• Breakfast: grapefruit, tea, no sugar/cream
• Lunch: soup, apple
• Calories: 425
• Exercise: 2 miles on bicycle
• Days ’til audition: 40
Dysfunction was apparently a family epidemic. I had it. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t.
Bundled up against the wind, I sat at lunch outside the school with the girls and pondered the previous day’s weird exchange between Beckett and his dad. I’d read that his dad was his manager and very hands-on in his career. But apparently it’d been a successful formula. Otherwise Walmart wouldn’t carry Steele Markov dolls on their shelves and teenagers wouldn’t come in spastic herds to see the midnight openings of his movies.
“Don’t you like your soup?” Erin lifted her spoon to her mouth and peered at the barely touched thermos her mom had packed for me. “It’s still warm. You know, vegetables provide powerful antioxidants, which can delay the aging process. I was just reading this fascinating article yesterday—”
“Biscuits.” Orla popped a cookie in her mouth. “Become the doctor who figures out how to get antioxidants into biscuits.”
“It’s good,” I said. “I guess I’m just not hungry today.” It was the stress. My counselor told me when those feelings started to creep up I was supposed to pull out my favorite verse and say it out loud. Or in my head. Sometimes I got so sick of those verses. Other times I wished God would come by and skywrite them in the clouds. “Have you guys ever seen this?” I plundered through my backpack until I drew out my brother’s journal. It opened right to the last page. “This cross?”
Orla took a look first. “They’re all over the country.”
“You have to find that exact one?” Erin asked.
I quickly explained. “I can’t finish my song without it. And if I don’t finish my song, I’ll mess up my audition with the New York Conservatory. Again.”
“Cross yourselves.” Orla glared over my shoulder. “Here comes Beatrice.”
The queen bee and two of her ladies-in-waiting sauntered up to our table. “Hello, girls. What’s new in your little world?”
“We were just talking about music,” Orla said. “Music and soup.”
Beatrice tapped her long nails together as she speared me with her dark brown eyes. “What exactly do you think you were doing at the set yesterday?”
In no rush to respond, I stirred my spoon in my thermos and watched some carrots and potatoes do backstrokes in the broth. “Working?”
She planted a hand on her hip. “I know what you’re up to, and frankly, it’s pathetic.”
“Back off, Beatrice,” Orla said. “You’re just mad Beckett chose Finley and not you.”
Beatrice ignored this and continued to stare me down. “If you think he likes you, you’re delusional. He would never date a commoner. He only goes for actresses.”
“It’s a job. Not a dating opportunity. I don’t want to be part of your little movie clique. I agreed to be his assistant and in return, he’s helping me . . . with a project.” That’s all she was getting. I wasn’t telling her one more detail.
Anxiety spun like a cyclone within me, and the food suddenly became a solid mass in my stomach. I shoved it away to get it out of sight. The pasta started to look like worms, the meat greasy wads of some poor, sacrificed animal.
In all these things, I am more than victorious through Him who loves me. In all these things, I am more than victorious through Him who loves me. In all these things, I am— “Oh, I’ll just bet he’s helping you.” Beatrice’s top lip curled.
“Just watch yourself. The movie business is a world few understand and few can handle.”
Orla bit into an apple. “You’ve done a walk-on part for one movie and a commercial for socks.”
Beatrice lifted her pointed chin. “I’d hate for you to . . . get hurt or get in any trouble and have to cut your stay short in Abbeyglen. That would be terrible.” Her smile made my insides curl. “I’m just looking out for you. Like a friend. As the principal’s daughter, I feel it’s just naturally my job.” She flounced away with her two bodyguards, who cast dark looks over their bony shoulders.
“Was that a threat?” Orla asked. “I don’t like that.”
“Beatrice just has her nose out of joint,” Erin said. “She’s under the misconception that she has a chance to get in Beckett’s inner circle, and Finley’s become an unexpected threat. And the fact that you’re associating with us, instead of her—even worse.”
“It really is just a job.” I twisted the lid on my thermos. Ireland was supposed to be where I finally found peace.
God, why is turmoil following me like I’m in a bad soap opera?
“You’ve nothing to worry about.” Orla pointed to my soup.
“You going to eat that?”
“No.”
“Can I have it?”
“Yes.” I slid it her way. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”
After school I hopped on my bicycle and pedaled away from Sacred Heart and toward Rosemore nursing home. Maybe I had caught Mrs. Sweeney on a bad day. Maybe she hadn’t felt good, and it had made her uncharacteristically cranky.
God, help me get through this. Because I’ve got nothing to offer someone who’s in the last stages of her life. Nor do I want to be around her. Please . . . help me.
Walking through the doors, I waved at Belinda the head nurse, smiled at the old woman in the wheelchair in the middle of the lobby, and followed the linoleum floor to hall C.
It’s about Mrs. Sweeney. It’s about Mrs. Sweeney.
Standing in front of room 12, I tapped my knuckles on the door, then peered inside. “Hello?”
She glared at me from her bed. “Go on with you.”
I stepped inside. “I think we got off to a really bad start, ma’am.”
“Don’t make me get out of this bed, child.”
I swallowed and kept on walking, getting closer to the dragon’s nest. “My name is Finley Sinclair. And I want to be your friend.”
She stared at me like I’d just offered her a time-share in the desert. “I don’t have the energy to deal with you today, so I’m telling you, leave my room!”
“I can’t do that, Mrs. Sweeney.” I inched in more. “You and I are going to hang out a bit. I brought a book.” I pulled out Pride and Prejudice from my bag.
“I don’t like reading.”
I unclenched my teeth. “Well, that’s no problem. I’m going to read for you.”
“D’you think you’re better than a television?” She threw her head back and gave a frail laugh. “At least I can press the mute button on the telly.”
Lord, you probably think this is funny, don’t you? I guess somehow I deserve this.
“Have you ever read Pride and Prejudice?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’ve no use for such romantic tales.”
I took a seat in the chair beside her. Then scooted it back three inches, just in case I needed to make a hasty exit. Or in case she ate children. “It’s a great book.” Actually I hadn’t read it. I figured everyone in the world had but me. Apparently, it was like the single girls’ Magna Carta.
“I don’t want to hear it.” Mrs. Sweeney turned her head and faced the wall. “I don’t know you, and I certainly don’t want to hear your voice prattle on.”
“I introduced myself. Do you remember that I’m from the school and—”
“Young lady, I do not have much time left.” Mrs. Sweeney shot every word like a bullet. “And I do not want to spend what little remains with the likes of yourself!”
That was it.
“You know what? I’m here to spread some dang goodness and light, and I can’t do that with you yelling at me!” Bloodshot eyes stared back at me as I stood. I might’ve been scaring her into a heart attack, but I couldn’t stop. “I have had it up to here with death, and guess who I get assigned for this dumb project? You! Not some sweet old grandma. Not some storytelling grandpa. You!”
Mrs. Sweeney crossed her bony arms over her flannel-covered chest and huffed.
“Now, you need me.” I stomped back toward her bed. “And I need to get my hours in. So we’re going to be friends. Whether you like it or not.”
“I’m calling the nurse.” She reached for her button. “I pay too much money for this place. I don’t even feel safe.” Her breath wheezed, and I felt a stab of guilt. “If this is what young people are like today, then the whole world is doomed. Doomed, I say!”
“I’m not leaving.”
“’Tis downright sinful to treat your elders in such a manner.”
I eased back into the chair, shoved it back another few inches, then opened the book. “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’”
“Gibberish!” Mrs. Sweeney held her bony fingers over her ears.
“You’re talking nonsense. Where is that nurse?”
The door flung open and Nurse Belinda rushed inside. “This better be good.”
Mrs. Sweeney took two deep breaths, and again I reconsidered my stance. “This young girl here will not leave. She has taken over me room and invaded me privacy. I want her removed at once.”
“Did you do that—invade her privacy without her permission?”
I clutched the book to my chest. “Yes.”
“And did you refuse to leave after Mrs. Sweeney asked you to do so?”
My pulse skittered in my wrist. “Yes.”
Belinda shook her head. Then smiled. “Good on you.” She clapped me on the back and chuckled. “Now that’s what I like to see. Cathleen, you can shout all you like, but Finley is welcome to stay. In fact, I’m prescribing it.”
“You can’t prescribe anything,” Mrs. Sweeney said. “You’re not a doctor, sure yer not.”
“Then I’ll get him to write an order. You ladies have a fine day.” Whistling to herself, Nurse Belinda sauntered out, closing the door behind her.
With her lips pressed tight enough to vacuum seal, Mrs. Sweeney stared at me from her bed.
On the wall the third hand of a clock ticked off the seconds, reminding both of us time was slipping away. Time in that day. And in our two lives.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said after a moment, “this went much better in my head.”
Those eagle eyes didn’t even blink.
“I, um, I’m sorry. I don’t deal well with stress.”
She harrumphed and deflated into her pillows. “Get us a drink of water.”
At least she was acknowledging me. “Yes, ma’am.” I walked to her side table and poured from a pink pitcher with her last name written on it in rushed, uneven letters.
She took the cup from my hand, shaking as she lifted it to her cracked, gray lips.
I returned to my seat and opened the book. “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’” And as the seconds stretched out like warm taffy, I read for the longest thirty minutes of my life.
By the time I stuck a bookmark between the pages and shut the tome, Mrs. Sweeney’s head tilted at an angle as she snored louder than a four hundred–pound man.
I slid the book into my bag and eased from the chair. Walking on tiptoes, I crossed the room and peeled open the door.
“Get a better book.”
I froze with my hand on the knob.
Mrs. Sweeney opened one puffy, heavy-lidded eye. “I said, get a better book. That one is absolute rubbish. Featherbrained girl running after some silly boy? I won’t have it.”
I turned my head until I could cover my smile. “Yes, Mrs. Sweeney.” I couldn’t have agreed more. “Is there another classic you’d like to hear instead?”
“I should say so,” she said as I pulled open the door. “Bring me something by that fella Stephen King.”