Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [26]
“Vassar and Piedmont are already wooing Mary for their honors programs!”
“Piedmont, Swarthmore, Amherst, and Williams will practically pay our Jessie to attend their honors programs!”
“Our Mary doesn’t need financial incentives! She can write her own ticket!”
“Our Jessie already has! She has her pick of the Ivies!”
The one-upmanship was enough to make “their Jessie” drop out of high school and become a hooker on the Point.
“It’s been so fun rooming with you!” Call Me Chantalle gushed, handing me a pink piece of stationery with a tea-rose border.
The sound of her voice came as a surprise to me. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other for weeks, not since she neglected to put a toe shoe on the door and I walked in on her polishing the Grim Reaper’s skin scythe with her tongue.
I took a closer look at the paper, on which she had written Mary DePasquale in loopy, girlie cursive. What? Didn’t her parents know about Chantalle? Beneath it was a series of numbers, letters, and symbols which surely couldn’t represent what I thought they did.
“My e-mail and digits, silly! So we can keep in touch.”
It was obvious that she was putting on a show for both sets of parents. I looked at the two very respectable, very deluded people whose genetics had produced this hobag. I wanted to say something like, Call Me Chantalle, I wouldn’t touch you without a stockpile of antibiotics. But I knew my parents would be horrified by my candor, which, of course, conflicts with Phase 1 of the PDAD plan.
I waited until I got home to flush her info down the toilet, where it belonged.
I hadn’t expected to get anything out of SPECIAL. To finally have something to be excited about was beyond my expectations. I now know I will get through my senior year, if only because I’ve finally gotten a glimpse of what awaits me once my diploma is in my hands.
the fourteenth
I thought it was bizarre that my parents hadn’t driven up to visit me at SPECIAL, but I didn’t want them there, so I didn’t bring it up. And on the phone, they said nothing but vague, unimportant things about life back in Pineville, so I assumed nothing was going on. I should’ve known better. No, they wanted to wait until I was settled back into the homestead, enjoying a fine breakfast of Cap’n Crunch and coffee, before springing a month’s worth of bad news on me.
“Your grandmother, Dad’s mother, Gladdie . . .”
“I know who my grandmother is, Mom.”
“Well,” she said, clutching her teacup. “She fell down the stairs again while you were at SPECIAL.”
“Jesus Christ! Is she okay?”
“Well, she didn’t do any damage to her artificial hips.” Mom paused to sip her chamomile. “However, it seems the fall was caused by . . .”
“By what?”
“A little bit of a stroke.”
“WHAT?! How can you have a ‘little bit’ of a stroke? That’s like saying she caught ‘a touch of the AIDS.’ ”
“Well, she was in the hospital for only two weeks.”
“Only two weeks!”
“The stroke impaired her motor skills. And her memory is gone.”
“Mom! The woman is ninety years old! She hasn’t been in her right mind in decades.”
She shushed me. “Don’t say that. It will upset your father.” “Where is she now?”
“Well, we moved her into an assisted-living facility because she can’t take care of herself anymore.”
“Assisted-living facility. Is that PC for nursing home?”
She shushed me again. “Don’t say the N word. It upsets your father.”
My father. Aha! No wonder he hadn’t grilled me about my workouts. He’s been too distracted by his mother’s little-bit-of-a-stroke.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“We didn’t want to worry you.”
“Does Bethany know?”
My mother paused just long enough before saying yes to let me know that she was full of crap.
“Liar.”
Mom frowned. “We don’t want to tell your sister over the phone. And she’s out in California, so she couldn’t do anything to help, anyway. Why worry her? We’re waiting for a more appropriate time.”
Of course. Denial is how we Darlings deal with everything. Or, rather, don’t deal with anything. Like Matthew. His birthday is two days away. He would’ve been twenty-one.