“I think a lot of people can run as fast as your car,” Oliver said.
“What it lacks in speed it makes up for in personality,” I said. “Besides, all the sand probably weighs it down.”
He laughed and leaned in to kiss me. Who knew pre-calc could be so romantic? “No, but seriously,” he said after a minute. “You need to tell them.”
“Dude, I know. I will. Just . . . I have to do it on my own time. I know my parents, I know when it’s a good time and when it’s not.”
Oliver regarded me with suspicion. “You weren’t joking about that driveway comment, were you?”
“ANYWAY,” I said. “Focus on math.”
“What do I get if I get the next one right?” His breath was warm on my neck, making goose bumps raise up on my arms as I shivered.
“You get a gold star,” I whispered back, then turned around to kiss him.
“Is that a metaphor?” he asked.
“Get it right and see,” I replied, and started to kiss him.
Cccccrreeeeeeaaaaaaakkkk!
“Laundry time,” Oliver muttered as we flew apart again.
“Worst chore ever,” I added, and he could only nod his head in agreement.
Oliver was right, though. The clock was ticking and I had only three weeks before I had to tell UCSD whether or not I would accept their offer. Which meant, of course, that I had only three weeks to tell my parents that there was even an offer to accept. I tried a few times—at dinner one night, while we were all in the car the next—but every time I started to say something, the words seemed to fall apart in my mouth and all that came out was a cough. “Are you getting a cold?” my mom finally asked after the third time at dinner. “You sound a bit wheezy.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
“You’re not eating very much,” she said. “I thought you liked this pasta?”
It was bow-tie pasta with cream sauce, my mom’s secret recipe that she wouldn’t even give to my grandmother. (And if you don’t think that caused a ruckus at Thanksgiving last year, then you would be very wrong.) And yes, I did love it, but between Caro and school and college and Oliver, it felt like the anxiety boulder in my stomach left no room for food.
“I’m fiiiine,” I said again, suddenly aware that I was whining. “I’m fine,” I repeated, trying to sound like an almost college student and not a three-year-old. “I just have a lot of schoolwork and Caro and I . . .”
Both my parents froze with their forks to their mouths. “Caro and you what?” my dad said. “Don’t leave us hanging. Caro and I are joining the circus? Caro and I have decided to become neurosurgeons? Caro and I have decided to reimburse our parents for the eighteen years’ worth of room and board that they’ve so lovingly provided us?”
“Honey, she and Caro are fighting,” my mom said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“How did you know we were fighting?” I asked.
“Because you’re only sending a million texts a day, rather than two million,” my mom said, but I could tell that she was trying to be nice about it. “What happened?”
She was clearly dying for more information. I wonder if she and Maureen had discussed this at all. “We just had a stupid fight,” I said. “She said some things and I said some things, that’s all. No biggie.”
“You and Caro have never fought before,” my dad said.
“We argued over that My Little Pony doll when we were four,” I pointed out. She won. I was still bitter.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll make up,” my mom said. “You and Caro have been friends forever.”
“Can I be excused?” I asked, wiping my mouth with my napkin in preparation to flee. “Oliver and I wanted to do some homework together.”
My mom raised an eyebrow at me. “Where? Here or there?”
“There,” I said. Our house didn’t have any squeaky floorboards.
“Two more bites,” she said, and I swallowed them in one, relieved to be off the hot seat.
For now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The high school had an open house on Wednesday night, one of those things where all the parents and their kids can come to the school and show off their work and talk to the teachers about how great/wonderful/abysmal their little darlings are. It’s a big community to-do, and my parents, of course, haven’t missed one ever. Even when my mom had bronchitis, she managed to make a miraculous recovery and show up to discuss my B-plus grade with my eighth-grade history teacher. (My mother thought it should have been an A-minus. She thought wrong.)
Oliver’s mom, on the other hand, hadn’t been able to attend one for ten years, so she was over the moon. “Come on, we’re going to be late!” I heard her yelling that evening as she herded everyone into their cars. I heard this because I was being herded by my parents into our car.
“Emmy, step on it,” my mom said. “If we don’t get there soon, there’s always a line to talk to your AP Bio teacher.” Mr. Hernandez was thirty years old and very, um, in demand by most of the moms in our school. Not that my mom wanted to hit on Mr. Hernandez. She was probably the only mom who actually wanted to discuss my participation in class with him.
“Aren’t you tired of talking to my teachers?” I asked them as I fastened my seat belt. “I can just reenact the conversation for you.”