“So, you aren’t going to tell us what happened on your date?” Paige asked Sophie with a level of incredulity. “Come on, Soph, I’m dying to know where he took you!”

“I’m not saying,” She stubbornly refuted as we ran around the outline of the soccer field during Monday practice. “My lips are sealed. But I will say that it was just absolutely amazing. Really. It was the best date that I’d ever been on. I have no idea how I ever hated this guy. I just made so many wrong assumptions.”

“Well, I’m glad that you’re happy,” Paige sighed but obviously not happy about Sophie’s secrecy.

“Look, it’s not like I don’t want to tell you,” Sophie said. “It’s just that it was our night, you know? I don’t want to share it with anybody else.”

“I know, I get it,” Paige assured her although I didn’t get that. I didn’t understand that a night could be so amazing that you’d want to keep it to yourself. It was just one night and even though it was amazing, it couldn’t hold so much specialness. Not in my eyes.

“So are you two like, together?” I interjected since I hadn’t asked Andy that question. When he came back from his date on Friday night, I was asleep but when I woke up on Saturday morning for breakfast, Will had told us that when he came home, Sophie wasn’t with him. He’d dropped her off at her house before coming back home, which he’d never done before, and then Andy wouldn’t say a thing about the date at all. I knew it went well though considering he was in an amazing mood all weekend and wouldn’t stop smiling. It was adorable yet sickening.

“No,” She sighed. “I just want to go on a few more dates before we make it really official. I just want to make sure that he wasn’t just pretending to be amazing on the date just for my benefit. I just want to be sure that I’m falling for the real Andy Fisher, you know?”

I didn’t know.

Paige nodded as we continued to jog with everybody else until the coach blew her whistle and then we started doing dribbling exercises which quickly ended our conversation about Sophie and Andy. My weekend wasn’t nearly as exciting or rainbows and flowery as both Sophie and Andy’s were. It was bland, pretty much. I watched some movies, texted Paige a lot, and if I’d run into Carter in the kitchen or the hallway, we’d hold a conversation before we went our separate ways.

For the rest of practice, we didn’t get much time to talk but when the coach called it quits for the day, we all met up at the bleachers to grab our sports bags and headed to the parking lot.

“So we’ll be the first to know when Andy asks you to be his girlfriend, right?” Paige wondered with a level of authority in her voice as if she wasn’t really asking Sophie a question, it was a demand. We must be the first.

“Of course,” Sophie confirmed with a nod. “I’ll text you as soon as we have that conversation but I’m warning you that it probably won’t be for at least a few more weeks.”

“Take your time,” Paige told her. I took a big gulp of my ice water and when we got to the front of the rock, I saw that Carter wasn’t there yet so I’d have to wait for his practice to get out. “As long as we know. Anyway, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” I offered her a wave and then a smile as she and Sophie both walk passed the bright spirit rock towards the parking lot to go to their cars and drive back home to enjoy the rest of their days.

I sit down on the hot rock and then I start playing games on my phone while I waited for Carter to show up. After ten minutes, I heard deep groups of laughter coming from the school so I turned around and saw Carter and a few of his basketball friends coming out of the school with other players coming out of practice emptying out behind them.

I hopped off of the rock that was burning my legs and then waited there for him to approach, now standing side by side with Ethan, who was the only friend of his that I’ve met and that I know the name of.

“Hey,” I greeted them once they had approached the rock and then I walked in line with Carter toward his car. Sometimes, Ethan rode with Carter and they hung out at the house so I assumed that was what was happening that day since Ethan was still walking with us into the parking lot.

“Hey. How was practice?”

I shrugged. “Just practice. Sophie wouldn’t tell us where Andy took her on that date though.”

“I’m convinced that it wasn’t real,” Carter explained and I laughed, rolling my eyes at him.

“He wore a tie.”

“He paid her to say that they went on a date,” He refuted.

“And you said that I’m the pessimistic one,” I muttered, getting in the back seat of the car and just listened in on Carter and Ethan’s discussion on Andy’s unreliability when it comes to girls.

“You know,” I spoke up as Carter pulled into the garage and we all got out of the car. “In Andy’s defense, I’d seen Will hook up with more girls than Andy in the time that I’ve been here.”

“Will?” Ethan wondered curiously. “Hooked up with somebody? Who was it?”

While I shrugged in ignorance, Carter said, “Melissa Garner.”

“No way,” He said in an excited awe but then as we walked to the front of the house Carter gave his friend a look and shook his head as if to say ‘no don’t say that bad bad’ and the Ethan cleared throat and said, “I mean, uh, no way.”

That time, he sounded disappointed and grossed out.

I just rolled my eyes at them both. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think that you guys give Andy enough credit.”

I didn’t want to debate the subject though because really, it wasn’t any of my business, so I didn’t give them the chance to respond before I was disappearing up the stairs to get to my room.

After a long shower to soothe my aching joints, I got dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and wrapped my hair in a towel for it to dry and then I opened up my laptop and checked my email.

I’d gotten mail back from the teachers that I had emailed earlier in the summer, right when I got my schedule figured out via email with the school’s guidance counselor, about any summer AP work. I’d signed up for all of the AP courses that I could handle, which was three, and two of them had emailed me back about homework that was expected to be done before school started next month.

For English, I had a reading assignment and then a five paragraph essay to write about the reading. The reading was long but I could finish the essay in two hours.

As for my AP Government class, I had to do four current event one page essays about politics in the news. Also not something that I was worried about completing before school started.

I went to order the book that I needed for English online but as I was searching for the right book, a Skype message popped up on my screen which surprised me. I barely ever used my Skype, I really only had it for a job interview that I had last year but I never really got rid of it because I was too lazy.

I was getting a request to be added to somebody’s contact list and when I saw that the username of the other person was LisaWizz, I immediately thought of my mother, whose name was Lisa. I eagerly accepted the request and then waited for something to happen. For her to message me or video call me or something. If that really was my mother, I could feel my veins pumping faster with excitement to be able to talk to my mother again. After all this time.

Finally, after staring at the screen for what seemed like forever, I heard that ‘beep boop beep’ noise that Skype made when somebody was video calling you and then the message popped up on the screen, asking me if I wanted to answer the call or not.

I clicked the green ‘answer’ button and then my mother’s face appeared on the screen as my camera booted up and then my image showed up in the bottom right hand corner.

“Mom!” I cheered, almost tearing up at the amount of excitement that I felt in the moment. I was finally talking to my mom and I’d missed her so much. Seeing her on the screen- her hair darker and her skin tanner- I just wanted to leap through the screen and wrap her in a hug.

“Maddie?” She wondered, staring cluelessly at the screen. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes. Yeah, I can hear you,” I assured her. “How are you? How’s France?”

“Oh, darling, it’s lovely,” She assured me with a bright grin- a grin brighter than I’d ever seen her grin. “We went on a day trip to Paris last week and it was just marvelous.”

My mother doesn’t use words like ‘lovely’ or ‘marvelous’.

“That’s good to hear,” I said instead. “How’s Gerard?”

“Also wonderful,” She assured me. “He’s doing so well with his career, he’s really going places here.”

“That’s great.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Her laugh was bright and airy. What was France doing to her? “How are things there? How’s Tom?”

“I’ve adjusted. Tom is fine. You failed to mention that his family is rather large,” I said, taking the towel off of my head and running my fingers through my wet hair.

“I didn’t tell you that?” She wondered, her head cocked to the side with a thoughtful frown. “I could have sworn that I told you about his boys. Well, anyway, you sound happy so I’m assuming that they aren’t too bad.”

“They’re nice,” I confirmed. “Like I said, I’m adjusting. Do you know when you’re going to be home?”

“Oh, I can’t even think about that far ahead in the future,” My mom fake shuddered on the other end and then laughed, playing it off as a joke. As if it was a joke that I even asked that. How could she possibly consider coming back here? To see me? How ridiculous that is.

“Well, are you at least coming back for holidays? Thanksgiving? Christmas?”

“You know, Maddie, Gerard has such a huge, wonderful family here,” She said to me in her I’m-sorry-but-I’m-really-not voice. “They’d just be devastated if we didn’t show up for the annual festivities.”

Festivities? Was Gerard giving her a vocabulary lesson?

“So that’s a no,” I muttered, feeling a little bit deflated although I knew that I shouldn’t have. I should have expected her to say that. To say that she’d found a new family, a bigger and better family, to spend her holidays with. Who needs one little daughter when you can have ten uncles, twelve aunts, and three sets of grandparents accompanied by eighty cousins and fifty-two nieces and nephews? “I’m really going to miss you, you know.”

“Sweetie, I already miss you so much,” My mom assured me, her bright grin back in place and giving her crow’s feet by her eyes. “And we can Skype sometimes too. The time will just fly by, I promise. So tell me more about Minnesota. Any boyfriends?”

“Nope,” I sighed. “I don’t really know that many people. I made the varsity soccer team though.”

“That’s outstanding,” She chirped so loudly that I almost turned down the volume on my laptop. “I’m so proud of you, Maddie.”

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve just sent you something in the mail so look for it,” She said. “A little gift from Gerard and me from France.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise, darling,” She insisted. “But I think that you’ll just absolutely love it.”

“Mon amour, nous devons partir maintenant,” I heard Gerard’s deep voice rumble in the background although I had absolutely no idea what he was saying.

“You speak French now?” I asked my mom with raised eyebrows. For the whole year that she’d been with Gerard, she’d learned about five words of French but I guess now that she’s actually in France, it’d be more imperative that she learn.

“Well, no, not exactly,” She said slowly with a small shrug as if that didn’t really even matter that much even though yes, he did just speak French to her and yes, she is in France of all places but no, speaking their language really wasn’t at the top of her to-do list. “But I’m learning. Anyway, I have to go. Gerard is taking me to the theater.”

She hated theater. She always thought that it was a waste of time, TV was so much better. Culture shmulture.

I didn’t remind her of that though, I just nodded as if I understood although this conversation had been the most confusing thing I’d encountered in a while. “Sure. I’ll talk to you later. I love-“

But it was too late- she’d already ended the call, ready to take off into the French scene to explore everything that she hated with the man of her dreams. Who had she become? Well, whoever she was, the new Lisa had apparently forgotten that she was a mother. Or maybe the new Lisa decided that only Old Lisa was a mother, now that she was New and In France, she was no longer obliged to Old Lisa’s entanglements. Including me.

When I answered the call, I had expected it to make my day. But once it was over, it seemed to just turn my mood into crap.

At dinner that night, I was especially quiet and for the most part, nobody really noticed since the table was full. Tom was off of work which meant both Ace and Alijah were there too and Anna was over, which left a great deal of conversations to be had. Conversations that I did not need to be a part of.

However, when I started glumly poking at my four cheese rice instead of actually eating it, Carter had noticed since he was sitting right beside me.

“You okay?” He wondered.

“Yeah,” I said, probably just a little bit too quickly. “Everything’s fine. I’m just not very hungry tonight.”

“You look like your puppy just died,” He refuted with a teasing laugh but I didn’t return his laughter or even try to smile. “Seriously, what’s wrong?”

I wanted to say ‘nothing’ and leave it at that but I knew that he wouldn’t just believe me or pretend to, he would keep asking and then everybody else would notice and then they’d want to know too. So, as Will and Tommy were continuously teasing Andy about dating a girl for more than two hours, Carter leaned in close to me and I ignored Ace accidently elbowing my ribs as he told Anna about his very exciting day. “I finally got to talk to my mom. She called me on Skype.”

“That’s good though, isn’t it?” He wondered, taking a bite of his chicken.

“Right, yeah it was a good thing,” I agreed with a nod. “It’s just that she kind of barely remembers who I am anymore. She’s changed a whole lot and she uses words like ‘marvelous’ and she’s going to theater. I don’t know. She’s just changed so much in just this little time that she’s been gone.”

“That does suck.”

“And she’s not even coming back for holidays or anything. It really does suck,” I sighed.

“What are you two whispering about?” Andy asked, looking directly at me and Carter and his face was red with a light blush so I assumed that he was just trying to get the attention off of him and his newfound fondness of commitment.

“Oh, nothing,” I said quickly but I knew by now that the ‘nothing’ answer would get you nowhere in that house. Andy just continued looking at us expectantly and then Will, Tom, and Tommy started looking at us too.

“We were just talking about school starting next month,” Carter lied with ease, sitting up straight and creating distance between us again.

“Right,” I agreed with him, clearing my throat. “And I just realized that I have a lot of AP work to catch up on so I’m going to go do that now.”

“And I’m going to go help her. Since I took the same classes last year,” Carter added, which I wasn’t expecting, as I stood up from the table and gave my extra rice to Will, who had quickly called dibs.

I gave Carter a strange look but I didn’t want to blow our cover so I just put my plate in the sink and then went for the stairs as Tom wished us both a goodnight and good luck on the homework.

Without questioning Carter, I just followed him through the twisty hallways that made up the second floor of the Fisher Residence until we ended up in the familiar game room that we had hung out in once before.

“You don’t have to coddle me every time that I’m grumpy, you know,” I informed him, crossing my arms over my chest although I did appreciate the effort that he was putting in to making me feel better. I didn’t want to become his charity case. Or anybody’s charity case.

“I’m not coddling you,” Carter told me, walking passed me and then farther into the game room. “I have to redeem myself from the last time.”

“That was pretty sad on your part,” I agreed, trying not to laugh as I followed him to the ping pong table, where I had crushed him the last time that he brought me in here to play. It really did improve my mood last time so I was sure that he could make me feel better this time with the same thing and although I wanted to object to him obviously taking pity on me, I really needed something to get my mind off of things.

And Carter knew just how to do that.