talk. It didnât have anything to do with her, and I knew that she was being nice. If Iâd had any sense I would have Googled âHow to sound sincere when apologizing,â but I hadnât, and it was too late.
âOkay then,â she said. âI considered just letting the money go, but since youâre almost sixteen I think that itâs important that we take this seriously. Iâm not going to lecture you about what you should and shouldnât have done, but the money needs to be repaid. With slight interest.â
I wondered what she was doing on the other end of the line. Smiling? Waiting for me to tell her what an awesome person she was for wanting to turn me into a financially responsible adult? She could wait forever.
âHere is what we decided. Youâre ahead on your studies, and itâs almost summer, so weâre going to let you stay with your sister until youâve earned the money to pay me back and for a return ticket. You need to be back by the end of the summer. This isnât a joke and itâs not a vacation. We checked and saw that there are jobs you can do if you have a permit, and your sister has been kind enough to say that sheâll help as much as she can with finding a job and transportation.â
I was going to get to stay in LA! I bit my cheek so that I wouldnât sound as happy as I felt.
âWas this Momâs idea?â I asked.
âIt was mine,â Lynette said. âBut thatâs not all. You can test out of your science and math classes, but your history teacher wants you to do a final project. Heâs going to be sending you an e-mail with details. Your teachers were all quite understanding. I hope you realize that youâll be missing all the end-of-year activities, the chance to say good-bye to your friends.â
I was already thinking of the places that I would apply for jobs, maybe the candy store near the lot where my sister was filming. Or one of the ice cream stores with the trendy names and all the girls in line who looked like they kept that ice cream down for about 2.5 seconds. If Mom and Lynette thought missing some picnic at the aquarium was a punishment, they had read the wrong piece of Internet wisdom.
âAnd you can decide how you want to communicate with Birch.â
You wouldnât think it was possible, but Iâd really forgotten about not seeing Birch for three months. He was just learning to pull himself up on furniture when I left, and he could make baby sign language for âfinishedâ and âmore.â He even called me âNa Naâ when he really wanted my keys or to go through my wallet. He would probably start walking this summer.
âDo you think heâll remember me?â
Lynette let out a long sigh, like I was beyond hopeless, and I felt for a minute like I really was going to cry.
âWhy didnât Mom call today?â
âYour mom has her own struggles,â she said, but I didnât see my mom struggling. Instead, I saw her walking down the frozen food aisle with Birch and Lynette, having a grand old time and trying to forget that she even had a daughter. All the while, Lynette was blathering on about how much my mother loved me, and how she wasnât very good at expressing it, and how worried she had been. But I knew what Doon had seenâthree people who did just fine on their own.
âItâs a complicated thing,â Lynette finally said, âthe way mothers love their daughters. You donât understand it now, and I know itâs not helpful when an adult says something like that, but one day youâll see. The way you feel about Birch is the way your mother feels about you, only sheâs had thirteen more years to know you and hope for you and love you.â
Sometimes when Birch was doing something accidentally hilarious like trying to eat a shoestring, Iâd ask my mom what I was like when I was his age. She told me