CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS,…
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY
COPYRIGHT
To my parents, Gregory and Jane Hurley, who taught me to love writing, and to my amazing children, who give me so much to write about. And to my husband, Graham…always.
For more than forty years, Yearling has been the leading name in classic and award-winning literature for young readers.
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ONE
“You’re kidding.”
Why do people say that only when there’s not a single chance, not one in a zillion, that what they’ve just heard is a joke?
Still, that’s what I said when my dad told me we were moving.
“You’re kidding.”
It’s the same thing I said one day almost a year earlier, after walking home from school. The air was honeysuckle-scented, the grass was damp from a morning shower and my arms were swinging in the breeze. No backpack. It was a Friday, I’d just celebrated my twelfth birthday four days earlier and sixth grade would be over in a week. Everything was perfect.
Except it wasn’t. I found out that day that sometimes perfect is perfectly horrible but you don’t know it yet.
Clue number one was the police car in my driveway. That was a first. The car was empty, but the engine was running and the flashing light was on, spinning around like a retro disco ball.
That was the car I noticed first. But other cars were in the driveway, too, and still others were parked along the curb. I was dumb enough to feel a little twinge of excitement, like I was walking into a surprise party or something. But I’d never had a surprise party, and why would a police officer be invited, and what was the occasion anyhow, and…weird ideas like these were bouncing randomly around in my head when…
When my life fell apart.
Dad had spotted me through the window and he came running out of the house. He had been on the track team in high school and was still a really fast runner. He was barreling at me so fast, I thought he’d knock me to the ground. But the instant he reached me, he wrapped his arms around me and sobbed into my ear. My dad sobbing…This was a first, too. I was beginning to hate firsts.
I don’t remember his words, or how many people crowded around us, or whether I noticed that my blouse was wet with Dad’s tears, or the instant when I knew that all I wanted in the whole wide world was to see my mom, who was nowhere in sight, because…
She was dead.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
Except I knew he wasn’t.
Tough break for a twelve-year-old, right? Isn’t a twelve-year-old supposed to worry about fractions and training bras? Who changed the rules of my life? And why wasn’t I consulted?
But that’s what happened. My mom was dead of some weird brain problem I’d never heard of and couldn’t even spell (a-n-e-u-r-y-s-m, I learned after checking a dictionary). I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. The whole world caved in, and only ten seconds before, everything had been perfect, and…
I wanted a do-over.
TWO
“You’re kidding!”
Now it was Lani’s turn to say it. Note the exclamation point. If Lani’s name was in the dictionary, it would be followed by an exclamation point. She was my best friend, but I have to admit that she was heavy on emoting. Mom used to call her Triple-L: Larger-than-Life Lani.
“I’m not kidding,” I said glumly, unfolding sleeping bags beside my bed for our weekly Friday-night sleepover. “I really am moving.”
Dad had told me the night before, so I was still absorbing the news myself. Lani clutched her chest in her best drama queen impersonation. “Omigod, Elsa! You said you had big news, but I didn’t know your big news would ruin my life! Moving!” She moaned. “When?”
“Next weekend, just before the start of spring semester.”
“N-next w-weekend…,” Lani repeated, sputtering the words. “Where?”
“Harbin Springs, just sixty miles from here.” I shrugged, trying to sound like it was no big deal. I felt terrible, but Lani was dramatic enough for both of us. “No big change.” One South Carolina town was pretty much like another…stubby little palmetto trees lining every main street, dainty pink azaleas and fuchsia crepe myrtle on every lawn and enough humidity in the summer to choke a horse, but lots of crisp, shimmery days in the other seasons, including occasional afternoons in the dead of winter so warm you could go outside barefoot.
“Why are you moving, Elsa?” Lani wailed, working her way through a reporter’s list of who-what-where-when-why. My stomach hurt. I hoped she was running out of Ws.
“My dad got a new job. It’s a smaller bank, but he’ll have some big-shot title that he’s really psyched about.” I managed a sad smile and tugged at Lani’s thick auburn hair. “He told me he could commute until summer starts so I could finish seventh grade here, but I figure now is as good a time as any to take the leap.”
“You’re insane!” Lani shrieked.
I smiled. “It’s not so bad,” I insisted. “Harbin Springs is close to the ocean. Dad said you can visit anytime and he’ll take us to Myrtle Beach. Plus, we’ll live with Grandma, at least until we find our own place. Dad says the fresh start will do us good.”
“A fresh start? In the middle of seventh grade?” Lani jumped to her feet, flinging her hands in the air. “We don’t make fresh starts without each other! How will I survive the Slice Girls without you?”
The Slice Girls’ real names were Rebecca, Blaise and Selena, but since the start of middle school, they’d been the Slice Girls to us. It was our secret joke, based on how they cut their eyes at us to let us know they were now way out of our league, popularity-wise. “The look” surgically removed our self-esteem, dunked it in formaldehyde and left it in the science lab as an official “Geeks as Life-Form” specimen. It made no sense, really; it hadn’t been long at all since we were all doing cartwheels together in each other’s front yards and selling lemonade from the curb. But middle school started and Snob City.
I felt a little pinch in my heart. It wasn’t any fun being unpopular, but, well, with Lani, it actually kinda was. We were unpopular together. It was Lani who defended me when the Slice Girls made fun of my freckles, telling them with a sneer that they were beauty marks. It was Lani who puffed out her chest and told them that we made our own fashion rules when they laughed at me for wearing babyish corduroy overalls (and high-waters at that!) on the first day of school. Lani even wore her overalls the next day for solidarity. It was Lani who made me feel good about my limp light brown hair (versatile, she called it) and my long skinny legs (a model’s legs, onc
e my scabby knees healed up, she assured me).
Lani was a great friend. I jumped to my feet and gave her a hug. “I’ll miss you,” I said. “But don’t worry about the Slice Girls. You can take care of yourself. And you can visit me as often as you want. Every weekend, practically.”
“It won’t be the same!” Lani said.
I plopped backward onto my bed. “I don’t know…maybe it’s not such a bad thing.” I gazed up at the ceiling. “You know, before my mom died last year, I was just Elsa. Not too tall, not too short, not too skinny, not too fat, not too smart, not too dumb, not too pretty, not too hideous…just Elsa.”
“What are you talking about?” Lani said. “You’re still just Elsa.”
“No. Now, to everybody except the Slice Girls, who would hate me with or without a mother, I’m Poor Elsa. Poor-Elsa-whose-mother-died. Maybe at a new school, I can be just Elsa again.”
“Nobody treats you differently,” Lani said, but her heart wasn’t in it. Actually, though I would never say so, Lani’s own mom was Exhibit A.
Mrs. Evans had always been nice to me, but before Mom died, she was nice in a brisk, “hi-Elsa-now-you-girls-get-out-from-under-my-feet” kind of way. After Mom died, she became nice to me in a gaze-in-my-eyes-and-ask-me-if-I’m-REEEALLY-okay kind of way. It was sweet, but our conversations never felt natural anymore.
“Hiiii, Elsa,” Mrs. Evans would say, drawing out her vowels in a way I’d never heard her do before. “Ya okaaay, honey? You reeaally okay? Ya shooo-er?”
Kinda creeped me out. I hadn’t only lost my mom. I had lost my averageness. I wanted it back.
Lani and I were on the same wavelength about almost everything, but this I didn’t think she could understand.
She plopped down on the bed beside me. We were quiet for a minute, staring at the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars on my ceiling. “What’s it like to lose your mom?” Lani asked quietly.
I paused. Lani had spent the past year making sure we talked about anything other than my mom, as if avoiding the subject could keep me from thinking about her. I wasn’t prepared for a head-on question. Besides, how do you answer a question like that? I thought for a minute.
“I wish I’d made a list of questions to ask her before she died,” I said softly. “You know…things only a mom can answer, like how you keep from poking yourself in the eye when you put that gloppy black stuff on your lashes. And why you put that gloppy black stuff on your lashes in the first place.
“And how you unbunch your underpants so that nobody will notice,” I continued, feeling silly and sad at the same time.
“Well, I can tell you that,” Lani said, trying to sound helpful.
There was more, too, though. I guess I didn’t realize I had so many questions until I didn’t have a mom to ask anymore.
Finally, I said, “Think of everything it means to have a mom, then subtract it all.” I laced my fingers together and laid my hands on my chest. “That’s what it’s like.”
“You still have your dad,” Lani said. “He can help you.”
“Yeah, and he’s awesome. But…” I propped myself up on an elbow. “Take the Slice Girls, for instance. If they dissed us at school and I told my dad, he’d say, ‘Oh, honey, that’s just how kids are at your age. Don’t let it bother you.’” Lani laughed at my deep, throaty Dad imitation. “But if I told my mom, she’d have a look in her eye that let me know she was feeling the exact same thing I was feeling. I miss that look.”
I sighed. Funny thing about those stars on my ceiling…In the dark, they glowed, but in daylight, they just blended into the background. Dusk was just starting to settle outside, so I had to squint hard to see their outlines.
Yup. Still there.
“It’s gonna be fine, you know.”
Dad squeezed my hand as we sprawled lazily together in our backyard hammock. Lani had gone home, and he joined me in the hammock as the lazy stillness of a Saturday evening settled in.
“Moving to a new place isn’t the end of the world,” he said softly. “Harbin Springs is a nice little town, and the middle school has a great reputation. It’s the same school your mom went to, and look how brilliant she turned out to be.”
I smiled. Dad and I didn’t talk about Mom much, but we didn’t avoid talking about her. I think we each just knew how the other felt.
“Are you sure you don’t want to finish the school year here?” he asked gently.
“Things just feel a little weird here, you know? Besides, I’m looking forward to being with Grandma. I could use a woman’s touch, don’t you think, dahling?” I joked in my best diva accent.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Dad asked, pinching me playfully. “I can even give you my makeup tips, if you ask really nicely.”
I laughed. Dad always made me laugh.
“Sure, you’re the makeup expert in the family,” I teased, “but who will help me with my essays?” That had always been Mom’s job. She was a writer, doing funny little essays for the local magazine and starting novels she was sure she could publish, if only she ever finished one.
“Hey, give me a chance!” Dad said. “I won a contest in fourth grade for writing about my hero.”
I grinned. “Who was your hero?”
“Genevieve Lawler, of course, the most efficient school librarian ever. True, she had the personality of an eggplant, but that gal knew the Dewey decimal system like the back of her hand. Ya gotta admire that in a person.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess: She judged the essay contest, right?”
“A sheer coincidence.”
I giggled and Dad squeezed me closer. “We’re gonna be fine, Elsa,” he said softly.
I burrowed my head into his chest. My mom was gone, my best friend would soon live sixty miles away from me and I was about to endure the most daunting of all challenges: starting a new school toward the end of seventh grade. But with a dad as cool as mine, how bad could things be?
THREE
Dad and I didn’t talk much as we drove to Harbin Springs with a U-Haul full of furniture cruising behind us. I had packed my whole life into that trailer: scrapbooks, CDs, dolphin posters, goofy pictures with Lani and me sticking out our tongues in an amusement park booth.
The window was open and my hair flew in the breeze. Dad had turned on the radio a couple of times, but nothing seemed to suit him, and now it was quiet. Quiet except for the rustle of the breeze as we left our old life in the dust.
Are you there, Mom? I asked in my mind. I did that a lot lately. Don’t worry; I wasn’t going mental. I just liked talking to her in my head, even if she couldn’t answer. I pretended she could. At least I think I was pretending. Sometimes, it seemed like she was actually there.
Mom, this really sucks, I said in my head as Dad cruised along the interstate. Here I am, moving to a new town. And no matter where I go, you’re not there, which, by the way, is, like, so unfair. Moms aren’t supposed to die before their kids are grown, are they? I think there’s some kinda rule….
My eyes stayed focused on the road without seeing anything at all.
I’m mad at you, Mom, I continued in my head. That’s nuts, huh? Mad at you for dying…But I can’t help it. In fact, I’m more than mad. I’m furious. At you. At you, Mom. Do you hear me, Mom? How dare you die on me?
I blinked quickly to push back the tears forming in my eyes. My stare returned to the blur of asphalt.
But more than anything, I just miss you.
Dad turned off an exit I knew like the back of my hand. We’d visited Grandma’s house a lot over the years. Off the exit was a soft-drink bottling plant that signaled that Grandma’s house was another quarter of a mile. In two minutes, we arrived in Grandma’s neighborhood, full of neat little ranch-style brick houses with flower beds and window boxes. Most of her neighbors were retired, so there was a sleepy but comforting feel to the tidy, tree-lined streets. These same retirees were raising their families when Mom grew up here, and she said that in those days the neighb
orhood was always full of kids on bikes and skates. There were front-yard games of kickball, and games of hide-and-seek that wound from one yard to the next as teams got more creative with their hiding places. Mom told me how much fun it was to be one of a dozen sweaty, mosquito-bitten kids who played in the summer from morning until dusk, when parents started gathering on front porches to call them home for dinner.
Now everything was quiet. The kids were all grown, and the folks left behind spent their time trimming hedges and pulling weeds. Before Mom died, coming here felt as safe and comfy as my ratty old bathrobe. Now it seemed…different. The kind of different that makes your stomach hurt.
As we drove up the street, a couple of Grandma’s neighbors waved at us. We waved back. Mrs. Willis, Mrs. Mulligan…we knew them all by name.
Dad pulled into Grandma’s driveway and tooted the horn twice—short toot followed by long toot. Dut-dooooo. That was his official driveway greeting. The front door opened and Grandma was smiling, waving us inside.
“Come in, come in!” she sang, her hand fluttering like a little bird. She hugged me as I stepped onto her front porch.
“There’s my girl,” she said. “I’ve got the house all ready for you. You’ll sleep in your regular spot, of course…your mom’s old room!”
She smiled brightly as she said it, but her blue eyes suddenly sparkled with tears. I squeezed her hands.
“It’s okay, Grandma,” I whispered.
She swallowed hard. “Okay? It’s better than okay! I have my darling Elsa all to myself! And guess what, I’ve got a five-thousand-piece puzzle already started for us in the den. We’re gonna have so much fun!”
I smiled. “Careful, now, Grandma. You wouldn’t want to trigger my heart condition with all this excitement.”
She looked startled. “Heart condition…!” Then she started laughing. “Oh, Elsa. Just like your mom, with your dry sense of humor.”
Dad joined us on the porch, lugging a suitcase in each hand.
“Hi, Jack,” Grandma said, pecking him on the cheek. “Let’s get you two settled.”
Do-Over Page 1
