“Okay. They look great.” Dani is saying all the right words, but her voice sounds flat and dull. We all pretend not to notice.
“Can I have coffee?” I ask. Dad closes the milk carton and squints at me.
“I dunno, sweetie. I don’t want to stunt your growth.”
“Dad, she’s, like, a sasquatch already. Let her have a cup of joe.” Duke ruffles my hair and winks at me.
“How would you like it fixed?” Dad grins when I hesitate. “Tell you what, I’m going to make it light and sweet for now. You let me know if you want it different next time.”
“Sounds good.” When Dad puts the coffee in front of me, my hands shake, I’m so excited.
The first bitter sip is kind of a letdown.
Dani reaches out and gives me a soft shoulder squeeze. “It’s an acquired taste, Dell. You’ll learn to like it.”
“Or you’ll always hate it,” Duke cuts in. “Like I do.”
“You must be excited to see Marnie and Lilli and your mom and Peter today,” Dani says as Dad puts her pancake in front of her.
“I do miss them.” I clear my throat and drop my voice to a whisper. “But I’m scared to start high school. Now that I’m headed back to Michigan, it finally feels, like, real.”
“Oh, Dell!” Dani scoots her chair closer and hugs me. I hug her back, tight enough to make up for all our lost hugs this long, dreary summer. “I wish I could be there on your first day! Don’t worry. I know you’re going to do amazing.” She fingers the silver bracelet with the dangling heart clasped around my wrist. It was a graduation gift from her, Duke, and Dad.
Dad had it sent to my school on graduation day, so I got to open it—along with a bouquet of sunflowers and a teddy bear wearing a graduation cap—in front of all my classmates. Getting those gifts should have made me so happy, but all I wanted was my family there with me—my whole family. I’d felt pangs of the same loneliness on birthdays and holidays, but I’d always had Lilli and Marnie there to distract me from how much I was missing the other half of my family. I graduated from middle school, and half the people I loved most in the world weren’t there to see me walk across the stage. That sucked.
“I haven’t had a first day of school without Lilli and Marnie since I was just a little kid,” I tell Dani. “I know it’s weird, but it’s almost like, because I have to act brave when they’re around, I kind of convince myself to be brave by default.”
I’m horrified to realize my words make my beautiful sister cry again.
“Not weird at all! That’s just you being an awesome sister.” She hugs me tight again, her shoulders shaking. “I’ll be thinking about you on your first day, okay? I know we can’t really call or text while you’re at school, but I’m going to go to chapel before classes and light a votive for you, just like Nan Sunny used to do for all of us on the first day, for good luck.”
I bury my face in Dani’s shoulder, and I cry a little with her because it’s so unfair and sad that Dani’s had to be mom and grandma and sister to me this summer. I promise myself that this is going to be the year I start to act a little more grown-up, start to be a little braver. By next summer, maybe Dani won’t feel like she always has to worry and take care of me—maybe she and I can just be sisters...and friends.
We get ready to head to the airport, and for the first time, everything feels unsettled and gross. I’ve been dividing my time between two places I love for all these years with only small dips of sadness, but now I’m drowning in regret. Instead of feeling double lucky—two houses, two families, more love and happiness for me—I feel torn in two.
When we get to the airport, Dad engulfs me in a long hug. “I’ll sure miss you. Ask your mama to call me when you land.”
Duke’s hug comes with a noogie at the end. “Keep drinking coffee, bugbite. I don’t need my baby sister towering over me before she’s in tenth grade.”
Dani smooths down my hair. “I know this summer was a bummer. You just wait until next summer. I promise, it will be the best summer of your life. Knock ’em dead, Dell.”
Saying good-bye to my family in Florida reduces me to a sobbing puddle, and despite the flight attendants’ kindness and extra cookies, I’m wrung out and exhausted when I finally touch down in Michigan.
MICHIGAN
Mom hugs me, long and tight, as soon as I’m off the plane. “Why are your eyes so red?” she asks. “Did you use the rosewater spritz I packed for you? Sweetie, you know how dry the cabin of a plane can be. Let’s get you home so we can try on your uniforms.”
Peter gives me a warm hug, gathers my bags, and leads us all to the car. Marnie and Lilli link their arms through mine, and we amble through the parking lot like a tiny, awkward flock of long-legged birds.
“—and so we totally thought, because I’m so tall, I should play basketball, but it winds up I’m really not that good.” Marnie has been rambling nonstop since I stepped off the plane, and she keeps tugging down, hard, on my arm, making my shoulder sore. I almost snap at her because I’m so stressed from this morning, but I stop myself and remember that she’s just excited. I wish I could share that excitement, but the only thing I feel is exhaustion. “But they had volleyball games, and, like, I’m really good. I mean, really good. Do you want to play when we get home? AJ? Do you want to play? Dad got me a net and everything.”
“I’m so glad you found out you’re good at volleyball,” I say dully, my brain clouded. “I’m not feeling up to playing anything today, though. Maybe tomorrow?”
Lilli isn’t talking my ear off, but she is singing both parts of the call-and-repeat camp song “Little Red Wagon,” which is so grating, even her angelic voice can’t make it tolerable.
Mom and Peter herd us into the car, and we head home, Marnie still talking a mile a minute, and Lilli still singing about the little red wagon’s broken front seat and dragging axle as I gaze out the window. It’s so weird how this morning I watched the sandy beaches of Key West fly by, and now I’m looking at the emerald green fields of summertime Michigan.
Which makes me think about how I’ve never seen a winter in the Keys. I’ve never celebrated a Fourth of July in Michigan. Dani and Duke have never gone ice-skating in the little birch wood behind my grandparents’ lake house. Marnie and Lilli have never eaten crabs, fresh out of the trap, after a long day on the boat.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like my sadness is radioactive, like it’s burning through me and poisoning everything.
When we pull into the driveway, I announce that I have to use the bathroom and race upstairs, where I head to my bedroom instead and shut the door quietly, so no one will come looking for me right away. My mom has redecorated my room while I was gone—it’s all done in soft blues and yellows, very elegant and way more grown-up than my lilac room was, but it doesn’t feel like my room. Tears course down my face as I try to figure out why I suddenly hate everything about the life I used to feel so lucky to have.