Working Title
Setup: So, Twilight ends at the start of Winter break, right? Well, fast forward a couple of months, and you're at Spring Break, which is when this story takes place. Now, if you remember correctly, last year Gina came to visit over break (Reunion, book 3) so this year, the tables are reversed, and Suze is flying to New York (Thursday) to visit Gina. Then stuff happens, there's a climax, the conflict resolves, and the story ends.
Chapter 1
There are many kinds or people who really annoy me. This includes cocky telemarketers, anyone who calls me "Susie" (except my mom), stepbrothers whose sole purpose of existence is to get me in trouble, and flight attendants who walk around like someone's just stuffed a can of Campbell's Soup up their butt.
In order to avoid the middle of these annoyances for a week, I was being subjected to large doses of the last. Translation: I was leaving my three stepbrothers and going to stay with my friend Gina for the week of Spring Break, and because she lived in New York City, on the opposite side of the country from my house in Carmel, California, I had to endure a six-hour flight. However, I had to give credit to my mom and her husband Andy; they had managed to book me tickets which did not require me to get up at the crack of dawn. In fact, I got to wake up later than I would have if I had gone to school, like I was supposed to. See, in order to get me tickets at such a great time, I had to agree to fly on a Thursday. Actually, I would have been willing to do this even if the tickets had cost the same. Anything to get me out of Math Besides, it's not like I'm missing anything. No teacher would be crazy enough to think that he could actually get kids to learn anything when it was two days before a vacation.
In spite of the fact that my stepbrothers Dopey and Sleepy (aka Brad and Jake) were going to gain exactly nothing from attending class, Andy made them go to school on Thursday anyway. He did, however, permit the third step-year old David (or Doc, as I like to call him) to accompany me to the airport. This was because David is a genius. No, seriously. He's who I go to if I need help on homework, and I'm three grades ahead of him.
When he heard that Doc got to miss a whole day of school just so he could say goodbye to me, Dopey immediately pleaded to be allowed see me off, too. I would have been touched, but I knew that he only wanted to miss a day of school. Dopey was actually glad to be rid of me for a week, and I must say, the feeling was mutual. Doc is the only one of my stepbrothers who I allow people to mistake for a brother. If anyone referres to Sleepy or Dopey as my "brother", I can't help but correct them.
When I got to the point of the airport beyond which only "persons with a valid boarding pass" could enter, I found that I was actually quite sad to be leaving my family behind. My mother, of course, went completely gaga and made a huge scene. "My baby is leaving me" she kept repeating (needless to say, at age seventeen, it is quite embarrassing when my mother calls me her "baby"). Andy, who my mom married after my dad died, clapped my on the shoulder and instructed me to "look after yourself, kid". But David, unlike the adults, did something which caught me completely off guard. He threw his arms around my neck and whispered into my ear "I love you, Suze."
Simple enough, right? I mean, our parents were married, and we'd been living under the same roof for over a year. There had to have been some "I love you's" going around, right? Wrong. Let's just say that I'm not exactly the touchy-feely type.
I know how I should have responded. I should have just told David that I love him, too. I should have given him an extra squeeze, and maybe patted his curly red hair a bit. I should have told him how adorable he looked, with his pale skin paler than usual, contrasting with the freckles that dotted his face. It was obvious that he wanted to say this before I left, just in case my plane crashed, or I got caught in a late snowstorm and was stranded in New York, or something.
Of course, because I'm so brilliant with words, all I could think to say was "Uh, thanks" as I awkwardly dumped out my loose change so that I could pass through the metal detector. Yeah, I know. Nice going, Suze. Hey, give me a break, will you? Until I moved out to California, I never had siblings. I never even had friends, except Gina.
Gina, who, as I stepped off of the plane, shivering from the freezing temperature which airports are always set to, rushed up to me and almost knocked me over with a gigantic hug. My spine was getting seriously crushed, but I didn't care. I hadn't seen Gina in a whole year. My backbone could take it.