn’t seem that complicated.

I shrug. “Tell her what you just told me.”

Cassie chews her lip. “But in Fiona’s eyes, Kendra Mack is—the worst. That I became friends with her? And treated Fiona the same way they used to treat us? She probably felt terrible when she found out who had her diary. And there I was, for weeks after, laughing and talking with the same girl.”

“Well, you miss Fiona, right? It took you a while to realize it, but you do. And I bet she misses you too. Probably by now she’s also had time to realize it, like you have. Sometimes you need that—space to be angry and then not
anymore. Like when we were mad at each other on the way here. We were together all the time, but we still weren’t ready to talk. Being shoved together might’ve even made it worse.”

She looks at me. “That’s true.”

“So, why would it be different for you and Fiona?”

“Because—”

I put my hand gently over her mouth. “Just call her, Cassie. It’s like this Chinese proverb Tamika likes: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’”

“Oh, Tamika,” she says, the words muffled by my hand. “One day I gotta meet that girl.”

The idea of Cassie meeting Tamika, and me meeting Fiona, gets more exciting when Cassie finally calls Fiona and apologizes. I don’t hear the conversation, because Cassie wanted to have it on her own, but when she’s done, she thanks me and says they have plans to go roller-skating together when Cassie gets back.

“It’s an activity we can have fun doing even if the talking part isn’t so great,” Cassie explains. “She accepted my apology and said she’s sorry too, but I know it’ll take a while to get back to where we were.”

It’s clear by the sound of her voice that she’s hopeful they’ll still get there. When I tell her I wish I could be
there for moral support, she shrugs and suggests I come down some other weekend, after she and Fiona are better. Unlike the dodgy way she’s acted before, I know this time Cassie means it, and it’s an exciting thing to look forward to.

The next day we have to do everything—swimming, walking on the beach, watching the sunset from our porch—all for the last time. We map out our return trip, deciding that even though Chicago might be fun to revisit one day, we want to get as much out of our adventure as possible and will start a completely different route in the morning.

Before we know it, Grandma Tess is starting a new playlist and steering us toward New Hampshire. It’s good Cassie and I will have so much time in the car together, because we need to work on another plot. This time it’s not about stealing Cassie’s phone back or turning the car around, but what Cassie should do about Kendra Mack.

“That girl deserves some of her own medicine,” I say. “Not to mention you need to break from her for good.”

Cassie tries to convince me that Kendra Mack thought Cassie was in on the joke, but when we review all Cassie’s messages, it’s impossible to believe Kendra Mack’s total innocence.

It takes us until Columbus, Ohio, to fully devise the whole plan.

“You’re sure about this?” Cassie asks me, taking my phone from my hand. After some back-and-forth about other ideas, I decided we should stop trying to come up with a new plan and instead just steal Kendra’s.

“Absolutely.” I nod.

We’re in the courtyard at the Easton Town Center, where Grandma Tess suggested, that after two weeks with the same clothes, we could all use a new outfit injection. Cassie and I found semi-matching sundresses immediately, but Grandma Tess and Grandpa Howe are taking their time browsing.

Cassie had told me she suspected part of why Kendra Mack was even friends with her in the first place was because Kendra had a crush on Tom. If Kendra Mack and Izzy Gathing could pretend to be a boy, Cassie and I certainly could, too, though it wouldn’t take much to write texts better than theirs.

“Okay, but if Tom finds out, he’s going to kill me. He thinks Kendra Mack is obnoxious,” she says.

“Well, I agree she’s obnoxious—”

Cassie play-slaps me on the arm.

“But we’re not going to
say
they’re from him,” I remind her. “We’re just going to let her think it’s true, and watch her go crazy. This way, it’s still her own fault. She’ll never
really
know what happened, but she’ll be too embarrassed to ask
you about it. It’s not as awful as what she did to you either, because no one will ever know about it except her and us.”

A smile flickers in Cassie’s eyes, but then she frowns again. “How are we going to make sure she doesn’t do something irrational, like call your number a thousand times or crash my family’s Labor Day party?”

Her anxiousness reminds me of myself at the beginning of this trip, wondering how quickly we were going to become best friends, and how to make certain we would have the most magical vacation ever. How I planned I was going to keep all my fear inside myself, and be so strong it would somehow make my mom better. I think about how those things have still sort of happened, but like Grandma Tess said, not always in the ways I thought they should.

“I don’t know if we can make sure of anything,” I tell Cassie, “especially where Kendra Mack is concerned—”

She snorts in agreement.

“But I know we’ll work through all of it together.”

“Absolutely,” she says, wrapping her arm around my shoulder and giving me a squeeze.

Turns out, it doesn’t take long for us to get bored with texting Kendra Mack, or even thinking about her. She flirted like crazy, of course, the minute she suspected it could be Tom (
I’ll give you a hint: You might know a girl
who might be my sister
, we wrote), and it was a little funny to string her along, but both of us soon felt kind of bad about what we were doing, and by the time we arrive in St. Louis, we decide to end it with a
Sorry. Wrong number
. There’s a lounge with a bowling alley in the basement of our hotel, and we’ve got way more fun things to do down there with our grandparents. I block Kendra’s number from my phone, so she can’t text me anymore, and that’s that.

“She’s going to hate that,” Cassie says as we change for our evening with Grandma Tess and Grandpa Howe. “Being ignored.”

“I’m more than happy to ignore that girl for the rest of my life,” I say.

Cassie smiles. “Me too.”

We spend the rest of the night eating Klondike bars, fried cheese with marinara sauce, spicy-sweet spring rolls, and tiny barbecue sandwiches with coleslaw on them in between rounds of bowling. Cassie and Grandpa Howe make an even better team in the lanes than they did on the dance floor, but at least Grandma Tess and I don’t get totally walloped. At nine o’clock, the regular lights go down and the disco lights come up, turning the back of the bowling alley into a neon-glowing dance floor.