Counting Thyme (10 page)

“You think Val's going to be okay, right?”

Mr. Knuckles gave me a thumbs-up. Well, not really because his thumb was permanently tucked, but in my mind that's what he did.

I looked at the Thyme Jar. I wondered how long it would take to get Val's test results. I wondered if it was even worth saving my time anymore, with how serious everything had gotten. I couldn't help missing home, but wanting to leave felt wrong. I wasn't sure how those two things could ever work out. And then a terrible thought crept into my mind: If Val's treatment stopped working, there would be no reason
to stay in New York. No reason at all. Because Val would be out of options.

“Stop it,” I cried, burying my face in my pillow. I couldn't think like that. I was a terrible sister to think something like that—of course Val's treatment would work. It was going to
work
.

There was no other option.

YOU'RE INVITED

“DID YOU HEAR THAT EMILY GAVE REBECCAH A RIDE TO
school today?” Delia said as I fumbled with my locker in the morning. The twins' lockers happened to be on either side of mine—twin bookends for the new girl. They were wearing dresses with red and white checkers, like picnic blankets. Their entire wardrobe matched, like they shopped at some kind of twins-only store where everything came in pairs.

“What about Lizzie?” Celia asked.

“She
walked
,” Delia said, like walking to school was the worst fate ever. The twins rode the bus.

“Lizzie should have stepped up her game for middle school,” Celia said.

“Emily has better fashion sense,” Delia agreed.

I could feel them waiting for me to comment on the Emily and Lizzie situation, but I wasn't going to spill the beans about the Dorothy trouble. I just hoped Lizzie was doing okay. I'd meant to catch up with her before homeroom, but I hadn't slept much the night before, and my fingers were being even clumsier than usual. I couldn't get my locker open to save my life.

After a few minutes of watching me yank at the latch, Delia asked for my combination and spun the numbers with three quick movements. “There ya go, sweets,” she said.

As the door swung free, something red and sparkly fell out of my locker.

“Ooh!” Delia exclaimed, snatching the envelope off the floor before I could react.

“Ohmigosh! You totally got invited to Emily's holiday party,” Celia said as Delia pulled a card from the envelope and held it up for me to see.

A note was written across the bottom in Emily's bubbly handwriting:
Sorry for the short notice! I really hope you can make it!

“Score,” Delia said as she handed over the shiny invitation. “Are you excited?”

I nodded, but honestly I didn't know how I felt about the invitation. With everything going on at home, I didn't feel like going to a party. We usually spent Christmas at Grandma Kay's with just our family, unless my cousins came to visit. It was nice of Emily, though. She'd kept her promise from the copy room, but did that really mean she was my friend? Or was I just a project, like Lizzie had said?

“We're totally going,” Celia said.

“We go every year,” Delia added. “Our dad works with Emily's dad.”

I thought about how much Emily must love having the twins invade her house every year.

“You should come,” Celia insisted. “Your family can come, too. They have this huge apartment. It's a whole floor at the top of the building, and they have a Christmas tree in every single room and waiters with trays of fancy food. It's the best party
ever
.”

“I believe you,” I said, “and that sounds awesome. It's just . . .” I searched the invitation, as though it might give me an answer. I wasn't going to get my usual Christmas, anyway. With her bad hip, Grandma Kay couldn't fly all the way across the country. Maybe going to the party would be a
nice distraction. But if my family came with me to the party, everyone would find out about Val, and the drug trial, and everything . . .

“I don't know if my family can make it,” I blurted out. My cheeks burned with a hot mixture of shame and panic.

“That's totally okay,” Celia said.

Delia patted my arm. “We'll all be there, so you won't be alone.”

Alone.
Was that what I really wanted?

Celia and Delia walked away with their arms linked together. After a minute, I slid the invitation between my books, clicked my locker shut, and headed down the hall after them.

Halfway to homeroom, I slowed down. My head hurt from crying the night before. I didn't feel like listening to gossip about the Spring Fling. Plus, now that Emily was mad at Lizzie, there was bound to be drama at lunch. Maybe I would go to the nurse and tell her my stomach felt sick. That I needed to go home. At the thought of home, my stomach really did clench.

I spun around and started weaving down the hall in the opposite direction. Mom was sure to be annoyed when I called, but Mrs. Ravelli wouldn't mind coming to get me. She'd probably even make me one of her hot chocolates and tell me stories about skipping school in Italy.

By the time I hit the front hall, I was running. I turned the corner at full speed, ready to leave MS 221 behind forever,
and smacked right into Jake Reese.

My books went flying, and so did Emily's invitation.

For a second, we both stood there, staring at each other. Then I bent down to get the books at the same moment he did, and our heads smacked together, too.

“S-sorry,” I stammered as Jake rubbed at a spot on his forehead. He was wearing a dark wool jacket with metal buckles. His hair looked even curlier than usual. I'd been trying not to stare in class, but up close, it was impossible not to look. He was just so
noticeable
.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Great. Just perfect, Thyme.

I grabbed my books, trying to stack them so they wouldn't slide, and Jake handed over the invitation. He looked past me like he wanted to leave, then kind of stood there like he was waiting for something instead, only I didn't know what. Was I just supposed to leave first? Or was he waiting for
me
to say something?

That's when I noticed his earbuds were hanging from the collar of his jacket, like he'd just been listening to music on his way to school.

“I listened to that song,” I said. “The one by Simon and Garfunkel.”

He scuffed his boot against the floor. “Oh yeah? What did you think?”

“It was nice . . . but I thought it was weird, too, how they sang in those whisper voices.”

As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back. I didn't
want him to think I was making fun of him. It's just that the song really was strange. Dad had played it for me twice.

He nodded. “Me too,” he said, and I smiled with relief, which made me blush. It felt good to talk about a normal thing like music.

“My dad has their record,” I said. “He has a really big collection. I mean, too big to bring them all here. He had to leave a lot of them in storage when we moved.”

“Cool,” he said. “My grandma listens to their stuff all the time.”

“Does she live nearby?”

“You could say that,” he said. “I moved here this summer. We're living with her now, just until we get back on our feet. Mom and me.” He looked less than happy when he said it, and I wondered what had knocked them off their feet. Then I realized that meant he was new, too. Which was nice. I was trying to think of what to say next when the late bell rang.

“You got invited to Emily's party?” he asked, looking right at me all of a sudden.

I felt a flutter in my stomach. “Yeah.”

“Me too. Are you gonna go?”

That's when I made up my mind. “Yeah. I think I will.”

He grinned. “Me too.”

VIP

OUR CAB PULLED UP OUTSIDE OF EMILY'S BUILDING ON
East 92nd Street at six thirty, half an hour before the party was supposed to start. I wanted to avoid running into anyone else on the off chance that Dad would start blabbing about hospitals and cancer. At home, he'd given us a special poster to celebrate the beginning of winter break. It was a to-do list for all of us, with things like
sleep
,
eat good food
, and
family time
on it. The list part had made Mom smile. Cori had rolled her eyes. I guess Dad was just trying to make things easier while we waited for the results from Val's blood test.

“You're sure you don't want me to go in with you?” Dad asked as a doorman approached the cab.

“No, I'm okay on my own.”

He squeezed my hand. “I'll see you at ten sharp, like we talked about. All right?”

I leaned across the vinyl seat to hug him. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Have fun, but not too much fun,” he said with a goofy look on his face. I think he was happier about the party than I was. He was the one who had always invited his old college
buddies over for barbecues and football games, back when we still did that kind of thing.

Amazingly, Mom hadn't objected to me going alone. I think the fight with Cori had fried her wires. But it was Cori who had surprised me the most. As soon as she heard I was going to an actual party, with actual friends, she vetoed the sweater I was planning to wear and dragged me into our room to look through her clothes, which were all colorful and flashy, like her. I was afraid she would make fun of me for being lame or tell me I should be super grateful for her help, but she just pulled a pretty pink dress from the closet and held it up.

“You're taller than I was when I wore this to Cousin Marisa's wedding. Do you remember that? It rained for hours, and we had to hide under that big white tent in her backyard. When they cut the cake, Val wouldn't come out from under the table. He said it was his fort.” She stopped talking, and her eyes got far away. I wondered if some small part of her missed being normal, too.

“You know what?” she said, blinking fast. “You can borrow my cashmere sweater to go over this. It'll be perfect.”

“But the sleeves are too long.”

“We'll roll them up! Come on, get changed. Then we'll curl your hair.”

And I did, because it felt nice not to argue with her for once.

Inside Emily's building, there was a uniformed man waiting in the elevator. “Your name, miss?” he asked, holding the doors for me.

“Thyme Owens. I'm here for Emily Anderson's party.”

He checked a list and nodded. “The penthouse it is.”

Then he pressed a button, and the elevator zoomed up while my stomach dipped. The doors had a mirror finish. I blinked, and someone else blinked back: a girl in a puffy black jacket and a pink party dress, with dark, wavy hair. Thanks to Cori's curling iron, I looked more like her than ever before. But that was nice, somehow. It made me feel like maybe I could be more like her—have fun and be cool, even if it was only for one night.

The elevator stopped, and the doors parted, revealing a huge vaulted foyer with a super-tall Christmas tree. The air smelled like evergreen and freshly torn mint from Grandma's garden.

“Here you are, miss.”

I stepped out of the elevator onto a white marble floor. My fancy black shoes clicked against the stone. They also pinched my toes, but Cori had claimed they looked best with the dress.

The elevator doors whispered shut, leaving me alone with the glittering tree. A thousand tiny white lights sparkled among the branches, which were packed with ornaments of every shape and size. I wondered if Emily collected ornaments the way Grandma Kay did. My heart sunk at the thought of Grandma, alone in her house at home, decorating her tree by herself.

“Thyme?”

Emily was standing at the other end of the foyer. As soon
as I saw the surprised look on her face, I knew it was a mistake to come so early. She must have thought I was some kind of stalker.

“Sorry I'm early.”

She smiled. “It's no problem. Come on, I'll show you my room.”

I hoped that it really wasn't a problem, but now I felt lame being there at all.

We stopped by a coatroom, and I hung my jacket on a long metal rack. Then Emily led me down the hall and through a living room the size of our apartment. There was another fancy Christmas tree in front of the windows, next to a row of long tables dressed in white cloths. We turned down another hall, and Emily opened a door. Inside was a plush white carpet, a couch, and even a fireplace—but no bed.

“Want some water?” Emily asked.

“Sure.”

“Sparkling or flat?”

“Um . . . I guess flat?”

She disappeared through another door, and I caught a glimpse of a tall white canopy bed inside. So this was just her sitting room?

A minute later, she came back with a bottle of water for me and a Perrier for herself. She plopped down on the couch and I perched on the other end, careful not to drip water on the shiny pillows. Being alone with Emily in her bedroom was a lot different than sharing a lunch table. I wondered what she
thought of my dress and my hair. She had on a sparkly black dress that looked like something a model would wear—the sequins shimmered every time she moved. She must have felt awkward, too, because she kept fussing with her hem. Maybe she was having second thoughts about inviting me.

“I like your fireplace,” I said, because Grandma Kay always said to open a conversation with a compliment.

Emily smiled. “Here. I'll turn it on.” With the flip of a switch, small orange and blue flames flickered to life on the logs. “It's gas,” she said. “My mom says a live flame adds ambience to a room, like, the way fresh flowers make people happy? But I don't know.” She glanced at the tiny blue flames. “It doesn't look that real to me. Right?”

I thought fire was fire, but I agreed with her anyway, because that was Grandma's other conversation tip: Don't cause a fuss.

Above the fireplace, brightly colored paper stars hung from the ceiling. They looked sort of like origami, but not. There were dozens of careful cuts in each folded star. They were beautiful, even though they were only made of paper.

“Did you make those?” I asked, and Emily nodded.

“They're called
parols
,” she said. “We make them every year at Christmas. Only this year I have to make them twice. My nana's coming from the Philippines for her birthday, and Mom wants to surprise her . . . not that Mom gets stuck making the decorations.”

“They must be really hard to cut out.”

Emily quirked her lips. “Yeah, but you get faster the more you practice. They're supposed to bring hope. Faith. Good stuff like that.” She looked at me like she was deciding something. Then she shrugged. “I can show you if you want.”

She got her scissors and I watched her cut slits in the paper. Then we twisted each sheet and stapled them together to form elegant stars. Grandma Kay would have loved them. I decided to make one for her when I got back to the apartment, even though it wouldn't get to San Diego by Christmas.

While we worked, Emily told me how her mother wanted her nana to move to New York, but she would only visit. I told her my grandma didn't want to come with us, either, but that I didn't blame her because I'd rather be back in California, too—though I was careful not to say too much about my family or Val. I just told her how the avocados in San Diego were nearly as big as my head, and the strawberries tasted better than candy, and how the breeze came in off the ocean, all the way across the city, carrying that tangy, fresh smell right into our house.

“I wish I could go to California with my dad again,” Emily said. “He travels a lot for his job. But usually he goes by himself, or my mom goes with him.”

“They just leave you here alone?”

She held a curl of paper for me to staple. “No, I have an au pair. She's from France. My parents have this thing about me not missing school. They don't want me getting a big head or something. That's why I go to public school.”

“Oh. I wondered, you know, with all of this.” She blushed,
and I said, “Not that I don't like it. You're just a little fancier around here than I'm used to.”

Emily laughed. “You know what? I'm glad you came early.” I lifted up the finished star, and she clapped. She was being so nice, not bossy at all like at school. It didn't make sense.

She got some string, and we hung my star with the others above the fireplace. That's when I noticed that the mantel was lined with photographs. Emily in fancy dresses, standing in front of theaters, at parties. Lizzie was in almost every picture, even the older ones.

“What's going on with you and Lizzie?” I asked.

Emily's face froze up. “Why? Did she say something to you?”

“Just that she wants to try out for Dorothy, too. And you're mad at her for it.”

“It's just a misunderstanding,” Emily said, smiling her big, toothy smile from school, the fake one she gave the twins when they were annoying her.

“You could have fooled me.”

“I've known Lizzie since kindergarten. She'll be fine.” She turned away, shutting me out, exactly the way Mom did when she didn't want to talk about the hard stuff.

“If you say so.” Why was I so annoyed? If Emily wanted to lose her best friend over something as stupid as a play, that was up to her.

She turned back, paper clenched in her hands. “Look, I just don't think it's a good idea for her to audition. But that's all I can say about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Super-awkward silence filled the air. Then a knock sounded at the door, and a tall, beautiful woman with Emily's same dark hair leaned inside. She looked like a movie star.

“It's time,
Ly-ly
,” she said. Her voice lifted up at the end of each word.

“Yes, Mother. We'll be right there.”

The door clicked shut.

“We'd better go,” Emily said. “My mom means business.”