Figuring that my room was probably as clean as it was going to be, I headed over to my dresser, bent slightly to see myself in the mirror, and ran a brush though my hair. Like all my siblings, I was tall—five nine, with long light-brown hair and a slightly crooked nose due to a trampoline mishap when I was six. I also had hazel eyes, the only one of my siblings to have them—like for the last kid, the genetic lottery had been split down the middle. I tugged the brush through the ends, wincing—my hair had reached the length where it would get tangled in a second. But I’d also gotten used to having it long, and even as I knew I should cut it, I also knew I probably wouldn’t.
I pulled a sweatshirt on over my pajamas and was halfway to the door when I heard my phone buzz, the sound muffled. I looked around and, after a moment, realized that I’d accidentally made the bed over it. I retrieved it from under the covers and smiled when I saw it was my favorite brother calling.
“Hi, Danny.” I pulled the phone away for just a second to check the time. “It’s early out there.”
“Well,” he said, a laugh somewhere in his voice, “some of us have to fly all the way from California.”
“You could have come in last night.” This was what I’d been pressing for for the last few months, since having just a weekend with my siblings didn’t seem like nearly enough. I’d been trying to get everyone to come on Tuesday or Wednesday, so that we’d get some Grant time before relatives and guests descended. But only Linnie and Rodney had come home early—both Danny and J.J. had to work and could only take Friday off.
“Not this again.” I could hear a smile somewhere in my brother’s voice.
“Wait,” I said, my eyes going wide. “Why aren’t you on the plane?”
“I’m calling you from the plane,” he said, and I could suddenly picture him, on the tarmac in San Francisco, kicked back in his first-class seat, a cup of to-go coffee by his side. “You’re allowed to make calls from planes, you know. We haven’t taken off yet and I wanted to check in. How’s it all going?”
“Great,” I said immediately. “It’s been awesome to have Linnie and Rodney here again.”
“I mean is everything going okay with the wedding? No last-minute disasters?”
“It’s all good. Clementine’s taking care of everything.”
“Glad I’m getting my money’s worth.”
“You should be sure to mention that in your speech.”
Danny laughed. “Maybe I just will.”
Clementine Lucas was Linnie and Rodney’s wedding coordinator—Danny had offered to pay for a planner for them, calling it his engagement present, when they’d moved up the wedding date. They had gotten engaged two years ago but seemed in no real hurry to set a date or plan their wedding, and we’d had a running joke that they’d get married sometime in the next decade. The only thing they knew was that they wanted to get married at our house—it had been Linnie’s dream since she was little.
Since Rodney was in his third year of law school and studying for the bar and Linnie was finishing up her master’s in historic preservation, this spring was probably not the best time for them to be attending a wedding, much less planning their own. But when my parents told us they were putting the house up for sale, things on the wedding front suddenly went into hyperdrive.
I looked over at the stack of cardboard boxes that I’d pushed up against my closet door, like that might make me forget about why they were there in the first place. I was supposed to begin the process of cleaning out my room, because our house had been bought by Lily and Greg Pearson, who would be moving in, along with their three extremely loud kids, as soon as the escrow process was complete. I had secretly hoped there would be no buyers, that our house would languish on the market for months, but when it sold, and fast, I wasn’t surprised. After all, who doesn’t want a house that had been featured in one of America’s most beloved comic strips?
So, in the midst of all this, Clementine had been incredibly helpful—Danny had found her through Pland, a start-up his venture capital firm had invested in. It had contacts with wedding planners all over the country, and matched couples with the best ones. And apparently, aside from a serious disagreement about the napkin colors, everything with Clementine had gone great.
“Well, I can’t wait to see it all myself this afternoon.”
“You’re still getting in at two?”
“That’s the plan.” Danny cleared his throat. “And I’ll have a surprise when I see you.”
I grinned; I had a feeling I knew what this was. “Is it a Double-Double?”
Danny sighed. “I never should have taken you to In-N-Out when you came to visit.”
“So that’s a no?”
“That’s a ‘hamburgers shouldn’t go for six hours without being refrigerated.’ ” There was a small pause, and he added, “You could have access to In-N-Out constantly if you moved out here next year.”
I smiled and glanced, automatically, at the stack in the corner of my desk—the bright, shiny folders that were my college acceptances. I’d applied to eight schools and gotten into three—Northwestern, outside Chicago; College of the West, in a small town in Los Angeles; and Stanwich, the local university in town where my dad taught. I’d decided last week to go to Stanwich, and had told Danny my decision even before I’d told my parents. He’d been trying to talk me into joining him on the West Coast ever since. “Well, I really think all major life decisions should be based on fast food chains, so . . .”
“I knew you’d come around.” I could hear, in the background, an announcement about buckling seat belts and making sure all overhead bins were secure. “I should go. See you soon, Chuck,” he said, using the nickname for me that only he was allowed to use.
“Wait,” I said, realizing he’d never told me what his surprise was. “Danny—” But he’d disconnected the call. I left my phone on the dresser and walked over to my desk, set aside the orange College of the West folder, and picked up the bright purple one from Northwestern.
I’d gotten into Medill, Northwestern’s journalism school, which was the whole reason I’d applied there in the first place. My guidance counselor hadn’t believed me, thinking that I wanted to be at the same school where Mike was, not understanding that this was actually a bug, not a feature. I flipped through the brochure from Medill that had been sent to me, looking at the glossy pictures of students in the newsroom, the possible internships with major media companies, the journalism study-abroad program. . . . Before I got too far, I closed the folder and picked up the Stanwich College one, running my fingers over the lamp that was part of the school’s crest.
Northwestern had stopped appealing to me right around the time my parents told me they were selling the house. The idea of going away had sounded a lot better when I had a house to come home to. Suddenly, the thought of losing both my house and my town was too much, and I’d started to think more and more about Stanwich. I’d practically grown up on the campus, and I loved it—the tree-lined quad, the stained-glass windows in some of the classrooms, the truly epic frozen-yogurt topping bar. And it just began to seem like the best choice—I’d get to start something new while still holding on to the familiar. And it was a great school, and I knew it was going to be really, really great.