When we pulled into the driveway all I felt was impatient. I couldn’t wait for Jamie to get out of my car. I couldn’t wait to get home and into my bed. I especially couldn’t wait for my picnic with Ruby. Now there were two things I wanted to ask her, and I had no idea how she’d respond to either one. Suddenly that not knowing didn’t scare me so much anymore.
I meant to spend Sunday morning doing all the homework I hadn’t done on Saturday because I was too nervous about my date (question mark) with Ruby. But then it was the day of the actual date thing, and the very idea of opening a textbook was laughable. Like I was going to sit down and read about kinetic energy when I was seeing Ruby in eight and a half hours. I needed every minute of that time to pace frantically around the house, wondering why I couldn’t have suggested a Sunday breakfast instead of a midafternoon snack. On my twelfth trip through the kitchen my mom finally threw down her book.
“Would you stop? You’re making me nervous!”
“I can’t help it! I don’t know what else to do!”
My mom took a big bite of doughnut and rubbed at her temple. “Go get my purse,” she mumbled.
I dashed into the entryway and yanked my mom’s black leather bag off the hook by the door. I handed it over, and my mom wiped her powdered-sugar fingers on her pajama pants before digging out her wallet. She peered into it, sighing when she found only a few dollar bills. I held my breath as she slipped her emergency second credit card out of its slot. The last (and first) time my mom had given me that card was for my six-month-anniversary date with Jamie. I’d made us a reservation at the fanciest steakhouse my mom’s sixty-five-dollar budget offering could buy. With tip I paid sixty-two.
“You’re having a picnic, right?”
I nodded excitedly. I’d been planning to cobble it together from food we already had in the house, but instantly I began to dream bigger: Fresh fruit. Cold deli sides. Buttery European cookies.
“Okay,” my mom said. “Forty bucks, max.”
“That’s plenty,” I said. “I mean, it’s enough. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She picked up her doughnut with one hand and her book with the other. “Now get dressed and get out of here. And take your time.”
And I did. I showered and drove to the fancy grocery store out by La Jolla: the one with carpeted aisles and frigid air-conditioning and the boys my age wearing black polos who bagged your food up for you, where old people and rich people and old rich people bought organic produce and gourmet cheese as normal, everyday food. I lingered over every display, and stopped for every free sample offered to me by ladies with perfect manicures, wearing white chef’s coats and discreet hairnets: a tiny shrimp cocktail in a paper cup; a smear of truffled goat cheese on a crispy herbed cracker; four sips’ worth of cranberry kombucha, on sale this week for $3.99 a bottle from $4.59 a bottle.
I walked all the way through the store once without putting anything in my basket. I had to maximize my forty dollars, and it was easy to get sucked in by flashy-but-impractical items, like the four-pack of crème br?lée pudding that came in actual glass dishware, which I stared at for a full thirty seconds even though it cost eight dollars. On my second trip through the store, now older and wiser, I picked up a box each of raspberries and blueberries, three blocks of cheese, prosciutto and salami, two kinds of crackers, and a bag of potato chips, just in case. Then I did some mental math and put back the blueberries and one box of crackers.
The subtotal came to $38.41, so I threw a bag of M&M’s on top for dessert.
Back at home in the kitchen, my mom now upstairs in the shower, I packed everything neatly into a cooler and then stood back to appraise my efforts. I wished I’d thought ahead to buy one of those special wooden