PROLOGUE
My mother believes there are two types of people: those who like to be the center of attention, and those who are too shy to want anybody to notice them. She thinks I am the second but should be the first.
What she’d never understand is that some people like to be noticed for some things but not for other things. Like to be noticed for being an excellent piano player, but not for being allergic to peanuts. Or noticed for wearing new shoes, but not for speaking with an accent. Or noticed for being the only Kennedy High student to score a 5 on the AP Human Geography exam, but not for being the only Kennedy High student whose breasts are bigger than her head.
CHAPTER 1
“Come on, Greer. Maybe you’ll make a new friend.”
I answer in annoyed blinks.
“It’s nice to help someone get settled in a new place. It’s a chance to give back.”
I blink at her harder, because she’s pretending like I volunteered for this.
“Half an hour. Forty minutes, tops.”
Mom’s half hours do not top out at forty minutes. Mom’s half hours can last hours. Especially if she has an audience.
We’re here for her work. She is a relocation advisor with Relocation Specialists, Inc. Big companies hire her to help settle new employees in the area. She leads neighborhood tours, arranges school visits, and recommends pediatricians, handymen, or Brazilian waxers.
She’s very good at it. It satisfies her constant need to share her opinions and justifies the over-the-top luxury SUV she leases, with its interior of baby-seal leather.
Sometimes, like now, if she has a client with a kid my age, she’ll drag me along to meet with them, like a junior re-lo advisor. I’m supposed to answer their questions about being a teenager in suburban Illinois. They never have any questions.
It’s always the same. It’s even the same Starbucks. I sit next to Mom and try to look extra welcoming. The new kid stares at their phone under the table so I know that wherever they came from, they had friends cooler than me. If the client is a mom, she’ll ask me the kind of questions she thinks her sulky kid would want to ask if they weren’t too sulky to ask them, and once I start to reply, my mom will interrupt with what she thinks I should answer. It’s completely uncomfortable for everyone, except Mom. Kathryn Walsh is never uncomfortable.
Believe it or not, there are times being a mild-mannered, high-achieving, generally agreeable teenager does not work for me, and dealing with my mother is one of them. If I fought with her more, like Maggie fights with her mom, or if I was embarrassing, like Tyler, she wouldn’t make me do these things. It would be too exhausting. But Kathryn Walsh exhausts me more than I exhaust her, so here I am. She is just so. I am just so not.
It is why I go with her to meet the uninterested progeny of people cruel enough/important enough to make their families move during high school.
It is why I help my brother, Tyler, with math homework he could find the answers to online.
It is why I faithfully attend the yearly reunion of the moms and babies from her childbirth class, hosted by this very coffee establishment every May.
This branch of Starbucks is located on the path of least resistance. I follow her inside.
The kid I’m supposed to meet will be a sophomore at Kennedy, like me. That’s something. All I have in common with the Natural Birth and Beginnings crowd is being dragged out of the womb by the same midwife. Jackson Oates, whoever he is, is probably going to think this is as awkward as I do, so at least we’ll have that in common, too.
Mom greets Mrs. Oates with a hug and they introduce me to Jackson, who does not look like a sulky weirdo. He’s actually kind of non-sulky and non-weird. Light-brown hair, dark-brown eyes, and a big smile as soon as we say hello. He puts out his hand to shake mine, which makes me wonder if the place they just moved from was the 1950s. I’ve been taught to be polite, though, so I shake firmly. He seems pleased.
“Oh, good! Your parents must have drilled the importance of a good handshake into you, too.” He says it in a dad voice, with a glance sideways at his mother, who rolls her eyes. “I always feel like I’m closing a German business deal,” he adds in a normal voice. His hand is warm. Not sweaty. Just warm like a live body is supposed to be, and like I suspect the usual phone doodlers’ hands are not.
“We meet a lot of new people,” says his mom, as an excuse.
“Ich will buy zwanzig Apfelkuchens and ein BMW,” he says to me, and against all my instincts, I am charmed.
This is not going to be the kind of awkward I thought it would be.
This is a different kind of awkward.
There’s a quick negotiation while Mom figures out what everyone wants, orders for us (she is just so just so), and pays. Because she basically views me as her assistant, she says to everyone else, “Let’s grab that table. Greer will wait for the drinks.” Mom and Mrs. Oates head to Mom’s favorite four-topper, the one closest to the outlet. Jackson stays next to me, though, watching the barista steam the milk.
This is the part where the new goon is supposed to slide in next to their mother and act like I personally made them come here. But Jackson is standing next to me, waiting for the drinks, like we’re in this together. I must look confused. He says, “You’ve only got two hands. For four drinks?” Like an idiot, I look down at my hands, as though I’m confirming the number.
“Oh. Right. Yes.”
“Hey, thanks for coming here today. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of things you’d rather be doing.”
I thought I did, but this is actually much more interesting than clipping my toenails after all. I sputter, “It’s no problem.” We stand there in silence for a minute, and I wonder if I’m the non-conversational goon in this arrangement. I add, “You realize you’re getting a serious insider’s tour right now. This place is kind of an underground favorite with the locals.”
He half grins. “Starbucks?”
“Oh, so you’ve heard of it?”
“Kathryn? Coffee ready for Kathryn?”
We carry the drinks from the counter. I set down Mrs. Oates’s café miel and Mom’s oh-what’s-that-is-it-French-I’ll-try-that-too at the table, where they’ve spread out the Relocation Specialists Resource Binder, where Mom keeps all her pro tips about this “uniquely welcoming and family-oriented community just forty-five minutes from downtown Chicago.” I’m pretty sure this Starbucks is in the binder (which is in the Starbucks, which might make it some kind of re-lo wormhole).
Jackson walks right past with my hot chocolate and his chai. “Those cushy chairs are open. Is that good with you?” he says over his shoulder.
Umm, yes?