Chapter Twenty-Eight

“JOEY GIRL!”

Joey heard her mother’s voice from somewhere up in the bleachers and scanned the crowd for her face. Before she could find her, though, she felt a crushing hug and realized Dad had found her first.

“Daddy!” she yelled, turning around to try to match the hug with her own, less-strong arms. As she squeezed, she felt her mom join them and tried not to cry as she let them both hold her for the first time since about an hour before her own graduation. She failed and was a blubbering mess when they finally pulled apart.

Dan was no longer by her side but must have gone up to help save the seats her mom had been in. Probably better that way, as her parents were now talking over each other with questions and exclamations.

“How was your flight? Have you gotten taller? I hardly recognized you! Our little world traveler! You’re so grown up! Did you take a cab? I told you I’d come pick you up.”

And then together, bringing her back in for a hug, “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you both too,” she said.

“We should sit,” Dad said. “This thing is about to start. Promise you’ll stick around to the end of this one?”

He laughed at his own joke as they climbed the steps to the row where a stressed-out Dan sat, trying to save enough room for them all to sit together.

“I’ll go find a different spot,” he said sheepishly, realizing there was no way they’d all fit.

“Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “We can ask people to scooch.”

“No, it’s fine.” Dan still looked a little frazzled. “I’ve got a couple friends down in the front and I can join them.”

Joey tilted her head at the looks her parents exchanged over her head as she sat down.

“What?” she said. “We’re fine. He gave me a ride here.”

“He did?” her dad asked.

“Yes, and we talked about everything.” Noticing their shocked expressions, she quickly added, “Not everything, but we’ll talk more tomorrow. Or soon.”

“Oh,” her mom said, looking uncomfortable.

Joey knew she’d put them all through so much and felt awful that she had brought all of this back into their lives on what should have been an exciting night.

“Hey, we’re okay,” she said. “Really. I’m here for Betty and that’s all that matters.”

Again, her parents exchanged a look she couldn’t decipher, but the graduates were beginning to walk onto the field and she decided to chalk it up to the fallout of her sudden disappearance and reappearance.

Joey strained her eyes trying to pick out Betty in a sea of black caps and gowns. Then she laughed when she realized it wouldn’t be hard at all. While a few of the graduates had put cute designs on the tops of their caps, only one had decorated theirs with pink and silver tinsel so she looked like Punk Rock Barbie Graduation Doll. Joey remembered with a laugh that she’d joked about doing the same thing the first time she’d watched her graduate. Something must have happened this year to make her bolder.

Joey smiled, wondering what other changes the year had brought for her little sister. The whole event proceeded just as Joey remembered it would, including the typical graduation speeches, which this time reminded her of her own. She looked for Dan, seated about twenty rows in front of her, and tried to read his mind by looking at the back of his head.

She used to be able to do it, but she wondered if new Dan’s brain worked the same. She tried to hear him and found herself only able to hear what she thought he might be thinking. How this time last year, the love of his life had given one of those speeches and essentially publicly dumped him. How he’d looked for her on the field, a ring heavy in his pocket, realizing she’d run away. Then later realizing just how far she’d run away.

But those thoughts should have made his shoulders sag. She only had his body language to work from and his posture definitely did not seem to be that of a man who was dejected and agonizing over lost love. He sat up straight, occasionally talking or listening to the friends on either side of him. Maybe he was trying to distract himself. All Joey could think about in those stands was what she had done last year, and she knew she wasn’t alone.

Her parents were still being weird, and she could tell by the way people quickly looked away that others in the stands knew what she had done. It wasn’t every year the valedictorian took off running after the ceremony.

She tried to shake these thoughts and to focus her attention back to Betty. She was definitely going to forgive her for the letter thing, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t ask about it at some point. She had to.

Joey looked down at Dan and absentmindedly tried to read his mind again, but all she could do was try to see where he was looking. He was staring toward the graduates, which made sense, and it looked like he was looking at or near Betty. She was impossible to ignore, but he seemed to be singularly focused. He was much closer to the field than she was and would probably get to her before Joey and her parents did.

Maybe he didn’t want Joey to confront Betty about the letter because he wanted to first? If Joey had torpedoed their whole lives because she thought Dan had betrayed her, it would make sense that he wanted to talk with her about it. In typical big brother fashion, he wanted to protect her from a fight with Joey, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want answers.

Joey relaxed as everything seemed to make more sense. Her parents were tense because she and Dan had arrived together. Dan was happy but needed answers just like she did. Betty was…Betty. All sparkly and blissfully unaware of the chain reaction she had caused with one decision.

As the graduates threw their caps in the air, Joey watched as Dan joined the crowd of people who were trying to reach their loved ones on the field. She and her parents held back to let the rows in front of them leave, and Joey sighed and hoped Dan would either ask gently or hold off for another day. She loved how he always wanted to have the hard conversations to protect her from them.

Joey smiled as she saw him reach Betty, scooping her up in a hug and twirling her around the way he used to do with her.

She froze as she saw him kiss her longer than a brother would normally kiss a sister.

And as Dan dropped to one knee in front of Betty, Joey let out a blood-curdling scream.