Happily Ever Emma (6 page)

“Yes I do,” Kry says, rummaging in her lunch box for something good to eat. “Maybe it would cheer her up a little.”

If Kry says something, it’s because she means it, so I give up.

Annie Pat nods slightly, as if agreeing with Kry about how Mrs. Rodriguez should start dating again.

They agree! It’s two against one.

Now, I
really
can’t tell Annie Pat and Kry the details about my mom’s date tomorrow night, and the next-Friday date, and how neither one is going to happen, thanks to me.

I feel lonely, even though I am the only right person in the entire world.

And I still have that bad feeling stuck somewhere between my stomach and my throat.

But maybe it’s just a piece of my bagel sandwich.

It is a wet Wednesday afternoon, and I am walking home from school as slowly as I can without going backward. I stare at people’s droopy, drippy holiday decorations.

I pretend I am a sloth, one of the pokiest animals on earth.

Maybe everything will be okay tonight, I think, trying hard to cheer myself up. Maybe Dennis Engelman called my mom again to remind her he had to cancel, but magically, they’re not mad at me. Or, if he didn’t call again, maybe Mom is relieved. Maybe—

“Come on, Emma,” Annie Pat says from somewhere under the hood of her shiny pink raincoat. “Can’t you walk any faster?”

The rain patters down on my own hood. (I wear a slicker because I always lose umbrellas.) “Nope,” I tell her gloomily. “You go on ahead.”

“Okay,” Annie Pat says. “But only because I have to. My mom is waiting for me so we can take Murphy to the doctor. He has an
appointment
,” she says, making it sound like a big deal—as if her little brother is the president of some bank, and not just an ordinary baby. “The toothless wonder,” Annie Pat and I have started calling him.

He is pretty cute, though, with his little tufts of red hair and his crazy gummy smile.

“Bye,” I call out, because Annie Pat is already skipping down the sidewalk toward her own street, Sycamore Lane, which is two blocks past my street, Candelaria Road.

Except Annie Pat has a house, not a condo,
and
she has a baby brother,
and
two parents who stayed married. Also, as far as I know, she doesn’t have a guilty conscience about
anything.

Some kids have all the luck.

“I’m home,” I whisper as I close our front door behind me.

“Emma,” Mom exclaims from down the hall, and I am horrified to see her rush into the living room wearing a bathrobe and a towel wrapped like a turban around her head.

This means she just washed her hair, which is something she usually does in the morning—unless it’s a special occasion.

Oh, no.
She is getting all fixed up for her canceled date tonight!

“Where have you been?” Mom asks, looking at an imaginary watch on her still-damp wrist. “I expected you half an hour ago. I was getting worried!”

“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my backpack onto the floor and peeling off my crayon-yellow slicker. “Annie Pat had to stay late at school,” I explain, making up the lie on the spot.

Telling it doesn’t seem too bad, though, compared to what I did on Monday night. Or what I
didn’t
do—which was to tell my mom that Dennis Engelman called.

And that he’s not coming tonight.

Being bad seems to get easier once you’ve already started, especially if you get away with it the first time.

I guess I’m big bad Emma these days.

“Well, you’re here now, at least,” Mom says, rubbing her sticking-out hair with the towel. “Grab a snack, sweetie, and get started on your homework. Because—surprise! There’s a really fun sitter coming, and if you’ve finished all your work, you guys can watch TV together.”

“A
sitter?”
I yelp, because ever since we moved to Oak Glen, I have always gone over to Annie Pat’s house, or Anthony Scarpetto’s, whenever my mom has had to do something alone.

“That’s right,” my mother says, nodding. “And you’re finally going to get to meet my friend Dennis Engelman tonight, Emma. I decided it’s time. Then he and I have dinner plans. And since it’s a school night, I figured you’d be better off staying home with a sitter, so you could get your work done and get to bed on time.”

“But—who’s coming
?”
I ask in a croaky voice, because we have lived in Oak Glen for more than four months, and like I said, I have never had an at-home sitter. Not once. I am too old and too mature for an official sitter, in my opinion. Anyway, what did Mom do? Go out on the street and ask the first stranger she met to come over tonight and watch TV with me?

“Who’s the sitter?” I ask again, barely squeezing out the words.

“Her name’s Shayna,” my mom says happily. “And she and her family live downstairs. She’s in high school, Emma, and she’s just adorable. I met her in the laundry room last Monday night.”

I can’t even move. I just stare at my mom.

I don’t know what was going on in my brain at the time, but when I didn’t give my mother that phone message on Monday night, I never dreamed I’d get caught. I guessed that Mom would say, “Oh well, good riddance!” when Dennis Engelman didn’t appear tonight, and I figured Dennis Engelman would want to forget all about my mom when she stood him up next Friday. I thought things would get back to normal around here. I never planned on
this.

It’s going to be a bad night on Candelaria Road.

And on top of everything else, there is no
way
I can keep from getting in trouble when they figure out what I did. Or, rather, what I
didn’t.

“Get a move on, Emma,” my mom says, laughing.

“Okay,” I say, and I plod into the kitchen for my after-school snack, which I barely manage to choke down.

“Wow, this is pretty harsh,” Shayna whispers to me two and a half hours later. “Your mom’s date is more than an hour late. And she bought a new pink dress, too.”

Shayna
is
really cute, and she’s also very nice. She brought a stack of celebrity magazines that we are looking at together, which is a privilege, since she knows so much about famous people. And we are watching TV at the same time.

It is the exact opposite of my normal everyday life.

This would be so extremely cool—if it weren’t so terrible! Because Shayna’s right. Mom is sitting all alone in the kitchen, waiting for Dennis Engelman to show up and take her out for dinner, and he is probably still eating shrimp cocktail in San Diego. Or maybe he and his business guy are eating dessert by now. Extra-fancy hot fudge sundaes.

“Why doesn’t she just call him again?” Shayna asks, keeping her voice low. Her forehead is wrinkled with concern for my mom. “Maybe he finally turned his cell on. That jerk!”

“She won’t call him again,” I murmur, turning a magazine page with cold fingers. “My mom’s not exactly the type to keep calling someone up over and over.” Especially not a
man,
I add silently, because Mom is pretty old-fashioned in a lot of ways.

“Well,
I’d
call him, if that was me sitting in the kitchen, and I’d tell him where to get off, too,” Shayna whispers, furious on my mom’s behalf. She whips her caramel-colored ponytail around like she is getting ready to go into battle.

Shayna sure cares a lot about my mom, and she barely even knows her!

This makes me feel guiltier than ever. Here I am, Mom’s
daughter,
who a minute ago was having fun while looking at photographs of famous people. Meanwhile, poor Mom is fidgeting with her brand-new pink dress in the kitchen. And she hardly ever buys new clothes.