Page 11 of The Do-Over

Twelve minutes later, my grandma pulled into the driveway in her ’69 Mustang. I knew it was her without looking because her beloved murdered-out muscle car rumbled like a motor beast. I ran down the stairs.

“I’m going to Grandma Max’s.”

My dad looked at my face and he knew I was upset. “When will you be home?”

I grabbed my backpack from the floor. “She said I can crash there.”

Lisa came out of the kitchen looking irritated—I hadn’t even heard her come home. “But I just put chicken in the oven.”

“Um, thanks. I’ll heat it up tomorrow.”

She frowned and gave my dad a look before I escaped out the door.

CONFESSION #5

My grandma taught me to do burnouts in her car when I was fourteen.

“The soup will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“Sounds good.” I lay on the crushed-velvet sofa, wrapped up in sadness and the smell of soup, and stared at the television. “Thanks.”

“You do know, darling,” my grandmother said, carrying an afghan across the room and laying it over my legs, “that your worth is greater than what Josh or any other boy thinks.”

“I know.” But I didn’t. I didn’t want to listen to her be kind when the reality was that I wasn’t enough for Josh.

He’d texted me five times since I’d left school:

Can we talk?

Did you leave?

Meet me by my locker after school—please?

Going to go to the library now, but I did nothing wrong, Em. This isn’t fair.

Now I’m pissed. Call me.

I was just too broken to formulate words and sentences inresponse to his inquiries. Every time I tried—and I tried every five minutes or so—I ended up crying and picturing him kissing Macy.

“Sometimes I don’t understand why you don’t open your mouth and say the words that are on your tongue,” my grandma said, walking over to the kitchen and turning down the stove. “Iget the privilege of hearing you let loose with your anger. Others should, too. You are not the people-pleasing mouse you purport yourself to be. Burn some cities down with your rage!” Her speech was punctuated with her aggressive stirring of the soup.

“What do you want me to do, Grandma? Just unload on people?”

“A little bit, yes.” She glanced over her shoulder at me and said, “Quit worrying about making everyone else happy.”

“I’m not good at it like you.” Grandma Max was fierce and absolutely incapable of losing an argument. “It’s easier to just say what the people want.”

She grabbed two bowls out of the cupboard and started filling them with soup. “But doesn’t that eat you up inside?”

I shrugged. My insides were shredded, regardless of how they got that way. I pictured Josh and felt my heart literally get heavier in my body. Because if he wasn’t a match for me, what did I know about love… or anything? It’d been hours since I’d left school, and I felt like I should be finding some perspective, but instead I just felt empty.

I dropped the throw on the sofa, went over to the table, and sat beside my grandma, thinking about the newest awful decisionI had to make. I’d sat at this table with her hundreds of times. Could I really leave her and go to Texas? She said she’d be fine if I decided to go, but wouldI? My grandma was one of my best friends, and the only one I was ready to tell about Texas yet. I’d like to say I was worried about how my widowed grandmother would survive without my presence, but it really was the other way around.

She took a bite of her soup. “Pepper!”

“What?”

She went over to the stove and started messing with the stockpot. “I was distracted and forgot to add pepper. Grab some and sprinkle it in your bowl before you take a bite.”

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