The Unexpected Everything (53 page)

“Oh,” Topher said, sounding utterly thrown. “Um . . . okay.”

“Yeah,” I said with a small laugh. I sat up a little straighter and pulled the sheet up in front of me, tucking it under my arms, my fingers tracing, for just a second, the pattern of the Little Dipper that was printed there. I looked over at Topher and knew that this—whatever we'd been doing for three years now—was over. That it was better to have what I'd had with Clark than something like this. I might stay safe with Topher and never get hurt, but that also meant I'd never feel anything real. “Sorry I didn't realize it until right now.”

“You
love
him?” Topher asked, sounding not cool or dismissive or sarcastic, but for the first time in a long time, genuine. I could hear the hurt in his voice, but also the confusion underneath.

“I do,” I said, nodding. I wasn't sure what, if anything, I was going to do with that information. But for tonight, knowing it felt like enough. “So I think, you and I, we're probably . . .”

“Yeah,” Topher said, pulling on his shirt and buttoning it up. “I figured that.” I pulled on my tank top, and then we just
looked at each other for a moment, across the comforter with rocket ships printed on it. “I sometimes wonder,” he finally said, his voice soft and maybe the most genuine I'd ever heard it, all games and stratagems gone, “if maybe in the beginning, I'd just . . . if we'd actually . . .” He reached forward and brushed his fingers through the ends of my hair slowly, like he knew that soon he wouldn't be able to do this. “Never mind,” he said, shaking his head, some of the briskness coming back into his voice. He looked away from me and adjusted his cuffs, and when he looked back, I could see the little authentic window he'd shown me was now closed.

Topher headed back down to the party after that, and I waited two minutes, more out of habit than anything else, before following him. I let myself out the front door and walked to my car, which I'd parked half a mile up the road. It was a breezy night, the humidity cut by the wind, and I took off my flip-flops and held them in one hand as I walked barefoot, tipping my head back to look up at the sky.

I remembered the stick-on, glow-in-the-dark stars that had been all over the walls of the kid's bedroom—the ones that looked pretty good until you had the real thing to compare them with, and then they just looked like pale imitations. I thought about the guy outside, and his galaxy theory, and as I looked up, I wondered which of these stars—the ones that seemed so permanent and fixed—weren't actually done changing quite yet.

T
he Elder shook his head, feeling the weight of each of his years, the wisdom he had that nobody seemed to be able to hear. “You have to
try
,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, then opened them and forced himself to go on. “You have to take your chances. Go and attempt and see what happens. And even if you fail—
especially
if you fail—come back with your experience and your hard-won knowledge and a story you can tell. And then later you can say, without regret or hesitation . . . ‘Once, I dared to dare greatly.' ”

—C. B. McCallister,
The Drawing of the Two
. Hightower & Jax, New York.

Two
beeps
from my phone sent me bolting upright in bed the next morning, fumbling for it and sending the stack of precarious things on my nightstand crashing to the floor. I squinted at my phone, trying to get my eyes to focus, willing it to be texts from my friends. Maybe Toby and Bri had figured out a way to move past this, and Palmer had decided not to be mad at me any longer, and . . . I felt my shoulders slump when I saw what was actually there, two calendar reminders that had popped up.

Dad—campaign event/New York. 12 PM

Clark's reading!!!! New Jersey 3 PM

I looked at these, and at the exclamation points by Clark's, realizing that with everything going on, I'd forgotten about both events and had certainly not put together that they were happening on the same day. As far as I knew, I was not expected to be at my father's event—Peter hadn't said anything and neither had my dad, so I figured I was in the clear.

I flopped back onto my bed, then looked at my calendar for the day—which was totally open. I must have cleared it with Maya for Clark's reading. Now, the thought of having the whole day ahead of me open—especially with my revelation from the
night before—was not appealing in the least. I pulled up my texts and started to write Maya, asking her if there were any walks I could take over today—I'd even deal with a cat—when my phone screen turned black. I'd run the battery down.

My first thought was that I'd have to tell Toby that I could no longer make fun of her for this, before I remembered, once again, what had happened. I pushed myself out of bed and went downstairs, yawning, in my sleep shorts and the
ASK ME ABOUT THE LUMINOSITY
shirt of Clark's that I'd never gotten around to returning.

“Morning,” my dad said as I stepped into the kitchen. He was hovering around the coffeepot, but in a way that made me think he wasn't actually having coffee and had instead been waiting for me to come down.

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my hand across my eyes as I went to the fridge in search of orange juice. He was wearing a button-down shirt and a suit jacket, but no tie—his
I'm professional but not stuffy
outfit he always wore when campaigning in the summers. His hair, though, was as sharply parted as ever. “So,” I said, after taking a long drink and waiting for my brain to start waking up, “You have that campaign event today?”

“Kind of,” my dad said, giving me a shrug. “It's the governor's campaign. He just wanted to me to say a few words.”

I nodded as I took another drink of my juice, convinced that even after all these years, I would never understand how politics worked. The governor and my dad had privately hated each other for years, but maybe he was trying to get a piece of my dad's redemption arc. It was all going to start unfolding at a press conference on Monday, with Peter laying out every step of it.

“But there's actually something I wanted to show you,” my dad said, smiling at me, and I realized he really had been waiting for me to get up.

“Okay,” I said, looking around the kitchen.

“Outside,” my dad said, walking toward the side door. “Ready?”

“Sure,” I said, setting my glass down, utterly baffled as to what this could be. I honestly wasn't sure there was anything I wanted, unless standing on the driveway would be Palmer, Toby, and Bri, all having made up, having forgiven each other and me, along with Clark and Bertie, everything somehow fixed and okay. I stepped outside, and the heat hit me like a slap in the face. “Ugh,” I said, wincing. It was boiling already, and humid, like I'd just walked face-first into a hot shower.

“Yeah,” my dad said, grimacing at me. “It's going to be a hot one today.”

“
Going
to be?”

“Okay, let's go to the garage,” my dad said, talking fast, sounding excited. I had a sudden Christmas-morning flashback of both my parents sitting on the couch watching me open my biggest present, waiting to see my reaction. But it wasn't Christmas, and it was nowhere near my birthday. So what was this, exactly?

I followed my dad to the garage door, which was closed, and looked around, in case I was missing something. But a second later my dad pulled out the garage door opener from his pocket and took a breath. “Okay,” he said, his thumb on the button, but not pressing it yet. “This is something that I hadn't planned on doing just yet, but . . .”

A loud, low-pitched
BEEP!
made us both jump, and I looked over to see a bus chugging up to our driveway. It started to turn in, but then stopped and backed up a few feet with a
beep-beep-beep
sound that seemed unnecessarily loud on our totally quiet street, sending some birds from nearby trees into flight.

“What the heck?” my dad asked, striding down toward the end of the driveway, sounding annoyed. I followed a few paces behind, and as I got closer, felt my steps slow.

There was a giant picture of my dad's face on the bus, taken from his last campaign photo shoot.
WALKER FOR CONGRESS,
it read in giant red and white letters. Underneath this, but only slightly smaller, was printed,
TOWARD THE FUTURE
.

“Peter!” my dad yelled, as he walked up to the bus. His face was starting to turn red, and since he'd been fine just a moment before, I had a feeling this was due to the bus and not the heat.

The doors opened with a
squeak
and a sound of air releasing, and a moment later Peter was striding down the steps and smiling at us. “Morning,” he said, then winced. “Jeez, it's hot out today. Luckily, the bus has AC.”

“Why is this even here?” my dad asked, staring at it. “When did we decide we were going ahead with this?”

“We didn't,” Peter said as he pulled out his BlackBerry. “An intern forgot to cancel, and it had already been paid for, so it showed up this morning. Along with the driver, Walt. Hey, Walt,” Peter called into the bus. The driver—Walt—who had a short blond crew cut and looked to be in his late fifties, just lifted an eyebrow at Peter before raising the paper in front of his face, hiding it from view. “Anyway, thought we might as well get some use out of it. Ride to this rally in style.”

My dad just looked at the bus, a small frown still on his face.

“Great,” Peter said as though my dad had agreed, eyes on his phone screen. “I've got to catch up on some e-mails, but let's plan on leaving in ten, okay?” He looked up and frowned at me as his eyes drifted down to the pajamas I was wearing. “Andie, you're, uh, not coming, are you?”

“No,” my dad and I said at the same time.

“Gotcha,” Peter said, relief clearly etched on his face. “See you later, then.” He climbed back onto the bus, fingers already flying over his keypad.

“Bye,” I called, even though I had a feeling Peter could no longer hear me. Behind the wheel, Walt lowered his paper and rolled his eyes before raising it again—he'd clearly had more than enough of Peter already.

“Okay,” my dad said, holding up the garage door opener, smiling at me again. “Ready to do this?”

We walked back up the driveway, the asphalt warm under my bare feet. I looked back toward the bus for just a second, my dad's huge face giving a confident but trustworthy smile to the street. Despite whatever Peter had said, campaign buses didn't show up by accident—not unless there was a campaign that would require them. “Dad—” I started, right as the garage door opened and I found myself looking at a yellow '65 Mustang.

“Surprise!” my dad said, making a little flourish with his arms, smiling big as he looked from me to the car.

“Is that . . . ?” I asked, taking a step closer to it. “Is it Mom's?” It looked just like it, but I couldn't be sure. “Didn't you say you didn't know where it was?”

“I said that, yes,” my dad said, grinning now, and I could see
that he was incredibly pleased with himself. “I didn't want to give the surprise away. It's been in a storage facility upstate. Your mother asked me to give it to you when you turned eighteen, but when you started asking about it, I thought maybe now was the moment.”

“This is great,” I said a beat too late. “Really great,” I repeated, trying to bring some enthusiasm into my voice. “Thank you.”

“I've made sure that it's ready to be driven,” he said, walking toward the car, running his hand along the side of it. “It got fully overhauled, detailed, everything. And I'll have to teach you how to drive stick, but after that, you should be good to go.” He looked at me and his smile faltered a little.

“Awesome,” I said, making myself smile, knowing I wasn't reacting the way he wanted me to. I felt terrible about it but wasn't sure I would be able to fake it. Because there was a bus with his face on it at the bottom of the driveway, reminding me of everything that was going to happen and how little I could do about it. When was he planning to teach me how to drive a stick shift if he was going to be not only working, but campaigning in the fall's election? I looked at the car, pretty sure that it was going to sit there, undriven, for a very long time.

“Sorry,” my dad said, his excited energy ebbing away as he ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Maybe . . . this was probably the wrong day. But when they called and said it was ready, I just wanted you to have it.”

“No, it's great,” I said, feeling even worse than I had a moment ago. “Really, Dad. Thank you.”

“Well,” my dad said, after an awkward silence had fallen, “I hope you like it, Andie.”

He turned to head inside, but before he'd reached the door,
I blurted out, “You're running again, aren't you.” It didn't sound like a question because it wasn't one. All the proof I needed was sitting at the bottom of the driveway.

My dad turned back to me. “I told you, I haven't decided anything.”

“You can at least tell me the truth.” I said, shaking my head, realizing that I should not be getting mad at him right after he'd given me a present, but knowing that it was happening anyway.

My dad raised his eyebrows. “I am,” he said. “I'm still weighing my options.”

“It's just . . . this summer, having you around, it's been really . . .”

“Alex!” Peter was standing on the bottom step of the bus, tapping at his watch in a hugely exaggerated manner, like we were involved in a game of long-distance charades. “We have to get going. Walt can't make traffic miracles happen!” Peter stepped back inside the bus, and I looked back at my dad.