Caroline and George left early the next morning. I was exhausted, but I dragged myself out of bed to eat breakfast with them. Grandpa was going back with them for a few weeks, and I started to get emotional when I hugged him as they were leaving.

“I’m going to miss you, sweetie,” he said. “You be a good little girl.”

My eyes started watering. “Did you take those crystals with you, Grandpa?”

I figured he wouldn’t know what they were or even remember I had given them to him, but he pulled them out of his pocket to show me. “I didn’t forget, Emme,” he said, smiling. He hadn’t called me by my name in weeks.

I started crying as I waved from the window. It had been hard with him here, having to constantly show him where the bathroom was, telling him where Grandma was when he asked, but now with him actually leaving I felt sick. Would George and Caroline know how he liked his snack? Would they be patient with him when he got confused? George had zero patience, and I prayed he would understand Grandpa couldn’t help it.

I tried going back to bed for a nap, but I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up and went for a jog to clear my mind, but it was freezing out, so I came back home and got in the shower. It felt good to be in a steamy room and just to be alone for a while. My skin was glowing when I got out of the bathroom. I slipped on my terrycloth robe and went downstairs to eat lunch. My dad made veggie patties and hash browns. I was on my third helping of hash browns when the phone rang.

“Hey Em. What’s up?” Brendon asked.

I hadn’t expected him to call. Maybe I either completely misread him the last few weeks, and we had never been back together in the first place, or else he was making a fool of me. I thought I’d have more time to decide how I was going to react. Part of me considered hanging up on him, but decided to act like I didn’t care if he was with Lauren.

“Did you have fun on the carriage ride?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“I was there yesterday. I saw you and Lauren in the carriage together,” I said.

“Em, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Lauren and me. It was just a coincidence she was in Frankenmuth with her family,” he said, explaining how Lauren’s parents played golf with his, and they ran into each other.

“I’m in the middle of eating lunch right now,” I said.

“Oh, okay. Well, call me later. Maybe we can go see a movie or something,” he said.

I didn’t answer. I just hung up the phone, and Mom said I sounded rude.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t want to get into it since she had been out of it since Grandma died. Plus, I didn’t want my parents to know Brendon might have been seeing someone behind my back, so I said it was Darren and stuffed another veggie patty in my mouth. After lunch, I called Rory to see if she wanted to get together. Her family was still in town, and she had to babysit for the kids. I was hoping she’d ask me to come over and babysit with her, but she didn’t mention it. Instead I went downstairs, and my parents were getting ready to go out.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I forgot we had these stupid opera tickets,” my mom said. “My manager gave them to me weeks ago, and she’ll be upset if I don’t show up. Are you going to be all right here by yourself?”

I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want to say I needed my mommy and daddy to stay home with me. Besides, my mom needed a distraction right now, and I didn’t want to ruin her night out. Dad said I could invite a friend over to watch a movie.

“Everybody’s out of town, and Rory has to babysit,” I said.

“How about Brendon?” Mom asked.

I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and I pretended I might call him. I’d much rather be alone than have him think it was okay to hang out with his ex all the time. However, fifteen minutes after they left, I was starting to get anxious. I hadn’t been home alone in a long time since Grandpa had been staying with us. Now I was all by myself and hearing creaks and groans I had never heard before. The home phone rang, and I checked the Caller ID, but it said “cellular call,” and it was a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hi, Em.”

Crap. It was Brendon. He had used someone else’s cell phone because he knew I wouldn’t pick up for him.

“Do you want to see a movie tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t feel like going out,” I said.

He didn’t give up. “We could hang out at your house, or I could come get you and we could—”

Something fell upstairs and made a huge banging sound. My whole body went cold.

“I just heard a noise upstairs, and there’s no one up there,” I said. My eyes darted around the room.

“Do you want me to come over and check it out?” he asked.

I was furious with him, but I was more scared than I was mad.

“Okay, come over,” I said.

“On my way. Do not go upstairs.”

Like I was going to run up there to investigate whatever made the sound. Just because he thought I was stupid enough to take him back and believe his lame excuses did not mean I was a complete fool.

He was at my house in five minutes, and he went upstairs to check on what had made the noise. I tried to remember if my room was halfway decent. He came back downstairs and said one of the shelves in the guestroom had fallen, and all the stuff was on the floor. I followed him into the room and piled up the books.

“Sorry, guess I was just a little nervous. I haven’t been home alone in a while,” I said.

“It’s no big deal,” he said. “Do you want to rent a movie or something?”

I nodded and went to get my purse. He followed me into my bedroom.

I saw a pair of baby-blue underpants hanging on the arm of my chaise lounge. He sat in the chair, but didn’t seem to notice my undies until he leaned back and knocked them onto the floor. He glanced down to see what he had dropped.

“I believe these are yours,” he said, handing them to me with a smile.

I snatched them from him and tossed them in my hamper. This was just great. First, he thought I was dumb enough to believe he and Lauren “just bumped into each other.” Then, I acted like a baby over a noise. Now he got to embarrass me by finding my panties. Maybe I could accidentally set off the alarm at the video store to add to the evening. Why couldn’t I just be normal?

We headed to Movie Mania, and he told me to pick out the film. Brendon didn’t like romantic comedies, but he didn’t say anything when I picked one out. He also hated it when girls drool over hot actors, so I purposely picked a movie with Rex Davidson in it. I’m not into Rex at all, but a lot of girls at school have pictures of him in their lockers.

“I want this one,” I said, and he went up to pay for it. Normally, I’d ask his opinion, and I always offer to pay or at least split the cost with him, but not today. We got in the car, and I put on the radio.

“I didn’t know you liked Rex Davidson,” he said, holding up the movie.

“He’s hot,” I said, staring straight ahead.

“Well, Audrey Macintosh is pretty hot, too, so I guess it won’t be too hard to watch.”

I hadn’t even noticed she was in the film. Brendon never said stuff about any actress he thought was cute, and I figured he knew what I was doing. After all, he always said he hated it when Margaux would talk about how she was in love with the lead singer from Lone Shark right in front of Seth. He said it was rude, even if the guy was a rock star and it was just a fantasy thing.

“Do you want to get some snacks?” he asked.

“Don’t care.”

He pulled into the Stop-N-Go, and grabbed a bag of potato chips. They had a bunch of organic chips, but I pretended I couldn’t find anything. He got a bottle of soda and asked me what I wanted. I stood in front of the cooler and said they didn’t have the juice I wanted. He grabbed a bottle of water for me and went up to pay. He gave me the water, and I held it but I didn’t open it. I was upset he thought he could make a decision for me, like I was being too difficult. We got back to my house, and I went into the kitchen. I poured myself a bowl of chips and got my own bottle of water from the fridge. Even though it was the same brand, I left the water he had bought for me sitting on the counter.

“Should we start the movie?” he asked.

I shoved the disk into the DVD player, and the previews started. The movie was bad from the beginning, and the acting was horrible. Brendon made a joke during the film, and I picked up the remote and rewound the part he talked through, even though I didn’t care what I missed. I got up to get something else to eat and noticed we had the same brand of chips he had bought at the store, so I brought my bag into the family room and poured them into my own bowl.

“My chips too dirty for you?” he asked, and I shrugged. “Okay, someone’s mad at me. Mind telling me what I did?”

“Shh, I want to see this part,” I said, picking up the remote to turn up the volume.

“Em, what did I do?” he asked.

“Are you going to talk through the whole movie?”

“I told you I just ran into Lauren at the festival. Obviously you don’t believe me.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“I should go. I thought things were going to be different this time, but if you can’t trust me then I don’t know what to do,” he said, but he didn’t get up.

“Fine, go.”

He got up and walked out of the room. I heard him close the door behind him, and I went into the kitchen. He had left the water bottle on the counter. I went to lock the front door behind him, but saw he was sitting outside on the porch, so I opened the door.

“Forget your keys?” I asked.

“Can we please talk?”

“Fine,” I walked back into the house, and he followed me. It had started snowing, and there were snowflakes melting on his collar.

“I’m not interested in Lauren,” he said. “I had no idea she was going to be in Frankenmuth. My dad just ran into Mr. Hartnet—”

“I’m not a jealous person, but I don’t like being replaced every time I’m not around. You know, I wasn’t the one who started dating as soon as we got into a fight,” I said.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You started hanging around that one guy.”

“Darren? He’s just my friend from class.”

“Well, Sam overheard Darren telling some guys you had been all over him at some party.”

“What? I never even—I hate when guys imply stuff. Ugh, I want to kill him.”

“Yeah, my reaction, too,” he said.

“But you were the one throwing your girlfriends in my face,” I said. “I mean, you and Lauren kissed right in front of me.”

“She kissed me, and honestly it caught me off guard.”

I rolled my eyes. “What about the mermaid?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The girl who dressed up as the mermaid for Halloween,” I said.

“Nicola was my co-chair on the planning committee…and I might have offered to drive her because I wanted to make you jealous,” he said with a smile.

“How mature,” I said.

“You have no idea how upset I was when I heard about you and Darren,” he said. “At first, I didn’t believe it, but you were always with him. It made me sick to think you were already over me.”

We stood there staring at each other in the hallway. The phone rang, and I left him standing there. It was Kylie calling from her grandmother’s house. I pulled the phone into the pantry and whispered that Brendon was here and told her what had happened.

“Oh wow. Do you have your copy of Being You around?” she asked. “There’s a whole section on this.”

“It’s upstairs in my bedroom. What do I say to him?” I asked.

“Do you still like him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And are you finally over the I’m-not-good-enough crap?” she asked.

“Thank you, Kylie. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

“Just tell him you want to…um…you know Margaux would know exactly what to say,” she said.

“And Margaux would have him buying her a present at the end of the argument, too,” I said. Biting my lip, I realized I didn’t have it in me to handle another loss in my life. I felt so empty now with Grandma gone and Grandpa going through so much and not being at our house anymore—I physically couldn’t handle any more drama or pain. “Okay, I’m going to go in there and pretend to be Margaux.”

“Good luck,” she said. “Call me later.”

I went back into the hall, and Brendon was sitting on the stairs. I sat next to him and said I believed he and Lauren had just run into each other. Pretending to be someone else gave me courage. I felt like I could say anything I wanted because it wasn’t coming from me.

“It threw me the way you just shut me out,” he said. “And it hurt to see you had moved on. Before, I felt like we had this connection—like I could almost read your mind.”

I wanted to tell him how miserable I had been without him, but I didn’t. I had always been honest about my feelings, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere. Kylie was right—I didn’t feel like I was good enough for him, and I had never felt comfortable around his friends either. Maybe Margaux was smart to hold back and have some control over the relationship. From now on I was going to follow her lead.

“I just want things to be okay between us. I know you were jealous over Nicola, but—”

“I wasn’t jealous of her, just upset you picked her of all people. It made me look bad,” I said. It was like I was quoting Margaux. “But I didn’t honestly think you were interested in her.”

He stared at me. “Oh, okay. So…do you want to watch the rest of the movie?” he asked.

“Let’s go out. I didn’t have dinner, and I’m starving,” I said as I grabbed my coat. “How about Finnigan’s? I’m craving something fried and greasy.”

We got into his car, and I put on some music. He pulled into the parking lot, and I asked him to drop me off at the door because Margaux always insisted her dates do it. We sat down to order and decided to split some potato wedges and fried zucchini. The waiter put crayons on the table in case we wanted to draw on the paper tablecloth. I picked up a red crayon and started to draw a house. Brendon grabbed the blue crayon and drew a swimming pool.

“Maybe I don’t want a pool at my house,” I said. “Make it a tennis court.”

“Oh, so it’s your house. Fine, I’ll make my own,” he said and he drew a fence between the house and the pool.

After we ate, we walked downtown and went into one of the gift shops. The store was crowded, and a guy pushing a stroller bumped into Brendon’s leg.

“I hate crowds,” Brendon said after the guy with the stroller had apologized. “Can we get some air?”

We walked back outside, and I pulled my hands inside of my sleeves and crossed my arms to keep warm. Brendon saw me freezing and gave me his navy scarf. I suggested we stop for hot chocolate, and we went to Beanie Weanies. We waited in a long line, and the little boy behind me had a hacking cough. Grandma always told me to say a prayer and imagine a white light around you whenever you were around sick people. We got our drinks, but there was no place to sit. We stood by the garbage cans and waited for somebody to leave. Two young guys started to get up, and Brendon shot over there and nabbed the table.

“Great save,” I said.

“You know, I’m not a people person,” he said. “Maybe politics isn’t for me.”

“You could always try modeling if law school doesn’t work out,” I said, smirking.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I’m not even sure I’m going to go to law school.”

“I thought your family had your ten-year plan mapped out forever. Law school, then politics. Something change?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It’s hard to get into law schools, and isn’t there some study which says someday there will be two lawyers for every person or something?”

“I don’t know, but you have a lot of time before you have to make a decision,” I said. “Have you heard from the colleges you applied to yet?”

He shook his head. “Nope, but I’m going to South Bend next weekend with my parents to check out the campus.”

I hadn’t even thought about the fact he’d be moving out of state if he got accepted. He’d be miles away and meeting tons of new people, and he wouldn’t want to be stuck with me anymore. He seemed deep in thought, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Brendon was bound to meet girls who had a lot more in common with him than I did. It was probably a school full of Lauren Hartnets. He’d probably wait until after prom to dump me. Unless he decided Nicola would look better than Lauren in the prom pictures. Then he’d dump me and take her to prom. With my luck, she would get a full scholarship to the same college, and they could spend every moment together.

“Em, do you want to split an espresso brownie?” he asked.

I snapped back to attention. “Sure.”

“Kind of dozed off there, huh?”

“I was just daydreaming about my other boyfriend,” I said, and I tried to look underneath my eyelashes the way Margaux did when she would flirt with somebody. Margaux had a way of flirting with a guy, while letting him know she had other offers. She knew how to work the whole lashes thing, too. Unfortunately, I think Margaux’s mascara worked better than mine because it made me look like I had a nervous tick or something. Brendon stared at me funny as he got up to get a brownie. When he came back, I broke my half of the brownie into little pieces the way Margaux did, and I tried the eyelash thing again.

“Do you have something in your eye?” he asked, leaning over.

“Uh, yeah.” It was either lie or admit my attempt to be cute sucked. Margaux should teach a course on this stuff.

After we ate, we got in his car and drove around to look at the Christmas lights. I relaxed and forgot all about trying to be Margaux. We had fun picking out which houses we wanted to live in when we got older.

“I love the red brick house,” I said. “Look at that sun porch.”

“Okay, that’s where we’ll live when I’m a journalist and you’re a best-selling author,” he said.

I was about to say I wanted a garden when I realized he had talked about us being together in the future. Did he mean it, or had it slipped out and now he regretted it? Would he get my hopes up if he were going to dump me after prom? He dropped me off at home, and I called Kylie as soon as I took my coat off.

“So are you guys okay or what?” she asked.

“Yup, we made up, but—”

“But? Now what?” she asked.

“He’s going to be going to be out of state next fall,” I said. “And I’m sure he’s going to want to see other people.”

“Girl, will you just stop thinking so much and relax? He might want to keep seeing you. Besides, fall is a long time away. You could break up way before. He could die before fall ever comes around,” she said. “You could die before then.”

“You’re so comforting,” I said. “I almost made a fool of myself doing the flirty eye thing Margaux does. He thought I had something in my eye.”

“I tried to smack my lips like she does when she wants a guy to notice her mouth, but I ended up smearing my lip gloss all over, and nobody told me,” she said. “I didn’t even notice I had a peach smear under my lips until I got home from school.”

“Wait, did you do it last week? I thought you had impetigo,” I said. “I even threw my pen out after you borrowed it.”

“Zach thought I had it, too, and he was freaked out I might be contagious. Luckily, we’re no longer in the impress-me stage, and I just told him it was lipstick,” she said.

“I’ll have you know I threw out my favorite pen, too. You know, Margaux needs to write a how-to book,” I said.

“Yeah, but her advice would only be good for relationships you want to last less than a month or on guys whose minds you want to mess with,” she said. “Geez, poor Seth.”

“Actually, she broke up with him before she left for Kentucky. It’s poor Austin now,” I said.

It was a good thing I never saw Austin at any of the family reunions because it would be uncomfortable, since Margaux would end up dumping him, too. It always took guys a long time to date after she was through with them.

“You know, Margaux isn’t the best role model for a decent relationship,” Kylie said. “Zach and I only got together after I stopped playing games with him, and now he’s my best friend, too.”

Kylie might have been right, but Margaux had two things I had been craving: self-confidence and control when it came to relationships.

“Still, you might want to call Austin’s parents and tell them to cancel any life insurance policies they might have on him. I hear they don’t cover suicides, and it would be a shame for his parents to waste all that money.”

“How do you know it won’t be different with—” I broke off laughing. “Sorry, couldn’t say it with a straight face. But who knows? Maybe it will be different with Austin. People can change.”