Last Year's Mistake - Gina Ciocca Page 0,22

his face contemplative. “You never know. It could happen. Especially if it’s a bestseller and they decide to make a movie out of it.”

“Could I be in it?” Miranda squealed.

“Don’t give her any ideas,” I warned.

But David didn’t have it in him to frost her cookies. “If it were my movie, I’d let you be in it, Miranda.” That was all it took to set my sister beaming. I swear if she worshipped him any harder, she would’ve broken something.

I shot David an admonishing look. “There’s not going to be a movie. Although I wouldn’t complain if the book were a little successful. Like, successful enough to buy a house near Uncle Tommy’s cabin.”

David pretended to be aghast. “What happened to waiting for college? You’d leave me high and dry like that? Just take off with Wilma and ditch me for Newport?”

“You? No. Norwood? In a heartbeat.”

“What? But Norwood has so much to offer! There’s restaurants and stuff to do on every corner. Oh, wait—no, there’s not. But wait, we’re right on the water. Oops, that’s Newport too. I know—no one has a Weed-’n’-Feed supply store on every other street like we do. Try to find that in Newport.”

“See,” I said through snickers, “you’ve only been here six months and you already have a firm grasp on the lameness.”

He shrugged. “Portman Falls wasn’t much better.”

“Miranda!” my mother called from the bottom of the stairs. “Leave your sister alone. Come help me with the cake.”

Miranda scowled, but dropped Wilma in my lap and stalked off to help my mother. Only then did I notice something peeking out from beneath Wilma’s skirt, and I peered closer at her stubby thigh.

“Um, why is there a Band-Aid on her leg?”

David didn’t bother keeping a straight face. “She had a bruise the size of Texas.”

Laughter bounced off my bedroom walls as I hurled the cat at his face. “Ass!”

He threw her back, and I sank into my pillow, stroking the soft fur, allowing myself a momentary lapse into fantasies of my father’s roaring success.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” David said. “About your dad’s book.”

I flushed guiltily. “It would be nice.”

“Would you really leave?”

“If my parents went, I wouldn’t have a choice. But it’s not going to happen.”

“It could happen.”

“It won’t. Besides, it’s more fun when you’re there with me. You’d have to come too.”

David smiled. “That’s definitely not happening.”

I smiled back. “Anything is possible.”

Nine

Rhode Island

Senior Year

Candy’s shoulders rose and fell rhythmically as I tucked my comforter around her and Wilma, whom she’d fallen asleep clutching the night before. She’d come home with me after Violet’s party, where I’d left Crowley to babysit Ryan.

Lucky for Matt, Ryan wasn’t a puker when he drank. But Candy? Yeah. I wound up holding her hair somewhere around two in the morning.

Before I could tiptoe away from the bed, one of her eyes cracked open. “I’ve made fun of this cat eleventy billion times and you never told me she was the product of some torrid love affair you had before I knew you.”

Crap. After she’d caught me spying on Violet and David, I’d spent a good part of the night dodging questions about him. Considering what she’d seen, I’d been hoping she’d wake up this morning with a serious case of alcohol amnesia. My wish had obviously not been granted.

“It wasn’t a torrid love affair.” I sighed.

She sat up, dragging Wilma by the arm. Her hair looked like brown cobwebs, and remnants of midnight-kohl mascara rimmed her eyes. “You hid his picture in your goddamn closet. Which means it was torrid. So spill it, sister, because I saw everything last night and I want the real story.”

I plunked down next to her. “We were friends, Can. I know no one believes it thanks to my stupid sister, but we were.” I reached for the photo on my dresser, still sitting where Candy had left it the night before. “Besides, I didn’t want that from him.”

“Why?” Candy blurted, attempting to get her fingers through her tangled mane. “Did he smell bad? You know I love you, Kelse, but short of some serious noxious fumes, I can’t imagine why anyone would not want ‘that’ ”—she snatched the picture from my hands and thrust it in my face—“from that.”

I plucked the photo from her fingers and placed it facedown on the bed. “Believe me, plenty of girls wanted it. I guarantee he didn’t spend this past year crying into his pillow over me.”

Candy raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish he had?”

“No.”

My