Chapter 8
There was a knock on my door, and my dad pushed it open. “Hey, kiddo,” he said and leaned against the door frame.
“Hey,” I replied before flopping back on the bed. For the past hour, I had been moping around my bedroom.
“You sound tired.” Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could picture the frown lines etched into his forehead. My dad had developed the habit of being perpetually worried when Cara first got sick.
“Didn’t sleep well,” I told him.
Last night, when we got back from our trip, our parents told us the good news—Cara’s white blood cell count was doing better, and she was being released from the hospital.
After that, I went straight to bed. Even though I was worn out, I had stared at the ceiling until early morning, unable to fall asleep. A certain boy had been on my mind.
“Too excited about Cara coming home?” he asked.
“Yeah, something like that.” I picked a spot on the ceiling and studied it, hoping that my dad wouldn’t hear my lie.
Oliver was the reason I couldn’t sleep, not Cara.
He’d given me his number and asked me to call.
Was today too soon? Would it make me look desperate?
Maybe I should hold off for a few days. But if I waited too long, would it look like I wasn’t interested?
Calling or not calling was all I could think about.
Was I a horrible sister because I was focused on Oliver Perry and not Cara?
Yes, I was excited that she was coming home, but it didn’t mean her cancer was gone.
She was still sick. And if there was one thing that I truly wanted, even more than a chance to spend more time with Oliver Perry, it was for my sister to get better.
“Well, your brother and I helped her into the kitchen. Mom is making breakfast.”
“Mom is cooking?” I sat up on the bed. My mom wasn’t much of a chef. She could make Easy Mac and PB&J, but normally family meals were my dad’s responsibility.
“Attempting to. I should probably go help her before the pancakes turn into a scrambled mess.” Cara could live off pancakes, so it was no surprise that my mom wanted to make them. Syrup was practically a food group in our house.
“Scramcakes,” I said with a smile.
“Yeah, we don’t want that,” he said, laughing.
As my dad turned to leave, Drew stuck his head into the room. “Hey, Stella, Cara keeps asking where we were the last two days. Can we just give our present to her now?” He was bouncing up and down, and I could tell that he couldn’t wait to see her reaction.
“Sure thing,” I said and got off the bed. “Let me just get everything together.”
“Okay. There are some birthday gift bags in the hall closet if you want to wrap everything up.”
After grabbing a gift bag covered in glitter and tucking all the signed merchandise inside, I headed to the kitchen. My mom and dad were by the stove, and the smell of breakfast filled the room.
“Stella!” Cara called and patted the chair next to her.
She was at the table with Drew and they’d started playing Rummy 500, our family’s favorite card game.
Dad had taught us how to play when we were little, and we’d been perfecting our own personal strategies ever since.
Drew was the best out of the three of us, but I hated playing with Cara the most. Over the years, she’d earned the nickname The Scooper, because of her infuriating knack for scooping up the discard pile just when you wanted it the most.
“Hey, you,” I said and smiled back. Cara was always buying wigs, and today she was sporting an edgy pixie cut. “Looking sassy today.”
“You like?” She fluffed up the fake hair. “I think it brings out my rebellious side.”
“Since when do you have a rebellious side?” Drew asked and shot her a skeptical look. It wasn’t that Cara was a goody two-shoes, but with her illness, she didn’t have the opportunity that normal teenagers did to break the rules.
“Well, for starters, I’ve already looked at your hand twice. It would be really nice if you laid down the queen of hearts,” she answered innocently.
I burst out laughing and sat down.
My mom turned when she heard me. She had flour in her hair and on her face. “Morning, honey,” she said with a smile. “Want a pancake?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Did you make them?”
“No,” my mom grumbled and waved the spatula at me. “Your dad took over. He was mumbling something about scramcakes.”
“All right, I’ll take one.”
“Thanks for the love and support,” my mom said. Nevertheless, she took a plate down from the cabinets and held it out for my dad to scoop one perfectly golden cake onto. The syrup and orange juice were already on the table, so she only grabbed a fork before setting the breakfast in front of me.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said happily and dug in.
“Who’s that for?” Cara asked when she finally spotted the gift bag.
“Yum, this is great, Dad,” I told him through a full mouth. When I swallowed and set down my fork, I turned to Cara. “Possibly for a nosy sister.”
“Ohhh!” she exclaimed and wiggled her eyebrows in excitement.
“It’s your birthday present,” Drew added.
“Is the nosy, yet completely charming sister allowed to open her present?” she asked.
“I suppose so.”
“Yay!” Cara gushed and clapped her hands together. When I pushed the bag across the table to her, Drew scooted away in caution. Cara was about to flip.
Cara pulled out the tour T-shirt first. When she unfolded it, she smiled. “Aww, thanks, guys. I love the Heartbreakers.” I could tell that she was trying to be nice, since she thought we had gotten her a T-shirt that she already had.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “When did you get a hole in the armpit?”
Cara shrugged. “Oh, it’s been there since—” She stopped suddenly and then flipped over the sleeve to see if it really was her own shirt. Frowning, Cara looked back and forth between the two of us. “I don’t get it. You’re giving me my shirt?”
“Your new and improved shirt,” I told her with a smirk.
She looked confused for a moment before something finally clicked in her head. “No way!” she said in disbelief and flipped the shirt over to inspect it. There in black Sharpie were the boys’ names.
“Oh my freaking God!” Cara screamed. “This is amazing. No, this is better than amazing. This is like Christmas on steroids!” She was so excited that she didn’t know what to do with herself.
First she squeezed the shirt to her chest before deciding to pull it on over the one that she was already wearing.
“Thank you guys so much,” Cara said, looking at both of us. She acted like she was going to cry. “You totally win best birthday present this year.”
“You haven’t even finished opening it yet,” I pointed out.
“There’s more?” She tore into the rest of the bag, squealing with glee each time she pulled out another one of her signed belongings.
“I don’t remember this one,” Cara said when she unrolled the poster that Xander had given us.
“It’s not out yet,” Drew told her. “Xander said it’s going to be in the next issue of Tiger Beat.”
“He gave this to you?” Cara exclaimed, her eyes practically popping out of her head. “You say that like you know him.”
For a moment, I think Drew forgot that we were talking to Cara, a.k.a. the crazy Heartbreakers stalker. “Well, yeah, we hung out with them Saturday night.”
Cara spent the next few hours interrogating us about the Heartbreakers.
After Drew mentioned that we had hung out with the band, my sister made us share every detail about our trip.
As a punishment for his slip, I made Drew do the retelling.
While he told the story, I let Cara flip through my camera.
I had recorded most of the night. There were a few pictures of Oliver cooking, shots from the pool, a video of one of the chicken fights, and of course the pictures I had taken of Oliver at Starbucks.
“So, who has the prettiest eyes?” Cara asked as she watched the chicken-fight video for the tenth time.
Drew raised an eyebrow. “You’re really not asking me that, are you?”
Cara set the camera down before resting her elbows on the table and propping her head up in her hands. “In my opinion it’s JJ,” she said dreamily.
“I don’t know,” Drew said and rolled his eyes. “I was leaning more toward Alec.”
“What do you think, Stella?” Cara asked as she continued to stare off into space.
My thoughts went immediately to Oliver, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
After years of trying to convince me that the Heartbreakers were “so hot” there was no way I would admit to Cara that she had been right all along.
Drew smirked at me. “No contest there.” Then he traced a heart in the air with his fingers.
“Shut up!” I hissed and gave him a hefty kick to the shins under the table.
“What the heck, Stella?” he complained and rubbed his sore leg. “That hurt.”
Cara snapped out of her daydream and turned to me. “Huh? What are you guys talking about?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I lied and looked away so she couldn’t see the pink forming on my cheeks.
“Bullshit,” Drew coughed.
“Do you want another kick?” I threatened.
“Okay, you have to tell me now,” Cara said and clicked her manicured nails across the table impatiently. I glared at my brother, daring him to say something. “Stella?” Cara asked.
I kept my mouth shut, and Drew and I continued our silent staring contest. Finally he looked down. I thought I had won and for a moment I silently celebrated a victory, but then he smiled wickedly.
“OliverPerrygaveStellahisnumber!” He spoke so fast that his words blended together. I almost didn’t understand, and by the time I did, Drew had jumped out of his chair and well away from my foot.
Cara giggled. “No, really. What are you guys talking about?”
“‘Please call me, Stella,’” Drew mocked.
I gritted my teeth together. “I am going to kill you, Drew!”
“Oh. My. God,” Cara said slowly. She looked back and forth between us. “He wasn’t joking?”
When neither of us said anything, Cara had the confirmation she wanted. “Holy shit! Oliver Perry gave you his number? You’re such a lucky bitch. Oh my God, can I see it?”
For someone who wasn’t very mobile, Cara was adept at launching herself toward my pocket where my phone was tucked away. I pulled my cell out of my jeans, and she snatched it away before I could blink. While Cara was searching through my phone, I flipped Drew off.
“Where is it?” Cara demanded. “You guys weren’t lying, were you?”
“No,” I said as my cheeks turned red. “It’s under ‘Starbucks boy.’”
Cara eagerly flipped through the numbers again until she found Oliver. “Wow,” she said slowly. “That’s really it?”
“Yeah,” I answered, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Cara was staring at my phone like it was a miracle from heaven.
“So have you called him?” she asked. I could tell she was doing everything in her power to keep from hitting the call button.
“No,” I muttered.
“Oh my God. Okay, so when you do, you need to tell me everything. Do you think it would be weird if I said hi? I know he doesn’t know me, but come on. You know I’m like the Heartbreakers’ biggest fan,” Cara gushed.
“Sure, no problem,” I said quietly.
Sensing my discomfort, Drew switched the subject as he sat back down at the table with another plate of pancakes.
“Okay, moving on to something way more important than a phone number. What do we want to do for our birthday on Friday?” Thank you, I mouthed to Drew even though it didn’t make up for him being a jerk.
For our birthday, I wanted to do something simple so we wouldn’t have to worry about Cara. Last year had been perfect since we spent the day on the beach. Our aunt and uncle own a cottage on the ocean in South Carolina, and my entire family flew out to visit them for a whole week.
We played sand volleyball and Frisbee with our cousins—Cara cheering from the side—and swam in the cool water.
For breakfast, lunch, and dinner we munched on fresh watermelon and sipped lemonade.
When it got dark, we built a bonfire in the sand and roasted marshmallows as the waves crashed against the shore in a soothing nighttime song.
“We could go to the movies,” Drew offered and shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s so boring,” Cara whined as she spun my phone in circles on the tabletop.
As much as I agreed with Cara, I couldn’t think of something to do that was a perfect combination of safe and exciting. “A movie could be fun,” I said slowly. “Didn’t that one thriller just come out?”
“I don’t like thrillers,” Cara complained. She turned to Drew. “Besides, didn’t you say that you would never go to the movies with me again?”
“What?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said and snorted. “Remember the Twilight premiere?”
“Oh God,” Drew said and buried his face in his hands. “Don’t remind me.”
Cara had been so excited about the opening of Twilight that she dragged Drew to the midnight showing with her. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. She dressed up as Alice and forced Drew to be Edward. After the movie, he had run into his crush from school, his face covered in sparkling glitter.
“We looked so perfect,” Cara said, remembering the event fondly.
“You put powder on my face,” Drew said, irritated. “I looked like an idiot.”
“And that’s different from any other day?” I said. “I think I have a picture of you on my computer somewhere.”
“Okay, never mind,” Drew grumbled. “We’re not doing a movie.”