CHAPTER 12
Daisy came over on Thursday after school, and the three of us sat at the dining room table working on our calculus practice exam. Exams were early next week, and calc was really the only subject I was nervous about.
And Jamie was even worse than I was. Way worse.
“You have to carry the exponent when you take the derivative,” Daisy told him, tapping her pencil against her lips. “You keep dropping it, but it has to come down and multiply the rest of the term.” Their shoulders were brushing with how closely she leaned in.
Jamie didn’t seem to notice. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does it have to carry through?”
Daisy flicked him on the side of the head, just above his ear. It made a hollow sound. “Man, you’re going to fail this exam. Focus.”
I raised my hand. “Ms. Daisy, I have a question about number seven.”
“Do neither of you pay attention when Mr. Taylor talks?”
“You’re a better teacher,” Jamie told her softly, hunching over his paper to get to work on fixing his exponents. He scraped his eraser over the page. “I think you’re the world’s only artist that also is good at math.”
Daisy snorted, now lightly shoving at the side of his head as she stood from her chair. “Now to help the other twin,” she muttered to herself as she rounded the edge of the table. “I should start charging a tutoring fee.”
“Hey, Jamie helps you in English sometimes, and I have your back in poli-sci.”
“Ah, yes. A perfect circle.” Daisy wrapped her arms around my torso and leaned in, resting her chin on my shoulder. “What is troubling you with seven, dear student?”
Sometimes I thought about how different things would be a year from now.
Heck, even in three months, things would be drastically different.
Jamie would be off to New York for Columbia, I’d be up to my eyeballs in classes and credit hours at Mullhound, and Daisy would be juggling a job around babysitting her siblings.
The fun, carefree air that the three of us shared would dissolve, replaced by something more adultish.
At least I’d still have Daisy nearby, though. The thought of Jamie being hours away, though, hurt my heart. It could’ve been worse, though. He could’ve chosen UCLA or Stanford, which were other places Mom had him apply to.
I wondered if Jamie and Daisy ever got around to talking about NYU. They seemed pretty easy-going with each other, but I couldn’t imagine them having such a serious conversation without me.
Daisy and I ended up finishing our practice exam before Jamie, who was still two questions behind. Daisy took her seat back at his side, facing me across the table. “Did Carter end up meeting you last night?” she asked, beginning to doodle on a blank piece of notebook paper.
I nodded. “For a little bit. We played chess.” Before he decided to take a flirty little phone call, leaving the window wide open for Beck to crawl through it.
Jamie, though he was supposed to be finishing his study questions, watched Daisy’s pencil as it traced shapes. His thoughts mimicked mine. “Before Beck came.”
Daisy shoved at his head again, pushing it back down. “You, focus on your practice exam.” And then she looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “Beck? As in Beckham Jennings? As in, you played chess with your arch enemy?”
“We’re not arch enemies.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I don’t hate him,” I replied. Jamie’s pencil stopped scratching out numbers.
He was not-so-discreetly listening in, risking another scolding from the drill sergeant at his side.
“Back to Carter. He’s busy, but he said that his parents got an invite to Ms. Jennings’s birthday party on Saturday. So… I should see him then.”
Daisy nodded slowly. “So, like… is this a romantic thing now?” Her eyes quickly lifted from her sketchbook. “Because I’m so for it, if it is, but I thought Mr. ASMR was just a friend.”
I didn’t immediately answer. Love and romance were not things we often talked about—mostly because nothing was a secret in our trio, and talking about crushes and feelings in front of Jamie was embarrassing.
“I don’t know,” I said at last, a cop-out answer if I ever had one. “We’re… getting to know each other.”
Daisy nodded again, hearing the subtext.
She continued doodling, pursing her lips.
“I forgot to tell you. I overheard Collin talking about it with Raelynn at Senior Night, and I was going to say something, but then Beck, and then Carter—” She stopped.
Let out a breath. Continued sketching. “Dalton is coming home for the summer.”
Since I sat across from him, I watched as Jamie froze. He even went as far as to set his pencil down, straightening. At the same time, we both demanded, “What?”
The Giovannis were one of the families at Alderton-Du Ponte that’d joined when their son, Dalton, entered high school. Dalton had gone off to college last August, leaving his heartbroken ex-girlfriend behind.
His ex-girlfriend, whom he’d dumped cruelly, as if the last two years they’d been dating had been nothing more than a weak, two-week fling.
Daisy had cried for a week straight. She’d refused to leave her bed, and even when Jamie or I forced her—made her come over, to get fresh air and get out of her room full of memories—she’d just cry in our rooms. I hadn’t been sure she was ever going to get over her first heartbreak until one day she’d just stopped.
Stopped crying, stopped caring, and started pretending like her ex-boyfriend never even existed.
Until now.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Daisy went on, tearing at the bottom corner of her notebook page. “It’s not like it’s a big deal.”
Daisy never went into depth on how Dalton broke up with her. She never told me what he’d said or how he’d said it. However he had done it had been hurtful enough to send her into a crying spell that could’ve flooded the Sahara Desert, that was all I knew.
Jamie stared at Daisy, and she pointedly ignored both of us.
I wondered what he was thinking. His side profile as he watched Daisy was hard, full of a black hatred that I was sure would blink away the second she lifted her eyes.
The hatred wasn’t toward her, of course.
If Dalton Giovanni had no haters, Jamie and I were both dead.
“So we need to get you a boyfriend before he comes home,” I said, nodding. “Rub his freaking nose in it.”
“Yeah?” Daisy gave a ghostly laugh. “Like who? The only two single people our age at the club are Collin and Beck, and both are just—ugh.”
A thought popped into my head, and I couldn’t fight my smirk. “Could always date Jamie for the summer.”
Jamie flinched in his seat. “No, she can’t.”
Daisy gasped again, smacking his arm. “Please! You’d be lucky if I dated you. It’d be the achievement of your life. You’d tell it to your grandkids one day, I dated Daisy Carmichael.”
Jamie rubbed at his shoulder, gaze tracing her.
It was strange; in my head, Daisy was like a sister, and Jamie was my brother, but the two were not “like brother and sister.” A convoluted part of our dynamic, an oxymoron that didn’t make sense.
The two of them dating would be gross—and I would seriously be ticked off, because that threw a wrench in everything we’d been building since freshman year—but it wouldn’t be wrong.
The garage door in the kitchen suddenly swung inward, and Mom stumbled in with two plastic bags hanging from a hooked finger. She had a dust mop underneath one arm and struggled to cart in her briefcase along with the haul. Her eyes met mine. “A little help?”
All three of us burst into motion. Jamie got to Mom the quickest, taking everything from her but her briefcase. “You went to the grocery store?” I asked as Jamie pried the plastic bag open, peering inside.
“Cleaning stuff?”
Mom set her briefcase down on the kitchen counter. “I want to clean the house before Destelle comes.”
“Ooh, when is she coming home?” Daisy sounded far too excited.
I shot her a look, and she raised her shoulders to her ears.
“She’s not coming home until graduation,” I answered for Mom. “That’s, like, a week and a half away. Why are you cleaning already?”
“Have you seen this house? It’ll take me every part of a week and a half to get it ready.”
“It’s just Destelle.” I didn’t know why she was treating Destelle like it was the Queen of England visiting, and not just Mom’s own daughter. It was nothing that special. Besides, four weeks was a long time—she totally would cancel.
“And Harry,” Mom said. “She said he’s coming too.”
Jamie looked up. “Really?”
Mom nodded. “I don’t know why you’re all huffy, Nellie.” She patted my back as she walked past me and toward the fridge. “You like Harry.”
I did like Harry. Destelle’s boyfriend was probably as warmhearted as they came. I liked him a lot, actually.
Daisy frowned at me when Mom had her back turned. What’s wrong?
She might’ve grumbled when Jamie and I did our twin speak, but I was pretty fluent in Best Friend, too. I shook my head. Later.
“Are you going to be staying for dinner, Daisy?” Mom asked. “We’re having our famous chicken noodle mashed potatoes.”
“I have to cook for the kids tonight,” Daisy said apologetically. “But just know that it pains me to say that. In fact—” She twisted her wrist to look at her watch. “I should get going. Penn can only watch the two for so long, and Theo’s going to be dropped off soon from soccer practice.”
Even before she’d finished, Jamie backtracked toward where we’d left our review papers sprawled out. He slid her notebook and textbook into her backpack, and when he zipped the flap closed, he held it out to her to thread her arms through. “I’ll drive you.”
Daisy shook her head, turning so that Jamie could ease her bag onto her back. “It’s nice out. I just want to walk.”
She still wasn’t quite looking at either of us, the subject we’d abandoned no doubt still lingering in her mind. Dalton. “Call me when you get home,” I told her. “So I know you didn’t get kidnapped and chopped to pieces.”