Since her talk with Dad and Chloe, life in the Kahn household had been warm, fun, and relatively unevent-ful once again—if somewhat bittersweet. Julianne and Chloe were closer than they’d ever been, but Julianne knew that their renewed bond was underscored by a sense of loss.
As she headed back down the beach for home, Julianne’s runner’s high was tainted by the realization that she’d have to run past the Moores’ place on her way home. The Moore property was expanding so rapidly that it would have been almost impossible to avoid it.
Julianne took a deep breath, promising herself yet again that running past the massive construction site in no way compromised the campaign of avoidance she’d launched against Remi over the past weeks.
After talking about it a lot with Dad and Chloe, Julianne had more or less acknowledged that Remi was an innocent bystander in his family’s expansion campaign, but she still couldn’t bring herself to talk to him.
Fair or not, he was still tangled up in the messy web of the summer’s hurt and loss, and Julianne wasn’t ready to untangle that part just yet. She had too much else to deal with. She shifted her eyes away from the looming construction and focused instead on the gleaming, turquoise water. The ocean looked like an exact replica of Julianne’s painting, giving her a familiar pang of pride and loss. As Julianne stretched her long legs into a comfortable gait, she ran with her head slightly turned. She just couldn’t keep her eyes off the water. It felt a little too much like a sitcom setup. At any moment, Julianne thought, I’ll probably get bonked on the forehead by a stray Frisbee, or I’ll collide with another runner who had his eyes on the water, too. She was still laughing at her own imagina-tion when the playlist shuffled to “SexyBack.” Julianne quickened her stride and let Justin steer her back toward home.
Arriving on the porch, her sound track still blaring in her ears, Julianne leaned down to stretch her calves before taking off her running shoes. Taking a little hop forward, she pulled her right heel behind her back and held it with her left hand. Every time she came back from a run, Julianne looked up at her bedroom balcony and promised herself that this wouldn’t be the last time she’d dash over the sand and return to the house she loved. She sighed and finished her stretch before kicking off her sneakers onto the porch and heading inside.
She padded into her bedroom in her white ankle socks with green and yellow pom-poms. When Julianne had first bought the socks, Chloe had laughed that they’d ruin her athletic cred. Julianne paused in front of her mirror, rolling her eyes at her red, sweaty face and her soggy curls. She turned to Chloe, who was sprawled out on Julianne’s bed reading Us Weekly.
“I look like Miss Piggy,” Julianne declared.
“No you don’t. You look sporty. Well, except for the socks.” Chloe giggled. Humming “Hollaback Girl”
quietly to herself, Julianne headed over to her desk and plunked herself down in front of her computer. She was trying to decide between the online crossword and Perez Hilton when the blinking lights of her cell phone caught her eye. Julianne reached across her round Jackson Pollock mouse pad to grab her phone off the desk, but Chloe darted over from across the room and beat her to it.
“Hmm. I wonder who it could possibly be?” Chloe queried in a singsong voice. She looked at the blinking display, then passed the phone to Jules before returning to the Us Weekly on the bed.
Julianne let a few minutes pass and then reluctantly scrolled through her missed call log. 9:45 a.m.—Remi Moore. 10:56 a.m.—Remi Moore. 11:32 a.m.—Remi Moore. 12:19 p.m.—Remi Moore. She pitched the phone across the room, thankfully hitting an overstuffed pillow on her bed, rather than Chloe. She rubbed her hands roughly over her face, looking the very picture of lovelorn angst. Why won’t he stop calling? What part of “I can’t see you again” can’t he accept? How will I ever superglue my heart back together if Remi won’t leave me alone with the pieces? A tiny nagging voice in the back of Julianne’s brain occasionally reminded her that if Remi did finally stop calling and texting fifteen times a day, she’d be devastated. Beyond devastated. But Julianne couldn’t focus on her messy feelings for Remi right now—there was too much else left up in the air. She pushed herself up from the desk chair and crossed the room to her bed, completely ignoring Chloe, who was still settled in with her magazine. She picked up a stray pillow in a flowered pil-lowcase and tossed it on top of the cell phone. Then she strode out of the room toward a well-deserved shower, leaving Chloe exactly where she’d found her.
Julianne emerged from the shower forty-five minutes—
and three encores of “Irreplaceable”—later, refreshed and ready to take on the rest of her afternoon. She slipped on a pair of skinny jeans, a white tank top trimmed in hot pink lace—the result of a recent shopping trip with Chloe—and her cute, turquoise slip-ons. She futzed with the clasp of a necklace featuring a hammered metal star that she’d made in lapidary club during sophomore year.
Julianne took a cursory glance in the mirror before sliding her oversize sunglasses up the bridge of her nose.
The she grabbed her digital camera—complete with its new zoom lens, thanks to a summer of gainful employ-ment—and headed out of her bedroom.
As she walked past Chloe’s room, she heard her sister call, “Jules, is that you?”
Jules walked in and plopped herself facedown on Chloe’s bed, next to Chloe’s hefty stack of surgery guides and diagrams. No wonder she comes to my room to read Us Weekly , Julianne thought.
“So,” Chloe said authoritatively. “Does he always call you seventeen times a day?”
Julianne cast her eyes toward the floor. “On
