The List of Things That Will Not Change Read online

  “Everyone but you forgives you.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t talk. I finally understood why Miriam always had a box of tissues on her coffee table.

  Miriam said, “There are times when it’s right to be angry, Bea. And there are times when we use anger as a kind of protection from feeling hurt. It’s a way of covering up.”

  I sniffed. “Like a pearl?”

  “You lost me.”

  “A pearl starts with a piece of dirt that gets into the shell. The oyster slimes all over it, to cover it up. That’s what a pearl is.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Just thinking. What if the oyster didn’t slime all over the dirt? What if it just let the dirt stay there and be dirt?”

  “Then the dirt might hurt the oyster.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know! I’m not an oyster!”

  She laughed. “No. You are much, much better than an oyster.” Then she came over to my couch and hugged me. We were still hugging when Mom knocked on the door and poked her head in.

  “Everything okay in here? It’s twenty after!”

  Miriam said, “Everything is great.”

  We never even opened the gummy bears.

  * * *

  —

  That night, Red sat on my bed with me while I did my worrying. He was extra snuggly (especially for Red). I closed my eyes and tried to worry, but for once, I couldn’t think of anything to worry about. Instead, in my mind’s eye, I saw all these bright lines, like lasers or something, connecting me to everyone I knew. There was a line for Mom, and one for Dad, one for Sheila, one for Sonia, and one for Jesse. There were lines for Angus and Lizette and Mr. Home and Miriam and Angelica and James and Jojo and Uncle Frank and Aunt Ess and even Carolyn Shattuck and Dr. Thomas. I could see myself on the bed, with Red right next to me, and there were so many lines shooting out of me that it was like I was a flower or something, opening.

  On the morning of Dad and Jesse’s wedding, I woke up early and it was raining, hard. Sonia was on California time, so she was still asleep. But Jesse was already drinking coffee at the kitchen table with Sheila, smiling his face off.

  “It’s raining,” I said. “You promised it wouldn’t rain!”

  “It’s going to be a beautiful afternoon,” Jesse said. “Trust me.” He patted Sheila on the back. She was staring into her cup and looking miserable.

  “It can’t rain on your wedding, Jess,” Sheila said. “It…can’t.”

  We’d all driven to the airport to pick up Sonia the night before. When Sonia and I went to bed, Sheila was at the table with her calligraphy pen, writing the words to Dad’s song, “You Are My Sunshine,” on squares of thick paper, one for every guest. One of Dad’s high school friends was going to play his guitar while Dad and Jesse walked down the aisle, and everybody would sing the song together. Sheila had it all planned out.

  Now there was a neat stack of paper squares on the table. She must have stayed up really late.

  “Maybe we can do ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ instead,” I told her.

  “Not funny!” She pretended to throw her toast at me.

  “Where’s Mission?” I said.

  “At my place,” Sheila said. “He’s meeting us at the restaurant.”

  * * *

  —

  We don’t call Jesse the weatherman for nothing. By three o’clock, everything was sunny and dry and felt just-washed. When we got to Beatrice, I could see myself reflected in the restaurant’s front windows, and Sonia next to me. Dad had said “my guests” could come early to help, and Angus and Lizette were already standing by the door, next to a huge box.

  “It’s the cake!” Lizette said, pointing at the box. “We’re guarding it. My grandma’s parking the car.”

  Sonia and I decided that since we were the maids of honor, we were allowed to peek at the cake. It was three layers, beautiful and creamy-looking, and the cake smell tickled my nose.

  “It actually smells like 7 Up!” Angus’s eyes were huge, like maybe he’d just seen a unicorn. He started taking deep breaths with his head half inside the box. Lizette laughed.

  “Don’t breathe on it!” Sonia elbowed Angus a few steps to the side, and Lizette carefully lowered the top.

  “Anyway, it’s not done yet,” Lizette said. “My grandma is bringing all these edible flowers to decorate it. She likes to do that part at the last minute, so they’re fresh. Just wait till you see it finished.”

  Angus made a face and said, “I don’t want flowers on my slices.”

  Lizette laughed. “What do you mean, slices?”

  “Doesn’t everybody get one slice from every layer?”

  Lizette shoved him, and Angus pinwheeled his arms, pretending to lose his balance.

  “Nobody better sit on my cake!” Lizette’s grandma was jogging toward us, wearing a fancy hat and dragging a suitcase on wheels. I wondered if it was full of flowers. (It was.)

  Dad unlocked the restaurant door from the inside and gave us jobs to do. First, we went around to all the tables, setting out the jugs of sunflowers Sheila had ordered. Next to the front door, we lined up little cards that told people where to sit when it was time for dinner. Sheila and I had drawn a tiny sun on each one. Then, in the garden, we opened folding chairs and lined them up in rows. Sheila showed us how to tie these big ribbons from the art store to the back of each chair, to make them look fancy. And we put one of Sheila’s song cards on every seat.

  Our other job was to stay out of the caterers’ way. Dad said on his wedding day, someone else was going to cook.

  It was pretty much the best afternoon of my life. In a way, I didn’t want anyone else to come. Not even Mom. I wanted just me, Sonia, Sheila, Angus, Lizette, Dad, and Jesse, making everything beautiful. I stood in the garden and took a deep breath. There was a breeze, and the sun made the chair ribbons shine. Angus was making Sonia laugh—I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want to know. Sheila and Lizette were dumping ice into some long coolers set up along the fence. I just stayed still and felt my happiness, the giant balloon of it.

  Then Sheila said it was time for me and Sonia to get ready. We squeezed into Dad’s office and got our dresses on, and Sheila pinned daisies in our hair. I couldn’t believe it was all really happening, exactly the way we planned it.

  When we opened the shoeboxes with our new sandals in them, I was glad Sheila hadn’t let me wear mine all week the way I had wanted to. The sandals were perfect. They reminded me of a Cinderella book I used to have. I looked at Sonia, and she smiled a real smile. I knew her smiles now.

  Sheila stood us side by side and held out two little white boxes.

  Inside were necklaces: gold chains so thin they looked like shining thread, each with a small gold sun hanging from it. It was the most grown-up thing anyone had ever given me. Sheila did the necklace catch for Sonia, and then she did mine.

  We walked out together into the dining room, where everyone was waiting for us: Angus and Lizette stood there smiling, and Dad and Jesse started clapping. If they had gotten married right then and there, it would have been a purely wonderful day.

  At five p.m. sharp, Sonia and I were on “door duty,” welcoming people, showing them where to find their table assignments for dinner, and leading them back through the restaurant to the garden for the ceremony. I kept touching the little gold sun on my necklace, and when Angelica and her family showed up, I pretty much just held on to it.

  Angelica looked just like herself. I couldn’t even tell that anything had happened to her. I introduced everyone to Sonia and then walked them to the garden and gave them really good seats in the second row. I tried to say something to Angelica, but I guess I wasn’t ready. I said I had to get back to the door.

  “Hi, sweetie.” Mom was suddenly right behind me, holding her
present in both hands. She looked funny, not exactly like herself—nervous. Melissa came up next to her, smiling big enough for three people. Mom had to put the present down before we could hug, and it was like we were reaching across something to find each other. Those were the only hard seconds of the day so far. But then Aunt Ess came over and hugged Mom for a long time, and Mom’s face changed. She looked like Mom. I introduced her to Sonia, and Mom hugged Sonia, too. That felt good. I decided I was ready to talk to Angelica.

  She was sitting in her white folding chair, looking straight ahead while everyone stood around smiling and drinking lemonade and talking a mile a minute. I got two glasses of lemonade with two striped paper straws. I wanted to be good, but I wasn’t sure if I was good or if I just wanted Dad and Aunt Ess and everyone to see me being good. Anyway, I sat down next to Angelica and gave her one of the lemonades.

  I said, “So, how do you like New York?” Dad told me that they were going to spend the day “seeing the sights.”

  She shrugged and said, “I don’t. It’s kind of gross.”

  Dad had warned me that they probably wouldn’t like it here, and he said we couldn’t take it personally. “Really, Bea,” he said. “Try.”

  So I went out of my way to say, “Yeah, it’s pretty loud and crowded.”

  “And garbage everywhere,” Angelica said, puckering her mouth. “It smells. We saw this guy? I think he was totally drunk. In the morning!”

  When I looked closely at Angelica, I could see that she didn’t look exactly the same as she used to. She had some zits. Sheila told me she had a million of them when she was a teenager, but now her skin looks perfect. The trick, she told me, is not to pick at them. It looked like Angelica picked hers. But I was pretty sure that if I got zits I would pick mine, too.

  I took a deep breath. “Angelica,” I said. “I’m sorry about last summer. It was terrible, what I did.”

  She smiled. “The stuttering thing? Don’t worry about it.” She waved at me and sucked her straw.

  “Yes, that.” When I thought about the bits and coin dinner, my legs felt a little seasick. “But I was actually saying sorry about—the loft.”

  She just looked at me.

  “When you fell. I…pushed you.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “You did? I thought I lost my balance.”

  “No—your knee squashed my foot, and I kind of—” I kicked the empty chair in front of us, to demonstrate.

  “Jeez, it was a two-minute thing. Did I ever show you this?” She pulled her hair back above her ear and showed me a pink mark on her scalp. “That’s where James threw a piece of wood at me when he was ten. It had a nail sticking out of it! Blood everywhere.”

  “Yuck,” I said.

  “Yeah. Those are nice sandals,” Angelica said.

  “Thanks. Sonia and I got the same ones.”

  She nodded. “Cool.”

  It seemed like Angelica didn’t even notice my apology. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Actually, I knew that you kicked me off,” Angelica said.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I know the difference between falling and being pushed, Bea. Duh.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said.”

  “I was afraid that when you fell, something happened. And that’s why your face had that problem and you had to go to the hospital.”

  “What, because of getting my wind knocked out?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “That wasn’t why. I know why it happened. Karma. I got bad karma.”

  “You what?”

  “Bad luck. I brought it on myself. I threw away a toad.”

  She threw away a toad?

  Angelica looked at her hands again, which were just lying in her lap. Her nails looked really nice. She and Aunt Ess had probably gone for manicures.

  “I was vacuuming—I have to vacuum the whole house, every Saturday. And I heard this noise in the hose that means something kind of big got sucked up. And when I looked, I saw this little toad in the canister. Ours is clear, so you can see. I don’t know if it was dead or not, but I didn’t—I didn’t do anything. I left it there, to get dumped.”

  “Oh.” Poor toad.

  She shrugged like she didn’t care, but her face looked like she was about to cry. “I don’t know why I didn’t let it out. I was mad about having to vacuum. There was a thing I wanted to go to with my friends, but my mom said I had to vacuum first. Anyway, the next day I woke up and my face was different. And then it got worse.”

  “But it might have been a coincidence about the toad,” I said. “I really don’t think that’s why you got sick.” I felt like Miriam. Maybe Angelica needed a Miriam.

  She shrugged again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I looked her right in the eyes. Not because I was supposed to, but because I wanted to. “For hurting you.”

  “It wasn’t such a big deal, Bea. I’ve had the wind knocked out of me before. Relax. I forgive you.”

  We sat there. I did feel a little better.

  “Last year stunk,” Angelica said. “James was so mean all summer. Plus, my parents had been fighting a lot at home, and then at the lake they just totally stopped talking to each other, which was way worse. Everything kind of stunk.”

  “Your parents fight?”

  She nodded. “Oh yeah. But it’s a lot better now. They started counseling. We all go together sometimes. It’s pretty cool, actually. You know who talks the most in counseling? James! Can you believe that? Anyway, we started having more fun, I guess, even with everyone freaking out about my face problems. This year has been a lot more fun than last year.”

  “Wow.” It felt like Angelica and I were having our first conversation ever.

  “But New York City really does smell, Bea. I mean, I can’t smell it right now, but—P.U.! How can you live here?”

  I leaned back in my chair. A daisy head pressed into my neck. “It does smell sometimes. Especially in the summer. But I like it anyway.”

  “So is Sonia coming to the lake this summer? And Jesse?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I’d never thought about that. Why couldn’t they? Jesse and Dad would be married, just as much as Uncle Frank and Aunt Ess.

  “Angelica,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you should forgive yourself. About the toad.”

  She stared at me.

  “Okay, everyone!” Dad called out. “Let’s do this!” And people cheered and started finding seats.

  Dad and Jesse were getting married at the far end of the garden, where Sheila had strung a lot of paper lanterns and daisy chains along the wooden fence. The garden was mostly in the shade now, but the lights made the flowers glow a tiny bit, exactly the way Sheila said they would.

  Sonia and I were in the front row, sitting between Sheila and Mom. I asked Mom to sit there with me.

  “In the front row?” she said when I asked. “Won’t that be— I don’t know, Bea. Won’t that be strange? Sitting in the front row at my ex-husband’s wedding?”

  But I told her strange would be if we weren’t sitting together.

  A judge was marrying Dad and Jesse. I’d been watching for a serious guy in a black robe, but he turned out to look regular, smiling in a suit. Sheila had pinned a daisy to his jacket. She had pinned daisies everywhere she could think of.

  When the guitar music started, we all turned in our chairs to look back at the restaurant door. Dad and Jesse came down the steps together, and we all started singing “You Are My Sunshine.” It was even nicer than I thought it would be, hearing everyone’s voices together. I looked at Sheila and she looked so, so happy. I caught her eye, and she made her smile even bigger.

  Dad and Jesse walked down the aisle, just them, holding hands, all the way to
the front. Then the judge started talking about how it was an honor to be there, part of a special day in our family, and how love is one of the things we should never forget to celebrate. Then Aunt Ess and Sheila each stood up to read a poem. I couldn’t pay attention to the poems because I was getting really nervous. When Sheila sat down after her poem, Jesse nodded at me and Sonia, and my heart felt like thunder. It was time for the vows.

  We stood up together and got next to our dads. I was squeezing Jesse’s ring, and I could feel that my face was red. I looked across Dad and Jesse to Sonia on the other side, and she looked nervous, too. She waved at me and I waved back, and that made a few people laugh.

  The judge said, “Jesse and Daniel have written their own vows.”

  That’s when Mission stood up. I had forgotten all about Mission. He was near the back, in the second- or third-to-last row, but his voice was loud.

  “Jesse, my man,” he said.

  A couple of people laughed—I guess they thought it was a joke.

  Sheila stood up and faced him across all the rows of people. Her back was to me, but I could see her face in her voice. Her voice was furious.

  “Mission, what are you doing? Sit down.”

  Mission said, “Don’t do this, bro.”

  Sheila had her fingers buried in her hair. “Get out of here, Mission. Right now.”

  Mission just stood there.

  “Now!” Sheila yelled. But Mission didn’t move. Nobody did.

  That’s when Uncle Frank and Aunt Ess started singing. They started out quiet: You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

  Aunt Ess has a really nice voice. On the next line, the whole second row—Angus and his parents, and Angelica, James, and Jojo—joined in. You make me happy when skies are gray.

  Melissa and Mom were singing. Lizette and her grandmother were singing. Then it was everyone. The whole garden was singing. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.

  I felt frozen. But then Dad took my hand, and I saw that Jesse had Sonia’s hand, and Dad had Jesse’s, and the four of us were connected.