Famous Last Words by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Author:Jennifer Salvato Doktorski [Doktorski, Jennifer Salvato]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
ISBN: 9780805093674
Google: YEGKUlJteRUC
Amazon: 0805093672
Barnesnoble: 0805093672
Goodreads: 16075953
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2013-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

chapter fourteen

Holiday Wrap-Up

Shelby’s mom drops us both off at my house after work. The plan is to have pizza with Gram and then walk downtown for the annual prefireworks reunion. It’s been only a few weeks since we’ve seen our classmates, and yet we all flock to Memorial Field, the high school’s football stadium, to walk laps around the bleachers and check one another out.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with us, Gram?” I feel guilty leaving her home by herself again. I haven’t been around that much this weekend.

“You two have fun. You don’t need an old lady like me tagging along.”

“You’re not old,” Shelby says. She loves Gram. “You should see Ms. Highland, the eleventh-grade English teacher. Now, she’s old. She’s, like, too senile to even be teaching. Sometimes her wig shifts when she’s writing on the chalkboard.”

Gram reaches absently toward her wavy gray hair that she keeps stylishly short. “I’m glad I inherited my father’s good locks.”

The doorbell rings. My grandmother hands me some money.

“Pay for the pie, hon,” Gram says. “Maybe it’s a cute boy.”

I peek through the skinny window alongside the door to see if it’s anyone we know. He’s not cute as Gram had hoped. He’s not even a boy. He is old. Not old like my parents, old like Gram.

“Uh, Gram. I’ll let you handle this one,” I say. I walk back into the kitchen and hand her the money.

Gram returns a few minutes later carrying the pizza.

“Would you believe that was Freddy from the senior club?” Gram says. She puts the pizza on the kitchen table.

“Freddy, huh?” Shelby teases.

Grandma actually smiles and waves Shelby off in an aw-shucks kind of way. Great. Now my grandmother is getting more action than I am. I reach for a slice of pizza and take a bite.

“So, what are you going to do tonight?” Shelby asks.

“Watch the New York City fireworks on TV like I always do.”

“You should have gone to the family picnic, Gram. You could have watched the fireworks on the boardwalk,” I say.

“Are you kidding me? I’m not going to any family functions until that witch Angie apologizes.”

The D’Angelos are notorious grudge holders. There is always some cousin or aunt or uncle who’s at odds—or full-out warring—with another family member. The Gram–Aunt Angie feud is a fairly recent one (some last for years) and concerns Aunt Angie’s oldest son, the podiatrist. Gram made the mistake of patronizing a local foot doctor instead of having someone drive her the seventy-five miles to Aunt Angie’s son’s office in Toms River to have what amounted to nothing more than a high-tech toenail clipping. One has to wonder how word of Grandma’s toenail clipping ever got out. Not that it matters. Our family arguments are rarely grounded in logic.

Still, I know Gram is just using this as an excuse. She probably wanted to give my parents some space.

“You girls get ready to go,” Gram says when we’re finished eating. “I’ll wrap up the rest of the pizza.

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