Chapter Forty-Nine
"Miss me much?" asked a voice from the door. A voice that made me turn immediately away from the window.
Jenny had only been gone a week, but she looked infinitely more worldly. Her hair, mostly back to the familiar medium brown, was loose and bounced around her shoulders. Her red lipstick and her over the shoulder sweater made her look years older than she actually was. She dropped her duffel bag and held her arms out to me.
I met my sister in the middle of the room and we held each other tightly.
"You look so old," I said at last, when she'd stepped away to see me at arm's length.
"You look like you've stopped being a girl and become a woman," she said, fondly with a trace of sadness.
"It happens," I said, stroking my stomach. She bent down and put her hand on it.
"How far along are you?" she asked.
"Almost a month," I guessed.
"It's so incredible," she said, sounding awestruck. "How badly did Daddy kill you?"
"Well, he was the main dictator behind the whole ordeal, but he's healing. Hey, look," I instructed, holding out my left hand. She admired the square diamond.
"It's beautiful," she said sincerely.
"Why are you here?" I asked.
"Mom called me. And because my best friend is getting married tomorrow," she said. "Where?"
"Oh, we just have broad plans. Like we got the marriage license. Probably at the church where Mom and Daddy got married," I said.
"How can you care so little? Ooh, you should get married at the river court!" she said excitedly.
"What?"
"Seriously! Or by the river court. It's so pretty, with the river and all. And you can wear the white dress you got for the wedding last may, and your white sandals, and we can invite⦠hmm. I guess the four of us, the three Scotts, Karen and Keith, Brooke, Mouth and Kylie, maybe Sawyer's grandmother. And some of your friends," she added graciously. I raised an eyebrow.
"So basically I have no say whatsoever," I said.
"Basically. Here, try it on," she said. She went to my closet and rummaged through it, eventually locating the silk dress. She looked around the room. "Cal, why aren't you packed?"
"For what?" I asked, taking the dress from her and slipping out of my cotton shirt.
"You're moving tomorrow, remember? You're going to need a change of underwear," she said.
I shrugged and finished changing into the dress, exchanging the bra I was wearing for a strapless one before turning around.
The hem of the dress began at just above my knee and ended midway down my calf, going down diagonally. The bodice was quite tight and low, appropriate for the spring wedding I'd bought it for. It had spaghetti straps and the only thing interrupting the white was a chain of dark pink flowers decorating the left lower side.
"Hmm. It's nicer than I remembered. Can I be you maid of honour?" she asked eagerly.
"Whatever," I said, flopping down onto my bed and putting my hands on my stomach.
She rummaged in her closet, pulling out various dresses and examining them before throwing them into either the 'yes' or 'no' pile.
Without asking my opinion, she eventually picked out a knee length, deep pink halter tied dress and began to mess with my hair.
Some girls need their mommies. All I need right then was my big sister to take care of me.
We drove in her brand new car to the river court. She got out immediately and began making measurements of the area while I got out slowly and wandered over to one of the nets.
I pictured Sawyer and me kissing for the first time, only inches away from where I stood. I saw us lying on the court, seeking solace from the sun. I saw us sitting on the picnic table, before and after we'd gotten together.
"Good news," she said, joining me. "It looks like we're all going to fit just about perfectly."
"Great," I said uninterestedly.
"I'm in love again," she said suddenly.
"What's his name?"
"Lyle. He's a junior," she said.
"What does he think about you?" I asked.
"Oh, he's mad about me. Of course. Now come on, we have to go shopping," she said.
My big sister dragged me through a nail salon, a shoe store, a flower store and finally to a jewelry store. In the last one, we pored over every wedding ring they had, eventually settling for one of the simplest gold bands they carried.
"Want an engraving?" asked a bored looking thirty year old behind the desk.
"Um, can you just write 'Squirt+BJ?" I requested timidly.
"Who and BJ?" she asked
"Squirt. Like the action of spraying windex. Here," I said, writing it down. She nodded and shrugged.
"Come pick it up in half an hour," she said.
In the half hour, Jenny and I went down to the food court to grab ice cream cones. We ate it while slowly making our way back to the jewelry store.
"So I heard you ran off?" she asked eventually.
"Just for a few days," I admitted.
"They must have gone insane."
"Not so insane. They traced my credit card, it didn't take them long to find me," I said, tossing my napkin in a garbage can as we passed.
"So what do you want to do tonight?"
"What can we do? I want to get drunk, but I can't," I whined.
"True. Here's what: we'll get Lauren, and we'll have a sleepover in our room like we did just before I went to school."
"Coming of age. I get it. Sounds good," I said.
"Oh, my little girl's growing up so fast," she said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and squeezing them.
