But no more. No more normal for me.

Was she going to be able to deal with that?

WasI ?

“Jessica,” Mom said, stepping in front of me, effectively blocking my path to the garage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Just that maybe if you had ever supported me in anything I ever did—besides going to Juilliard—I might have turned out more the way you wanted me to.”

Mom’s eyebrows went up. WAY up.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “You know your father and I have always supported you, in everything you’ve ever done—”

“Not about Rob, you didn’t,” I said.

Mom looked shocked. “Isthat what this is about? That boy? I can’t believe you’re even giving him a second’s thought, after the way he treated you—”

“He treated me that way because ofyou , Mom. Because of your stupid statutory-rape speech. You totally scared him off—”

“I’m glad I did,” Mom said indignantly. “Jessica, I know you’ve always had self-esteem issues, but believe me, you can do a lot better than a common grease monkey with a criminal record.”

“For swimming after hours at a public pool, Ma,” I said. “That’s what Rob was on probation for. For trespassing.”

Behind me, I heard Douglas burst out laughing. “For real?” he wanted to know. “That’s why he got busted?”

I whirled around to face him. “It’s not funny!” I shrieked. Although, of course, ordinarily I probably would have found it hilarious. All that wondering, all that worrying, for years, and over what? A midnight swim.

I swung back around to face Mom. But before I could get a word out, she was saying, “If he really loved you, Jessica, he’d have waited for you. The fact that he did run away, just because of my little speech…well, that shows you something about him, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said tensely. “It shows me that he loved me enough to respect my parents’ wishes. And do you have any idea what he did while he was waiting for me to turn eighteen, Ma?”

“I’ve told you before,” she said irritably. “Don’t call me Ma.”

“He bought his own business,” I went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And his own house. He’s probably earningmore than a hundred thousand a year, fixing up motorcycles for rich Baby Boomers,and he’s going to college at the same time. What do you think aboutthat , Ma?”

“I think,” Mom said, her mouth flattening to a straight line, “that you’re forgetting one very important thing.”

“What?”

“That you saw him kissing another girl. You’ve never seen Skip kissing another girl, have you?”

I stepped around her and headed to my bike.

“Well?” Mom wanted to know. “Have you? No. You haven’t, have you?”

“Only because no other girl wouldlet Skip kiss her,” Douglas pointed out, causing Tasha to start laughing so hard, she had to slap a hand over her mouth to stifle it.

I pulled my bike from the garage, kicking the doors closed behind me with one booted foot.

“Where are you going?” Mom demanded. “Wait, don’t tell me. You’re going to seehim , aren’t you?”

“No,” I said, lowering my helmet over my head. “I’m going to get away fromyou .”

And then I gunned my engine a few more times than was strictly necessary, just to drown out whatever Mom said next, and drove away.

Nineteen

“Ruth?”

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded groggy. “Jess? Is that you? God, what time is it?”

I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand. “Oops,” I said. “It’s one in the morning. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, you woke me up.” Now Ruth sounded less groggy and more alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. I held the cell phone closer to my ear, blinking up at the ceiling in my night-darkened bedroom. After an evening of driving aimlessly around the countryside—then returning home to find Mom still sulking in her room, and Dad working late at the restaurant—I’d amused myself by watching home-improvement shows.

Only all these did was make me think of Rob, who’d done a much better job improving his house than any of the people I saw on TV.

“I mean, nothing’s really wrong,” I said to Ruth. “I just…I really need to talk to you. I think…I think I did something really stupid.”

“What did you do?” Ruth asked, her voice filled with dread.

“I…I think Rob proposed, and I just sort of…walked out.”

“You think Rob proposed?” I could tell Ruth was sitting up, since her voice suddenly got much clearer. “What do you mean, youthink he proposed? Did he give you a ring?”

I gazed at Rob’s grandmother’s ring, still around the third finger on my left hand. It was dark in my room, but I could still make out the diamond in the middle of the band. There were smaller diamonds set all around it, in some curlicue gold stuff. I bet Karen Sue Hankey would know what that curlicue gold stuff was called.

“Well,” I said. “Yes. But—”

“Holy crap,” Ruth said. “Heproposed !”

Which is when a male voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere very close to Ruth, said in the background, “Hewhat ?”

The weird thing was, I could have sworn the voice was Mikey’s.

“Ruth?” I asked in the silence that followed. “Was that—”

“That was Skip,” Ruth said quickly. “He came in here to see who I was talking to.”

“Really,” I said. “Because it sounded like he was in bed with you. And it sounded more like—”

“I can’t believe Rob proposed!” Ruth interrupted. “That is amazing, Jess! I mean, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. He didn’treally propose. He told me he wasgoing to propose when I got back from Afghanistan. But then I—well, you know.”

“Saw him with Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”

“Right. And he seemed to think it would be better if he just let me go through whatever it was he seemed to think I was going through, at the time.”

“Which,” Ruth said, “in retrospect, wasn’t such a bad thing, Jess. I mean, you have to admit, you were a mess back then.”

This was so not what I called her to hear.

“What happened to‘he’s the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most’ ?” I asked indignantly. “Suddenly you’re on his side?”

“Of course not,” Ruth said. “But look how things turned out. You’re a lot better now. And he still gave you the ring. Which means he must still want to. Marry you, I mean.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “He didn’t so much as give me the ring as throw it at me. And I just sort of hung on to it. The thing is, Ruth—” And suddenly I found myself pouring out the whole story—Hannah, and Randy, and the videotapes, and the scrapbook, and the things Rob had told me that afternoon. All of it.

And when I’d finished, Ruth said, “Well, it’s obvious he’s still in love with you. The question is, are you still in love with him? I mean, would you take him back? In spite of Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”

I had to think about that.

“It’s not like she’s in the picture anymore,” I said slowly. “I mean, that I can see. And, I mean, we were broken up then…sort of. The thing is, I don’t even know if he’d take me back. You know, if I offered.”

“He gave you a ring.”

“He THREW it at me.”

“Well, why don’t you ask him?”

“What? Just go up to him and be all,‘Hey, do you still want to marry me?’ ”

“Basically, yeah. Why not?”

I stared at the ceiling. “Because what if he says no? What if he thinks I’m still”—I swallowed—“broken?”

“Then you give him the ring back, say sayonara, and hop on the first flight back here, and I’ll find you a totally hot new guy who fully appreciates what an amazing person you are.”

“Tell her if she wants us to, we’ll still beat him up for her,” whispered the male voice very close to Ruth, apparently thinking I wouldn’t overhear.

Only I did.

And this time, I knew it wasn’t Skip.

“Ruth,” I said. “Why is my brother Mike in BED WITH YOU?”

“Crap,” Ruth said. Then, apparently to Mike, she said, “I told you she could hear you.”

“Hi, Jess,” Mikey called in the background.

“Oh my God.” I was sitting up, convinced I was going to hyperventilate. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen it coming. It was just so…so…

Gross.

“I can’t believe I only go away for two days,” I said disgustedly, “and you two have already hopped into bed together.”

“Jess,” Ruth said, sounding worried. “It’s not like that, really. I—I—”

“Oh my God,” I said. “If you say you love my brother, I’ll barf. I swear it.”

“Well, it’s true,” Ruth said. “I think I always have—”

While this was true, I still didn’t want to have to hear about it.

“Put Mike on the phone,” I said to her.

“But, Jess—”

“Just do it.”

A second later, Mike’s deep voice was saying, “Jess. It’s not what you think. I really—”

“If you break her heart,” I said to him, “I will break your face. Do you understand?”

Mike sounded stunned. “Isn’t that what you said to Tasha, about Douglas?”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t you be saying that to Ruth, and not me?”

“No,” I said. “Because in this instance, my loyalties lie with Ruth, not you.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” Mike said, sounding sarcastic.

“Well,” I said. “She’s my best friend. You’re just my brother.”

“I happen,” Mike said, “to love her.”

“Oh God.” The nachos I’d heated up in the microwave for dinner came up a little. “You’re going to make me sick. Literally. Put Ruth back on the phone.”

“Did Rob really propose?”

“Put Ruth back on the phone.”

“What are you going to say? Yes? If you say yes, are you going to stay in Indiana?”

“Why?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Because if you stay in Indiana, then I can move in here with Ruth,” he said, “when I transfer to Columbia.”

“You’re transferring schools for a girl?Again? Did you forget what happened last time you did that?”

“Shut up, Jess,” Mike said. “It’s different this time.”

“You better believe it is,” I said. “Because if you screw this one up, you’re—”

“—dead. Yes, I got the picture, thanks. So. What are you going to do?”

“If one more person asks me that,” I began in a warning tone. Then I broke off, struck by a thought. “Hey, where’s Skip, anyway? What does he think about how you guys have turned the place into a den of sin? What does he think about what you’re doing to hissister ?”

“Skip’s at the Jersey Shore,” Mike said. “With some girl he—”

“Okay, that’s enough about Skip,” Ruth said, apparently having wrestled the phone back from my brother. “When are you coming home?Are you coming home?”

“I don’t know,” I said, chewing my lower lip. I hadn’t mentioned anything to her about Douglas’s offer of a teaching job at his new alternative high school. Because I wasn’t sure I could stay in this town, knowing that Rob was living in it, too, and not be with him.

As if she were the one with the psychic powers, and not me, Ruth said, “Jess. Just ask him. Okay? Now get some sleep.”

She hung up.

I sat there, blinking down at my cell phone. Then I placed it gently on the nightstand and flopped back down against the pillows. How was it, I wondered, that everyone—everyone I knew, anyway—was getting some, except for me? What had I done wrong? How had I screwed everything up in that arena so very, very badly?

It was kind of ironic that as I was thinking this to myself, a hailstorm of rocks suddenly struck the bay windows in my bedroom. Not hard enough to break the glass, but definitely hard enough for the loud rattle they made to wake me…

…if I’d actually been asleep, that is.

Only one person had ever thrown pebbles at my bedroom window before. The same person who, earlier that day, had thrown an engagement ring at me.

Tossing back my comforter, I went to the closest window and peered down, hardly daring to hope that it would actually be him.

But it was. He was standing in the moonlight in jeans and a black T-shirt, just pulling his arm back to let loose another volley of stones. I hastily flung open the window and screen, leaned out, and whispered, “Hold on. I’ll be right down.”

Then I grabbed a cotton robe I’d thrown into my overnight bag when I’d packed so hastily for the trip home, and slipped it on over my tank top and boxers. I wished I, like Ruth, had given a little more thought to my nightwear, and maybe bought something a little sexier to wear to bed, like her cute camis and matching tap pants, which my brother Mike was apparently currently—ew, that was WAY too gross to think about.