The Daughters Join the Party by Joanna Philbin

Author:Joanna Philbin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780316192354
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2011-11-06T22:00:00+00:00

chapter 14

Over the next few days, whenever Emma passed Remington in the halls, she noticed Walker wasn’t with him. Instead, her brother now seemed to be spending lots of time with two senior guys she barely knew—Steven Hall and Chris Flagg. Steven and Chris were swimmers and straight-A students, just like Remington, but there was something about them that she didn’t like. One day she heard Steven whispering numbers to Chris as certain girls walked by them in the hallway. And whenever she walked past them when her brother wasn’t around they leered at her.

She understood why Walker wouldn’t want to be around them. He was way too classy for that kind of stuff. But she wondered why Remington did, even if it was just during school. He’d never been into hanging out with people like that. He didn’t drink, he didn’t party, and he was the last guy to call out numbers as girls walked by. The only thing she could figure was that they’d gotten to be friends during Remington’s preseason swim team training and on runs around the reservoir. She made a mental note to say something to Remington about this. Preferably the next time he did something to annoy her.

But when she wasn’t picking apart her brother’s choice of friends, Emma concentrated on her speech. She finally read through all the articles she’d printed and picked out her three main points. She tried to remember what Walker had said about the introduction, the body, and the conclusion, and spent the weekend writing it all out. Over and over, she practiced speaking it out loud to Archie in his tank, trying to make it shorter each time. Mrs. Bateman hadn’t given her a time limit, but Emma was guessing that she liked things on the shorter side.

On Sunday night, the night before speech team practice, Emma was delivering her speech to Archie, who was quietly slithering around on her bedspread, when there was a knock on her door. “Honey?” her mom called out. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.”

The door opened and Emma’s mom walked in carrying a zip-up clothing bag over her arm. “Honey, do you mind if I get your opinion on a couple things?” she asked. “These are some dresses that I might wear to Dad’s birthday party this weekend in D.C.” She laid the bag on Emma’s bed.

“Mom, watch out for Archie!” Emma said, snatching him up out of harm’s way and depositing him in his tank.

“Oh, honey,” Carolyn said with a sigh. “I always forget you have that thing.” She laid the bag down again and unzipped it. “So, there are three choices,” she said, and Emma saw silk ruffles and sequined hems spilling out of the bag. “I don’t know if any of them are me, but there’s going to be press there… Of course.” She pulled out the first dress, which was a midnight blue sheath with only one sleeve and a ruffled hem. “What do you think?”

“Definitely not,” Emma decided.

“Okay,” Carolyn said, tossing it.

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