I’m woken by the smell of blueberries.
I prise my eyes open. They feel like sandpaper. The light in my room is bright. Not dawning bright; halfway-through-the-morning bright. I’m stiff and I’m cold from sleeping on top of the covers all night. I’m still in my clothes. My unbrushed teeth are coated in fuzz.
I look to the side. Patience is sitting by my bed, with Beezus on her knee and a plate piled high with blueberry pancakes in her outstretched hand.
“I decided to forgive you,” she says. “Because a) Beezus missed you last night. He pined for hours. And pining for him seems to involve trying to eat my toes. And also, because b) I figured if he could forgive you, then I had no excuse.”
“He?”
Patience indicates with her head towards my open door. Jed is leaning in the doorway. He looks … strange, somehow. It takes me a moment to realise why.
He’s not wearing black.
He’s dressed in a pale blue shirt and tie and clean blue jeans, and his hair is confined in a ponytail. He’s clean-shaven, too. The five o’clock shadow is gone, and so is the little triangle-shaped goatee from his chin.
He looks nice. Not quite like the Jed I know and—my thoughts stumble on the word—love, but nice.
“What are you doing here so early?” I croak.
“It’s eleven am,” he says, smiling. “I thought you’d be awake. But I showed up to find Patience cooking you breakfast and you—Lady Muck—nowhere to be seen.”
“I feel like muck,” I admit. I sit up. “Jed, I’m sorry about—”
“I’ll leave you guys to it,” Patience says quietly and with a little smile. She puts Beezus on the floor and the pancake plate on my bedside table. “I’m going back to Saffron’s tent with Mum to have my cards read.”
“You’re thirteen,” I say. “Why do you want to know the future? Isn’t the pleasure of being thirteen in the not-knowing?”
“The pleasure’s always in the not-knowing,” she says sagely. “I don’t believe in the cards. Mum and I just have to get out of the house because Australia is tanking and Dad’s losing the plot. And plus I want to hang out with Gift and Miracle. Those little dudes are cool. I’m teaching them about quantum physics. See you tonight.” She stops just before leaving the room. “Kiss him if he’ll let you,” she says cheekily before she disappears.
“Whoa.” Jed tries to run his hand through his hair, but it catches. “Awkward.”
“I know,” I say, concentrating on getting upright and off the bed. “What’s she on about? Crazy child.” I reach for my pancakes and take a bite.
“They look really great,” Jed says, “but would you mind not eating them all? I, um, we kind of have reservations.”
My head jerks up. “Reservations? For breakfast?”
“It’s now eleven-fifteen,” Jed says. “Lunch.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.” I take another bite and reluctantly place the plate back on my desk. “But … wait … you had a date.”
Jed looks away. “Did I say that?”
“You didn’t not say that.”
“I was angry,” he says quietly. “Leah’s nice. She’s also a lesbian.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But we did hang out last night and it was fun. I’m sorry if I made it sound as if there was more to it. I was crabby at you. We watched Star Wars together. Her girlfriend is more of a Star Trek person. They fought about it. I took Leah’s side and we bonded over a shared hatred of C3PO. That’s it. I enjoyed hanging out with her, though, Connie. You would too. You should get to know her. You’d like her. And her friends. They’re all nice. They like Pokemon. They play Magic cards, too. Now you’re not with Viggo, you can do stuff like that again.”
“Right.”
“So anyway, I thought today we’d finish listening to your memories. We must be nearly at the end. But we won’t do any more adventures. Instead, I thought we could do … nice things. Things that bastard Viggo should have done with you. Like take you out for a fancy lunch.”
“How did you …” Jed raises an eyebrow. I puff out my cheeks. “I’ll just shower and get dressed. I have a million ‘Viggo’ dresses I can wear.”
Jed shakes his head. “Not a Viggo dress. A Connie dress.”
“Oh. I don’t have many of those.”
“You have the one with the cherries on it,” he says, ticking off on his fingers. “And the one with Hello Kitty. And the one with the polka dots and—”
“You really do remember everything,” I say, looking at him in awe.
He blushes. “About you, Connie-girl, yes, I do.”