Authors: Tamara Summers
The week flies by, and there’s no sign of Leo. Carolina stops by often, but always without him, and I’m too chicken to ask where he is, in case he told her about the whole situation. We’re so busy, I can almost keep my mind off him sometimes. Paris claims to be so furious at us that there’s no chance she’ll let us back into the wedding party, but, mysteriously, we’re still working as hard as we would if we were bridesmaids. Paris behaves as if we are doing penance for our sins and should be grateful she’s letting us be involved at all.
“Remember,” Sofia whispers to me, “in a week she’ll be married, which means she’ll be
gone for a month on her honeymoon, and then she’s moving to New York with Jiro. Just hang on until then.”
Monday’s project is the wedding program, which of course turns out to be much more complicated than necessary. Paris wants it printed on bright yellow paper, folded in half with a dark green ribbon tied around the fold. She also wants a photo of her and Jiro on the front cover, but since there isn’t a good photo of them together, he has to take the train out from New York first thing so that Sofia can follow them around the yard with the digital camera until Paris is finally satisfied, at which point he is stuffed right back on the train and sent home again.
Then she has a long debate with herself (and, unfortunately, us) over whether to cut scalloped edges on all the programs. She also insists on mentioning somewhere in it that she did all the catering and the flower arrangements for the wedding—this despite the fact that I don’t actually see her set foot in the kitchen
most of the week. I gather she thinks that
demanding
a particular menu is the same as “catering” it.
And she also has to call Jiro several times to get the correct spellings of his various relatives’ names, which takes a million years because each time the two of them talk there is much more in the way of smooching noises than actual information-exchanging.
“My, my,” Paris says pointedly, clicking around with the mouse as she designs the program—on my computer, I might add. “Look at all this extra
space
I have. It’s funny how much you can fit in when you don’t have to list a whole bunch of ungrateful
bridesmaids
.”
It takes us half the day to get them printed and the other half to fold them all and tie the ribbons, especially since Paris keeps insisting we’re doing it wrong and making us retie the bows. That night I try Leo’s phone again, and once again he doesn’t answer.
Tuesday we work on place cards—writing them out by hand in dark green marker, rewriting
them when Paris changes the seating arrangements for the hundredth time, and clipping them into the sunflower card stands she bought online somewhere.
Tuesday afternoon, just as we’re finishing those up, Paris suddenly remembers that she doesn’t have a guestbook, which sends her into a panicking meltdown.
“I HAVE TO HAVE A GUESTBOOK!” she hollers, running up to her room to get her shoes.
“It won’t be a real wedding without a guestbook! I have to be able to remember it forever and always!”
“If she drinks as much as she did at Sydney’s wedding,” Sofia murmurs to me, “she’ll need lots of help to remember it all.”
Paris comes slamming down the stairs again and grabs my wrist. “Come on, Jack. If we can’t find the perfect one, we’ll just have to make one ourselves.”
The prospect of spending a whole afternoon doing that gets me moving pretty quickly. Paris insists on going to pretty much every stationery
store within a seventy-mile radius, and of course, in the end we go back to the very first one, which has a plain white book that Paris decides she can gussy up with sunflower decals to make it more “thematic.” She actually buys three, just in case she messes up the decorations on the first one, and we spend the rest of the night “helping” her decide which one to use.
Leo doesn’t answer his phone Tuesday night either. This time I muster up my courage and leave a message: “Hey, Leo. It’s, um, it’s Jack. I’m sorry—I don’t know what to say. But I am sorry. Can we maybe talk about it sometime?” Yeah, it’s not exactly inspired. I’m not surprised when he doesn’t call me back.
On Wednesday Mom has us make the food that’ll keep in the fridge until Saturday, namely, buckets of potato salad, the rest of the sunflower cookies, truckloads of fruit salad, and a baked ziti dish that Mom plans to reheat the morning of the wedding.
While we chop potatoes and slice strawberries, Paris perches on the counter beside us and
works on her wedding vows, which apparently involves a lot of sighing, wistful gazing into the air, and stealing of sliced strawberries.
Alex stops by to help us in the kitchen, but Paris is as chilly as she has been since they fought at Vicky’s bridal shower, and Alex doesn’t stay long. I guess that means it’s Sydney who was upgraded to “good sister” in our absence, although she certainly doesn’t show it by turning up to do wedding things at any point.
“I don’t
knooooooow
,” Paris moans, banging her head (not hard enough, if you ask me) on the overhead cabinets. “I mean, ‘in sickness and in health’ just sounds so
gross
, you know? It makes me think of
boils
and
vomit
.”
“Paris, please,” Mom says, eyeing the giant bowl of potatoes and mayonnaise. “Not in the kitchen.”
“Is Jiro writing his own vows, too?” Sofia asks.
“Of course!” Paris flicks her forelock of hair back with a smug look. “I mean, I want to know what he thinks of me, after all.”
“Well, this seems like a good time to find out,” I say, and give Paris an innocent look when she glances at me suspiciously.
The phone rings, and I nearly impale myself on the strawberry-slicing knife as I leap for it, but Paris gets there first.
“Hi, Carolina!” she trills. “No, we’re not busy.” Sofia rolls her eyes at me. “Sure, I’ll be there soon.” She hangs up and pops off the counter. “I wonder what happened to her cute assistant,” Paris muses as she gathers her purse off the counter. “It’s like he just vanished.”
Sofia gives me a hard look as Paris sails out of the kitchen, but I don’t meet her eyes. As soon as I can slip away, I try calling Leo again.
“I wish you would answer,” I say to his voice mail. “I miss you, Leo. Please…please talk to me.”
But my phone is silent for the rest of the day.
On Thursday, Paris completely loses her mind. She bursts into my room at six o’clock in the morning. SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
“It’s the end of the world!” she wails. “We’re
doomed! Everything is ruined! RUINED!”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I mumble, burrowing farther under the sheets.
“SOFIA!” Paris screams, flinging herself down on the floor in a dramatic heap. After a moment, I hear my other sister’s door open, and she stumbles blearily into my room.
“What’s the emergency?” she says with a yawn.
“Just the end of the
world
, that’s all,” Paris declares hysterically. “My wedding is going to be totally
destroyed
.”
Sofia climbs into bed beside me and steals one of my pillows. Her feet aren’t too cold yet, since she just jumped out of her own bed, so I allow this. “Tell us what’s going on, Paris,” she suggests, lying down.
“Only a HURRICANE, that’s what,” Paris announces. “A freaking HURRICANE heading RIGHT FOR MY WEDDING, that’s what!”
Well, that wakes me up a little. “Seriously?”
“That’s what the Weather Channel says!” Paris sits up, her eyes wild. “I might as well just
cancel my wedding right now!”
“Sweetheart, if we lived our lives according to the Weather Channel, we’d probably never leave the house,” Sofia points out sensibly.
“But if there’s a hurricane in the middle of my wedding, it’ll be the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone EVER!”
“Maybe we should just keep an eye on it and see what happens,” Sofia suggests. “And come up with an alternative in case it does rain.” This, by the way, is something Mom and Carolina have both been suggesting since day one, to no avail.
“No!” Paris shrieks. “I’m getting married on that beach or NOT AT ALL!” She springs to her feet and storms out of the room, which would probably be more dramatic if she didn’t have to navigate around my piles of clothes and trip on a stack of books on the way out.
“Did you hear that?” Sofia says to me. “A natural disaster is heading our way. And, oh, wait…are you dating anyone right now? Or is this happening completely independent of you?”
“Shut up,” I say, shoving her out of bed.
“Just think about that,” she says, and wanders back to her own room.
I wrestle with my conscience for a while, and then decide that maybe if he’s fast asleep, Leo will answer the phone without realizing who’s calling. But of course, it goes straight to voice mail again.
“Did you hear about the hurricane?” I ask.
“It’s like the universe thinks we’re together anyway. So…maybe we should be. Please? Leo? Can’t we at least talk?”
With a sigh, I hang up and try to go back to sleep. But all I can think about is Leo’s face as he walked away at the airport, so eventually I get up and go help Mom make guest folders for all the hotel rooms with directions to the wedding site.
Friday is the craziest day of all. By now, I miss Leo so much it’s like every cell in my body is urging me to run off and go find him, and I probably would if Mom and Paris didn’t have an iron grip on me the whole day. We (meaning me
and Sofia) have to pick half of the wildflowers (the rest can’t be picked until tomorrow morning) and start arranging the centerpieces, which creates an almighty leafy mess all over the deck, and we have to go out to the park and meet with the rental people who are setting up the tent so we (meaning Paris) can be sure that it’s situated exactly right for a perfect view of the ocean with tables exactly arranged around the dance floor they lay down for her.
We also have to listen to every single song on Paris’s iPod so she can decide what order she’s going to play them in, and we have to test out the speakers she’s rented to plug her iPod into, and then we have to listen to the whole wedding playlist over and over again for the rest of the day, which at least features less annoying music than Vicky’s, but also has an odd over-abundance of Ludacris that I’m sure my parents’ elderly friends are going to be thrilled about.
And of course, Friday night is the rehearsal dinner, where we finally get to meet Jiro’s parents for the first time. They also seem like sweet,
quiet people, as baffled by Paris and the whole wedding thing as the rest of us are. Jiro’s mom speaks a little English, enough to make reservations for just the family at the nicest Chinese restaurant in town.
Much to my surprise, Victoria and Kevin join us, and Paris doesn’t drive them away. Alex and Harvey, Sydney and Marco, Sofia and Ben—everyone has someone but me. I thought that was how I wanted it, but I really miss having someone I can whisper snarky comments to and whose hand I can hold under the table.
I kind of wish Paris had set me up like Victoria did, but Paris cares much less about symmetry than Victoria does. As long as all the attention is on her, Paris doesn’t really worry about what everyone else is doing.
Mom and Dad give a pretty restrained toast—holding back, I’m sure, for the sake of Jiro and his parents. Jiro’s mom also gives a short “best of luck” kind of toast. Outside, the wind is picking up, but it hasn’t started raining yet. Paris steals Alex’s BlackBerry several times
to check for weather updates, her face getting paler and paler each time.
I sneak off during dessert to call Leo one more time, again with no success.
And then, finally, the longest week of my life is over, and it’s Saturday morning.
The day of Paris’s wedding has arrived at last.
I open my eyes slowly. Sunshine is pouring in my window and spilling across my sheets.
The house is suspiciously quiet.
I rub my eyes, and then my ears, wondering if I’ve gone deaf. There’s no screaming; no sounds of Paris freaking out or something going horribly wrong. I squint at the alarm clock by my bed.
It’s ten o’clock. Wow. I’ve actually slept for a decent eleven hours, probably for the first time all summer.
Where is everyone? Why isn’t the house full of chaos and panic?
I slip on a pair of socks and pad to my bedroom
door, poking my nose into the hall. It’s quiet; all the doors are still shut. But I can smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, so I head down there to see who’s up.
Mom and Carolina are sitting at the breakfast table, working on a crossword puzzle. They each have a cup of coffee and an English muffin with jam. It’s such a peaceful, ordinary scene that I wonder if I slept through the whole wedding and now it’s Sunday.
“Good morning, Jack,” Carolina says softly, spotting me. Mom looks up and smiles, putting one finger to her lips to signal me to keep quiet.
“There’s coffee over there,” she whispers, pointing.
“Why are we whispering?” I whisper back, getting out a mug and pouring sugar into it. I like my coffee to be two-thirds milk and one-third sugar, with a little coffee added for flavoring.
“Paris is still asleep,” Mom says with a gleeful expression.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Carolina says. “I often find
that the most anxious brides work themselves into such a state that they crash the night before the wedding, sleep beautifully, and wake up completely refreshed and ready for anything.”
“Really?” I say, sitting down beside them. This certainly didn’t happen with any of my other sisters. It hardly seems fair for it to happen to Paris, although I suppose it’s easier on us this way. “What about the hurricane?” I ask.
“Supposedly it’s still coming,” Mom says, “but right now it’s lovely outside.” She nods at the sunlight cascading through the patio doors.
A rustle in the doorway makes us all jump nervously, but it’s only Sofia, who gets herself a banana and comes to sit with us. “This is so exciting,” she whispers. “I wonder when she’ll wake up.”
“Well, she’s doing her own hair and makeup,” Carolina says. “And she knows what she’s wearing, so she only really needs an hour to get ready. Everything else we have to do will probably go smoother if she sleeps through it.” She winks at us.
“What would you girls like to do first?” Mom asks me and Sofia. “Food or centerpieces? Someone should go pick the rest of the wild-flowers.”
“And you should do it before showering,” Carolina says, wagging her head. “You don’t want the pollen all over you.”
“We can do that, right, Sofia?” I say.
“Sure!” She jumps up, and Carolina points us to two large baskets sitting by the back door.
“These are the flowers we’re looking for,” she says, giving us a list with photos of each flower beside it. It includes black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, daisies, and buttercups, along with different kinds of acceptable leaves and ferns. “Be back in an hour, if you can.”
It’s a strange feeling to be out in the woods behind our house on the morning of one of my sister’s weddings, picking flowers like we’re in one of those old English storybooks about families and picnics and May Day and the seashore. Sofia and I look for the brightest colors and the biggest blooms, filling our baskets with bursts of
yellow and white.
“What a pretty day,” Sofia says. “It’s hard to believe there’s a hurricane only a few hours away.”
“With this family’s luck, it’ll hit right as Paris walks down the aisle,” I say.
“Even if you’re still single at that point?” Sofia says pointedly.
I sigh. “Well, it doesn’t seem like I’ll have much choice about that anyway.”
“So what happened with Leo?” she asks.
“You guys seemed so happy on the plane, and then suddenly…poof, he’s gone. He didn’t dump you like David did, did he? Because there has been surprisingly little crying and moping and lying around in the dark listening to Sarah McLachlan if he did.”
“Hey!” I protest. “I was fifteen! I think my moping has evolved a little since then.”
“So you
are
moping?”
“But he didn’t do anything,” I say. “It was me. I told him we couldn’t be together.” I tell her the whole story of Las Vegas and our fight at
the airport. At the end she stares at me disbelievingly.
“And you just let him go?” she says. “Just like that?”
“No!” I say. “I’ve tried calling him every day this week. I’ve left messages…”
“Jack,” Sofia says firmly, “do you love this guy or not?”
My mind flashes to Leo bringing me wedding cake samples…finding silk flowers to put in the bouquet…dancing with me…waiting in the car with me outside Yolanda’s apartment…calling me observant, and beautiful, and all the other wonderful things he’s said to me this summer, and how he’s always been there for me and tried to take care of me, no matter how ridiculous I was.
“I do love him,” I admit, my voice cracking.
“He’s the greatest guy in the world.”
Sofia grabs the basket out of my arms. “So get over there right now and tell him that.”
“What?” I take the handle and try to tug it back. “No, I can’t! We have a wedding today! I have bridesmaid duties!”
“No, you don’t,” Sofia says, yanking the basket out of my reach. “You’re not a bridesmaid anymore, remember? And I think you’ve done quite enough for this wedding. You go tell Leo right now that you want him to be your date to Paris’s wedding.” I open my mouth to speak, and she yells, “Hurricane or no hurricane! Go!”
Well, how can I argue with that? I turn and begin running through the trees. As I get closer to our house, I see Mom and Carolina through the patio doors, puttering around the kitchen. If I go in there, I’ll definitely get snared into another task. There’s no way to sneak past them and shower or change. I’ll have to go to Leo’s as I am, in tattered jeans, a black tank top, and the old plaid shirt my Dad wore while he painted the attic. But this is not the time for vanity! This is the time for action!
Luckily my bike is leaning against the side of the garage, where I left it a couple of days ago. I swing onto it and sail out of the driveway without anyone noticing me. It takes me about fifteen minutes to bike to Leo’s house, and as I drop
my bike on the grass out front, I hope my face isn’t too red and my hair isn’t too ridiculous.
I ring the doorbell and wait, rolling up the sleeves of the shirt and feeling my heart pound. Is he here? Will he answer the door? Will he see it’s me and pretend not to be home?
After a long, long time, I hear the locks being turned, and the door slowly swings open. My heart leaps in my chest when I see Leo standing there, and I realize how painfully much I want to throw myself into his arms.
He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and his hair is still tousled with sleep. He tilts his head and squints at me.
“Is it a wedding emergency?” he asks. “Did my mom send you?”
“No,” I say. “I—”
“Wait, let me guess—Paris has decided she wants a horse and carriage to take her away after the wedding, and we absolutely must find one in the next three hours. Am I right?” He actually smiles a little, and I smile back.
“Nope. Nobody knows I’m here. Well, except
Sofia. I’m a runaway bridesmaid. Or, you know, ex-bridesmaid.” I get the impression I’m babbling.
“Ah,” he says, leaning against the doorframe.
“It’s not about the wedding,” I say. “Except—” I take a deep breath. “I was wondering if you wanted to be my date. To Paris’s wedding. This afternoon.”
His eyebrows arch. “Seriously? What about The Curse?”
“I don’t care,” I say boldly, looking him straight in the eye. “It doesn’t matter what happens. I would rather be set on fire again than lose you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Hopefully that won’t be necessary.”
“So you’ll come?” I say. “Please? Will you?”
He looks down at his feet. “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe I was wrong about all this.”
“No!” I cry, seizing his hand without thinking about it. “You weren’t, really, I swear. I feel the same way you do, I really do. I—” My voice catches in my throat, but I force it through. “I love you, Leo.”
He squeezes my hand and meets my eyes again. His are so green, it’s like looking into sea glass. “Just…let me think about it, okay?” he says. “I need to think.”
“Okay,” I say as he drops my hand. “If there’s anything I can do to convince you…you know, there’s going to be sunflower cookies. And I’m pretty sure Paris is going to play her entire Pink collection when it comes time for dancing. And hey, if we’re lucky, there’ll be a hurricane. You don’t want to miss that, right?”
He half-laughs. “Okay, I’ll let you know.”
“All right…bye then,” I say.
He shuts the door, and I’m left with a peculiar ache in my chest that I can’t do anything about. Instead I get back on my bike and ride home, where I find that Paris is
still
sleeping, and Sofia is putting the wildflowers in Mason jars out on the deck. I help her finish that, and we drive them over to the park, where we set out the wildflowers and the sunflowers on the tables (which, to be honest, doesn’t leave a lot of room for place settings, but that is what Paris asked
for). By the time we get back, it’s noon, and time for us to shower and get dressed.
Since we’ve been spared the overalls, Sofia has offered to lend me one of her sundresses—a cute, knee-length, teal silk dress that actually makes my eyes look a bit more blue than gray. I wear silver butterfly clips to pull my hair back and a silver butterfly necklace.
I’m putting on lip gloss when Sofia comes into my room, wearing a long blue-green dress with hints of gold thread woven into it.
“You look amazing,” I say.
“You too,” she says with a smile. “You’ll knock his socks off.”
“If he comes,” I say glumly.
“And if he wears socks,” she says, pretending to look thoughtful.
“Do you think he will?”
“Wear socks? I would think so.”
“No!” I turn around and throw the nearest stuffed animal at her. “Will he come?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sofia says, “because you put yourself out there and that’s what counts.”
“I think it matters a lot,” I grumble, turning back to the mirror.
“So…do you think someone should wake the bride?” Sofia suggests.
“Um, not It!” I say quickly. “Maybe if I wanted my head bitten off.”
Suddenly the doorbell rings, and we both freeze. “I bet that did it,” Sofia says. “She’ll be tearing out of her room any second now.”
“Who do you think it is?” I ask. “Leo? Do you think it’s Leo?” I shoot out of my chair and out the door before she can respond, and I get downstairs before Mom has even made it out of the kitchen.
But when I open the front door, it’s not Leo at all. It’s Victoria. And…she’s wearing her wedding gown.
What?
“Um…hi, Vicky,” I say cautiously. I wonder if it’s safe to point out that this isn’t actually
her
wedding day, or if she’s decided to wreak some terrible revenge on Paris by crashing her wedding as a bride, which…seems convoluted, if you ask me.
“Hi, Jack,” Victoria says sunnily, swanning
into the front hallway. “Where’s Paris?”
“Still asleep,” I say, wincing. Victoria’s eyes widen.
“My goodness!” she says. “We should do something about that!” And then, as Sofia, Mom, and I watch in astonishment, Vicky sails right up the stairs and down the hall to Paris’s room, where she knocks and then barges right in.
“It’s time, it’s time!” Vicky sings out. “It’s your wedding day, time to get up!”
The door closes behind her, and there’s silence. We all glance at one another, expecting to hear Paris shouting at any moment—either about Vicky wearing a wedding dress to Paris’s wedding, or about the fact that she’s slept until two hours before her wedding, or really, about anything at all, because she’s Paris, and that’s how she normally wakes up.
But the voices from behind Paris’s door are low and civilized, and there are no screams of anguish whatsoever.
“We should escape while we can,” I say to Sofia.
“Why don’t you go over and set up?” Mom says. “There’s plenty of stuff you can take with you.”
We load Sofia’s car with coolers full of ice, soda, beer, and bottles of water, followed by the box of wedding accessories (the guestbook, the place cards, etc.) and a few baskets filled with bags of potato chips and carrot sticks. When we leave the house, about an hour and a half before the wedding is supposed to begin, Paris has still not emerged from her room.
“Maybe she’s changed her mind,” I say to Sofia as we drive over to the park. “Maybe she’s decided not to get married after all.”
“Well, she can’t blame it on the hurricane,” Sofia says. The sky is still clear and blue, with only a brisk wind even hinting at a storm on the horizon. It’s enough of a wind to be a pain in my butt, though, since it keeps trying to blow programs into the ocean and napkins off into the trees. As the rental company arrives with Port-a-Potties and chairs for the ceremony, Sofia and I run around and try to pin everything down. I find
the cleanest rock I can to put on top of the programs in the basket. The coolers of drinks get arranged around the food table, where we stack the baskets of chips and carrots. We also have disposable cameras to go on each table, and the place cards need to be arranged around the guest-book on a side table, in such a way that they don’t immediately go spinning off into the sand.
This is a lot harder than you’d think, and I actually find myself missing Victoria’s crazy-elaborate origami-chopstick-glass-pebbles-vase ensembles, since at least those couldn’t get blown away by the wind. Just as I finally get A–G lined up in alphabetical order, a brisk breeze swoops in and half of them fly away. I’m chasing after them, barefoot, with my hair flying around my face, when I hear a laugh behind me.
I turn around and find Leo standing there, looking like he just stepped out of a movie about hot young supermodel crime fighters with hearts of gold.