Isla And The Happily Ever After Part 31

For the second time in a single minute, Hattie looks surprised. I hold out the key. She takes it slowly. "Don't you want to give this to Kurt? Isn't it his, too?"

"Kurt has new places to explore. And...he's not you. He's not my sister."

She almost appears to be shaken. Almost.

"And, you know, you don't have to keep any of this stuff, it's just junk we've picked up over the years-"

"No! No, I like it." She glances around, and her eyes catch on the mural, which I've been trying my best to ignore. "You brought Josh up here, too."

I tuck my hands inside my coat pockets. "Yeah."

"So was this some sort of gross s.e.xual playground? Did you do it on top of this carousel horse-head?"

"Hattie!"

She laughs at my reddened cheeks, and after a moment, I can't help but join in. "No," I say. "But maybe you should wash the blanket in that trunk."

My sister squeals with genuine horror, which only makes us both laugh harder. When we finally stop, she pulls her gaze away from mine again. She focuses on the river. "It's cool of you to give this to me. So...thanks."

"I'm sorry." I take a deep breath. "For being so awful to you this year. And for blaming you for something that wasn't your fault."

Hattie nods. She doesn't take her eyes off the Seine. But I know we're okay.

I take another deep breath, and...there it is. A new and distinct smell in the air. Hattie turns her head and smiles at me as the first snowflakes of the year swirl down upon Paris. The city is cold and hushed and beautiful.

"Will you miss this next year?" she asks, and when I look at her in surprise, she adds, "Maman told me they mailed the first cheque to Dartmouth."

I hesitate, and then I tell her the truth. "I will miss Paris. And I'll miss New York. I'm excited and scared, but...I think I'm more excited than scared. I think," I say again.

"You think?"

"I think." I slide down the wall until I'm sitting down. She sits beside me. We cross our arms, shivering. "When Josh and I were in Spain, we went to this park. This really, really beautiful park. And it started these ideas in my head about how maybe I wasn't the person that I thought I was. Maybe I'm not a city girl. Maybe I was only thinking about Paris versus New York, because nothing else seemed real, somehow. Like, everywhere else just seemed like something-"

"You'd read about in a book."

"Exactly. But being in this beautiful park with this beautiful boy talking about this alternate future in which I'm someone who learns how to camp and climb rocks and build fires and sleep below the stars...in that moment, it seemed possible."

"So what? You're gonna be a park ranger?"

I laugh. "I just want to try those things. They sound fun."

"What about Josh?"

My eyes catch on his mural. On the brownstone with ivy window boxes and the American flag. "What about him?"

"He's not a part of your plans any more?"

"Well...no. We broke up. And I don't need him to do those things."

"Yeah, duh," Hattie says. "But that's not what I meant. I meant don't you still want to do those things with him?"

"Yes," I whisper. "I still want to do everything with him."

"Isla...why do you think that Josh didn't love you?"

My voice grows even smaller. "Because I thought no one could love me."

"And why did you think that?"

"Because I didn't think I was worth loving."

Hattie takes this in. And then she hits me in the stomach. I yowl in surprise, and she hits me again. "Don't be stupid."

"Ow."

"Everyone is worthy of love. Even a dumb sister like you."

I snort. "Yeah, thanks. I got that. I'm okay now."

"Are you? Because you don't act like a person who is okay. You mope around school, and you hardly ever leave your room, and you always look unhappy."

"Says the sister with the permanent scowl."

"You need to talk to him."

I sigh and stare at my lap. "I know."

"So why haven't you?"

"Because now I do believe that he loved me. And I'm afraid that after all this time, after everything I've put him through...he doesn't any more."

"Ugh. So take a risk and find out. The sooner you ask him, the sooner you can get on with your life. Either way," she adds.

Thanks to Josh, I am taking risks. I've learned that if I never leave those areas of my life that feel comfortable, I'll never have a chance at a greater happiness. Accepting Dartmouth was a risk. Asking my sister to hang out with me was a risk. But the biggest risk of all is still Josh himself. I don't yet have the courage to give him the opportunity to say no. It's impossible, the not-knowing, but it's better than getting the wrong answer.

There's a m.u.f.fled ring from inside my coat pocket. I pull out my phone to silence it, and then it drops from my hands and bounces against the concrete.

Josh.

It's his actual name. I haven't seen it on the screen of my phone since before Barcelona. My heart wrenches. "Is that him? How can that be him?"

"Whoa. He heard us."

I pick up my phone. "What do I do?"

"One more ring until voicemail." Hattie peers over my shoulder. "Tick-tock."

I scramble to answer. "He- h.e.l.lo?"

There's a strange hiccup of silence. And then he speaks, and his voice It's him, it's him, it's him is awash with strangled relief. "I didn't know if you'd answer."

"You got your phone back."

"Yeah. Last week."

I feel a stab of sadness that he didn't call me immediately. And then a second stab, this one of guilt. I broke up with him. Of course he shouldn't call me.

"It's Sunday night," he continues. "You aren't at Pizza Pellino."

"No, I'm at the Treehouse with Hattie." And then I'm so dizzy that my vision goes black. "How...how did you know that I'm not there?"

But I've already antic.i.p.ated his answer.

"Because I'm here."

Chapter thirty.

I'm trembling. Hattie's ear is pressed against my head, listening in. Silver-white flakes catch in our tangle of red hair.

"Isla?" Josh says. "Isla, are you still there?"

"I'm here."

"I was hoping you'd be here. At Pellino's. My friends and I are on our way to the Olympics, so we stopped by for old times' sake. I wanted to introduce you. I mean, I know you already know them. But I wanted you to know them."

My head swims. "You want me to know your friends?"

"Is that too weird?"

"I don't know."

"I'd like to see you again. We could talk?" His question is tentative.

He's caught me off guard. I'm not ready for this. I have to prepare for this. "How long will you be in town?"

"Just tonight. We're catching the train to Chambery in the morning."

Hattie is nodding her head like a madwoman.

"Um," I say. "Sure. I guess I could be there in...twenty minutes?"

"Great!" Josh says. "Okay, bye."

I stare down at my phone's screen. "He hung up."

"He was afraid you'd take it back," Hattie says.

I put my head between my legs. "I feel ill."

"That was the strangest timing. The strangest. It's like fate, if I believed in fate. I don't know. Maybe I believe in fate now."

The tone of her voice makes me lift my head. She grins.

"Hattie." My heart seizes. "What did you do?"

"Jeez, nothing."

"Tell me what you did!"

"Ow." She covers her ears at my shouting. "Maybe I mailed your stupid book to his dad's stupid office in DC, I don't know."

I frown. "Huh? What book?"

"The one you brought home from Angouleme, thanks for not inviting me, that I stole from your room to read and discovered you'd had personalized? I thought it was so sad and pathetic that I mailed it to him. And maybe I attached a note saying how much you were totally still in love with him, and he should try calling you again."

It's the only thing that could shock me more than Josh's call. Finding out that I have Hattie to thank for it. I'm speechless.

"You're welcome," she says.

"Thank you? I think? I'll let you know when this is all over."

"You'd better." She pulls me to my feet, leads me through the trapdoor and down the stairs, locks the door, and slides the key into her pocket.

The pressure inside my chest grows at a paralysing rate. "I don't know about this."

"Shut up. You're being annoying again." Hattie leads me, stumbling, into the closest metro station. I feel like I'm moving both too fast and too slow. She shoves me through the turnstile and says, "Don't be a chickens.h.i.t. Tell him how you feel."

"What if he doesn't love me?"

"He does."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Ugh, then who cares? You won't lose anything you haven't already lost." She flicks a snowflake from the tip of my nose. "For once in your life, listen to your younger sister. She's taller, and she knows better than you."

The flakes are scattered, here and there, as they float down to earth. I glance at the grey-white sky. If only a blizzard would burst from above and bury me alive. That would be better than what I'm about to do. The temperature is below freezing, but I'm sweaty and feverish and short of breath. My feet touch Pellino's threshold, but my body won't go any further. One step at a time. I place my hand on the door.

Pushing it open has never felt so impossible.

A chain of bra.s.s bells signals my entrance. The maitre d' brightens at the sight of me. "Ou est Monsieur Bacon?"