Autumn's Wish (25 page)

When I open my eyes, everyone around me is booing. For a second I think it's because they saw what I saw, and they're booing me for being a terrible daughter and ruining my mom's last chance for happiness. Then I realize the other team just scored a touchdown and our chances of winning the playoff are slipping away.

I grab Jack by the arm. “If you ever—
ever
—hear me say I want to get any kind of plastic surgery, you have my permission to kick me in the head.”

I want to also tell him never to let me marry Kyler Leeds, but he won't really believe that's an option for me anyway, plus I'm fairly certain I can remember that on my own. I wait until the next big play is happening, then slip out of my row as best I can and walk home. Erick's there with a group of friends. They're all piled on the couch, watching something disturbingly familiar on the TV: me, singing loudly and off-key as I stumble-walk through the stadium toward J.J.

“Seriously?” I explode. “Already?”

Erick's friends respectfully stop laughing. Erick's mirth is unabated. “Are you kidding? It's already up from, like, twenty different angles. This one's the best.”

“How did you even know to look for it?” I ask.

“I have you on Google Alert,” Erick explains. “Only a couple of the videos call you out by name, but once I had one, I looked up the others. So good.”

“I'm not insane, Autumn,” J.J. says on the screen. “I'm done. The answer is
no.
”

“Harsh,” Erick says. Then, as if only now realizing I'm a real person this happened to, he looks concerned. “So…like…are you okay?”

“Where's Mom?” I ask, ignoring his question.

“Up in her room,” he says. As I walk upstairs, he calls after me, “If it helps, you're getting tons of hits! You could totally get on
Tosh.0
!”

I climb up the stairs and knock on my mom's door.

“Come in!” she calls.

She's in a pair of gray silky pajamas, propped up in bed and watching TV. She smiles as I come in.

“Hey, Autumn!” she says. “I thought you'd be out late tonight. Wasn't there a game?”

“We were losing.” I shrug, as if the state of the football game had anything to do with why I usually stay or go. I notice the picture on Mom's night table. A framed shot of her and Dad. I know it's on their honeymoon because they told me, but it's so close on their faces it could be anywhere. Mom's laughing about something and Dad has this satisfied smile—probably because he's the one who made her laugh—and they look so young and happy and in love that it hurts.

I think about Future Mom with her shrine of Dad pictures surrounding her all the time.

“Want to watch with me?” Mom asks, scooting over and patting the bed. “I figured I'd hang up here and give Erick and his friends some privacy.”

I hop onto the bed and scrunch low so I don't tower over Mom. I pretend to watch the cooking show that's on; then I ask, “Mom…do you ever see Glen?”

“Glen?” Mom repeats as if it were the silliest word in the English language. “No. He called me once, after our dinner, but I made it quite clear I wasn't interested in pursuing anything.”

“Really? 'Cause I was thinking…maybe you should call him again.”

Mom turns and looks at me quizzically. “You
want
me to call him?”

“I'm just saying…maybe I was a little harsh when we all got together. I mean, I don't want you to…you know…miss out on someone just because I got a little weird about it.”

“Oh, baby…” She leans over and kisses my head. “I love you for worrying about me. But you were right. And honestly, I knew it too. I had the most wonderful man in the world in your father. There isn't anyone else out there who could possibly hold a candle to him. Certainly not Glen.”

She sounds convincing, but I remember the way Future Mom looked when she reminisced about Glen, and I know she feels more than she's letting on. I try to press her on the subject, just to see if she might reach out to him again, but she's firm. The Glen chapter of her life is closed. She even deleted all his contact information.

I guess the good news is I know my mom listens to and respects what I have to say. The bad news is my advice led her down a path that will make her miserable. I think about it after I tell her good night and go into my room. My very first jump was to her wedding. Everything there seemed wrong: my friends, me, Erick…but especially Mom and Glen. I was positive that's why Dad wanted me to see it—because everyone in my little corner of the world was on a crash course toward disaster, and I had to stop it.

But now I think that was a mistake. I think he sent me to the wedding because Mom getting married was the one thing that was
right
in our future.

I pull out the locket and gaze at the
zemi.
I imagine the triangular face morphing into the smiling face of my father.

“I should've known,” I tell him. “You love her. You want her to be happy…even if it means moving on.” I sigh and throw myself back against the pillows. “I can fix it, though,” I tell my dad in the
zemi.
“I'll get them back together again. I promise.”

I kiss the
zemi,
tuck the locket back under my shirt, and pull a pad of paper and pen from my nightstand so I can make a list of everything I know about Glen. It's very short. I know he likes animals because he showed up at Catches Falls before he knew my mom, I know he likes pumpkin-flavored food, and I know he shops at the Trader Joe's near us. That's it. During our one dinner together, he only asked about us and said nothing about himself, so that's all I've got.

I'll make it work. I promise myself that until I make this right, I won't even think about any other future problems. It's not that hard, really. Ames, Taylor, Reenzie, Sean, and Jack seem to be on a pretty good path. My future with J.J. is a giant catastrophe, but I don't get my true love until Mom gets hers. Besides, I have no idea what to do to make the J.J. situation better right now. Better to give it some time before I try anything else.

Operation Glen starts at Trader Joe's. He shops there, so I stalk there. I ride my bike over every day after school. I leave the minute it ends, and I'm happy to escape. Ever since the football game, school is pretty much a nightmare of people mimicking my bad singing, asking me if we can go out again, or papering my locker, backpack, and once even
me
with their versions of “iguana wet goo.” My friends stick by me and have my back, but I'm still way happier getting to school the second it starts, spending every free moment in the library, and leaving immediately after it ends.

At Trader Joe's, I sit outside and watch people come in and out. I bring all my books and my laptop so I can get my homework done and work on the Common App for colleges. I hang until it gets dark, taking the occasional break to go in the store and get snacks, use the bathroom, and case the place in case Glen snuck by me at any point.

When I start the plan, I'm a little worried the store managers won't like me sitting around outside and will make me go away. They don't bother me, though. Instead, a disturbing number of people—and more every day—come up to me on their way in or out and ask me if I'm the YouTube girl with the Kyler Leeds song. I can't escape it anywhere. A bunch of the people who stop know me by name. Some even ask for my autograph. I try to smile and be nice, but it's completely mortifying, especially when they want to chat. They laugh about the video like it's a movie they saw instead of my actual life, or say things like, “So how did it feel at the exact moment you realized he meant no?” And of course they all want to know where I stand with J.J. now.

It's a massive testament to how much I love my mom that I don't run to my room, hide, and never come out again.

Over the weekend, Mom recruits Erick and me to put in some work on the new location of Catches Falls, which severely cuts into my stalking time. I'm back at it the next week, though, and I'm in the store trolling for snacks when an overweight middle-aged balding guy in a Hawaiian shirt with a Manager name tag pulls me aside. I assume I'm in trouble for loitering or something, but he just wants to know if the whole YouTube video was a setup.

“ 'Cause my buddy and me, we think it's some kind of viral campaign for a new TV show, and maybe you're here every day to do publicity,” he says. “Like there's a hidden camera watching to see how people react to you. 'Cause if there is, I thought, you know, maybe I could appear on camera. Do some kind of funny bit with you. I was in a theater group in sixth grade, you know.”

“Did not know that,” I say. He has this happy, expectant grin on his face. He's so excited I almost lie and tell him he's right, but then he'll expect to be in a viral video and I can't help him there. “Sorry, but it's not a publicity thing. The video was real.”

“Aw, come on,” the guy goads. “No one would do anything that embarrassing unless it was a setup. You can tell me the truth.”

I blush bright red, but no matter how many times I tell him the truth, he doesn't believe me. “Even if it was real,” he insists, “you must be doing some kind of follow-up. Why else would you be here every day for a whole week?”

I see no way to shut him up except the truth. “I'm looking for a guy,” I begin.

“J.J.?” he asks. “Or another one?”

My face burns. I grimace. “Another one. Not for me, though, for my mom. And no,” I add when he opens his mouth, “it's not for a video.”

I tell him the basics: that I got in the way of my mom's relationship, I regret it, and I really want to get them back together again. “But honestly,” I conclude, “the only real thing I know about this guy is that he shops here. So I'm looking for him.”

“Every weekday afternoon?” the manager asks.

“It's all I've got,” I say.

“But what if he shops in the morning? Or on weekends?”

It's an obvious question, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought it a million times myself, but it suddenly makes me so exhausted and overwhelmed I want to cry. It must show, because the manager looks stricken.

“No, no! It's okay!” he hurriedly says. “I just meant you should have told us here and let us help!”

“Let you help?” I echo.

“Sure! We're pretty good with all the regulars here. Tell me what the guy looks like and I'll let you know if I've seen him. We can ask everyone else on duty too. Even if he doesn't shop during my shifts, maybe he shops on theirs. Then you'll know exactly when to find him.”

Suddenly this overweight, balding manager looks like an angel from heaven. “You'd do that for me?”

“Course we would. You're a celebrity!”

I don't know about a celebrity, but if my personal mortification helps me get Glen and Mom back together, maybe it's worth it. I describe Glen to the manager, whose name turns out to be Earl. The description doesn't ring any bells with him, but a couple cashiers and the woman handing out taster samples all think they've seen him before. He usually shops in the late morning, and usually on weekdays, but he hasn't been in yet this week. I'm seriously considering skipping school for the rest of the week to stalk in prime Glen-time, but Earl has a better idea. He takes my cell phone number and says he'll share it with the rest of the staff, along with a physical description of Glen. Whenever Glen
does
show up, someone on duty will call me. I'm incredibly grateful but also a little dubious. Are they actually going to help, or did Earl just engineer a way to get the phone number of “the YouTube Girl”?

On Wednesday I find out. I've been sneaking my phone with me into every class and keeping it in my pocket on vibrate, just in case. I'm in the middle of physics when it goes off. Subtly, I check the text.