I Now Pronounce You Someone Else by Erin McCahan

Author:Erin McCahan [Erin McCahan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780545283137
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Chapter Sixteen

Jared came home Saturday, October 2, around three o’clock, right at the time I was getting my hair cut. He was happy, he said, to hang out with his parents for a little bit and would pick me up for dinner at eight.

I was upstairs when he arrived at my house, and I lingered there, calling down to Mother that I was coming, I’m almost ready; I’ll be right down.

I had been ready twenty minutes. But it was nearly my birthday, and I figured that—like Peter—I was entitled to make an entrance every now and then. Or for the first time ever.

And anyway, I was a little nervous.

I walked down the front steps, not the back ones that entered right into the kitchen where the three of them were chatting.

Jared, across the kitchen talking with Whitt, saw me first, and his expression of impatience transformed into one of those all-for-me smiles. For a second, I thought I saw something similar on Whitt’s face, but I didn’t take the time to study him and returned my gaze to Jared.

And then my mother gasped.

She pressed both hands flat against her chest and, catching herself, forced a weak but polite smile to her face.

Jared crossed to me, held my face a moment, and then ran two fingers along a strand of newly darkened medium-brown hair.

“This was worth the wait,” he said and kissed me quickly and called me beautiful, and Whitt seconded it while Mother lamented, “Bronwen. What on earth did you do?”

“I undid something, Mother,” I told her and soothed her with a kiss on her cheek. “This is my natural color.”

“But—yes—yes,” she managed.

But that was all she managed.

Jared told my parents we’d be home no later than twelve thirty or one, and since I’d have no curfew once I turned eighteen, Mother could not object. It helped, though, that Jared explained every moment of our evening—dinner, movie, a walk downtown, maybe late-night coffee.

“And then the first Happy birthday of the day,” he said.

“Sounds like you have quite a birthday in store for you,” Whitt said.

“Beats turning thirteen,” I said without thinking.

“What was so bad about thirteen?” Mother asked, and I summoned all my internal restraint against the rage I suddenly felt—Are you kidding me?!—and quickly said, “Oh, you know. No girl likes being thirteen.”

“Thirteen was a rough one,” Whitt said. “Hmm.”

“Hmm,” I said back.

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