The Elder shook his head, feeling the weight of each of his years, the wisdom he had that nobody seemed to be able to hear. “You have to try,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, then opened them and forced himself to go on. “You have to take your chances. Go and attempt and see what happens. And even if you fail—especially if you fail—come back with your experience and your hard-won knowledge and a story you can tell. And then later you can say, without regret or hesitation . . . ‘Once, I dared to dare greatly.’?”
—C. B. McCallister, The Drawing of the Two. Hightower & Jax, New York.
Chapter NINETEEN
Two beeps from my phone sent me bolting upright in bed the next morning, fumbling for it and sending the stack of precarious things on my nightstand crashing to the floor. I squinted at my phone, trying to get my eyes to focus, willing it to be texts from my friends. Maybe Toby and Bri had figured out a way to move past this, and Palmer had decided not to be mad at me any longer, and . . . I felt my shoulders slump when I saw what was actually there, two calendar reminders that had popped up.
Dad—campaign event/New York. 12 PM
Clark’s reading!!!! New Jersey 3 PM
I looked at these, and at the exclamation points by Clark’s, realizing that with everything going on, I’d forgotten about both events and had certainly not put together that they were happening on the same day. As far as I knew, I was not expected to be at my father’s event—Peter hadn’t said anything and neither had my dad, so I figured I was in the clear.
I flopped back onto my bed, then looked at my calendar for the day—which was totally open. I must have cleared it with Maya for Clark’s reading. Now, the thought of having the whole day ahead of me open—especially with my revelation from the night before—was not appealing in the least. I pulled up my texts and started to write Maya, asking her if there were any walks I could take over today—I’d even deal with a cat—when my phone screen turned black. I’d run the battery down.
My first thought was that I’d have to tell Toby that I could no longer make fun of her for this, before I remembered, once again, what had happened. I pushed myself out of bed and went downstairs, yawning, in my sleep shorts and the ASK ME ABOUT THE LUMINOSITY shirt of Clark’s that I’d never gotten around to returning.
“Morning,” my dad said as I stepped into the kitchen. He was hovering around the coffeepot, but in a way that made me think he wasn’t actually having coffee and had instead been waiting for me to come down.
“Hi,” I said, rubbing my hand across my eyes as I went to the fridge in search of orange juice. He was wearing a button-down shirt and a suit jacket, but no tie—his I’m professional but not stuffy outfit he always wore when campaigning in the summers. His hair, though, was as sharply parted as ever. “So,” I said, after taking a long drink and waiting for my brain to start waking up, “You have that campaign event today?”
“Kind of,” my dad said, giving me a shrug. “It’s the governor’s campaign. He just wanted to me to say a few words.”
I nodded as I took another drink of my juice, convinced that even after all these years, I would never understand how politics worked. The governor and my dad had privately hated each other for years, but maybe he was trying to get a piece of my dad’s redemption arc. It was all going to start unfolding at a press conference on Monday, with Peter laying out every step of it.
“But there’s actually something I wanted to show you,” my dad said, smiling at me, and I realized he really had been waiting for me to get up.
“Okay,” I said, looking around the kitchen.
“Outside,” my dad said, walking toward the side door. “Ready?”
“Sure,” I said, setting my glass down, utterly baffled as to what this could be. I honestly wasn’t sure there was anything I wanted, unless standing on the driveway would be Palmer, Toby, and Bri, all having made up, having forgiven each other and me, along with Clark and Bertie, everything somehow fixed and okay. I stepped outside, and the heat hit me like a slap in the face. “Ugh,” I said, wincing. It was boiling already, and humid, like I’d just walked face-first into a hot shower.
“Yeah,” my dad said, grimacing at me. “It’s going to be a hot one today.”
“Going to be?”