Welcome Back, Stacey! by Ann M. Martin

Author:Ann M. Martin [M. Martin, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

That next week was a busy one.

On Saturday afternoon, while my parents were seeing their lawyers, I went to a theater and bought three tickets (with baby-sitting money) to a movie I knew we all wanted to see. My plan was to wait until almost the last minute to give Mom and Dad the tickets, to ensure that we wouldn’t be able to find three seats in a row once we got to the theater. Then I’d insist that my parents sit together while I found a single seat.

But when I gave them the tickets, Dad said, “Stacey, what a nice surprise, but I plan to spend the evening combing the paper for apartment ads. Why don’t you and your mom take Laine instead?”

So we did, and anyway we found three seats together.

* * *

On Sunday, I suggested a carriage ride through Central Park. This was particularly meaningful, since years ago Dad had proposed to Mom in one of those carriages. My new plan was to wait until my parents had already climbed into the carriage, and then say, “Uh-oh! I forgot to give myself my insulin. You guys go on without me.”

But we never even made it to Central Park. Mom liked the idea, but this time she was busy reading the real estate section of the paper and didn’t want to leave the apartment.

* * *

On Monday when I got home from school I was delighted to find Mom out for the afternoon. Time for plan number three. I put our card table in the middle of the living room, covered it with a white tablecloth, set it for a romantic dinner for two, and cooked up a meal of chicken and vegetables. I even made two ice-cream parfaits for dessert. When my parents came home, I would tell them that I’d been invited to Laine’s for dinner, and leave them to the romance. But Dad didn’t come home. He phoned to say that he was going to spend the evening apartment-hunting and then sleep at his office. (He does that sometimes. There’s a couch in his office and he keeps a clean suit hanging behind the door.)

So Mom and I ate the dinner (but I saved the second parfait for Dad).

* * *

On Tuesday I was out of ideas. Ditto on Wednesday.

* * *

But by Thursday I was rolling again. I slipped each of my parents a note written on the official paper of my school, saying that I was behind in my work and that my guidance counselor wanted to meet them for dinner at the Silver Spur, a restaurant in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, Mom and Dad both smelled a trick and called the guidance counselor. Why did they have to be so smart? If they’d just followed directions, they would have had a nice, romantic dinner together and called off the divorce. Instead, I got in trouble with Mom, Dad, and my counselor, and was also given three weeks in which to catch up on my homework.

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