I wrote down the number, then pushed it towards her. She just looked at it, then at me. She didn’t pick it up.

As I started towards the stairs, where Rick and Trent were banging up with another load, neither of the renters said anything. I was used to that. As far as they were concerned, this was their place now, with me as much scenery as the water. But when I spotted a price tag still on a little wicker basket by the door, I stopped and pulled it off anyway.

2

MY BEDROOM DOOR was open. Again.

“So I’m like,” I heard my sister Amber saying as I got closer, already feeling my blood pressure rising, “‘I understand you want to look like a model. I want to win the lottery so I don’t have to do this job. Let’s just both lower our expectations, okay?’”

“I hope you didn’t really say that,” my mother murmured. I swore I heard pages turning. If she was reading that issue of Hollyworld I hadn’t even cracked yet, my head was going to explode.

“I wanted to. But instead I gave her the bangs she insisted on, even though they made her look about thirty-five years old.”

“Watch it.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

I slapped my hand on the half-open door, pushing it wide into the room. Sure enough, they were on my bed. My mom was, in fact, reading my Hollyworld, while Amber—sporting yet another new hair color, this time a carrot orange—was in the process of taking a sip off a huge fountain Diet Coke from the Gas/Gro. Between them was an open can of cocktail nuts. “Get out,” I said, my voice low. “Now.”

“Oh, Emaline,” Amber began.

My mom, knowing better, had already put the magazine back in my drawer, and was digging around in my duvet—which I had just washed—for the top to the nuts. When she couldn’t find it, she gave up, getting to her feet with a guilty look on her face.

“You know what it’s like upstairs right now.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” I replied, walking over to my TV, which was showing some rerun of a modeling reality show, and turning it off. “This is my room. My room. You are not allowed to just come down here and trash it.”

“We weren’t trashing it,” my mom said, as she stepped behind me on her way to the door. “Just sitting here having a conversation.”

I ignored this, instead going over to my bed, where my sister was for some reason still sitting. I dug under my pillow until I found the top to the nuts. I held it up, evidence.

My mom sighed. “I was hungry.”

“Then eat in the kitchen.”

“We have no kitchen!” Amber protested. Now she was finally moving, although, as usual, she took her sweet time. “Have you been up there lately, Miss Private Entrance? It’s like a war zone.”

“It’s not a private entrance,” I replied. “It’s the garage.”

“Whatever! Daddy’s torn out everything. There’s no place to sit, no place for the TV . . .”

As if in support of her point, I heard the pop of a compressor from upstairs, making us all jump. My dad had been doing carpentry for so long big noises no longer affected him. The rest of us, though, were still nervous as cats once he started up with the nail gun.

“What about your room?” I asked Amber, as my mom passed behind me, stopping briefly to tuck in the tag of my shirt, which apparently had been sticking out all afternoon. Great.

“It’s too messy,” she replied as she slowly made her way to the door, knocking a pile of folded laundry off the bureau on the way.

“Wonder why,” I said, but she ignored me. Sighing, I bent down to pick it up. A beat later my mom, still silent, joined me. Amber and her traffic-cone hair had left the building, sighing melodramatically as she went. Though older than me, she’d once been the youngest. Now, all these years later, she still acted like a baby, although we now all blamed it on her being the middle child.

“You’re in a mood,” my mom finally said. It was typical of her manner, as well as her approach. Where my sisters and I tended towards loud and bombastic, she was always understated and quiet. It was like raising us just sucked all the fight right out of her.

“I’ve been yelled at too much today,” I told her, getting to my feet. “And you know I hate when you guys come in here.”

“I’m sorry.” She held out the nuts to me, a peace offering. I shook my head, but still couldn’t help but pick an almond out of the mix.

“No strip-mining,” she said, helping herself to a handful. Selecting just the good stuff was one of her biggest pet peeves. “So isn’t that engagement thing tonight?”

The nail gun popped again upstairs, once, twice. “Brooke and Andy’s. Yeah.”

“Maureen must be beside herself.”

“She is. It’s like wedding planning is a drug and she’s always jonesing for a fix.”

“Emaline,” she said, but she was smiling. She and Luke’s mom had both grown up in Colby, although my mom was seven years younger. Still, everyone knew that Mrs. Templeton had been on the pep squad and dated the captain of the football team, while my mom got pregnant the summer after junior year by a tourist boy. People didn’t forget anything in a small town.

“I’m serious,” I told her. “You should hear the stuff they are all saying about me and Luke. It’s like they expect us to announce our engagement at the wedding, or something.”