Youth is seldom dyspeptic, and exercise develops wholesome appetites.
—Little Women
It was strange to wake up in a good mood. I wasn’t always grumpy, but this swooping, hopeful tingle in my stomach was an unusual sensation. My birthday, actual Christmas (not the stage version), the morning after Labor Day, a.k.a. our last performance of the season . . . that was pretty much it.
Now I could add “the afterglow of chatting up an interesting guy.” Even if it was unlikely to happen again, because now that Hudson and Andrea had seen for themselves what Little Women Live! was all about, it was hard to imagine them coming back for more.
At least I’d held my own last night, making Hudson laugh and ask questions, despite the fact that my life was objectively a billion times more boring than his. He’d gotten my number before leaving, like I was someone worth keeping in touch with whether we wound up in Andrea’s story or not. I counted that as a win.
My nose twitched, catching a hint of something sugary.
“Good morning,” my mother sang when I stepped into the kitchen. She smiled over her shoulder before cracking an egg into the dented mixing bowl on the counter. The baking powder and measuring cups said pancakes, which meant Mom was in a good mood too.
“Thanks again for showing Hudson around.” She reached for another egg and cracked it against the rim of the bowl with an expert whack.
“No problem.” I could have told her it was surprisingly fun, the highlight of my month, et cetera, but I didn’t want her to think this made up for all the times she’d asked me to do something that legitimately sucked.
“Andie was afraid he might be . . . challenging.”
Judging by the nickname, Mom had already penciled Andrea in as a new BFF, like there was no doubt in her mind they’d be back. Because dreaming is believing!
I watched her measure out a tablespoon of oil. “Why?”
“Sounds like his work ethic may be a little underdeveloped.”
“She told you he was lazy?” I wondered what Mom had said about me. Since it was apparently Bitch About Your Kids Night.
“No. More like . . . easily distracted. Not always focused on the task at hand.” The shoulders of her fleece bathrobe rose in a shrug. “Very talented, though. She showed me some of his photography.”
It must be nice to have a talent that fit right in with the career your parent had chosen for you.
“Anyway,” she continued, setting the butter dish on the table, “he seemed happy to have people his own age around.”
I shrugged, unsure whether she was thanking me or fishing for information.
“This could be really big for us, Jo.”
A silent tug-of-war broke out between Mom’s need for affirmation and my refusal to play along. Coverage in a national magazine would be a big deal—if it happened.
She glanced at the clock on the stove. “Are you hungry? We can wake up your sisters.”
My stomach heaved at the thought of waiting for Meg and Amy to stagger downstairs, then cramming around the table with piles of pancakes and an ocean of syrup to talk about how everything was going to be perfect from here on out.
“I want to get in a run this morning.” I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. “Since I missed the 5K.”
Mom’s smile wobbled. For once I wasn’t being passive-aggressive. I really did want to run—and not just as a way to avoid Happy Family Time.
“Maybe I’ll have some later,” I mumbled as I slipped out the door.
The grass was still wet with dew, so I stuck to the dirt trail leading to the edge of our property, peeling the banana as I walked. The path wound past a muddy depression that changed from puddle to pond, depending on the season.
I wondered what Hudson was doing before hitting the road this morning. Going out for breakfast around here was a pretty bleak experience, unless you liked cinnamon rolls the size of your head. Mom’s pancakes were way better, especially right off the griddle.
My steps slowed. Should I go back and make sure Amy didn’t eat all the most perfectly golden-brown ones just to spite me, leaving only the pale and undercooked first round? Mom would be happy—until I ruined the mood by saying the wrong thing. If my family was a bowl of batter, I was the salt someone mistook for sugar, spoiling the whole batch.
I balled up the empty banana peel and lobbed it overhand toward a scrubby cluster of cottonwood trees. A pale four-legged shape streaked to intercept it as it fell, snapping up the mottled peel before it hit the dirt. Fang, the neighbors’ German shepherd, was a big sweetheart with a long pointy muzzle, named for his all-white color. There’s a book, David had explained, when Fang first came to live at their house. White Fang.
It didn’t hurt that Fang also had an impressive set of teeth, or that their last name was Vang-Gilligan. Fang Vang, as we called him, became a regular part of our games. That was back when I used to see David every day—before he became Meg’s boyfriend, and then her ex.
Fang raced up to me with great joyful strides. After dropping the banana peel at my feet, he looked expectantly from it to me. His snowy coat was liberally spotted with grass and mud.
“What are you doing out here, buddy?” I bent to pluck the dirty, slobbered-on peel from the ground. Fang ignored the question, his entire body focused on tracking the movement of my arm. “You want me to throw this? Is that what you want?” I dangled it in front of him. “You think you can get it, Fang Vang? Are you fast like lightning?”
I threw the ragged peel as far as it would go, which was not very far, considering it wasn’t a particularly aerodynamic object. Fang made the best of it, nosing it a little farther before seizing the end in his teeth and giving it a sharp upward jerk.
“Did you break its spine? Yes, you did, killer. You showed that banana who’s boss.”
“Are you trying to corrupt my dog?”
I jumped at the sound of David’s voice. Logically, it made sense for him to be nearby, since Fang didn’t walk himself. On the other hand, we were definitely on our side of the drainage ditch that ran between our property and his, and David hadn’t exactly been making frequent appearances in our neck of the woods since he and Meg had imploded.
If that was even the right word. It definitely wasn’t an explosion, with tears and yelling and slammed doors, at least not at our house. Nor could I imagine David pitching a fit. He was too mellow. Plus, his parents cringed if someone laughed too loudly. I’d never felt more like a pony let loose inside a living room than on the rare occasions we hung out at his place.
“Hey.” I tried to sound casual, like there wasn’t a marching band chanting BREAKUP in the center of my brain. “I was just . . . throwing my banana peel.” Because that explained it all.
A faint ridge formed between his brows. “Composting,” he suggested, so seriously I knew he was joking.
“But more, you know, active.”
“Cardio composting.”
“I should start a YouTube channel.”
“Ka-ching.”
David’s style of humor was as dry as a desert, but you always knew he wasn’t making fun of you. Or at least not in a mean way. Right now, the fact that he was joking at all seemed like a subtle way of telling me either I’m fine or We don’t have to talk about it. Possibly both. Which was okay by me. I got enough secondhand emotion at home.
“I hear you had an exciting day yesterday.”
For a second I thought he was talking about Hudson, which would have been weird. David and I didn’t usually gossip about our love lives—for obvious reasons.
“The reporter,” he prompted.
Surely Mom hadn’t already written a press release. But how else would David know, unless he and Meg were talking again? Maybe that was what he’d been trying to tell me. It’s cool, we’re back together. “How did you hear about that?”
“I ran into your mom at Price Saver.”
“And she just ran up to you and blurted it out?”
He shook his head. “We were talking about something else.”
Here it comes. The big emotional breakdown. He must have needed time to work around to it. I did my best to look understanding. Neutral. Calm.
“She offered me a job.”
“What?” I screeched.
“A job,” he repeated, like maybe the problem was my hearing.
“Here?” I pointed at the ground. “In the show? As in the Little Women Live! one?” It seemed important to give him as many outs as possible.
“It would mostly be behind the scenes. Landscaping and stuff.”
“Oh.” I pressed a hand to my heart, exhaling in relief. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
“Just a very small part in the show.”
“Aunt March?” I whispered.
David blinked at me.
“Sorry. She’s been talking about finding an Aunt March for years. Which obviously would not be you.” I studied his face, trying to imagine how it would look framed by a wig. Even if you ignored the bony jaw, there was the Adam’s apple to consider—not to mention the shoulders. David wasn’t beefy like Laurie, but his frame was still significantly broader than your average old lady. Plus, he was at least six-foot-three, which presented its own challenges.
“Wait, you’re not playing my dad, are you?” Because that would mean he was also Meg’s dad, which: shudder.
“I’m John Brooke.”
So obvious and yet . . . so not. “Meg’s baby daddy?”
“That’s not how your mom presented it to me, but yeah.”
“You told her no, right?”
The pause said it all.
“David!” I shoved him in the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I thought you knew! It was in the press release.”
I reared back like he was contagious. “She mentioned you in the press release?”
“The wedding scene,” he reminded me. “‘Brand new this year.’ How did you think they were going to do that without a groom?”
“First off, I never read our press releases. It’s a coping mechanism. Second, since when are we queens of realism? If I’d thought about it, which I didn’t, I would have assumed Mom was going to make one of us slap on a mustache, or say, ‘Why, where is Mr. Brooke?’ and then someone else would answer, ‘I do believe he’s gone to send an urgent telegram.’”
We had a long history of finding creative solutions for our small cast size. Our invisible maid, Hannah, was always announcing things in a voice no one else could hear—like a theatrical dog whistle.
“Listen, David. I say this as your friend.” I stared him down, even though he had three or four inches on me. “It’s not too late. Save yourself.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m pretty sure your mom is counting on me.”
“She’ll get over it.”
He looked surprised, and maybe a little disappointed.
“I’m not trying to be a dick, but there’s no reason for you to suffer.” The too part went without saying.
“It won’t be that bad.”
“Oh, it’ll be bad,” I assured him, sensing weakness. “Badder than bad. The worst.”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
Putting both hands on his shoulders, I gave him a shake. “That is not the point. The cell door is open. Walk away while you still can! Don’t let us drag you down.” He started to smile, like I was exaggerating. “I’m serious. This is like if you lived next door to a family of mobsters, and one day the boss asks you to do a tiny little favor. No big deal, you think. I can get out any time. Next thing you know, you’re driving around town with a trunk full of bodies.”
He blinked at me. “Is . . . someone going to break my kneecaps?”
“You don’t know what it’s like.” I stepped back, pressing a hand to my stomach.
“I’ve lived next door to you guys forever, Jo. I have a pretty good idea.”
“It’s not the same. It hasn’t taken over your whole existence.” Maybe I should have complained more. I really thought I’d been doing a solid job on that front.
“I’ll be background scenery. People won’t pay any attention to me.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “It’s not like the show’s called Little Women and That Quiet Guy Who Tutors the Spoiled Neighbor.”
“What about the school tours?”
“What about them?”
“Are you prepared to get up onstage in front of half our high school?”
“I’m graduating in a month. I’ll probably never see most of those people again.”
“There’ll be reunions.”
He raised his eyebrows.
Fang settled himself next to me, leaning against my leg like he knew I needed moral support. I bent to pet him, partly as an excuse not to look at David. “You’re seriously going to do a wedding scene with Meg?”
“It’s fine.”
I raised my head long enough to scowl at him. “How is it fine?”
“It’s not like we were married, Jo. We barely even dated. It was probably a bad idea—”
My snort cut him off. “Sorry.” I swallowed the urge to add, I could have told you that. Fang nudged my hand with his head, reminding me I was falling down on the job. “So what happened?”
“You don’t know?”
“Believe it or not, there wasn’t a press release.”
“Not that you would have read it anyway.”
“True.” I gave Fang a scratch between the ears. “All I know is you guys were going out—”
“Whatever that means.”
“Um.” I wasn’t sure which part I was supposed to explain.
Fang dropped to the ground with a doggy sigh, resting his head on his paws like he’d heard it all before.
“She texted me at Christmas. When you were at your dad’s.”
We always flew out right before the twenty-fifth, when tickets were stupidly overpriced, so Mom could squeeze in a few special performances during the holiday season. The math didn’t come close to adding up, which was typical Porter planning. I shook my head, refocusing on the subject at hand. “Meg dumped you by text?”
“It was more of a ‘we need to talk.’”
“Ouch. Was that on Christmas?”
“Yeah. But I had my phone off, so I didn’t see the message until the twenty-sixth.”
“Unbelievable.” If memory served, Meg had spent the holiday cheerfully starting the online return process for the gifts she “didn’t really like.” Apparently, that had included David.
“It’s okay, Jo. Like I said, we weren’t serious. At all.” He looked sheepish. “I just thought . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Me neither.” David was friendly with all three of us, but privately—until the Meg thing—I’d assumed he was closest to me. I was the one who’d dragged him into our lives, a crucial fourth player in whatever game we were into that month. Meg and Amy usually wandered off, leaving me and David to finish the tree fort or canine obstacle course or Snackfé, the short-lived restaurant we operated out of our kitchen. Maybe if our menu had consisted of more than peanut-butter crackers and room-temperature water, we would have had a shot.
Unlike Meg and David.
“Uh, thanks.”
“Not because of you.” Fang rolled over, showing me his belly. I crouched to give him a rub. “So what did she say?” I asked without looking up. “When you had your ‘talk.’”
“You know Meg.”
“Eh. Kind of.”
“I asked her if everything was okay, and she did that thing where you can’t tell if she’s sighing or yawning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then she goes, ‘Can we just not?’”
“Not . . . talk?”
“That’s what I thought at first, so I was like, ‘Okay,’ and I shut up. Trying to respect her boundaries. And then she started making designs on the table with salt—”
I held up a hand. “Where were you?”
“Taco John’s.” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Is that important?”
“I just wondered whose salt she was wasting.” And who was going to get stuck cleaning up afterward, since it definitely wouldn’t have been Meg.
“Oh.” He took a deep breath. “Then Meg said, ‘It’s such a hassle.’”
It took me a second to catch on. “You mean ‘it’ as in the two of you? Your ‘relationship’?”
“Yes.” He imitated my finger spasms. “Our air-quotes ‘relationship.’”
“Dude.”
“I know.” He wasn’t smiling, and yet I got the feeling David appreciated the absurdity of getting dumped over a greasy basket of Potato Olés. Or maybe appreciate wasn’t the right word. Still, it didn’t seem like his heart was broken. We’d played enough Uno together for me to know when David was bluffing.
“And this was right after Christmas?” I wasn’t sure how I’d missed that development, because I distinctly remembered feeling queasy about the prospect of Valentine’s Day. The explosion of candy and teddy bears and hearts was always pretty sickening. David getting sloppy over my sister was not high on my list of Things I Want to See.
He shook his head. “It took a few weeks—to find a good time. Scheduling conflicts.”
“You were too busy?” Maybe he’d joined a club I didn’t know about. Either that or David had been postponing the inevitable, because the only “conflicts” on my older sister’s schedule were slathering herself in retinol and napping.
“It was Meg.”
“She left you hanging?” I had so many questions. Did they see each other at all, apart from David giving her rides to school? Were they still . . . romantic during that time? On second thought, I didn’t want to know. “And that was it? The end?”
“Basically. Except for asking me to give her the prom tickets.”
“Uh, what? Is that like splitting up your assets after the divorce? She gets the prom tickets, you get the weird lamp? We’re talking about somebody who pre-dumped you by text and then blew you off for like a month.” During which time David and I could have been friends again, if I hadn’t been keeping my distance from their supposed coupledom. That probably wasn’t the main bummer for him, but still. “I wouldn’t have given her a fingernail clipping.”
“Like from your stash or a new one?”
“You know what I mean. It’s ridiculous. Why should Meg get to keep tickets you bought?”
“She said she figured I wouldn’t need them.”
It was very David to have bought the tickets months in advance. And it was very Meg to selfishly demand them for herself while casually dissing her ex. Did she even have another date lined up, now that the dance was only a few weeks away, or was she going to flake on the whole thing and let the tickets go to waste? It didn’t feel like something I could ask David.
Standing, I brushed the grass off the back of my thighs. “You want to go for a run?”
“I have to measure the pond.”
“That pond?” I jerked a thumb at the mud pit.
“Your mom wants to put in a bridge.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Do I even want to know?”
“It’s a beautification project. To encourage people to ‘stroll the grounds.’”
“She’s back on her apple-orchard trip, isn’t she?” Mom had this fantasy of recreating the part in Little Women where everyone is grown up and married and they picnic among the apple trees with the next generation of cursed children. It was only slightly less impractical than her idea of filling the rest of our property with an entire village of literary reenactors—like things were going so well it was only logical to expand.
I could feel my teeth grinding. Time to run. “Okay if I take Fang with me?”
David looked torn. Maybe I was rushing things, pushing too hard for a return to normal. Patience didn’t come naturally to me, but for David I was willing to try.
“It’s fine,” I mumbled.
At the same instant, he said, “Can we swing by my house so I can change?”
I grinned at him. Aw, yes. Moving on.