From You to Me Read online

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Taylor slaps her hand on her hip, the smack echoing through my bedroom. “I look good in these pants.”

  “You are a loony toon, Taylor.” I hop into my matching pair, yanking up the zipper.

  “Well, then I am a loony tune who looks good in these pants.” We stare at ourselves in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door, lost in our own thoughts for a minute. When did Taylor get taller than me? I move my palm in a straight line from the top of my head and it bangs into her forehead. Taylor laughs.

  “Okay, then.” I lean over and grab a black T-shirt from the pile of clothes we’ve been trying on since seven a.m. I pull it over my head and say, “We’re going to walk down those halls and every mouth in Hemingway Middle School will gape open like that singing fish in your dad’s office.”

  Taylor pulls an identical shirt over her head and tucks it into the identical black jeans she’s trying on.

  “I mean, you know what Beyoncé says.”

  Taylor raises her eyebrows in a mock questioning look. “Who run the world?”

  “Girls.”

  “No, but who run the world?”

  “GIRLS!”

  We admire ourselves some more. All black. Yes. This will show the school that we mean business. This will tell everybody that summer is over and Amelia and Taylor are ready to take over the world. Top-dog eighth graders, that’s who we are.

  Taylor twists her long curls and spins them up to the top of her head. “I look like Sandy. Not even close to Beyoncé.”

  We start singing “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, both pretending to be Sandy from the end of the movie, when she’s had her black leather transformation.

  “You girls about done in there?” The annoyed voice calls over a loud knock on the door. “You don’t want to be late on the first day!” Mom was a little grouchy about having to wake up so early to let Taylor in this morning. But then, thankfully, she realized the importance of getting our first day of school outfits juuust right.

  “Almost done!” Taylor giggles.

  We do some last-minute shirt tucking and walk out of my room and past my mother, whose face always looks pained these days. Mom hands us both breakfast bars and we grab our schoolbags. Taylor whispers, “Who run the world?”

  I smile and hope that all the joking and singing has worked as some kind of magical camouflage. If I act happy, I will be happy. If I tell myself I’m happy, I will be happy.

  I will be happy.

  I will be happy.

  Sometimes when we drive by the lake, I think I can hear it growling. Is that crazy? I see the dark stillness of it spread out along the horizon and I wonder if maybe under that peaceful surface is the whole body of a monster. Its head is turned up to face the sky, its mouth is wide wide wide open like that one time I watched a rat snake eat a baby possum. The monster is waiting quietly, patiently, for its next meal. I press my ear against the window of Old Betsy and I hear the rattling of her rusty doors and the whining of her all-weather wheels, but I also hear something else. Something low, almost more of a feeling than a sound.

  The lake is hungry …

  It’s been three years since its last meal …

  “Amelia.” Mom’s golden eyes, her tiger eyes, dart up to the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of me in the back seat. “Amelia. Are you okay?”

  I don’t answer. Taylor looks me over and seems to decide that I’m probably okay. She catches Mom’s eye in the mirror and nods ever so slightly.

  Mom’s eyes dart back up to the rearview mirror and catch my gaze for just a second. My own tiger eyes—identical versions of hers, with the golden sparkle, the flecks of green, the rim of brown—try to tell her what I’m feeling. They try to explain about the monster under the lake.

  “I’ll be late to the General Store today, maybe four thirty. I told Mrs. Grant, and she said that was fine. Will you be okay?”

  I nod. Taylor’s grandma has been giving me extra cheese on my grilled cheeses at the General Store soda fountain for three full years now. She makes me milk shakes and lets me pick out a handful of penny candy anytime I want. It sounds amazing, like a birthday wish come true. But I’d trade all the cheese in the world to have Clara back.

  Even now. Even when it’s not supposed to hurt every single day.

  My eyes brim with tears but the annoyance of almost crying, again, seems to shut them down, thankfully. Taylor reaches over and squeezes my hand really quick.

  Old Betsy grunts and wheezes her way around the rotary in the center of town. Instead of a stoplight, there’s a huge fountain in the middle of the road that everyone has to drive around. A lot of days I think I feel like the fountain must feel. Everyone staring at it, wondering why it doesn’t work. It looks totally fine on the outside, maybe a few cracks but nothing that’s a big deal. But on the inside, something is definitely wrong. No matter how many experts and repairmen the town hires, no one can figure out why the fountain won’t spray water anymore. It’s been broken for thirty years because of some dumb prank, and it’s like the prank just broke the fountain’s heart.

  My heart understands. Except that instead of NOT being able to spew water into the sky, I can’t seem to stop spewing water from my eyes. None of the experts can fix me either. And believe me, a lot have tried.

  Mom steers Old Betsy into the school drop-off lane and I thank the Universe that my water-spewing eyes seem dry right now. My heart is about to explode, but that I can handle.

  That no one can see.

  “Have a good day, sweetie,” Mom says as Taylor shoves open the heavy car door and jumps to the curb.

  You know those videos that are speeded up super fast? The ones showing a leaf falling from a tree, drying up, curling, and turning to dust in a matter of seconds? That’s how I feel when Mom calls anyone—especially Taylor—“sweetie.” But these days, pretty much anything that comes out of Mom’s mouth makes me want to either crawl in a hole or run away as fast as I can (which is not very fast, but still). I can’t exactly figure out why anything she does makes me want to leap out of my skin, but there you go.

  Just another unfortunate mystery orbiting Amelia Peabody.

  I kick open the car door and grab my nearly empty messenger bag.

  “I love you!” Mom calls after me.

  I want to call over my shoulder, “I love you, too!” but I don’t. I mean, as far as last words go, I love you is pretty good. Yet … there’s this part of me, a huge part, that wants to believe I can keep her safe by not saying anything at all. You can’t get into a fiery car crash, you can’t get struck by lightning, you can’t trip and fall and break
your neck, you can’t be swallowed by the lake, if there are no last words. Right?

  Taylor and I walk toward the big live oak tree in front of the school. I don’t look back at Mom, even though I hear Old Betsy wheezing, even though I hear the car behind her gently honking. I hold my hand up over my head, a wave, even though I don’t turn around. And finally, Old Betsy harrumphs out of the drop-off line and Mom is safe.

  “Who run the world?” Taylor knocks her shoulder into mine and grins.

  “Girls!” I grin back.

  The bell rings and we both take a deep breath. We link arms and walk up the stairs through the heavy doors. My chin is high, but my heart is pounding. I try to ignore it. Usually all eyes are on me because I’m the poor girl with the dead sister. But now all eyes are on me because I WANT all eyes on me. No one feels sorry for Sandy in Grease. No one feels sorry for Beyoncé. Surely, my face only looks pale because of the tight black T-shirt. Definitely not because I’m afraid someone will call my bluff and realize I’m still the girl with the dead sister, the one who can’t be trusted to speak out loud in class because she might burst into tears.

  No. I’m the new Amelia. They’re staring at me because they know I mean business. They know eighth grade is mine for the taking.

  Well, mine for the taking after I peel my face from the edge of the doorway.

  “Amelia!” Taylor’s hands are over her mouth as she does a poor job of stifling her laughter. “Um. Watch out.”

  Perfect. Arriving in homeroom with a crease down the middle of my forehead was exactly what I had planned. Sigh.

  Instead of milling around and talking about summer vacation, everyone in the classroom wanders from desk to desk scanning papers, with shrieks and moans and laughs filling the room.

  “Wha—” I look to Mrs. Henderson, our new homeroom teacher. New meaning for eighth grade. Mrs. Henderson herself has been on the earth since the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

  “On each desk is a letter. Remember the ones Mrs. Werther had you write on your first day of sixth grade? Well, now it’s time to find your letter and see what you’ve accomplished.”

  Mrs. Werther is even older than Mrs. Henderson. She was one of the aliens that rode in on the asteroid.

  Taylor and I start to scan the desks, too. Taylor calls out, “Found mine!” and she sinks into her chair looking like she’s ready to burst into terrified laughter. I walk up and down each aisle, not finding my name. The late bell echoes through the room and Mrs. Henderson shuts the classroom door. I’m starting to freak out. Where’s my letter?

  A desk toward the back of the classroom is empty, so I hurry over there. Surely, that has to be mine.

  Dear Most Beautiful Queen of the Universe (snort).

  I suck in my breath, running my hands over the impressions made by the pen and smoothing the letter flat on the desk.

  NO.

  No way.

  Dear Self,

  You have made it to sixth grade, no thanks to that seriously goofy little sister of yours and her obsession with trying to steal clothes from your closet. Hello, scaring me to death this morning when all I wanted was a clean shirt. GAH.

  Holy Beyoncé. This is Clara’s letter!

  Without realizing what I’m doing, I drop into the chair attached to the desk. I hold up the letter and it shakes in my hands like my body thinks it’s made of plutonium.

  Mrs. Werther said to write something to yourself that would be inspiring when you read it on the first day of eighth grade. So. Hmm.

  How about: Congratulations on making all your dreams come true! Making some of your dreams come true? Making at least a couple of them true? Remembering to just dream in the first place?

  Well, in case you haven’t made all of your dreams come true, here are some things I really hope you HAVE accomplished. And if you haven’t … get after it, girl. Next year is high school! OMG.

  1)Be nicer to Mom and Amelia. (Why is it easier to be nice to Dad? Try to not let Mom and Amelia annoy you so much. Remember, you love them. So much.)

  2)Get on the softball team. (You’re good. Everyone says you’re good. Always remember … you’re good.)

  3)Ask Billy to a dance. (OMG. Billy. Sigh.)

  4)Throw an awesome birthday party on the lake. (Invite everyone, make sure the boat is working, have enough ice cream for the whole town, make sure everyone knows it’s YOU, Most Beautiful Queen of the Universe, in charge.)

  5)Plan the most epic eighth-grade prank ever. (But do a better job than Dad did for his prank—don’t break the FOUNTAIN. Wow, Dad, way to take it to the next level.)

  Seems doable, right? I mean, you ARE the Most Beautiful Queen of the Universe. Anything can happen.

  Good luck surviving middle school!

  Love,

  Yourself

  I hear Clara’s voice as I read the letter over and over. It’s as if she is leaning behind me and whispering in my ear. Hot, embarrassing tears threaten to overflow down my cheeks.

  I’m supposed to be tough and strong this year. How can I be tough and strong with Clara whispering in my ear about all the things she never got to do? And even worse … the one thing she did get to do: the birthday party at the lake.

  The day the monster awoke. The day that was the end of everything.

  “Amelia? Are you okay?” Mrs. Henderson’s voice breaks through the clouds and mist of grief, and my head flies up to face my teacher. I grip the plutonium letter and want nothing more than to bolt from my desk, run home, and never come back to school. Ever.

  “I’m—I’m fine,” I manage to whisper. Taylor shoots me a look from across the room. If you have to say, “I’m fine,” usually you are definitely not fine. This is something the two of us discuss a lot.

  After an agonizingly slow nine-million-hour homeroom, where all sounds and instructions seem to be coming through a tunnel a million miles away, where my head seems to be floating over my body, where I clutch the plutonium letter to my chest, afraid to breathe too deeply because I might combust into a cloud of atoms, the bell for first period rings. Everyone stumbles out of their desks and moves to the doorway. Taylor is by my side in about 2.7 seconds.

  She kneels next to my desk, putting a hand on my arm. “Amelia. What is it?” I can’t say anything. I can’t move. She gingerly reaches over and pulls the now crumpled letter from my grip. As soon as she reads the top of the page, her hand flies to her mouth. She looks up at me, her eyebrows crinkling in an angry V shape.

  “Do you think someone did this on purpose? To upset you? Who would do that?” Her eyes cast around the room, but everyone else is gone.

  I like that Taylor always wants to protect me, but I don’t think this was some mean trick. “I’m pretty sure Mrs. Henderson just saw the last name and got things mixed up. It’s a miracle she’s even still teaching. She’s got to be at least one hundred and fifty years old. It had to have been an accident.”

  “Or some kind of divine intervention.” Taylor’s eyes are huge and her eyebrows now make wide arcs on her forehead. “Maybe this is the Universe’s way of telling you you’re on the right track—eighth grade really is the time for you to take over the world.”

  “What do you mean?” I sniff and realize there are tears spilling down my cheeks. That’s me now: The Girl Who Doesn’t Even Know When She’s Crying.

  Taylor glances down at the letter and then looks back up at me. “I mean, maybe you can do some of these things Clara has listed. You want to break out of your shell, right? What if you follow her lead?”

  I reach over and take the letter from her, running my fingers over the handwriting on the paper. I can see where Clara’s pen stopped for a minute while she must have been thinking about what to say next. I can see how her writing got messier when she was excited. I feel the grooves in the paper where she pressed her pen hard, making sure her words hit the page just right. It’s like a little piece of her is here with me, after all this time. Something new, things I didn’t know about her. Who is Billy
? What does she mean about Dad being one of the kids who broke the fountain? I thought I knew everything about her, but here’s this sudden peek into a girl I didn’t really know.

  “That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?” Taylor presses. “You showing everyone that you’re tough by following Clara’s lead? I’d do it with you.” Taylor gives me a hopeful smile.

  I know it’s probably been so hard for her, being friends with the Crying Girl, having to soothe me and help me on the days when everything just seems lost. That’s why she’s dressed in these ridiculous black clothes with me, why she wants me to see this as a sign—because if I can be normal again, then she can be normal again.

  Maybe Clara’s ghost is trying to tell me to be a better friend.

  I don’t know, though. Find this Billy kid and ask him out? Join the softball team? What would Beyoncé do?

  “I think this is a terrible idea,” I say.

  Taylor claps her hands together and grins as she stands up. “We’re doing it, then. AWESOME.” I shake my head. Taylor is good at a lot of things, but not getting her way isn’t one of them. She reaches down and helps me out of my seat. The classroom is filling with students for the next class.

  “Come on, we’re going to be late.” Taylor drags me out into the hallway, pulling my schedule from my backpack, looking at my classes, and steering me toward algebra.

  Is this crazy? This is crazy.

  I don’t actually want anything on Clara’s list. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t want to be wearing these black clothes. Do I even want to be queen of the eighth grade?

  I think about my comfy bed. I think about pulling the covers over my head and just staying there, forever, like Dad almost did when Clara died.

  I trip over my shoelace and Taylor catches me just before I sprawl out in the hallway.

  “We might have to brainstorm a little about that softball thing,” she says through a laugh.

  This really is a terrible idea.

  “Extra cheese?” Mrs. Grant’s sharp stare bores holes in me and I wonder what secrets are leaking out.

  “Yes, please,” I say, looking down at the countertop. There are sparkly green flecks in the Formica. The Grants are very proud that the General Store hasn’t been redesigned since it was built by Taylor’s great-grandmother way back in the 1950s. It’s like walking into a time warp, with the counter area for milk shakes and hamburgers, and the pharmacy in the back. How many places can you go get lunch, candy, toilet paper, and your allergy medicine all at the same time? Not many.