Bitter End by Jennifer Brown

Author:Jennifer Brown [BROWN, JENNIFER]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316134149
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2011-05-09T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Everything was right again.

I drove home and rushed inside, heading straight upstairs to drop off my backpack. I changed into a pair of pajama pants and tossed my hair up into a messy ponytail, peeking out the window at Zack’s driveway. His car was already there, which meant they were waiting for me.

The house was silent—Dad wouldn’t bring Celia home from Yearbook Club until after six. I scrawled a quick note on the back of an envelope on the kitchen table, telling them I was next door, then stepped outside and shuffled through the grass in my socks, the cold quickly seeping into my toes.

When I walked in, Zack’s mom was in the study, pulling dried flowers out from between the pages of a phone book and pasting them onto little note cards. Mrs. Clavinger was really crafty that way, always making things out of raffia and hand-embossing envelopes and stuff. She had her own scrapbooking business and would have meetings once a month. Zack always called them her “hen gatherings,” and he always found somewhere else to be when the ladies were over.

“Hey, Mrs. C!” I called, shutting the door behind me.

She looked up, a piece of hair falling out of the bandanna over her forehead. “Alex!” she gushed. “What a—they’re in the kitchen—wonderful surprise—they’re making cookies.”

“Great,” I said, and headed for the kitchen.

Bethany was holding a metal bowl to her stomach and smacking Zack with a wooden spoon as he tried to stick his fingers into the dough.

“Hey,” I said, sidling up to them. I waited for Bethany to swing at Zack again and swiped a fingerful of cookie dough while she was occupied.

“Hey!” she cried, and smacked my arm with the spoon, too, leaving a smear of dough. While she was concentrating on me, Zack stuck his hand in the bowl from the other side, coming out with a fistful of dough. “You guys!” she squealed, but she was laughing too hard now to keep either one of us out, and we ended up taking the bowl to the table and all sitting around it, eating it with our fingers.

It was just like we’d done a million times before, eating junk and talking about everyday stuff like our classes and which teachers we thought were secretly hooking up on the side and how Mia Libby’s boobs had suddenly gotten way huger this year after she’d “gone to Europe for two weeks.”

We talked about the Colorado trip, still arguing about the merits of summer over winter travel. Bethany showed us photos of our RV. She pulled up the Stanley Hotel on her laptop, and we read about all the hauntings that supposedly happened there. We decided that for sure we’d go to the natural history museum in Denver. Things were really coming together. All we needed to do was pick a date.

Nobody brought up the night of the lake party. Nobody brought up Cole.

This was what best friendship was about: forgiveness and unconditional love. And cookie dough.

Zack

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