Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,67

Ava could remember. Though looking back now, she didn’t know if the summer was truly that special or if it was because it was the last one before depression. Before Dr. Clifford, before Lexapro, and before Logan Diffenderfer had called her stupid.

She knew she needed to call him. He’d found the information for her. He’d given her the gift of a picture. She needed to at least say thank you. Every time she picked up her phone, she couldn’t do it. She sent him a text instead.

Thnx.

Logan was weird when she saw him at school on Monday. Well, not weird, exactly. Cautious. He asked her how she was doing, in a way that was loaded and full of meaning. She knew what the question meant. How was she doing now that she knew what her mom looked like?

“Fine,” Ava said.

Only she wasn’t fine. When her mom had come back from Chicago on Sunday night, Ava had been weird and jumpy. She was angry at her mom—her adoptive mom—for keeping this information from her. But she also felt horrible for seeking it out on her own. She felt both betrayed and like the one who was doing the betraying.

It turned out that having the tiny taste of a biological mom was worse than having no taste at all. Every time Ava stared into the mirror, she would see the face of Isabel Castillo staring back at her. It was there when she walked past windows, and it startled her when she glanced in the mirror. She even saw it in the puddles that filled the sidewalks when the temperature spiked that Wednesday and all the snow melted at once. Logan was early to art class that day. He’d been early every day that week.

“How are you?” he asked in his new heavy way.

“I’m okay.”

It was his idea to look up Isabel’s address in Google Maps. Ava just wanted to see where she lived. To get some small clue about what her birth mother’s life was like. Maybe she was poor. But maybe she was rich. While Logan plugged the address in, Ava caught herself silently singing “Maybe” from Annie. Maybe far away or maybe real nearby.

Ava leaned over Logan’s shoulder and watched while the address came into focus. The apartment building was blank and ordinary and frustratingly nondescript. Facebook and Instagram were their next stop, but there were so many Isabel Castillos that it took the entire art period and all of their lunch hour to look them all up. None of them were her Isabel Castillo.

The next day, Logan showed up early to art class again. “I think I know a way you could fly out to California to see her.”

Ava shook her head. “She doesn’t want to meet me.”

“I’m not saying you have to meet her. Just see her. Wait for her outside her apartment until she comes out.”

“Like a stalker?”

“Like a daughter who just wants to know something.”

Ava shook her head. “No way. Hard no.”

“Can I just tell you my idea?”

“No means no, Logan.”

At lunch time, Jordan showed off the new dress that her grandmother had helped her make, and that stupid song from Annie popped into Ava’s head again. She had to duck into the bathroom so nobody would see her cry.

After school, she found Logan. “Hypothetically, let’s say I’m not totally opposed to stalking my mother. You said you had an idea to get me to California?”

Logan showed her on the map how East Palo Alto was only about a fifteen-minute drive from Stanford. “Tell your mom you want to apply to Stanford.”

“But I don’t want to apply to Stanford.”

“Tell her you might. And that you want to see the campus to help you decide. There’s a prospective-students’ weekend a little after Thanksgiving. You could fly there, and then it’s only a short bus ride to your birth mom’s.”

Ava looked down. “I don’t know.” It didn’t feel right. Tricking her adoptive mom into paying for a flight so she could see her biological mom.

“I could even go with you,” Logan said. “I’ve already seen the campus. But I’m sure my parents would say okay. They’re pretty desperate for me to go there.”

Ava stared at her toes. “I’ll think about it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WHEN THANKSGIVING break came, CJ drove the three hours to Ann Arbor with her parents to eat dried-out turkey at her oldest sister’s house like they did every year. She called Wyatt when they got there. “Just reminding you that my family left early for Thanksgiving