Meg Cabot - Missing You

But I told myself we were friends now, and friends stick together. Right?

It was a quick flight. I’d barely finished the in-flight magazine before we were landing. Rob just had a carry-on, same as me, so we didn’t have to wait for our baggage to get unloaded. We walked straight out to where he was parked.

And I saw that he’d traveled to the airport on his Indian.

“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back with me. We can rent a car, if you want.”

“No,” I said. It was stupid that the sight of that motorcycle should freak me out so much. “No, it’s fine. Do you still have the spare helmet?”

He did, of course. The same one he used to loan me back when we—well, whatever we were doing back then. I put it on, then straddled the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and trying not to notice how good he smelled—like Hilton Hotel shower gel and whatever laundry detergent his mom—I mean,he —was using these days.

It was weird to be back in Indiana. The last time I’d been there had been over spring break. Buds that had only just been starting to show back then had now burst into midsummer bloom. Everything was lush and green. Everywhere you looked, you saw green. There’s green in New York—trees line almost every street. But the overall color is gray, the color of the sidewalks and streets and buildings.

Here all I could see was green, stretching until it met a cloudless, achingly blue sky.

I hadn’t realized, until then, how much I’d missed it.

The sky, I mean. And all that green.

When we reached the outskirts of our town, an hour later, I saw that other things besides the buds had changed since I’d last been there. The Chocolate Moose was gone, sold out to Dairy Queen. Same building, new sign.

When we stopped at the red light in front of the courthouse, Rob turned his head to ask me, “Where to?”

“My house,” I shouted back, over the thunder of his engine. “I need to drop my stuff off.”

He nodded and roared off in the direction of Lumbley Lane.

And I soon saw that even the house I’d grown up in looked different, though the only thing that had changed was the color of the trim, which my mother had had spruced up to white from its former cream.

But the place seemed…smaller, in a way.

Rob turned into the driveway and cut the engine. I hopped off the back of the bike, then took off the helmet and handed it to him.

“I’ll call you later,” I said to him. “Will you be at home or the garage?”

He’d pulled off his own helmet. Now he looked at me oddly—as if he thought he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t figure out what.

Welcome to my world.

“What about—” he started to ask.

“I said I’ll call you.” I didn’t know how else to make him understand that I needed to be alone for this next part.

He looked a little angry as he jammed his helmet back on.

“Fine,” he said. “Call me at home. That’s where I’ll be. I should check to see—I mean, maybe she came back by now.”

“She didn’t,” I said.

He studied me through the clear plastic screen of his helmet. There was something he wanted to say. That was obvious.

But he seemed to think better of it and settled for saying instead, “Fine. See you later.”

Then he turned around and drove away…

…Just as the screen door on the front porch of my house squeaked open, and my dad came out and went, “Jess? What are YOU doing here?”

I didn’t tell them the truth. My family, I mean. That I was there for Rob,or that I had my power back…for now.

Sure, all they’d have to do was call Mikey. He’d have cracked under the pressure eventually—though I’d left him with firm instructions not to say a word to anyone about Rob’s visit OR my apparently rejuvenated ability to dream.

But I knew it would be a while before Mike succumbed to the peer pressure to tell. Especially if he wanted to stay on Ruth’s good side. Which I suspected he did.

Instead—after giving our German Shepherd, Chigger, the kisses he leaped up on me and demanded in his joy at seeing me home—I just told my mom and dad that I’d missed them, and had decided to drop in for a quick visit, using some of my airline bonus miles. It’s amazing what parents will believe, if they want to believe it enough. Mine would never, I knew, shut up about it if they learned what I’dreally come home for—to find someone. Worse, to find someone related to Rob Wilkins…whom my dad had actually always liked, up until I’d made the mistake of telling him about Miss-Boobs-As-Big-As-My-Head. Even then, he’d just gone, “But, Jess, are you sure about who was doing the kissing? I mean, if Rob says she was the one who started it, and he was just an innocent bystander, it’s not fair of you to blame him for it.”

Dads. Seriously. They should just stick to handing out the allowance.

My mom was delighted to see me, but mad I hadn’t called first.

“I would’ve planned a barbecue,” she said. “A welcome home barbecue, and invited the Abramowitzes and the Thompkinses and the Blumenthals and the—”

“Yeah, that’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m here for a couple of days. There’s still time to plan something if you really want to.”

“We could have a brunch,” my mom said all gleefully. “On Saturday. People like brunch. And if they already have plans for the rest of the day, they can still do them, after brunch.”

“Douglas is at work?” I asked, after dumping my stuff off in my room and noticing that they’d converted his room, across the hall, to an office for my dad, who’d formerly done the books from the restaurants at the dining room table.

“Probably,” my mother said, as she fussed around, saying things like my sheets weren’t freshened up, and how I should have called so she could run them through the wash first. “Or one of those city council meetings.”

“What?” I grinned. “Douglas’s interested in politics now?”

My mother rolled her eyes. “Apparently. Well, not politics, exactly. You know they’re shutting down Pine Heights—” Pine Heights was the elementary school all of us had gone to. It was three blocks away—so close, we’d come home for lunch every day—a building constructed during the Depression by WPA workers, ancient enough that it still had two entrances, one for boys and one for girls.

At least according to the scrollwork over the doorways. No one, when I’d attended it, had ever paid any attention to the signs.

“There aren’t enough children in the neighborhood anymore to fill it,” my mother said. “So the school board’s shutting it down. The city wants to convert it to luxury condos. But Douglas and Tasha”—Tasha was Douglas’s girlfriend and the daughter of our neighbors across the street—“have some big idea about—well, he’ll tell you about it when you see him, I’m sure. It’s all he ever talks about anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by the store and see him,” I said. “If you think he’s working now.”

“He probably is,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “It’s all he ever does. Besides this Pine Heights thing.”

Which was funny, because just a few years ago, none of us would have believed that Douglas would ever do something as normal as hold down a job. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, that we’d all despaired of Douglas ever even leaving his room, much less supporting himself.

“Invite him for dinner,” my mother called as I banged out of the house. “Tasha, too, if she’s around. I’ll make your father grill some steaks.”

“Hey,” my dad yelled from his office-slash-Douglas’s old room. “I heard that.”

I left them squabbling and went down to the garage. Opening the barnlike doors—our house is a converted farmhouse, and almost a century old like most of the houses in our neighborhood—I went in and found what I’d been looking for: the baby-blue 1968 Harley my dad had bought me, as he’d promised he would, for high school graduation.