“Just joking.” I opened my door.
“Good luck,” he said as I climbed out of the car. “Let me know how it goes.”
I promised I would.
I followed his instructions and went to bed early, but my mother woke me up when she got home by coming into my room. “What’s going on?” I asked, raising my head from the pillow, groggily alarmed by the intrusion.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry! Just wanted to make sure you were sleeping.”
And then of course I couldn’t fall back to sleep for an eternity.
fifteen
I forgot about George’s care package until I was desperately searching for a pencil the next morning and remembered that he had packed some for Heather. I poked through the contents, which were identical to Heather’s bag, except apparently I didn’t rate a cute stuffed rabbit. I felt a little hurt. If anyone should have gotten an extra gift, it should have been me: I was his actual tutee. Heather was just my guest.
Once I’d taken the test and come back home, I texted him to complain.
No bunny in my bag. Why do you hate me?
Just thought Heather would appreciate the extra luck. How’d it go?
It went.
And that was all I said to anyone who asked me that question. I had gotten through it, it was done, and I didn’t want to think about it anymore until I had to.
Heather’s texts to me were less Zen.
I failed
You did not
I didn’t know what half the words meant and math was brutal You always think you do badly on tests
Because I always do badly on tests
No you don’t
Yes I do
This is a stupid argument
Can I come over? My parents are making me crazy. They keep bugging me to try to remember the questions and what I answered and it’s not fun Sorry Mom and L are taking me out to celebrate being done OK
I felt a little bad not inviting her to come with us, but it was rare for both Mom and Luke to have a dinner free and I wanted to have them all to myself.
Except, of course, I wasn’t going to have them to myself: Mom had forgotten to ask Lorena ahead of time if she could babysit and she couldn’t, so we had to take Jacob with us.
“You sure he’ll be able to sit nicely through a fancy dinner?” I asked as I buckled him into his car seat.
“I’m bringing the iPad,” Mom said.
“He’ll be fine,” Luke said cheerfully.
Dinner was a disaster. The food took a long time to come, and the iPad had to be taken away from Jacob, because he kept turning the volume up on it. He screamed when Mom put it in her purse. Luke carried him out of the restaurant, but came back pretty quickly.
“Spotted,” he said, sitting down with Jacob on his lap. “People were coming at me with cameras.”
“At least Jacob’s not screaming anymore,” I said.
People had gathered on the sidewalk to peer in at Luke through the restaurant window, and the waiters were a little too attentive—every time we took a sip of water our glasses would instantly be refilled, and seven different people stopped by to ask us if we were enjoying our meal, including the chef. Diners at the tables near us kept glancing over, trying to catch Luke’s eyes. One guy actually came over to our table and said it was his fiancée’s birthday and could Luke just please come to the table to say hi to her, because she adored him and it would mean a lot to her. Luke did, as quickly as he could, and I guess it was kind of sweet to see how excited and flustered the girl got when he shook her hand and wished her a happy birthday, but I just wanted my family to be able to celebrate me in peace.
Luke asked the hostess to give the valets our car ticket and once our car was in front, we darted outside and piled quickly into it while flashes went off all around us and people called out to Luke, who waved and said a good-natured “Hey, guys” before jumping in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb.
And that’s when Mom told me that she had decided to accompany Luke to London, where they were shooting the show for three weeks in November.
I didn’t mind that she and Luke were going, and I didn’t mind that she planned to take Jacob: I’d miss seeing his little face, but I’d survive. (And given his behavior at dinner, I was in a particularly good place to accept the thought of his future absence calmly.) No, the part that made me groan out loud was that she had arranged for Grandma to stay with me while they were gone.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “She’s crazy.”
Mom turned so she could look at me over her shoulder. “Don’t talk about your grandmother that way,” she said primly.
“You talk about her that way all the time!”
Luke laughed, and Mom turned her glare on him.
“Don’t pretend she doesn’t drive you nuts just because you want to inflict her on me,” I added.
“She’s a very good grandmother. And a very good mother, in her way—”
“Her crazy way.”
“She comes through when we need her, which is the best thing you can say about family.”
“Okay, fine, but I don’t need her this time. I don’t need anyone to stay with me. I’m almost eighteen.”
“Bad things happen when teenagers are left alone.”
“Not with me!” I said. “When have I ever done anything wrong? I’m the best-behaved teen in the entire world.”
“You can be a little mouthy,” Mom pointed out.
“Everyone needs a hobby. Seriously. You know I wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Luke said, his eyes briefly meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “It’s the crazies who stalk me. It’s not that hard to find out where I live and I don’t like to think of you all alone at night.”
“We have the best security system in the world,” I said. “And what could Grandma do if someone attacked us? Lecture them to death about the dangers of gluten?”
“We’ll just both feel better knowing she’s there with you,” he said.
I gave up. If they were in agreement, I wouldn’t win this one.