She felt oddly breathless when she finished telling him the plan. Talking about it felt strange. This was going to happen. She was actually going to leave the place where she’d been born and raised, where she had lived her whole life. Unless Rourke gave her a reason to stay. And why on earth would he do that? “I’m taking advantage of the freedom the fire has given me.”
“Sounds to me like you’re running away.” He opened her car door. “I’ll meet you back at my place,” he said.
Feeling unsettled, she got behind the wheel.
“See you later,” he added, leaning slightly into the car. “Seat belt,” he reminded her, then slammed the door shut.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
So far at Avalon High School, Daisy had made two actual friends, and she hadn’t even had to lie to get them to like her. Of course, she’d held back certain information. She wasn’t sure whether or not that was considered lying. No, she decided. It wasn’t. However, she was keeping a few cards close to the vest. For the time being, anyway.
She was good at keeping secrets. Like when her parents started sleeping in separate rooms a year before the divorce, she hadn’t told anyone, not even her little brother. Or when Logan O’Donnell said he didn’t want anybody to know they were having sex, she’d totally kept it to herself, even though Logan was considered the hottest boy in the school.
Of course, hottest never meant the smartest, as she had soon found out. Just because a boy was sexy didn’t mean he knew how to practice safe sex.
Although, now that she looked back from her current perspective, she could clearly see that the truly stupid one in the relationship had been her. Even though it was dark, even though she’d wanted to do it so bad she nearly came out of her skin, she should have taken two seconds to check and make sure Logan actually knew how to put on a condom.
But who would have figured? she wondered. Who on earth would have actually thought Logan O’Donnell, who was going to Harvard, could be so clueless?
“You want to go skiing on Saturday?” asked Sonnet. The three of them were going to Sonnet’s house after school to study for a global-history exam. Daisy didn’t much care for school, but she genuinely liked Zach and Sonnet, and even though they’d be studying, it was a chance to hang out with them.
“I can’t go anywhere on Saturday,” Daisy reminded her. “I’m working, remember?”
“You didn’t waste time getting a job,” Sonnet said.
“Yes, well, I figure if I’m gainfully employed, maybe my folks won’t pressure me so much about college. I haven’t told my mom yet, though.” She could just hear her mother now. A Bellamy? Working as counter help in a bakery? Like that was some big stigma.
“What’s your mom got against working?” Zach asked.
“Nothing,” Daisy said. “That’s, like, the main reason she and my dad split up, because she’s a workaholic. She spent more hours at her law firm than she did at home, that’s for sure. Last year, she worked on a case in Seattle, meaning she only came home every other weekend. And now she’s in The Hague, and she almost never comes back to New York anymore. We e-mail, though,” Daisy admitted. “E-mail and phone calls. I think we actually talk more now that she’s in Europe than we did when she was home.” Daisy actually liked—no, loved—those talks. It was the one time she had her mother’s undivided attention.
“She’ll probably respect you for getting a job,” Sonnet pointed out.
“She would want me to have a job that, according to her, matters. And to my mom, that means a job that leads somewhere, like being a page for a politician, or an intern at a brokerage firm or something. Working for somebody who can write me a good reference for college.”
“Jenny will write you a reference,” Zach pointed out.
“Yeah, right—‘My cousin did a really good job selling muffins and pull-aparts.’” She looked at Zach. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but my mom wouldn’t think it’s anything special.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But I like working for Jenny. I think it’s cool that she’s your cousin.”
“Here we are,” Sonnet said, stopping at a mailbox that was nearly buried in a bank of snow. “Home, sweet home.” She collected the mail and led them up the walkway to her house.
In the dimness of the falling light, the snow rippled with purple shadows and the boxy white house looked like something from a distant time. It was incredibly plain, an unadorned white saltbox in the middle of a flat white yard. Daisy hoped there were flower beds or shrubs under the thick blanket of snow, because if not, the place would probably qualify for one of those makeover shows. She knew, though, that it didn’t matter what someone’s house looked like. Her parents used to have not one but two beautiful houses—a town house in Manhattan and a weekend place on Long Island—but it hadn’t managed to make them happy.
“My mom’s sick today,” Sonnet said as they trooped into the side door. “She came home from the conference with a cold.”
Daisy heard the sound of a radio somewhere in the house. Nina Romano turned out to be a fan of Air America. Sonnet led the way into what appeared to be the family room.
Nina was on the sofa with an afghan covering her, the radio on and a laptop computer in front of her. On an end table, there was an array of mugs and cold remedies, a box of Kleenex, a regular phone and a BlackBerry. She looked up and a smile lit her face. “Hey, you guys. How was school?”
Daisy had to pause for a moment to cover her surprise.
