While You're Away Part I by Jessa Holbrook

Author:Jessa Holbrook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2013-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

FOUR

I texted my sister Ellie, and she saved me from the rest of the party. I couldn’t go back in there, not with those texts from Will taunting me. Not knowing that I’d walk in and see Tricia hostessing away, completely unaware she’d been betrayed. Especially not knowing that I’d have to face Dave, even if he was oblivious.

Sliding my guitar into the backseat, I tried to sound light when I climbed into the front. “Homeward, Jeeves.”

“It’s early,” Ellie pointed out, ignoring my put-on expression. “Bad gig?”

Really, I should have known she’d ask. She and I were both pathologically addicted to our arts. That’s probably why we didn’t fight like most sisters. Sure, there was the standard-issue stuff. Closet raiding, special cereal eating, little battles. But never any wars, because we connected on a completely different level.

We saved the hardcore rivalry for our older sister, Grace. She was off at Loyola. Acing her GREs, getting a degree in financial mathematics that would make her crazy rich. Grace liked to complain that she was the one who’d have to take care of Mom and Dad in their old age.

Obviously, dancer Ellie and musician Sarah wouldn’t be any help. Grace didn’t believe that success could exist if it wasn’t quantifiable by equations and tables and charts. She was the alien in the family. She just didn’t know it.

But because Ellie and I shared that wavelength, it also meant that Ellie was hyperaware when my artistic schedule changed. Much like I would be shocked if Ellie were home on a Saturday morning—prime matinee time—she knew that I shouldn’t be heading out this early. A gig usually meant that Dave drove me home, sometimes just before my midnight curfew. A round of homework, one last tour of e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, and then bed—an early morning for me on the weekends was noon.

Clicking the seat belt into place, I shook my head. “It was good. Short, though, and really crowded.”

“Oh, good,” she said.

The other nice thing about Ellie was that she took me at my word. With surgical precision, Grace would dissect every single bit of that sentence to see if there was something more beneath it. Not Ellie. Whether she believed me or not, she didn’t push. She also didn’t pry, and I was glad.

I still didn’t understand what had happened with Will. Or more importantly, why it had happened. Was I only trying to get even with Dave? Was I just another one of Will’s endless conquests? Or was it possible that I hadn’t imagined anything, and Will and I shared some inexplicable pull? I felt split in pieces, and none of them matched. It turned out that it was possible to feel guilty and elated at the same time. To be ashamed and emboldened at once. Though it had been wrong to even try it, I wanted another taste of Will.

The quiet in the car gave me too much time to think. I wanted to get home, because there I could burrow in my own bed and welcome sleep.

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