Last Year's Mistake - Gina Ciocca Page 0,21

get anyone’s hopes up. We’ve been down that road before, and this time I wanted to know it was real.” His grin widened and he winked at me. “Happy birthday, Kelsey.”

He looked at me with a mixture of such pride, such love, that I almost wanted to cry. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present.

As if he’d read my mind, David leaned over and whispered, “My gift seems pretty lame right about now.”

My head whipped toward him. “What? You weren’t supposed to get me anything!”

David shrugged and motioned to his father. “It’s from both of us.” He smiled, clearly proud that he’d found a loophole. “Come upstairs. I put it in your room.”

We excused ourselves from the table, and I followed him up the short flight of stairs. The upper level of our house had three bedrooms and one bathroom clustered off a tiny hallway at the top. Once we’d reached the landing, he pulled me in front of him and covered my eyes with his hand.

“For real?” I said.

“Yes, for real.” I heard the light switch flip up and shuffled into the room, afraid I’d trip over my own feet even with David guiding me.

“Okay, look.”

I blinked as his hand lifted from my eyes and my bed came into focus. Then I gasped. And then I burst into laughter. On top of my quilt sat a beige-colored stuffed cat wearing a red and blue cheerleading uniform. The red bow perched atop her right ear matched the outline of the white letter A printed on her shirt. A card with my name scrawled in David’s handwriting stood propped up against it.

“Oh my God!” I threw myself on the bed and hugged the cat to my chest. “Did you get this because—”

“You hung a picture of the Grand Canyon by your bed right after I saw you take two hundred flyers from the guidance office about the University of Arizona?” He laughed. “Yeah.”

I eyed the postcard I’d taped up next to my headboard, a gorgeous photo of a sunset casting rainbow-colored shadows over the cavernous walls of the canyon. Uncle Tommy had sent it from one of his many vacations. He’d written:

It’s a beautiful world, beautiful girl. Can’t wait for you to get out and see it.

I’d promptly grabbed some tape and hung it up. My fascination had been growing since.

“They weren’t all for the University of Arizona.”

“A lot of them were. And the ones that weren’t were all schools on the other side of the country.” He grabbed a pillow from my bed and propped it between his head and the leg of my dresser, sprawling out on the floor. “What’s up with that?”

I picked at the bow in the cat’s hair—Wilma the Wildcat, the mascot for the University of Arizona. I knew I had plenty of time before I needed to seriously consider college, but I’d been thinking about it a lot over the past few months. Obsessively. “I’ve never left the East Coast. Do you know how small Connecticut is in relation to the rest of the United States? Like a crumb of apple compared to an entire pie.”

“Apples don’t make crumbs.”

I faked like I was going to throw the cat at him and smiled when his arm shot out with baseball-player instinct. “You know what I mean. I figure if I’m ever going to get out of here, college is my chance. Arizona has a great journalism program, it’s close to California—which I’ve always wanted to see. I think I’d really like it there.”

“You say that now, but Arizona is far. Don’t you think you’ll be homesick?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t miss this place. I’d miss my family.” A flash of blond hair and blue polka dots in the corner of my eye betrayed Miranda lurking outside my door. “Except my nosy sister.”

“Hey!” came the indignant cry from the hallway.

“Go back downstairs!”

So what did she do? Came in the room, sat next to me, and stuck her hand out, of course. “I helped get her in here; you can at least let me hold her.” I handed over the cat and she stroked its head.

“So, Miranda,” David said. “What do you think of your dad’s news?”

“I think it rocks. I hope everyone on the planet buys Daddy’s book and he gets famous and we become rich, rich, rich!”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up. Daddy’s told us a hundred times that getting published doesn’t mean getting rich.”

David bobbed his head from side to side,