Sarah Dessen: The Rest of the Story

I was happy for my dad as well. After the roller coaster of dealing with my mom, Tracy was the most welcome of changes. She didn’t take more than she gave, or give nothing at all. She could be trusted to go to a work dinner and not embarrass him by drinking too much or telling a joke that had profanity or sex as part of the punch line. And if she said she’d be somewhere at a certain time, she was always there. It was this last thing that I think he appreciated most about her. I knew I did. After loving someone you couldn’t depend on, you realize how important it is to trust someone will do what they say. It’s such a simple thing, not to promise what you can’t or won’t deliver. But my mom had done that all the time.

In our new home in Lakeview, in the Arbors neighborhood, I would have my own suite with a big airy bedroom, as well as a bathroom and a small balcony that looked out over the rest of our street. It would be a change from our apartment, where I could look out at night and see city lights, and the noise from the street was muted but still always there: garbage trucks rumbling in the morning; drunk students walking home from the bars after midnight; sirens and car horns. I knew I would miss it, the way I’d miss my breakfasts with Nana, us splitting the newspaper—she took the cultural section, while I preferred the obituaries—and being able to step out of my house right into the world going on around me. But change was good, as Nana also said, especially the kind you were prepared for. And I was.

Before all that, though, my dad and Tracy would leave for their honeymoon to Greece. There, they were chartering a boat, just the two of them, indulging their shared love of sailing to tour the islands. It was a perfect culmination of their courtship, which, despite their shared profession, had not begun in a tooth-based setting. Instead, they’d met at a general interest meeting of the Lakeview Sailing Club, which gathered every other Sunday at Topper Lake to race dingys and knockabouts. I knew this because before Tracy, I’d had the unfortunate luck of being my dad’s first mate.

I hated sailing. I know, I know. It was my name , for God’s sake—Emma Saylor—chosen because my dad’s passion for mainsheets and rudder boards had been what had brought my parents together at another lake all those years ago. My mom, however, had felt the same way about sailing as I did, which was why she’d insisted on spelling my name the way she had. And anyway, I was Emma for all intents and purposes. Emma, who hated sailing.

My dad tried. He’d signed me up for sailing camp one summer when I was ten. There, I was usually adrift, my centerboard usually having plunged into the lake below, as instructors tried to yell encouragement from a nearby motorboat. But sailing with other people was worse. More likely than not, they’d yell at you for not sitting in the right place or grabbing the wrong line under pressure. Even when my dad swore he was taking me out for a “nice, easy sail,” there would be at least one moment when he got super stressed and was racing around trying to make the boat do something it wasn’t wanting to do while, yes, yelling.

Tracy, however, didn’t mind this. In fact, from the day they were assigned to a knockabout together at the sailing club, she yelled right back, which I believed was one of the things that made my dad fall in love with her.

So they would go to Greece, and holler at each other over the gorgeous Aegean Sea, and I would stay with Bridget and her family. We’d spend the days babysitting her brothers, ages twelve, ten, and five, and going to her neighborhood pool, where we planned to work on our tans and the crushes we had on Sam and Steve Schroeder, the twins in our grade who lived at the end of her cul-de-sac.

But first, there was tonight and the wedding, here at the Lakeview Country Club, where the ballroom had been lined with twinkling lights and fluttering tulle and we, along with two hundred other guests, had just finished a sit-down dinner. Despite the lavishness of the celebration, the ceremony itself had been simple, with me as Tracy’s maid of honor and Nana standing up with my dad as his “Best Gran.” (One of the wedding planners, a dapper man named William, had come up with this moniker, and he was clearly very proud of it.) I’d been allowed to choose my own dress, which I was pretty sure was Tracy’s way of trying to make it not a big deal but instead did the opposite, as who wants to make the wrong decision when you are one of only four people in the wedding party? Never mind that I was an anxious girl, always had been, and choices of any kind were my kryptonite. I’d ended up in such a panic I bought two dresses, then decided at the last minute. But even now, as I sat in my baby-blue sheath with the spaghetti straps, I was thinking of the pink gown with the full skirt at home, and wondering if I should have gone with it instead. I sighed, then reorganized my place setting, putting the silverware that remained squarely on my folded napkin and adjusting the angle of my water glass.

“You okay?” Ryan asked me. We’d been friends for so long, she knew my coping mechanisms almost better than I did. Perpetually messy herself, she’d often told me she wished she, too, had the urge to keep the world neat and tidy. But everything is welcome until you can’t stop, and I’d been like this for longer than I cared to remember.

“Fine,” I said, dropping my hand instead of lining up the flowers, glass jar of candy, and candle as I’d been about to do. “It’s just a big night.”

“Of course it is!” Bridget said. There was that optimism again. “Which is why I think we need to celebrate.”

I raised my eyebrows at Ryan, who just shrugged, clearly not in on whatever Bridget was planning. Which, as it turned out, was turning to the table beside us, which had been full of young hygienists from my dad’s office until they all hit the dance floor, and switching out the bottle of sparkling cider from our ice bucket for the champagne in theirs.

“Bridget,” Ryan hissed. “You’re going to get us so busted!”

“By who? They’re already all tipsy, they won’t even notice.” She quickly filled our flutes before burying the bottle back in ice. Then she picked up her glass, gesturing for us to do the same. “To Dr. Payne and Dr. Feldman.”

“To Dad and Tracy,” I said.

“Bottoms up,” added Ryan.

We clinked glasses, Bridget with a bit too much enthusiasm, champagne sloshing onto the table in front of her. I watched them both suck down big gulps—Ryan wincing—as I looked at my glass.

“It’s good!” Bridget told me. “Even if you don’t drink.”

“My mom says it’s bad luck to toast and not imbibe,” Ryan added. “Just take a tiny sip.”

I just looked at them. They knew I wasn’t a drinker, just as they knew exactly why. Sighing, I picked up my flute and took a gulp. Immediately, my nose was tingling, prickles filling my brain. “Ugh,” I said, chasing it with water right away. “How can you really enjoy that?”

“It’s like drinking sparkles,” Bridget replied, holding the glass up to the light just as Nana had, the bubbles drifting upward.

“Spoken like a true princess.” Ryan tipped her glass back, finishing it, then gave herself a refill. “And my mom also says nobody really likes champagne. Only how it makes you feel.”

“All I feel is that everything is changing,” I said. Saying it aloud, it suddenly felt more true than ever.

“But in good ways!” Bridget said. “Right? New stepmom, new house, and before that, new summer full of potential …”

“For you two,” Ryan grumbled. “I’ll be stuck in the mountains with no internet, with only my dad and some drama nerds for company.”