In Your Room

by Jordanna Fraiberg

  IN YOUR ROOM

  JORDANNA FRAIBERG

  In Your Room

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © 2008 Jordanna Fraiberg

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fraiberg, Jordanna.

  In your room / by Jordanna Fraiberg.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Teens Molly and Charlie connect through email when their complicated families exchange houses for the summer, but a misunderstanding threatens the emerging relationship just when the two are about to secretly meet.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65105-6

  [1. Home exchanging—Fiction. 2. Long-distance relationships—Fiction. 3. Fashion design—Fiction. 4. Bicycles and bicycling—Fiction. 5. Email—Fiction. 6. Stepfathers—Fiction. 7. Lesbians—Fiction. 8. Boulder (Colo.)—Fiction. 9. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F8436In 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007051688

  Printed in the United States of America

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Alex

  Table of Contents

  June

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  July

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  August

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Acknowledgments

  JUNE

  From: Charlie

  To: Molly

  Date: June 15, 2008 12:05 A.M. PST

  Subject: In your room

  * * *

  Dear Molly:

  My name is Charlie and I’m staying in your house for the summer. More precisely, I’m staying in your room.

  Anyway, I’m writing because your cat showed up on the windowsill about ten minutes ago and hasn’t stopped meowing since. He won’t come in or drink or anything, so I figured you might be familiar with this behavior and know what to do. Or maybe he’s just freaking out because you’re gone. If you have any tips on what to do, that’d be great. Thanks. Hope you’re liking our house so far (if you’ve even arrived yet).

  Charlie

  From: Molly

  To: Charlie

  Date: June 15, 2008 9:00 A.M. MST

  Subject: Re: In your room

  * * *

  Dear Charlie:

  OMG! I forgot to leave a note about the cat! I hope he didn’t keep you up all night. He’s not even mine—he technically belongs to this old man down the street, but he spends most of his time outdoors, seducing suckers like me for attention, so he comes by a lot. You can just give him a piece of cheese to stop the meowing…. It always calms him down and seems to be the only thing he’ll eat. And don’t worry if you hate cats or anything—he’s totally harmless. I don’t know his real name so I just call him Cheese (not that original, I know) and he seems to respond, but I guess he’d respond to anything if it meant he got his chin scratched (and a piece of cheese). He’ll probably leave eventually if you close the window, but I can’t promise, since I always let him in. Hope that helps!

  Molly

  TWO WEEKS EARLIER

  1

  Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love.

  —Anaïs Nin

  Molly Hill closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to contain a sniffle.

  “Need some tissue?” Celeste whispered, reaching into her purse.

  Molly shook her head no. She had promised herself she wouldn’t cry no matter how much she wanted to. She knew she was supposed to be happy for the bride and that she needed to put her own feelings aside. But she couldn’t. Not when this wedding meant that her life was about to change too. Not when it was her own mother up there at the altar, exchanging the “for better or for worses” and the “I dos.”

  As the rabbi pronounced the couple husband and wife, Rina reached over and squeezed Molly’s hand, but it was too late. The tears had already started. Celeste took hold of her other hand and leaned in closer.

  Laura had wanted Molly up there next to her under the chuppah, but there was no way Molly could handle trying to keep her emotions under wraps in front of a roomful of people. It was much safer sitting in the front row, flanked on either side by her best friends.

  She didn’t want to stand up there and ruin one of the most important days of her mother’s life. Besides, she had no real right to be upset. Her father had been dead for almost ten years, and Laura had pretty much sworn off dating until she met Ron six months before. She had devoted her life to Molly, so it only seemed fair that she now got another chance at love. So what if it had all happened so fast and Ron was this globe-trotting middle-aged environmentalist who’d never been married, and was the last person Molly had expected her mom to end up with? Who was she to judge when she only had a year left at home anyway before going off to college?

  Only now, with Ron moving in permanently, a year was starting to feel like forever.

  Molly pulled herself together and summoned the happiest smile she could muster as her mom and Ron walked past on their way back down the aisle. As soon as they were out of sight, she squeezed her way through the cluster of guests waiting in line to give their regards to the newlyweds and wandered out onto the empty terrace overlooking the Pacific. Molly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the water. They only lived about fifteen miles from the ocean, but it felt more like a hundred in Los Angeles traffic. She wasn’t much of a beach girl anyway.

  “Take this,” Celeste insisted, appearing next to her. She handed Molly a glass of champagne.

  “I’m okay,” Molly said, refusing the drink. “Seriously.”

  “I don’t believe you, but this should definitely not go to waste,” Celeste said, taking a sip.

&
nbsp; “I’m really proud of you,” Rina said, staring out at the view next to Molly. “I know how hard this day is for you, and it’s really impressive that you’ve kept it from your mom, but you don’t have to hide it from us.”

  Molly could always count on Celeste to lighten the mood and on Rina to say just the right thing to make her feel less alone. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys,” she said, wrapping an arm around each of them. “You have to promise to keep me busy this summer. I don’t know how much newlywed bliss I can handle.”

  “I don’t think keeping you busy is gonna be a problem, Miss ‘I have the next ten years already scheduled,’” Celeste teased, nudging Molly.

  “I’m not that bad! Aren’t you going to back me up?” Molly asked, turning to Rina.

  “I think it’s great,” Rina said. “You know what you want, and you’re going after it.”

  “Exactly. I’m just focused,” Molly said, addressing Celeste. “You’ll see—when I become a huge designer, you’re going to be begging me for free clothes.”

  “Well, veering a little from the plan isn’t such a bad thing,” Celeste said, as Laura and Ron appeared on the terrace, which had already filled with the rest of the guests. “It worked out pretty well for your mom.”

  It was easy for Celeste to say. She was always the type to leap before looking first, no matter the consequences. Molly figured she was like that because of her dad. He’d walked out on Celeste and her mom when Celeste was five and had been in and out of her life ever since. All of Celeste’s impulsive behavior was probably a play for his attention.

  Molly had lost her dad too, but that was different. When he died, she knew he was never coming back. There was no confusion—and no one’s attention to compete for.

  Once everyone had settled with their champagne and shrimp cocktail, Ron clinked his glass to quiet the crowd. Molly glanced around the room at the smiling guests with their eyes trained on the happy couple, and had the sinking feeling that things were only going to get worse. But then again, she never was one to trust her instincts.

  Still having difficulty with the whole stepdad-ness of it all, Molly grabbed Celeste’s drink out of her hand. No matter that it was lipstick-stained and half empty. At that moment Molly was a glass-half-empty kind of girl.

  “I would like to thank everyone for joining us here on this very special occasion,” Ron began. “As you all know, I have every reason to celebrate. I never thought I would find a woman as beautiful, loving, and compassionate as Laura. But I have another reason to be grateful. And her name is Molly. I have always wanted a daughter. I am so proud to call Molly mine. And now, to kick-start our family, Molly will be joining us on our honeymoon!”

  “What?!” Molly yelped, louder and with less grace than she would have liked. Her stomach lurched into her throat.

  “That’s right,” her mother joined in. “We’re all going to Boulder, Colorado, for the summer. Surprise! We’re doing a house swap.”

  • • •

  Charlie Richards gave his bike one last push. He rounded the corner onto his street and coasted the rest of the way to his house, turning his iPod up to full volume. His parents were paranoid about him listening to music when he was on his bike, and he usually kept it at a low volume so he could hear the traffic, but he drew the line at their quiet, tree-lined street. There was something about the surrounding mountains and the peaceful pocket of Boulder suburbia, something majestic that begged for a chorus. Besides, he knew every driveway, doorway, and intersection like the back of his hand and could navigate the way blind. He did just that sometimes—closed his eyes—when the moment was right.

  Summer was his favorite time of year in Boulder. Most people flooded the area in the winter months to ski or snowboard, which Charlie also loved, but the real magic was in the summer, when the area’s hidden beauty came out.

  Charlie sailed up the driveway and in through the garage. He hoisted the bike over his shoulder and hung it on an empty hook next to a series of other bikes. To the layman, they were all the same, but to Charlie they each had their distinct purpose: thicker wheels for rougher terrain, thinner ones with lighter frames for greater speed, and so on. A row of women’s bikes dangled from the adjacent wall, including two identical child-size pink ones.

  All the ski and snowboarding paraphernalia was in the back, half-obscured by boxes, in hibernation until the next snow.

  He slowly opened the door into the house to avoid making any noise. He had gone for a ride after school and discovered a new trail, which meant he was now almost an hour late for dinner. He could hear voices in the kitchen but needed to run up to change before anyone realized he was home. There would be even more hell to pay if he showed up at the table with mud splattered all over him.

  “Charlie? Is that you?” a woman’s voice called out.

  He winced. Busted. “I’ll be right in,” he yelled back from halfway up the stairs. “Just need to wash my hands.”

  “Do it in here.”

  He did an about-face and sheepishly entered the kitchen. “Sorry I’m late.”

  His eleven-year-old twin sisters, Mia and Heather, and his two moms, Sally and Lisa, were sitting around the table, already on dessert. Lisa was Charlie’s biological mother, but those kinds of technical distinctions were frowned upon in their household. To enforce that point, everyone’s legal last name was Richards, which, technically speaking, was Sally’s name to begin with. Charlie was happy with that decision if for no other reason than he didn’t have to go through life as Charlie Babcock—Babcock being Lisa’s maiden name.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lisa said, removing a plate from the oven and putting it on the table. “I kept this warm for you.”

  “What’s going on?” Charlie asked, suspicious that neither of his moms, particularly Sally, seemed remotely annoyed that he was so late. They were used to it since he was prone to losing track of time on the trails, but that didn’t mean they liked it.

  “It’s a family meeting,” Mia, the blonder and slightly smaller of the sisters, said.

  “Everything’s okay,” Sally said, reading the look on Charlie’s face. “We just wanted everyone here so that we could let you know our summer plans.”

  “Yay!” the twins said in unison.

  “We have a fantastic surprise. We’ve decided that we’re all going to Los Angeles for the summer,” Lisa announced.

  “L.A.? What do you mean?” Charlie asked over his sisters’ high-pitched squeals of delight. He turned to Sally. “I thought just you were going for a month.” Sally was a pediatric oncologist and had a teaching fellowship at the Children’s Hospital there.

  “That was the plan,” Lisa started to explain, “but I got a call from one of my grad school colleagues this morning who asked if I was interested in taking over his summer courses at UCLA. When he told me that he was coming out here with his family for the summer, we realized we could just swap homes.”

  “A house swap?” Charlie asked with a hint of disdain.

  “It’s when you trade your house with someone else’s,” Heather chimed in.

  “Yeah, I get the concept,” he snapped. “Can’t I just stay here with Dan or someone?”

  “Nooo!” Mia howled in protest.

  “You can’t do that,” Heather added. “You have to stay with us.”

  “We’re sorry, honey,” Lisa said. “We don’t want to split up the family for that long.”

  “But what about my company?” Charlie knew that was a losing argument. He didn’t have a company so much as a strategy to make money over the summer leading mountain bike tours. “I’ve already started posting fliers.”

  “I’m sure your customers will understand,” Sally said. “You can pick it up again when we get back in August.”

  He could have sat there and drawn out the conversation for another hour, but there was no point. As much as his parents told him he was free to explore who he was and to express his opinions, at seventeen he still had no rea
l say, and the decision had clearly already been made. They were going to Los Angeles. But why, why did it have to be there? He could handle a city like Portland or Seattle and would probably not have cared all that much if that were the plan. But L.A. stood for everything he hated: freeways, SUV traffic jams, the worst air quality in the country, to say nothing of the rampant materialism, and, of course, Hollywood. It was a city that had nothing to offer, and the next two months were going to be a big waste of time.

  “What about Park City?” he asked. “Do I have to give that up too?” His best friend, Dan, was spending the summer at his rich uncle’s lodge in the mountains and had invited Charlie up for a weekend in August.

  “I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t still go,” Sally said, looking over at Lisa.

  “Fine with me too,” Lisa said.

  Charlie rose from the table. There was nothing more to be said. He didn’t feel the need to thank them for not ruining his entire summer.

  He left the room, headed back through the garage, and took one of the bikes off the rack on his way out.

  2

  Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

  —Joseph Campbell

  “Hey there, Cheesy,” Molly said to the meowing gray cat on her windowsill. “Are you going to come in and keep me company?”

  She was sitting on the white shag rug in the middle of her room, surrounded by mounds of clothes and the open drawers of the flower-painted dresser she had just emptied to make room for the arriving guests. She was usually very organized, especially when it came to travel, and would normally have all her clothes stacked in neat piles days before departure. But that was when she was looking forward to something—a vacation or a visit with relatives. This was something else entirely. Something she preferred to pretend wasn’t happening. But now that they were leaving in the morning, she had to acknowledge the reality of the months ahead and finally pack.