Page 9 of The Glittering Edge

Now Penny keeps a low profile. She doesn’t date, she limits herself to two beers when she’s at parties, and she doesn’t spread gossip. If nobody glances her way for an entire day at school, she awards herself five points.

She has a lot of points.

If Penny was more like her mom, she wouldn’t care about any of this. But she’s not as strong as Anita Emberly, and she never will be. So Idlewood can gossip all they want, but it will never be about Penny.

“You look amazing,” Penny says, sitting down at the table.

Her mom smiles and sets the diary aside. “And you look exhausted. Did you have fun last night?”

“Yeah, we… yeah.”

“Convincing!”

There’s already coffee in Penny’s favoriteAvatar: The Last Airbendermug, and she takes a sip. “Why aren’t you at the café?”

“Because we’re visiting your dad today.”

Penny gasps and shoots to her feet. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry, I completely forgot!”

Anita laughs. “Drink your coffee first. You slept past eight, so I’m guessing you’re hungover?”

“Don’t sound so hopeful.”

“I just want you to enjoy your youth.”

“Right, because you’re not enjoyingyourlife anymore?”

Anita gasps. “Are you saying I’m not young and beautiful?”

“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world. Just not the youngest—stop!” Penny laughs as her mom tickles her side.

“You deserved that. Now drink your coffee and get dressed. We need to leave in fifteen minutes to beat the funeral crowd.”

An hour later, Penny and her mom spread their picnic blanket on top of Nathan Emberly’s grave. Penny unpacks their brunch: more coffee, egg sandwiches, and melon wrapped in prosciutto. Anita stares at Nathan’s headstone, a sad smile on her face, while Penny pulls her knees to her chest and gazes at the spot where the cemetery meets the woods.

When Penny was little, she hated these picnics, because her dad wasn’t there. Not really. He couldn’t spin Penny around or play his guitar or dance with Anita like he used to, so what was the point of coming to the cemetery?

But as the years passed, Penny started grasping for pieces of her dad like snowflakes. She took out the photos of him again, years after she’d hidden them away. When she couldn’t sleep at night, she would listen to the music he’d made with his band. She learned to be happy with only her memories. Now she loves these picnics. They’re peaceful.

“So,” Anita says after a few moments of quiet, “any cute boys at Sango’s party last night? I’m sure your dad would like to know.”

“Not really.”

Penny’s mom cocks her head and says, “Any other details you’d like to share? Drama? Secrets?Confessions?”

That’s all it takes for Penny to give in, because she’s weak and bad at lying. “Our plans kind of… changed. We didn’t go to Sango’s party.”

If Anita were like any other parent, she would probably demand to know where Penny went and why she lied, or at the very least give her daughter a disapproving look. But Anita is Anita, so she nods and waits.

Penny clears her throat. “I went to Corey Barrion’s Fourth of July party.”

Now Anita reacts. She presses her lips together, as if carefullyconsidering her next words. Her hand absently plays with the charm on her necklace. It’s a black crescent moon, dull and misshapen and exactly the kind of jewelry Anita gravitates toward in a thrift shop.

“I heard those boys got into another fight,” Anita says.

“The Idlewood whisper network strikes again.”

“I don’t like knowing you were there, sweet pea. You know how I feel about those families. They cause a lot of hurt, and they take other people down with them.”

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