I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure Henry meant it. He and Lucy had never gotten along that great. I knew he thought she was too girly, and she thought he was a know-it-all. The few times the three of us had tried to hang out together, I’d felt like I was a referee, constantly trying to make sure everyone was getting along, and it had been exhausting. So I tended to hang out with them separately, which worked out better for everyone.
“So,” Henry said, getting back up on the bike’s pedals, “I was going to the beach. Want to come?”
I looked at him and thought about it. Hanging out with Henry would definitely be better than going home—even if he did call me Edwards and was always trying to get me to race him or see who could eat more hot dogs. “Okay,” I said, spinning my pedal back and standing on it. “Sounds fun.”
“Awesome.” Henry smiled at me, and I noticed that his teeth were no longer crooked in front, like they’d been when I first met him. And his smile was really nice. Why hadn’t I ever noticed that before?
“Race you to the beach?” he asked, already ready to ride, his hands gripping the handlebars.
“I don’t know,” I said, as I pretended to fuss with my gears, all the while getting into position. “I’m not sure if I—Go!” I yelled the last word and started pedaling as fast as I could, leaving Henry to catch up. I laughed out loud as I started to fly down the street, the wind lifting my ponytail. “Loser buys the Cokes!”
Lost & Found
chapter twelve
THE WAITING ROOM IN THE ONCOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF THE Stroudsburg hospital seemed like it had given up on any attempts to be cheerful. The walls were painted a dull peach, and there weren’t any encouraging posters about managing your cold or proper hand-washing techniques, like I’d been used to seeing in my doctor’s office. Instead, there was only a single badly painted landscape of a hill dotted with either sheep or clouds, I wasn’t sure which. The chairs were overstuffed, making me feel like I was slowly sinking down into them, and all the magazines were months out of date. Two of the celebrity marriages trumpeted on the glossy covers had since imploded in messy divorces. I flipped through the closest magazine at hand anyway, realizing how different these happily-ever-after stories seemed when you were aware of what the outcome was going to be. After a few minutes, I tossed it aside. I glanced down at my watch, and then at the door my father had gone through to meet with his doctor. This was not exactly how I’d imagined spending my day off.
I had planned on quitting the snack bar after the first disastrous day, seeing no reason to spend the summer with people who disliked me and made no secret of it. But at dinner that night, as we’d feasted on corn on the cob, French fries, and hamburgers cooked on the grill—what felt like our first real summer meal—my plan hit a snag.
Gelsey, it seemed, hated tennis. While she complained about how stupid the sport was, and how all the people in her tennis class were equally stupid, and Warren was simultaneously attempting to tell us that tennis had been invented in twelfth-century France and popularized in the court of Henry the Eighth, I’d just sat there, enjoying my corn, waiting for the moment that I could jump in and explain that while I was sure that there were merits to working at the snack bar, I felt that my time might be better utilized this summer by doing something else. Anything else. I was working out my explanation in my head, and so wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation around the table. It was only when I heard my name that I snapped back to attention.
“What?” I asked, looking at my father. “What was that, Dad?”
“I was just saying,” my dad said, mostly to my sister, who was glowering down at her plate, “that you also had a new, challenging experience today. But unlike your sister, you are taking it in stride.”
Crap. “Um,” I said, glancing at Warren, trying to see if I could silently communicate with him, and get him to distract everyone, or tell us how something else was invented. But Warren just yawned and helped himself to more fries. “Right. About that…”
“Taylor’s not quitting,” my father said. I cleared my throat, hoping that I could get him to stop somehow without looking like the flakiest person on earth. “And I’m sure her day wasn’t easy. Was it?”
He turned back my way, and everyone in my family looked at me, Warren’s fry raised halfway to his mouth. “No,” I said honestly.
“There you go,” my dad said, giving me a small wink, making me feel terrible about what I was about to do. But then I thought of Lucy’s face when she’d realized I was working there, and how lonely it had been, eating lunch by myself.