So it seemed fitting, really, that the moon was out and shining through the corner of my window as I pulled up the Columbia Web site and notified them I wouldn’t be attending in the fall. After all that hard work, it was so easy. Just a couple of clicks, some keystrokes, and done.
As for my father, there were no more e-mails, no explanations: he was just gone, Bigfoot all over again. At times, I found myself questioning his very existence, even though I knew I had, in fact, spotted him, with my own eyes.
And while I kept my initial acceptance message from Columbia in my inbox for a while, looking at it didn’t really make me sad. Instead, it was the lack of e-mails. How pathetic I felt logging in to my account, hoping to see my father’s address atop the new messages. The weirdness of donating all those books to the media center, now that I didn’t need them anymore.
Mostly, I felt stupid for falling for his big talk, the very thing my mother had warned me about. Even from a distance he’d taken me in, and I’d gone, gullibly and willingly. In my less masochistic moments, I reminded myself that I, a girl from Colby High, had gotten into an Ivy League school. That had to count for something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
But life went on. And the one person who knew that best of all, always, hadn’t gone anywhere. She was always bragging, telling anyone who would listen about my full scholarship to a great school. Squeezing my shoulder as she passed by me as I sat on the couch watching TV. Smiling from across the dinner table when Amber said something typically ridiculous. Stopping outside my closed bedroom door for only a moment, yet always just long enough so I knew for sure she was there.
3
“I’D JUST LIKE to say again how thrilled we are that Andy will be joining our family in August. Here’s to the bride and groom!”
There was a burst of applause as Mr. Templeton held up his glass, followed by a collective “Awwww” as the happy couple leaned in for a kiss. Off to the right, Luke’s mom stood watching, face flushed, tears visible in her eyes. A beautiful moment.
I looked over at Luke, who was standing beside me in a collared shirt I was sure he had put on only under serious duress. “I am so glad we are going to college,” he said. “Because this next year, at this house, when all this is over and my mom has nothing to do? It’s going to be scary.”
“That,” I said, as his parents hugged Andy, then Brooke, “is a really poor attitude.”
“My mother,” he said in response, “has already told me that I have to wear tails to this wedding. Tails. In Colby. We’ll be like all those people we mock.”
He meant the ones who came here for destination weddings, most often in spring and summer. They set up chairs and little arches decorated with flowers on the beach, then were surprised when it was windy and the bride’s veil took flight and everyone looked ruffled in the pictures. After complaining endlessly about all our caterers and vendors—hopelessly backwards compared to wherever they came from—they more often than not left wedding cake smeared into the furniture and a trail of broken dishes behind in their rentals. There was no denying people like this were part of an industry many in Colby depended on for their living. Which did not mean we couldn’t make fun of them, at least a little bit.
“Maybe,” I said, as there was another round of applause, “she’ll ditch that idea and let you all wear Hawaiian shirts and white pants instead.”
“Only if the bridesmaids wear flip-flops and carry single sunflowers,” he replied. These were things we had witnessed so far this summer alone.
“I would be happy,” I offered, “to decorate a bunch of shells with their initials and wedding date to scatter across the beach. Oh, and fill a bunch of little bags with sand for favors.”
He held up his hand, stopping me. “You joke, but they’re talking about releasing butterflies.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Told you,” he said, shuddering. “Scary stuff.”
Really, it was kind of fun to see Luke bent out of shape. Spend enough time—like three years of your life—with Mr. Easygoing, it was hard not to feel superneurotic in comparison. His attitude, though, was one of my favorite things about him, even if did make me examine my own psyche more than I preferred to. He was not bad to look at, either.
I stepped closer to him, kissing his cheek, and got a familiar whiff of chlorine and sunshine. I loved that smell. “You poor baby. I hope you survive this.”
“I think I’ll need extra emotional support,” he said, then gave me a real kiss, right in view of some elderly relatives passing by on the way to the appetizers. I could see their startled faces from the corner of my eye as he was pulling me in, but once his lips hit mine, relatives and everything else fell away. All this time and he could still make my heart jump, just like that first kiss in the fall of freshman year. Best-looking guy in school—no, just best guy in school—and he wanted me. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe it.
“I think I know who’s next,” someone trilled from behind us, breaking this thought even as I was having it.
Luke pulled back, grinning at me. “Look at that. Engagements are contagious.”
“So is the plague,” I said, and he laughed out loud.
“Luke? Honey?” A beat later, his mom was beside us, one hand on his arm. “We’re running low on ice. Can you run down to the Gas/Gro and get some?”