Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [75]
“They're frightening!” I screamed, ducking a whirring insect that had nearly flown right into my head.
“You should have heard them a few weeks ago at their peak,” my dad said, brushing one off the door handle of his car. “It was like a bunch of motorcycles revving their engines in the trees. They're supposed to be gone by the end of June, but they just keep coming. They're loud, but harmless. You'll get used to the buzzing. It gets to be like white noise after a while.”
My mother, of course, had a different opinion.
“They're driving me crazy!” she said, swatting at them with her beige Coach handbag.
“How can you tell?” my dad asked. “Between your menopause craziness and your turning fifty craziness and everything else?”
“Forty-eight!” my mom cried.
Dad groaned. “Have you forgotten who you're lying to?”
I was surprised by my father's comments, not by the cruelty, but because this was the closest I had heard my parents come to a direct conversation in a year.
“They've ruined the holiday!” my mother said, ignoring my father. “Bethany said she wouldn't dream of bringing Marin here when she heard the noise over the phone. I wanted to throw one last big barbecue, but who can enjoy themselves with this racket? I guess it will have to wait until Labor Day . . .”
“What do you mean one last big barbecue?” I asked.
Mom looked guilty. Dad kept his eyes on the road.
“Go ahead, Helen,” my dad said. “Tell her the news.”
Mom rearranged her features into her patented “Isn't it delightful?!” face.
“I sold the house!” she said.
“What?”
“We're moving!”
I looked at my dad for confirmation.
“Is this true?” I asked.
“Apparently so,” my dad replied with a weighted-down weariness that I was getting more and more accustomed to hearing.
For the rest of the ride home from the bus station, my mom prattled on about how she hadn't intended on selling the house but she'd held an open house for other Realtors to show off the rooms that she had staged in the hopes of drumming up interest in her fledgling business and one of the Realtors mentioned that she had a couple who were looking for a house in the area exactly like this one, they even had a little infant boy and they would likely pay top dollar for the house if all the furnishings were included and then she heard that Pineville had zoned prime property for new townhomes and when she heard what they were selling for she was stunned and knew she had to get in on it especially with interest rates on the rise . . .
“So, Mom,” I cut in. “When do you have to be out of the house?”
“The unit should be finished in September, so we're in the old house all summer, which is truly a shame because it would be so wonderful to enjoy the summer on the water but I suppose we have years of enjoyment ahead of us . . .” And she was off again.
All of this information before even pulling into the driveway was just too much to process. Upon laying eyes on 12 Forest Drive—with its blue siding, black shutters, verdant sod, blooming azaleas, red door, brass DARLING knocker—I couldn't help but hear Dexy screeching a sentimental ditty in my ear.
“Our house . . . Is a very, very, very fine house . . .”
I went straight up to my fake beige-on-beige-on-beige room and wrote Marcus a letter. Then Hope. And when I was finished, I collapsed in bed, half-wishing that I might sleep as soundly as a cicada. A deep slumber to get me through the next seventeen years.
I got seventeen hours instead.
the tenth
Why am I still here?
I was only supposed to stay here for the holiday weekend. But as Sunday turned into Monday, I just couldn't bring myself to get back on the bus. Back to Bastian. And whatever would happen the next time we were alone together.
And so I found myself feigning a scratchy throat, phoning in a fake diagnosis of mononucleosis to the Storytelling Project coordinator. After all, how many opportunities does one have to watch the apocalypse up close?
My mother