temptations the world has to offer.”
Her daughter made some kind of dismissive clicking sound at the back of her tongue before she said, “What-evs.”
Gail sighed.
“But Daytona Beach is perfectly safe, Mom!” Holly twirled around on her Uggs and flopped into the other kitchen chair. “There’s lifeguards, like, every ten feet down the sand! And police everywhere! And, you know, their whole economy depends on tourism, so, like, they have to make sure nothing bad ever happens to the spring-break kids because that would be bad PR and totally negatively affect their economy!”
Gail was impressed by her daughter’s logic, but it was all a load of bull and they both knew it. “The answer is no,” she said again, standing up and clearing away her breakfast dishes. As she rinsed them out in the sink, she felt Holly press close behind her.
“Please, Mommy?” Holly made the plea in her cutest, sweetest, little-girl voice. “No.”
“Dad would say yes!” Holly’s voice had magically regained its full measure of teenage torment. “If I lived with Dad, he’d let me go!”
Gail nearly choked as she placed her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. Holly was right. Her dad would likely endorse any vacation that included alcohol poisoning, random disrobing and waking up in a stranger’s hotel room, since that was pretty much his preferred getaway. It was all a moot point, of course. Holly couldn’t move in with her dad anytime soon, since Curtis Chapman would be a guest of the federal prison system for another four years. And that was contingent upon good behavior, which had never been his strong suit.
“No, Holly. That’s my final answer.”
“You’re being unreasonable! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to go!”
Gail turned. She put her hands on Holly’s upper arms and held her firmly. She looked right into her daughter’s big, beautiful brown eyes—a move that now required her to look up instead of down because her baby was about an inch taller than her. She spoke slowly and seriously.
“A terrible disease. An unplanned pregnancy. An auto accident. Being hit by a bus. Drowning. A shark attack. An unintentional starring role in the Sluts of Spring Break DVD available for $19.95 on the Internet.”
Holly’s mouth fell open.
“What?” Gail asked. “Did you think I’m some nerdy small-town English professor with no idea of what goes on outside of Beaverdale, Pennsylvania?”
Holly blinked. “Well…yeah.”
Gail kissed her daughter’s cheek, keeping her smile hidden. “I need to get ready for my nine o’clock class. You’ve got five minutes until the bus gets here.”
“But, Mom—”
“We’ll talk about it more this evening,” Gail said, heading toward her bedroom. “Maybe we can come up with some kind of alternative plan, okay? Maybe you and Hannah can do something fun a little closer to home.”
“Oh, right,” Holly said, grabbing her backpack and heading for the front door. “I can see it now—spring break in Amish Country! We could make cheese and go on buggy rides! Hey—you could be our chaperone, Mom! I can’t wait to tell Hannah! This spring break is gonna totally rock!”
“Bye, honey.” Gail got the words out just before Holly slammed the door behind her. She chuckled to herself as she pulled out a brown skirt and beige blouse from her closet, thinking that it wasn’t all that long ago that she’d tried the same thing with her own mom. And lost. Gail ended up spending her senior-year spring break in the backseat of Tommy Brancovicci’s beater 1981 Gran Torino, which, come to think of it, was nothing but a shark attack on dry land.
As she dressed, Gail ran through the day’s schedule in her mind. She taught her Intro to American Lit class at nine and her Honors Hemingway Seminar at two, with student conferences from ten-thirty to noon. She was meeting Kim for lunch—it had been far too long since she’d seen her best friend. And she had a department meeting at four and had to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. Oh! And she should swing by the campus print shop for her new business cards, so she could proudly tell the world who she’d become: Gail Chapman, PhD.
She shook her head at the irony of it. The heck with Holly and Hannah! What did two impossibly young and free girls need with a vacation? Gail was the one who’d earned a spring break!
She froze. Holly’s sarcastic proposal began echoing in her head.
Chaperone?
Maybe her daughter was onto something.
GAIL PICKED AT HER CAESAR salad with a