Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Author:Sarah Dessen
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

I THOUGHT I’d dodged the bullet of Family Day at Lincoln. A couple of weeks later, however, another issue arose. Just my luck.

“I have great news,” my mother announced at dinner one evening. Suddenly, it all made sense: the way she’d been humming to herself while she set the table, the extra cheerful manner in which she questioned me about my day at school. “We’re going to get to see Peyton. All of us, together.”

“Really?” my dad said.

She nodded. Clearly, she wanted to draw this out: it was that good. “I got a call today. He’s finished his first course, and there’s going to be a graduation ceremony, with all family invited.”

From the way she said it, so proud, you would have thought he was getting an Ivy League diploma, not a certificate from a prison program that was, in fact, mandatory. But that was my mom. When it came to Peyton, all she needed was a glimmer of good to extrapolate to outstanding.

“This is the civics course?” my dad asked, helping himself to more bread.

“Civics and Law.” She took a sip of her wine. “It’s such a great thing. He’s really learned a lot, and now that he’s done, he can pick other classes. There’s quite a variety, actually. Michelle says Lincoln is good that way. The warden really believes in the importance of on-site learning.”

“When is this happening?” my dad asked.

“The end of November,” she replied. “I’m thinking we’ll drive up the night before and stay at that hotel that’s right nearby. That way we won’t have to leave at the crack of dawn.”

“But I have school,” I said automatically.

For the first time all day, my mother’s cheeriness waned. “You can miss one day. This is important, Sydney.”

End of discussion. My father glanced at me, as if maybe he might speak up, but then returned to eating. And so the countdown began.

Plans were made, two hotel rooms booked. One for me and my mom, and one for my dad and Ames, who was of course coming along. My mother, in her networking mode, reached out to some other Lincoln families with “graduates” (as she insisted on calling them) to coordinate a potluck of desserts and coffee for after the ceremony. Just like that, she was back in her comfort zone. She was so busy, in fact, that she hardly noticed that I was spending just about every afternoon at Seaside. Which was fine with me.

“So it’s a class he took?” Layla asked me as we sat doing homework there one day. “I didn’t know there was school in prison. Seems like being locked up would be punishment enough.”

Unlike Jenn and Meredith, with whom I’d always shared a drive to succeed academically, Layla basically spent the school day counting down to the final bell. Even homework made her uncharacteristically grumpy, and she usually needed two or three YumYums to get it done.

“It’s a class everyone there has to take, about the law.” I flipped a page in my calculus book.

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