"Great truths always are. Promise me you'll hang out with him before class tomorrow."
"If I see him, I will," I said, as if I wouldn't have tried to do that anyway.
Claudia wasn't the only one happy with me that evening. My stepfather, Karl, was practically glowing as he plopped down next to me at the dinner table.
"What?" I asked. I wondered if he'd slipped away to Atlantic City for the day and hit a winning streak.
Karl had been in my life since I was four, and in all ways except the most technical, he was my dad. My actual dad was called "the Sperm Donor" by my mom—this despite the facts that they'd been married for ten years and my grandmother swore Mom had been crazy in love with him when they met. Dad now lived in Media, in the huge house he shared with the Bar Wench and their two astoundingly spoiled sons. He'd met his new wife at a bar and left Mom for her almost immediately afterward. That was back when I was three.
Now that we lived in Malvern, Dad was only a twenty-minute car ride away, but none of us imagined that would change his practically nonexistent visitation schedule.
Karl, on the other hand, was almost always around, and right now he was looking at me with a big loopy grin. I laughed. Karl was fantastic when he was happy: funny, smart, caring, insightful ... the polar opposite of an unhappy Karl. An unhappy Karl ... that was something Mom and I worked really hard to avoid.
"I have good news, Cara," Karl singsonged. "I made some calls, cashed in some favors, and it turns out Mr. Stevenson Jaffe would be thrilled to meet you when he comes out here in April. He'll be visiting family, but he's willing to take time out and have lunch with you, just to get to know what he calls 'the Whole Cara Leonard.'"
What? I didn't get it at first, and I could see Karl's smile start to harden into a frown.
Then I realized and smiled extra-wide. "That's great!"
And it was great. Stevenson Jaffe was the dean of admissions at Northwestern, Karl's alma mater and my first-choice college. I'd been hearing about the place for twelve years now, and honestly couldn't imagine going anywhere else. That Stevenson Jaffe himself was willing not only to meet me but to spend a whole lunch with me was huge ...
But April was a lifetime away and so not where my head was at that moment. I was busy thinking about Archer and what I'd say to him tomorrow morning. I couldn't wait to finish dinner and call Claudia to bounce ideas off her, but the Dean Jaffe thing had Karl so happy, he declared it Family Night. By the time he'd finished destroying Mom and me at Scrabble, it was past my okay-to-use-the-phone hours. I had to settle for texting.
I fell asleep counting not sheep but possible opening lines. Claudia must have done the same—I woke up to an e-mail from her with a huge list of options.
"Really, Claude? 'Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much'?"
I had her on speakerphone as I drove to school. Mom and Karl didn't like me to use the phone at all when I drove, and I understood that maybe it wasn't the safest thing in the world. But what was I supposed to do, go without talking to my best friend because they'd decided to move away from her? I tried to use speakerphone so my hands were free, and I never ever texted when I drove.
"It worked for Juliet," Claudia said. "Romeo fell head over heels for her."
"You are aware that they both die at the end, yes?"
"Did you seriously just ask me that question?"
"Did I seriously ask it, or did I seriously think you didn't know they died at the end?"
"Fine. Forget Romeo and Juliet. Forget the centuries-old benchmark of true romance. How did you want to start?"
I took a breath, then offered up the best of my bunch. "Hey! Do you play Scrabble? 'Cause I had the best triple-word score last night!"
Claudia's silence was deafening. I couldn't blame her. Maybe I'd go with the good pilgrim thing after all.
As it turned out, I didn't need an opening line. The moment I got my books into my locker, I heard Archer's voice behind me.
"You are a woman of mystery," he said, and my whole body grinned as I