She said it as if it shouldn’t be. As if the time Cat spent there could be better allocated elsewhere. As if it didn’t matter. Which, by extension, meant neither did Cat.
They drove in silence up from the harbor, the landscape shifting from boats, docks, and sand to towering oak, birch, and maple trees. Lush green leaves lined the winding streets where clapboard homes from the 1700s mixed with mini McMansions in subdivisions. This town wasn’t exactly small, but being in it beside Angeline made it feel like a coffin.
Only two traffic lights guarded intersections along their seven-minute ride. At the second one, Angeline flicked the blinker to take the next left into Acedia Charter School’s parking lot.
Three stories high with rows of slender windows lining the red-brick front, Acedia gave the optical illusion of being narrower than it actually was, like its architect had implemented one of Angeline’s “Five Closet Tricks That Shed Pounds Instantly!”
Angeline paused and glanced at Cat. “Be different with them gone . . . Stavros and June.”
Cat swallowed. “Jen.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Mmm . . . sure.” Stavros and Jen had graduated last year, leaving Cat as the sole remaining editorial member of The Red and Blue and with a friendship count of zero. She’d been too embarrassed to tell Gramps that the empty masthead was how she’d nabbed the editor in chief role.
“So, yeah,” Angeline said, “you can sit with us at lunch if you want.”
“Us? You and Leo are back together?”
“No.” Angeline bristled. “I meant us—Maxine, Sonya, and Riley, you know.”
“I’ll probably be in the newsroom.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“Well, that’s done then.”
“Done? Wait, did you promise Mom you’d extend a pity invite to your pathetic older sister?”
“Gramps, and the wording was different but close enough.”
Cat clamped her jaw shut. She barely waited for Angeline to put her hatchback into park before escaping it. Lately, Angeline had been pushing Cat’s buttons more frequently, and the sensation of her head about to explode was becoming all too familiar.
She eased the clench on her backpack, preparing to start her senior year alongside the classmates she barely knew.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cat caught sight of a distinctive lime-green sweatshirt. On anyone else the bright zip-up would’ve looked silly, but the combination of Leo’s tawny skin, thick black hair, and unwavering confidence made it work. He loved that sweatshirt almost as much as he loved Angeline—though presumably it got top billing now.
Cat remembered the first time she’d seen him in it, freshman year when Gramps had insisted on meeting the boy stealing away his granddaughter. He’d arrived with a loaded beach tote: flowers for their mom, a potted pink beach rose for Angeline, and chocolates filled with hazelnuts that his grandmother had brought from Venezuela on her last visit to the States. Leo’s parents were both Venezuelan, first-generation, and though Leo lacked a sweet tooth, the rest of his family—and now Gramps—couldn’t get enough of that Toronto candy. But Leo also had something for Cat: a spiral-bound notebook with Editor in Chief handwritten on the cover. She still had it. She’d waited, as if opening it before the role was hers would jinx it.
They’d had to use Cat and Angeline’s desk chair as the fifth seat at the dining room table, but Leo fit in instantly. He’d watch the Red Sox with Gramps, listen more attentively than either Cat or Angeline when their mom delved into stories from the law firm where she worked, and came ready with a new obscure fact to every dinner—he was obsessed with this podcast that uncovered the unusual in everyday things. Over the past three years, he’d become an everyday thing for the Quinns. He’d become family.
And Angeline being Angeline meant he no longer was.
Leo met Cat’s eye, and she smiled weakly at seeing his left shoulder cradled in a sling, hoping he wasn’t hovering on the fringes of the parking lot just to get a glimpse of his ex, especially after what she’d done to him.
It was their breakup that had made her sister more antagonistic than usual. At least, Cat suspected as much. She and Angeline didn’t talk about that stuff. Angeline had her friends. And Cat, well, Cat didn’t need to talk about that stuff because Cat never had time for that stuff. School and homework and studying for the SATs took Cat double the time it took Angeline. Leo ending things with Angeline was the first time in her sister’s life that things hadn’t gone her way.
Cat hit the path that wound around the side and to the front entrance of the school. Most everyone else opted for the shortcut across the lawn, under the WELCOME BACK, ACEDIA! marquee and past the concrete island with the statue of town founder Major Mushing that attracted the pigeons and doves and feathery beasts that kept Cat far away. Her classmates’ heavy, shuffling feet would grind down the pristine blades, leaving nothing but a muddy trail come October, same as every year.
2
When Angeline Is Here for It
30 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
It was the same as every year, except in the ways it wasn’t.
The one colossal way.
Angeline’s heart clenched as her eyes settled on the bright green of that mangy old sweatshirt that smelled like seaweed and sunshine even direct from the wash. She strained to meet Leo’s gaze across the parking lot, to see if he’d been looking for her—waiting for her—but he dropped his Ray-Bans over his eyes and fell in step beside his little brother, Sammy, a shorter, skinnier version of Leo, wearing his own favorite article of clothing: a red plaid shirt perpetually tied around his waist.
The idea that Sammy was starting his freshman year seemed as ridiculous as Angeline starting her senior year without Leo.
She’d known Sammy since he was eleven. Eleven. They’d devour Mr. Torres’s homemade arepas—corn cakes stuffed with whatever they had in the fridge: queso blanco or deviled ham or eggs or even just plain butter. Delicious no matter the filling. Then she’d sit on the couch next to Leo, pinkies entwined, pretending to do homework and providing cover so Sammy could sneak clips of Saturday Night Live, which his parents had said he was too young for.
And now Leo was escorting Sammy through the front door of high school.
She should have been beside him. Them.
Angeline hugged her tote tight to her chest and forced air back into her lungs.
“Good summer, Angeline?” said a girl she didn’t recognize.
“Loved the last vid,” said the girl’s friend, whose strappy sandals cost as much as a smartphone. Angeline knew because she’d been trying to land a promo gig with the brand all summer.