I set my fork down, took a restorative drink of my Diet Coke, and told them about what had happened that morning. When I finished, my eggs were looking decidedly cold, and Bri and Toby’s waffles had arrived.
“But I don’t understand how they could do that,” Palmer said as she leaned across the table toward me. “Are they allowed to cancel your acceptance like that?”
“Apparently,” I said, and I could feel my heart start to race again. “Which means I have nothing. No plans. Nothing lined up. I mean . . .” Topher’s words from the night before were suddenly ringing in my ears. Everything good had been gone when he’d started looking a month ago. Which meant I was so, so screwed.
“This Dr. Rizzoli guy sounds like a dick,” Toby said.
“Totally,” Bri agreed.
“I mean,” Toby huffed as she angrily speared a bite of waffle. “To not even give you a heads-up?”
“It’s not cool,” Tom agreed from his end of the table. “Um, are you going to eat all your bacon?”
I pushed my plate across to him, wondering if Tom was really hungry, or if he was trying to get in character as pork-loving David.
“Wait, but that means you get to be here!” Toby said, brightening. “That’s great!” I shot her a look, and she shrugged. “I mean, not so much for you. But it’s great for us.”
“It’s not great!” I said, my voice coming out louder than I’d expected it to, and the family in our normal booth glanced over at me. “Everything is wrecked. I’m never going to be able to find anything good now, which means there will be this gap on my résumé. During the summer I needed something the most.” I could feel my heart start to pound harder, like just saying these things out loud had made them more real.
“She’s spiraling,” Toby whispered.
“I see that,” Bri whispered back.
“Andie,” Palmer said, nudging my foot with hers underneath the table until I looked up at her, “tell me about the cute guy with the dog.”
“That’s not important!” I snapped.
“What did he look like?” Palmer asked, leaning forward, nudging me again.
“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to think about the guy right now when there were many more important things I had to deal with. I had a feeling Palmer was just doing this to try and distract me, so I could calm down, but when she nudged me harder, this one bordering on a kick, I relented, knowing if I didn’t answer her, she’d just keep on doing it. “Fine. Um—dark hair. Glasses. His shirt said something about droids. . . .”
Both Bri and Tom looked up at that. “Star Wars?” Bri asked, looking impressed.
“I like him already,” Tom said decisively.
“Can we focus here?” Toby asked, raising her voice. “If Andie’s in town, that means we’re all here for the summer, for once.”
I looked around the table and realized this was true. Last year Bri had spent all of July visiting relatives in India, terrified she was going to lose her memory because of the side-effects warning on her anti-malarial medicine. (We’d probably had more fun with that than we should have, making up things that hadn’t happened, pretending she should know what we were talking about, then acting overly concerned when she got confused. Bri, understandably, hadn’t brought us back any souvenirs from that trip.) And the year before that, Palmer had spent the first half of the summer doing a service program, building houses in New Orleans, and come back with a drawl she didn’t lose until November.
“You know what that means you’ll be here for, right?” Palmer asked me, raising her eyebrows.
It took me a moment, but then I sat up straighter, seeing the first silver lining of that morning. “The scavenger hunt?”
“The scavenger hunt!” Palmer agreed, banging her palm down on the table and setting the plates rattling. For the past five years Palmer had organized a scavenger hunt, usually taking place in August, when she felt things needed to be spiced up a little. Scavenger hunts were an Alden family tradition, and as soon as we’d all become friends, Palmer had started organizing her own. I’d missed last year’s, when I’d been stuck in bed with the stomach flu, getting photo updates so I could see just how much fun everyone was having. The year before I’d lost by a single point, something that still irritated me whenever I thought about it.
“I’m sorry, are you referring to my greatest victory?” Tom asked with a grin. “How many points did I win by last summer?”
“Nineteen,” Toby and Bri said in unison.
“And I’ve already started working on this year’s list,” Palmer said, mostly to me. “It’s going to be great.”