Don't Bet on It

Chapter 12

"Aww!" I grabbed Deena's hands and started jumping up and down.

Deena turned the color of a ripe tomato. "Stop!" she hissed. "You're gonna attract attention."

"So?" I squealed. "This is so awesome!"

"It's not that big a deal." Deena rolled her eyes.

"Are you kidding me? It's a HUGE deal!"

"Emma's waiting for you," she said, pointing.

"Let me know how it goes!" I called, flouncing off. I heard her groan and mumble something under her breath.

"What was that all about?" Emma asked when I reached the car.

"Deena's going on a date with Daniel," I said, smiling.

"Ooh." She waggled her eyebrows.

"I know. I've been shipping them for so long."

"They'd be cute together," Emma said, climbing into the car.

I threw by backpack into the backseat and sad down in the passenger seat. "We don't have to pick out furniture, right?" I asked as she pulled out of the school parking lot. "Aren't they functional guest bedrooms?"

"If we don't like the furniture, we can get new stuff," Emma said. "But yeah, they already have furniture."

I looked out the window. "The furniture in my room looked alright."

"Same," Emma agreed. "But if either of us decides we want something else, we can go shopping together."

"Cool." I leaned back and closed my eyes. "It's gonna be weird not living with Mom."

"I know," I heard Emma say. "But I guess I gotta get used to it if I'm gonna move out next year for college."

Oh, that's right. I was leaving my mom, and then my sister was leaving next year.

I started to well up and blinked a few times.

I'd been running away from that fact for I-don't-know-how-long. And now it was finally sinking in.

I reached up and brushed my eyes. I didn't want Emma to see me cry.

"I might not go out of state," Emma was saying. "But I probably will. I really want to go somewhere north, actually. I really like the climate up there. I'm thinking maybe somewhere in Washington or Oregon. It's really beautiful up there."

It's ironic how most of the time when you want to break down and cry, it's also when you're around people, and when you wait until you're alone you don't feel like it anymore.

It was finally hitting me that my parents weren't together anymore. Dad wasn't just in Switzerland, with us pretending he was on sabbatical and would be back soon. He was back and about to marry someone who wasn't my mom, someone who I'd never met until a few weeks ago. And I was about to move in with them.

What was I doing? Mom hadn't left; she'd been there for us the whole time. Dad was the one who'd walked out on us. Dad was the one who'd broken off all contact for a year and then come back and expected us to forgive him and let him back into our lives.

And that's what we'd done. We'd agreed to move into his house and see him every day every other week.

I felt sick. I couldn't believe we'd agreed to do that. I hated Dad. I hated him with a burning passion. Had I really agreed to move into the home of someone I hated just because it had a pool and a giant bedroom and a huge bathroom and all this other fancy frou-frou stuff that looked nice but had no real meaning?