The Six Rules of Maybe by Deb Caletti

Author:Deb Caletti [Caletti, Deb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: english eBooks
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2010-02-24T06:00:00+00:00

The minute I saw Juliet, she was going to hear it from me. If she wanted to mess up her own life, fine. But there was Hayden to think about. There was Jitter. I didn’t know who exactly Jitter was going to be, but I was starting to want the best for him. I felt the rising heat of my words, waiting for the chance to erupt and spill. I didn’t care how young she thought I was. She’d better knock this off, and fast.

I heard Juliet’s and Hayden’s voices in the basement later that afternoon. Maybe I would ask to speak to her alone; I’d say something like Can I have a word with you privately, the way people did on television. I walked down the stairs, to the cool paneled room. No one ever spent much time down there, except our old Barbies and their pink Corvettes, packed away in boxes marked TOYS in fat black marker. It was the room that collected the past, the same as that one kitchen drawer collects the rubber bands and loose screws and take-out menus until you can’t even open it anymore. I didn’t even realize how much stuff was down there until now.

“Knock knock,” I said.

“Come on in,” Hayden said.

I felt shaky with held-back anger. The sliding glass doors to the backyard were open, and Zeus trotted in and out with the glee of sudden free access to grass. Juliet sat on one box and had opened another; she had some of our old stuff laid out—my old Ernie Halloween costume; her Princess Jasmine one; Lambie, a stuffed lamb she used to keep in the corner of her room. She wore the Princess Jasmine headpiece on her white-gold hair.

“Hey!” Hayden said to me. Zeus trotted back in, sniffed a hello into my palm, and then trotted back out again. He couldn’t believe his good fortune at being able to come and go as he pleased. I had felt that same way when I first got my driver’s license. “We’re trying to get our new digs ready,” Hayden said. “Studio apartment.”

“You’re moving down here?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice steady. I avoided looking at Juliet.

“We’re leaving the nest,” he said.

“Mom just wants more distance between her and a crying baby,” Juliet said.

“I doubt that,” I said. In fact, it was a stupid and selfish thing to say. “The way she’s been acting, she’d be happy if you let the baby move into her room. You, too.” I tried to keep back my fury, but my voice came out sounding snotty, even to me.

Hayden looked up, but kept quiet. He directed his focus back to the boxes. “These will fit into the garage,” he said.

“’Member this, Scars?” Juliet held up an old rabbit we had that was actually a puppet. She put her hand up his backside and made his head look around. It felt wrong of her to dig inside all of those old boxes. What do you do with the past when it’s past? You box it up, label it, move it out of sight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.