by JB Dutton
* * * * *
Waking up next morning, I felt like a jet-setter. Flying to New York in September, touring Manhattan by helicopter last month, and now zipping down to Fort Lauderdale for the holidays in first class, thanks to the seemingly infinite generosity of the Temple of Truth. Maybe they sold a book from their collection to finance Mom’s salary for the year...
I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my hair. Zigzagging my hand across the steamed-up mirror, I stared at myself. I felt like a different person from the girl who said goodbye to Lancaster High six months ago. The crazy pace of the city, my adventures with the ToT, meeting Noon and Cruz... all this had turned me from a boring small-town nerd into a young woman leading an exciting life.
Throwing on a robe, I opened the bathroom door and ran straight into Mom. She was all a-fluster.
“Bob just called,” she announced breathlessly. “He wants to take me to Paris! Can you believe it?!!”
I couldn’t. But apparently it was true.
“He wants to fly us there in his private jet for New Years!”
For half a second I thought that “us” included me.
“You’ll be okay with Gran and Pops, right?”
Nope. Didn’t include me.
“Sure,” I answered, making my way to my room.
“It’s SO exciting! I can hardly believe it.”
She was acting so much like a teenager that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d actually said oh-em-gee a couple of times. One thing was for sure – Bob really knew the way to a woman’s heart. I took the towel off and rubbed my hair. You know what – good for her! And I could take a big chunk of the credit for introducing them to each other in the first place.
“I thought he was away for the holidays,” I called to her, wincing as I brushed out the tangles.
She appeared at my door. “No, his plans were canceled.”
“It’s great, Mom,” I said, giving her a big hug.
“Sorry, honey, but I really like him.”
If only things were as simple for me. “Don’t be sorry! You deserve to be wined and dined and taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You’re a hottie.”
She blushed a little. It was cute.
“You’re the best,” she said, kissing me on the cheek, then floated away on her own Bob-fueled cloud nine, and I closed my door.
My suitcase was open on the bed. We were leaving for the airport in two hours. Swimsuit? Check. iPad? Check. Summer clothes? Check. Then I looked over at the French book I’d stolen from the ToT apartment, tucked away under a pile of magazines on my nightstand. I grabbed it and threw it into the case too.
By the time we got to Gran and Pops’ guarded gated community it was almost eleven o’clock and pretty much all the residents had been asleep for hours. Insects whirled in the pools of light created by the ornamental street lamps. The air was muggy and close. Incongruous Christmas decorations glittered around the manicured lawns and golf cart tracks. It was a whole other world compared to New York.
My cheeks had barely recovered from half an hour of obsessive grand-parental pinching by the time I flopped down on my cot in the living room. This arrangement was fun when I was nine years old, but at sixteen it was kinda invasive on both sides of the equation. Not only for the obvious personal privacy reasons, but because Gran invariably woke up at 5 a.m. and was incapable of just staying in bed and reading a book for a couple of hours. Nope, she had to “busy herself”, and that basically meant creating housework and then doing it noisily while I pulled the sheet over my head. Whatevs. They’re the only grandparents I’ve got and I love them. Chill, Kari, it’s Christmas. Chill.
Yeah, like that was gonna happen.
