some old furniture out of the Bungalow. And I thought you could use it.”
Oh geez. “I can’t take that. Not after you’re spending so much time on it.” Like I want to owe May anything else. “Besides, I’ll only be in Burlington for a single academic year. Then I’ll leave again for graduate school.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” May says.
“Go to graduate school?” I yelp. “Yes, I do.” I can’t change my plans. If I do that, Reardon Halsey wins.
“You don’t have to leave,” she says. “There’s a graduate program in public health at Burlington U, right?”
“Sure, but…” I bite my lip. May went to graduate school right here in Vermont, and then set up shop locally. But I’m more ambitious than that. I want a degree from a top-ten university. I thought it would be Harkness. But now I’ll have to look elsewhere. Like Berkeley, or maybe Johns Hopkins. “I’m probably not staying,” I say. “And you should keep this.” I hand the phone back to her. “It’s going to look great, but I’d have to move it twice in nine months. I really can’t use it.”
“But…” May seems ready to argue the point. But then she closes her mouth and shoves her phone into her pocket. “Okay. Good to know.” Now she looks pissed. “Happy birthday anyway. We’ll cut the cake as soon as the band stops playing.”
She turns and walks away.
And I’m pretty sure I failed some kind of test with her. They’re the only kind of test that I usually fail. I watch her thread her way through the party, without another glance in my direction.
Shit.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out as a reflex. But my heart rate spikes when I see who the caller is. Reardon Halsey. The evil ex. Just his name makes me experience a fight-or-flight reaction.
Swiftly, I hit the button to decline the call. And then I take a deep, shaky breath. There’s no reason for him to call me. And I really don’t want to know why he did.
A little later, Audrey reveals our birthday cake. It’s really two cakes joined together in the middle. Audrey made it the way people divide toppings on a pizza—chocolate on one side and lemon on the other. A rich buttercream frosting covers the whole thing.
There are blueberries lining the edge, and Audrey has drizzled a message across the top in chocolate sauce: LOOK OUT WORLD. DYLAN AND DAPHNE ARE 21!
I choose a piece from the lemon side, and my brother chooses chocolate. We have never liked the same things, or read each other’s minds, or had a secret twin language.
Often, when I tell people that I have a twin brother, they say, “That’s so cool!” And Dylan is pretty cool. That’s why he has so many friends, most of whom are here tonight. His aim in life is to collect friends wherever he goes.
My aim has been collecting achievements. Not that I lack friends. But I poured all my energy into my life in Connecticut, and then walked away from it all. And I let my old high school friendships fall by the wayside. Now I’m lonely with nobody to blame but myself.
Nevertheless, I paste a smile on my face and thank Audrey for the cake.
And the wish I made when I blew out a candle beside Dylan was a simple one. Please let my twenty-second year be a little less terrifying than the last one.
When the band starts up again, two different men ask me to dance. But one of them is Roddy, my cousin’s boyfriend. And the other is my grandfather.
I say yes to both. But honestly, do I look that lonely?
After they reel me around for a song apiece, I treat myself to a single glass of champagne. I have never enjoyed getting drunk, because I don’t like to feel out of control. Especially in a room full of my extended family.
Eventually the band stops playing, and our friends begin to say goodnight one by one.
By the time we all climb onto the bus to head back to the farm, it’s one in the morning. I sit beside my grandpa.
“These dancing feet are tired. Happy birthday, Daphne. If you’re twenty-one, I’m probably legally dead.”
“You look fine to me. Did you have fun tonight?”
“Yes, until my date went home early.”
“Bummer,” I sympathize.
“Pick a wild one, Daphne.”
“What’s that?”
“Whomever you choose, make sure he knows how to party. Life is short, but the nights are long when you’re