“No. It’s only a hobby. I’m not that good.”

She makes a face at me. “You underestimate yourself. I bet you could make a living at your art.”

No one’s ever called it art. We head back to my car and Liana asks, “What are you planning to do after you graduate?”

I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. “I don’t know. Be a nanny?” At that moment, my cell rings. The sound of my parents reminding me I’m nowhere near old enough to make my own life decisions.

It’s Dad. “Where are you?” he asks.

“In Boulder.”

“Boulder! Doing what?”

I almost say, Practicing free love. “Taking this tour of artists’ studios.”

“Are you alone?”

I gesture to Liana, like, Poke a stick in my eye.

She laughs.

“No,” I tell him.

“Are you with Betheny?”

“No.”

“Is it okay to ask who you are with?”

Why does it matter to him? “I’m with my friend Liana.” Becoming more than a friend.

Dad asks, “Will you be home for dinner?”

I have to be, don’t I? I check my watch and it’s after three. That should be plenty of time. “Yeah.”

“You can ask your friend to come, too, if you want.”

I don’t think I’m ready to thrust Liana into the Van Pelt pit.

Liana and I continue to the car and I unlock the doors with the key fob. I expect her to get in, but instead she snakes her arms around my waist, pulls me to her, and kisses me. I feel my bag clunk to the ground and my knees go weak. We might’ve stayed like that for hours if someone hadn’t driven up next to us and honked.

We both climb into the Prius, look at each other, and laugh.

A crazy, out-of-nowhere laugh.

That night Liana texts me:

Best. Day. Ever

I text back:

What’s better than best?

We text for a while, until I hear Mom’s beeper go off. It’s after midnight and I know she must be exhausted.

Liana texts:

Thanks for accepting my friend request

It reminds me that I need to send her my class schedule.

I text:

School night. You better get your dulces sueños in

LOL. U 2

A few more texts and we hang up.

I grab my laptop to send Liana my schedule. I want hers, too, including work and extracurricular. I notice my relationship status still says In a Relationship, but Swanee’s name is gone. When I look for her in my friends, she’s disappeared. Someone took down her page. Which is just as well. I change my relationship status to Single.

Then I have this wild idea. She’ll probably say no, or ignore it, but I send a request to Liana asking her to confirm that she and I are in a relationship. A second later, a response comes in. I give a little squeal of joy. She accepted.

When I hand in my critical analysis outline to Mrs. Burke, she seems impressed. It’s so much more than a single paragraph. Of course, if she doesn’t approve of the topic, I’m back to square one. A smile curls the corners of her mouth and she says, “I love this movie.”

Score!

The paper isn’t due for a while, but I bet if I hunker down I can finish it in two or three nights. I know the grade on my persuasive paper is on my permanent record, but an A on this one might boost my average to a C+ or B-.

Liana spends practically every day cheering at baseball games or track meets. We still talk or text during the day or at night, but I miss being with her. Physically. Long-distance relationships suck.

At dinner on Thursday Dad says, “Earth to Alix.”

Who says that anymore?

“Does that sound okay to you?”

“What?” I say.

He turns to Mom, “Do you think we should get her hearing checked?”

Mom holds up three fingers and raises her voice at me. “How many fingers do you see?”

“Eleven,” I say. “My hearing, and vision, are fine.”

Dad says, “I was asking how you would feel about spending spring break up in Vail. One of my clients has a time-share condo he won’t be using and he asked if we’d like to rent it.”

Visions of snowboarding for a week perk me up. “That’d be awesome. All of us?” I ask.

Mom answers, “Of course.”

“What are you guys going to do?” Neither of them skis anymore, and Ethan’s too little. Unless they expect me to babysit while they rent snowmobiles, in which case we might as well stay home.

“We’ll stay busy,” Dad says. “We can go tubing or sledding. I think there are horse-drawn carriages. Ethan will like that. You and your mom can go shopping.”

When was the last time Mom and I shopped together? In elementary school, shopping for new clothes.

Mom adds, “We could take a side trip to Glenwood Springs for the day. Soak in the hot pool. That sounds idyllic to me.”

It sounds like heaven.

I didn’t even realize spring break was next week. It snuck up on me.

“Well?” Dad says.

“Well… yeeeeah.”

“I’m on call Saturday, so we’ll leave Sunday,” Mom says. The phone rings and she gets up to answer it.

I hear Mom say, “It’s for you, Alix.”

Who’d be calling me on our home phone? I answer and it’s Joss. “Stay the f**k out of my life!” she screams. “You have no idea what’s going on, and anyway it’s none of your f**king business!”

I cringe. Mom must’ve talked to Jewell.

“For your information, Swan took me to Planned Parenthood for birth control months ago. I’m not a moron.”

“I never said you were.”

“Swan’s the only one who got me,” Joss says in this croaky voice.

That may be true, but I care. I want to ask her if she’s in counseling yet, if Jewell is doing anything to help.

Joss snarls, “The f**king bitch stole Swanee’s iPad from my room.”

Why do you need it? You have memories, I want to say, but that would only set off another rant.

“Do you have any pictures?” Joss asks. “I want all the pictures of her that everybody has. She was my sister, and they belong to me.”

Pictures. I do have the pictures from Swan’s cell that I uploaded to my PC. I could transfer them to a flash drive and delete them from my machine. That would remove every trace of her from my life. Except the cell.

Is that what I want? I know it’s what I need.

“I know you have pictures on your cell,” Joss says.

I blink back to the moment. “Yeah, I do. I could put them on a flash drive, and you could get prints.”

Joss stalls. “I can’t afford to make prints. Could you do it?”

Still forcing me to pay. I should say no, but I can’t find it in my heart. “Sure.”

“Okay.” She lets out a calming breath. “Okay. Then I could forgive you.”

I don’t know why that makes me feel both irritated and exonerated.

She adds, “Oh, and for your information, he dumped me.” She disconnects.

Chapter 20

When I tell Liana we’re going to Vail over spring break, she says, “The whole time?” I can hear the disappointment in her voice.

“But we can still talk. And I promise we’ll get together as soon as I’m back.”

“When you get back, it’s my spring break. My dad always takes a group of students to archeological sites or on digs, and I go with him. Last year we went to Machu Picchu, and this year we’re doing a dig at the field school in North Park, near Walden.”

“Pond?”

She snorts. “No, silly. Walden, Colorado. Population five. It’s close to Steamboat Springs.”

“Will you have a chance to ski?”

“I wish. Mostly I help lug equipment and record Dad’s lectures.”

“Woot,” I say unenthusiastically.

“It’s cool. I really like going.”

“Are you thinking about becoming an archaeologist?” I ask.

“No,” she replies. “I plan a double major in Mexican-American studies and poli sci.”

If only her ambition would rub off on me.

She sighs. “I wish I was coming to Vail with you.”

“That’d be a blast. Sext me, okay?”

“Ha! Only if you sext me first.”

I can’t imagine either one of us sexting.

“I wish we could see each other at least one more time before you leave. You know how you asked if I like being a cheerleader? Sometimes it sucks.”

Totally. “Break a leg,” I tell her.

“Don’t say that! I fell off the pyramid my sophomore year and broke my wrist.”

Yikes. “Don’t break anything. I want you whole.”

“I want you whole, too,” she says softly.

This trickle of warmth seeps through my bones.

On Saturday, Dad asks if I’d mind going to the store to pick up diapers and formula. Since Walmart is on the way, I grab the flash drive to make prints for Joss. Naturally, today of all days, their photo machine is down. I ask if I can leave the flash drive so that they’ll have the prints ready when I get home.

Liana calls me while I’m upstairs packing. “Do you think we could Skype while you’re gone?”

Duh. “Why weren’t we Skyping all this time?”

“Because it’d make me want to be with you even more than I already do. I hate being apart.”

“Me too.”

“But let’s do it anyway.”

We exchange Skype names and talk for a while. Before we end the call, Liana says, “You’re getting under my skin, Alix Van Pelt. I can see why she-who-shall-not-be-named fell so hard and fast for you.”

“Ditto, Liana Torres.”

We talk for another hour or two or three and I forget all about packing.

The people who don’t go to Mexico for fun in the sun on spring break swarm to the Colorado ski resorts. The slopes are overrun with skiers and snowboarders. As I’m riding up the lift with two college students—a guy with his arm looped around a girl’s shoulder—I wish so badly that Liana were here with me.

It’s awesome having a condo right in the heart of Vail. I can actually walk from the building to the ski lift. There’s a balcony on every unit, and as I’m nearing the bottom of the hill I think I glimpse Mom and Dad, searching for me. I wave, and then do a face plant. That should impress them.

Around lunchtime I get hungry, so I trek back to make a sandwich and see if Mom and Dad are there. They aren’t, so I check in the fridge for something, anything, to eat.

People must be using the time-share, because there’s a fairly fresh loaf of bread, along with peanut butter and blackberry jam. I make a sandwich and then go out on the deck to eat and to watch the skiers. The weather is sunny—a cloudless, sapphire sky. Sitting with my feet up on the railing, I call Liana, figuring she should be home from church.

She answers on the first ring. “I hope you’re on the lift. Because I think it’s a felony to snowboard while using a cell phone.”

Maybe she should major in law. “I’m taking a break. Laying—or is it lying?—in the lap of luxury,” I tell her.

She says, “I hate you.” I know she’s kidding. “I wish I was laying—or is it lying?—with you.”

“It’s kind of lonely,” I tell her the truth. “Do we have time to Skype?”

“Sadly, no. I have to leave for work in five minutes.”

“No fair peeking in the dressing rooms,” I say.

She goes, “You’re such a buzzkill.”

I smile. We talk until she says, “Eek. I’m late. And my cell is almost dead.” Mine’s drained, too, so I head inside to recharge it. Mom’s coming in the door with armloads of groceries, and I relieve her of the bags. “Where are Dad and Ethan?” I ask.

“Schlepping around town,” she says.

I help her unload the groceries and put them away.

“I bought all this food, and now I don’t feel like cooking,” Mom says. “Want to go out or have something delivered?”

The sandwich only whetted my appetite. “Definitely,” I say. “Let’s go out.”

She sits at the condo’s dinette and opens a folder with a bunch of menus in it for all the restaurants in town. “It’s nice to see you happy again,” Mom says. “We’ve been worried about you, you know.”

I don’t meet her eyes. “What did you expect?”

“I’m not talking about Swanee dying. Of course you’d be upset about that, but every day you were with her, you were… drifting.”

Drifting. What does she mean? I guess I know. How Swanee was trying to make me into someone I wasn’t. Manipulating me. Making me feel inadequate, the way Liana said. Not only that, but pulling me away from my parents.

They do need to realize that at some point they’ll have to let me go, and vice versa.

“Haven’t you ever felt like you’ve made sacrifices for Dad?” I ask. “Done things you didn’t really want to do?”

Mom seems to consider the question. “I suppose I’ve adapted. We both have. But we’ve never asked each other to sacrifice who we are as individuals. And if we really had a moral objection to something the other wanted, we would’ve talked it out and compromised. We’ve given, not taken away. We’ve grown stronger together.”

The same way I’m beginning to feel about Liana. When she’s not with me, a part of me is missing.