Love, Jacaranda by Alex Flinn

Author:Alex Flinn [Flinn, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062447869
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2020-07-06T18:30:00+00:00

To: [email protected]

Date: December 22, 6:14 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

Subject: Girls get crafty

Dear Mr. Smith,

Today, I spent the entire day shopping and making decorations for the Hodgkinses’ Christmas Eve party. I had to talk them into it. The Hodgkinses don’t DIY, they buy. But after the twentieth time Mrs. Hodgkins sighed loudly about undelivered greenery from Maine, I spoke up. I figured it would solve three problems:

1.Make Mrs. H. less stressed out

2.Make Phoebe less stressed out

3.Give me and Phoebe something to do that doesn’t involve shopping and spending money

Oh, and I’m going to add:

4.Get me to stop thinking about what, exactly, Jarvis Junior meant when he said, “This is her? The girl?” Like, do they DISCUSS me? And what do they say?

Anyway . . . you can see how I’m overthinking this.

When I said we should just make decorations, Phoebe looked at me like I’d suggested we form a metal band. Mrs. Hodgkins looked like I’d suggested we form a metal band and perform at her party.

“It’ll be fun,” I told Phoebe. Then I remembered the beautiful card she’d made, and I added, “You’re the artistic one.” She looked down and blushed, very un-Phoebe-like.

“What kind of decorations?” Mrs. Hodgkins asked.

Ah! There was the problem. Since I’m a Miami girl, they assumed I’d suggest flamingos in Santa hats or maybe a life-sized animated nativity scene in the living room. So I took out my phone and showed them the photos of everything Daisy and I made over Thanksgiving break. I figured that that would do the trick. Phoebe’s hella competitive, so if I crafted at Daisy’s, then they had to have BETTER crafts, CITY crafts, at her place.

I wasn’t wrong. Half an hour on Pinterest later, we were out buying 6 Christmas trees, which we had delivered (I could get used to this whole “money is no object” thing), six stands, twenty pillar candles, and every string of lights and can of spray snow available in three Duane Reades. We sent Phoebe’s brother, Fitz, out to buy white and silver spray paint since you have to be 21 to do that. Then we went to Central Park to gather twigs and pinecones to make centerpieces and giant wreaths for the walls.

“I feel like a vagrant,” Phoebe said as she gathered twigs. “Or a bird.” But she giggled and, with her face flushed pink in the cold and the sound of street Christmas music in our ears, she looked the happiest I’d seen her.

“Admit it, it’s fun.” We were throwing sticks into a Bloomingdale’s Big Brown Bag because Phoebe refused to consider trash bags.

Phoebe nodded. “Abigail and I—when she was going to be my roommate—we talked about decorating our room a theme, like stencil stuff on the walls to look like Paris. But that didn’t happen.”

I started to say that Daisy and I would help her decorate, if she wanted. But I knew that wasn’t her point. Instead, I asked her what had happened to Abigail. (But tentatively, because Phoebe is like this cat that used to sit outside our apartment when I was little.

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