You’re Invited Too

by Jen Malone

  Almost. All it takes is Linney’s sneering face popping into my head to remind me that I have to do this. That girl really dills my pickle, and I can’t deal with her making fun of my dad the rest of the year.

  “Good morning, Dad!” I say, way too chirpily. “There’s coffee and breakfast scramble.” I cut a piece from the casserole dish. “It’s got eggs and sausage and tomatoes.” I drop the plate on the table and go to fill his mug.

  He eyes the plate. “I see that. And it looks great, sweetie. But . . . it’s seven a.m. on a Saturday. Why are you up?”

  I carefully place the coffee on the table and then fetch a fork and knife. “Oh, um . . . I have soccer practice this morning.”

  “At ten, right?”

  “Yeah . . .” Come on, Vi. Just say it. I’ve only been psyching myself up for this all week, and I have what I’m going to say all planned out. I just have to do it. Fish or cut bait, Meemaw would tell me.

  Dad digs into his food, and I fill a plate for myself. Except I’m not really hungry. I sit down and fold my napkin into triangles.

  “This is really good,” Dad says through a mouthful of eggs. He looks up at me, and I open my mouth to say what I planned . . . and shovel a forkful of food into it instead.

  “Thanks.” I barely get the words out past the food.

  Dad’s done in about three bites. He picks up his coffee and leans back in his chair. He’s studying me like he’s never seen me before. Which is so not helping. I push a piece of sausage across my plate.

  “Oh wait,” he says softly. “I know what this is about.”

  “You do?” I look up, really hoping he brings up the subject himself. That would make this so much easier.

  He goes red under what’s left of his summer tan. “It’s about that Travis boy, isn’t it? The one you went to the Founder’s Day dance with.”

  I choke on the orange juice I just tried to swallow. Dad passes me another napkin as I cough.

  “Now, Vi, sweetie, he’s a great kid, and his family is good people, but you’re twelve. And maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, but that’s just too young for dating. I know it’s weird to talk to me about this, but since your mother isn’t here . . . well, I’m glad you brought it up anyway.”

  Except I didn’t bring it up. I take a huge gulp of orange juice, partly to stop coughing and partly so I don’t have to say anything just yet. Because Lance is not—not at all—what I wanted to talk to Dad about. In fact, he’s probably the last thing I’d ever want to talk to Dad about.

  I drain my glass. Dad’s looking at me all expectantly, like he’s not sure if I’m going to fight him on the no-boyfriends thing. Which is so embarrassing and so not at all on my mind right now. Mostly.

  Deep breath, Vi. Just say it.

  “Um . . . it’s not about Lance . . . ,” I finally say. And I swear Dad sags a little bit in his chair, like he’s just dropped a bag of rocks. “It’s about . . . I want you to quit your job.”

  There. Said it.

  And watching Dad frown, I feel like the biggest jerk ever.

  He takes a sip of coffee. I flatten out my napkin on my knee and start folding triangles all over again.

  “First,” he finally says, “if I did that, I’d have to go back to construction, and that means I’d miss all of your soccer games.”

  Right. I’d hate that, but it’d be worth it to get Linney off my back at school.

  “Second, you realize that was the first Founder’s Day I’ve been to in years? And I liked it, even the old-people-on-a-cruise-ship game. If I didn’t have this new job, I would’ve missed seeing you get all dressed up.”

  That’s true. Before we were old enough to go around town by ourselves, I usually tagged along to Founder’s Day stuff with Sadie’s family. It was nice to see Dad out that day, for a change.

  “And third, didn’t you buy us those kayaks so we could paddle together? I can’t do that if I work all the time. And I like this job. Sure, it ain’t a job that comes with an office or anything, but I like it. I like being around the kids and knowing that I’ll get off work at five o’clock every day.”

  The whole time he’s been talking, I’ve felt as if I swallowed a piece of gum. And that gum’s been sitting in my stomach like a water balloon that keeps growing and growing and growing.

  I’m starting to wish I hadn’t said anything at all.

  Dad drains his coffee and goes to refill the mug. I clear the table, as quietly as possible, kind of hoping he won’t say anything else.

  “I know I embarrass you,” he says.

  I drop the dishes into the sink a little too hard, and one of Meemaw’s pretty shell-patterned plates cracks right across the middle.

  “Dad . . . ,” I start, but, really, I don’t know what to say right now. I’m sorry I don’t care that this job makes you happy? I’m sorry I’m a shallow meanie who only cares about what people think of me?

  “Being twelve is hard,” he says. “I get that. But the Vi I know—the one who plays a mean game of soccer, the one who’s stood up to that Linney girl for years—that Vi wouldn’t care.” He holds up the lid to the kitchen trash can as I dump the two pieces of plate into it.

  I want to agree with him and say that of course I don’t care what Linney thinks. But then I flash back to that whole scene in the school hallway, with Becca by my side and that new French guy coming to my rescue.

  Maybe that’s it. Maybe I don’t want to be rescued. But it wasn’t as if I was standing up for myself right then. And I don’t know why I wasn’t.

  “So I’m sorry if my job embarrasses you, but I’m not going to quit.” Dad puts his mug into the sink. “Thank you for breakfast.”

  And then he’s gone.

  • • •

  If it hadn’t been crack-of-dawn a.m. and if I didn’t have practice in a few hours, I would’ve sent the Bat Signal to Sadie, Lauren, and Becca. Instead I baked six dozen muffins for no reason, and then Dad drove me to soccer. After the most uncomfortable car ride ever, I had to spend the whole practice ignoring Lance, who kept staring at me every time we got anywhere near each other. I don’t even know why—it’s not as if he likes me. He made it pretty clear at the Founder’s Day dance that he’s into Linney. And ever since then, she’s been eating lunch at his table. Mostly, I pretend to ignore them, because it’s easier that way.

  I snagged a ride home with Evan Miller, so at least I didn’t have to feel so guilty sitting next to Dad again. His new green kayak was gone when I got back, too. So I texted Lauren, who talked to me for a few minutes before her alarm went off to remind her that it was time to finish her pre-algebra homework. Then I got ready as fast as possible for Becca’s sleepover, even though it technically didn’t begin till five. And I tried not to think about Dad in his kayak, wondering why he isn’t good enough for his own daughter.

  I drop my bike under Becca’s house and haul my overnight bag up the stairs. Cooper, the resident Lab at Polka Dot Books next door, barks and jumps with all of his doggy enthusiasm against the wooden fence.

  “Hey, buddy.” I hang over the railing on the top step and wave at him.

  “Hey, buddy, yourself.” Becca’s opened the door. “Why are you here so early? Not that I mind, of course. I need someone who can com . . . comser . . .”

  “Commiserate?” I suggest. It’s been Lauren’s word of the week, and I think we’ve all heard it in every possible way it can be used by now. Lauren’s going to be single-handedly responsible for all of us acing the SAT in high school.

  “Yeah, that,” Becca says. She slumps against the door frame. “Because my life is over.”

  “Becs, they’re only braces. I mean, yeah, you can’t eat a few things, but it’s not that horrible.” I dump my bag inside the door, underneath the Sandpiper Beach Citizens of the Year awards honoring Becca’s parents, and head straight for the kitchen. “And besides, this party is all about having one last blast, right? You’ll eat so much of that stuff tonight, you won’t be able to miss it for
the next couple of years.”

  Becca trudges behind me. “It’s not that. Well, maybe it is a little. But mostly it’s my face! I’m gonna be a brace-face, and Philippe will never, ever, ever in a hundred million years find that cute.”

  “Philippe?” I stop in the middle of pulling out ingredients for caramel apples.

  “He’s just . . . really nice. And megacute. Don’t give me that look! I know I swore off boys. It doesn’t really even matter now, does it? Plus we have school pictures next week, remember? So when I’m fifty and trying to recapture my youth by looking at my seventh-grade picture, all I’ll remember is braces.”

  Poor Becca looks so upset. I give her a hug. Then I hand her a bag of caramel candy to unwrap. “Put that in a bowl so we can melt it, okay? I promise cooking will make you feel better. It always works for me. I baked a pile of muffins this morning. Which means we’ve got breakfast for tomorrow.” I nod toward my backpack in the living room.

  Becca slowly unwraps the caramels while she looks at me. “What happened? Did you run into Lance and Linney?”

  Ugh. Why does everyone think everything has to do with Lance? “No. Wait, why would I have run into them together? Are they, like . . . boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  Becca shrugs. “No, I don’t think so. But she’s been hanging out at Stewie’s a lot. So if it isn’t Lance, what’s bothering you so much that you had to bake?”

  I run water over a bunch of apples in the sink and start scrubbing them dry. I’m not really sure I want to talk about it. Becca would totally get it, of course. She was there for the whole awful puke scene, and she was even there when Dad announced he’d gotten the job at school. She looked about as horrified as I felt about that news.

  But it’s Becca’s birthday party, and honestly, I don’t really feel like talking about it. If I could go the rest of the night without thinking about that look on Dad’s face, I’d feel a whole lot better.

  “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I say.

  So we make caramel apples, and I listen to Becca worry about how much the braces will hurt and whether anyone will call her names (which is crazy, really, since lots of girls in our class have already gotten braces) and whether she’ll have the braces off before she’s in high school and goes to prom and whether she should get all one color bands or mix it up with two or three.

  By the time Sadie and Lauren arrive, we’ve not only got caramel apples; we’ve also got deep-dish pizza (Dr. Bernstein told Becca that the crust can damage her braces; who knew pizza crust was so dangerous?), saltwater taffy, bowls and bowls of every flavor of popcorn we could think of, sunflower seeds, and even beef jerky, which Becca said she was only going to eat because she wouldn’t be allowed to eat it after Monday.

  “Ooh, popcorn!” Lauren digs a hand into the nearest bowl. “I’ve been studying pretty much all day. I am so ready for this party!”

  “Pizza! I’m starving.” Sadie goes to grab a slice, and I have to smack both their hands away.

  “Let’s get it all upstairs first,” I tell them. Becca’s parents have a strict no-eating-in-your-bedroom rule, which totally makes sense since food could get lost really easily in Becca’s room, but I guess Becca was so miserable that they decided to bend it for tonight.

  Upstairs, we shove aside piles of clothes and school papers and things I can’t identify (I swear I think I saw some squished papier-mâché we did in second grade). Then we eat and eat and eat. Becca wants to watch her favorite teen-romance movies, since, she says, “This stuff will never happen to me now.” That just sounds way too depressing, so we talk her out of it and into dressing up and taking pictures instead. Which is So Very Becca.

  “Then you won’t care about your school pictures because you’ll have these to look at instead!” Sadie says as Becca pulls on the fanciest dress she owns.

  Lauren snaps shots of Becca sitting, Becca standing, Becca leaning mournfully against her closet door, Becca jumping up like a cheerleader, and Becca strumming her guitar. Sadie scooches across the floor to where I’m sitting.

  “Something’s up with you,” she says.

  I sigh. “It’s Becca’s party. I don’t want to ruin it by being all grumpy.”

  “What happened?” Sadie’s eyebrows are knitted together.

  Now I have to tell her, or she’ll assume someone died. “It’s my dad. I asked him to quit, and it . . . didn’t go like I planned.” I rifle through Becca’s jewelry box. I know she decided at Founder’s Day to start collecting brooches, and I guess she’s really committed. There are a ton of them in here. I push the old-fashioned pins aside and find a long beaded necklace to wind around my neck.

  “Is he mad at you?”

  “No, but I think I really hurt his feelings. I just feel so . . . awful. And mean. My dad’s always been there for me, and I was so horrible to him. Now he thinks I’m embarrassed by him, and that he’s not good enough, and officially, I am the worst daughter who ever existed.”

  Sadie leans over and wraps me in a bear hug. “I totally get it,” she says.

  Wait, she does. Sadie said she’s still going out of her way not to bring up any wedding talk around her mom because it always gets awkward.

  “Um, helloooo?” Becca’s snapping her fingers. “No whispering! It’s group-shot time! Vi, you put on that red velvet dress. Sades, you need the faux-fur-trimmed coat. It’ll look très cute on you! And someone needs to wear these adorbs gold sandals!” She scoops the shoes up and tosses them to Lauren, who falls back into a mountain of clothing as she catches them.

  Sadie giggles, and I can’t help smiling.

  I’m pulling on the hem of the dress to try to make it longer (because Becca is shrimp-size and I’m what she once called “statuesque”), and Lauren’s wrapping a hot pink scarf around her neck (I might not be the fashion queen of Sandpiper Beach, but even I get that a scarf doesn’t really go with sandals), when Sadie’s phone rings with the RSVP theme song that Becca wrote this summer.

  La la la la la la la la, life is so much more . . .

  Sadie freezes mid–camera shot.

  “Maybe it’s just Izzy,” I suggest.

  “Or someone who’s heard about the awesomeness of RSVP and wants to book a party,” Becca adds. “Of course, we’ll have to turn them down like the others, though.” We’d agreed after we booked the wedding that it was all the party planning we could handle with school and stuff.

  La la la la la la la la, shared among us four . . .

  “Or your mom, calling to remind you about something,” Lauren says.

  Sadie pulls the phone from her purse on the floor and glances at the screen. Her shoulders sag. “It’s her,” she announces before she puts the phone to her ear. “Hello, Miss Worthington?”

  “This woman is way more trouble than this wedding is worth. Seriously, we’d make more money if we quit, because then we could book other parties. You know, for normal people,” Lauren whispers.

  “Shh!” I say to her. If that bridezilla can hear Lauren, we’ll get kicked off the wedding for sure. And getting fired isn’t exactly great for business.

  “But it’s true! I can prove it. See, I have this spreadsheet that logs how much time we’re putting into this wedding and then calculates what our hourly rate would be based on the total amount of payment she’s offered us, and—”

  Sadie kicks at Lauren’s leg.

  “Ow!” Lauren hops up and down on one gold-sandaled foot.

  “I see, Miss Worthington, but . . .” Sadie slumps onto Becca’s bed. “How about tomorrow morning? . . . Oh . . . No, of course we want to do everything we can, but right now we’re . . .”

  I sit next to her. I’m dying to know what Miss Worthington is talking about. I poke Sadie’s leg. What? I mouth. What’s she saying?

  Sadie waves a hand at me. “Yes, we still want the job! . . . No, I understand. . . . Okay, thirty minutes. See you then.” Sadie clicks her phone off and falls backward onto the bed.

  “What was that all ab
out?” Becca asks.

  “Bridezilla emergency. She’s found some guy called ‘the Italian Tenor’ she wants to sing at the wedding, but he’s only available to Skype with us about predicted wedding-day humidity conditions that could affect his vocal cords tonight, because then he’s heading off on the Australian leg of his world tour. Please ask me if I understood more than six words of the sentence I just said.” Sadie pushes herself up onto her elbows. “The part I got loud and clear is that she wants one of us at her house. Right now.”

  Sadie

  TODAY’S TO-DO LIST:

  ■ google “ways to deal with bridezillas”

  ■ figure out what an Italian Tenor is

  ■ appoint a vice president to deal with all this stuff from now on

  So when she says right now, she means—” Becca starts.

  “Right now!” I cut in.

  “But, but, but . . . it’s my birthday party! Did you tell her that?”

  I shake my head, sigh, and gather my hair into a ponytail. Time to get down to business. Literally. I slide off Becca’s faux-fur coat and scrub at the glitter she applied to my cheeks earlier. Nothing says unprofessional like glitter cheeks!

  As the tiny sparkles disappear, my sparkly mood does too. I’d been soooo looking forward to tonight. A sleepover with my very best friends was supposed to have been the perfect way to escape all the stress of this stupid wedding and the awkwardness of things at home. Mom’s been acting like her normal self, distracted but Mom-ish, although she has been around an awful lot, which is actually not normal (yesterday she and Izzy played Monopoly for approximately three hours). But whenever anything about her party-planning company or mine comes up, the air gets chillier than the ice-cream freezer at the Variety Shoppe.

  And speaking of my company, it really does feel like mine most days, with all the responsibility that comes with that. I know RSVP belongs to all of us, but I’m the president and I’m the one whose cell-phone number is on all our flyers, which means I’m the one getting each and every “Sadie-babe, I was thinking” phone call from Alexandra Worthington. And there are a lot of “Sadie-babe, I was thinking” phone calls. It’s like the woman is incapable of making a decision and sticking to it.