“I suppose.” Granddad penciled “haberdasher” into the crossword, then opened the paper, shook it, and turned to the front page. “Have you started your college applications?”
I groaned. “Granddad, please. It’s May. Applications aren’t due until the fall.”
“You still haven’t told me where you’re applying,” he pressed.
“That’s because I haven’t decided.” I hadn’t told Granddad— it would’ve freaked him out—but I was really struggling with the idea of picking a school, and consequently a future. I had no idea what I wanted to study, and even though I knew Granddad had his heart set on me attending an Ivy League school—or, even better, the University of Chicago, where I could get a reduced tuition and live at home—I couldn’t quite imagine myself at any of those places. There was only one thing I knew for certain: I had to get out of Hyde Park. I loved Chicago, and the little neighborhood where I’d grown up, but I was starting to feel restless. Granddad was content with his compact, uneventful life, but I ached for adventure, and I wasn’t going to find it if I was just following Granddad’s plan for me. It was going to be hard to break that to him, which was why I hadn’t done it yet.
There was something else I needed to talk to him about. Something I hadn’t brought up at dinner the night before, because I’d been too busy trying to decide whether it had actually happened. “Hey, Granddad?”
“Hm?” he mumbled without looking up from his paper.
“Grant Davis asked me to prom,” I said. Not that I thought he’d know who Grant was—Granddad wasn’t great with names or faces, and my best friend, Gina, was probably the only one of my classmates he actually knew.
Nevertheless, the mention of a potential date got his attention. “Who?”
“Grant Davis,” I repeated. “He’s … this guy. From my school.”
“And he asked you to prom?”
“Try not to sound so shocked,” I grumbled. Sometimes I wondered if Granddad assumed I was just as much of a loner as he preferred to be. “It’s not completely absurd that someone might ask me to prom.”
“I didn’t say it was absurd.” Granddad set to work quartering a hard-boiled egg, sprinkling it with salt.
I smacked his hand lightly. “You know Dr. Reingold said to cut it out with the sodium.”
“Don’t lecture me, Alexandra, that’s my job.” Granddad always called me by my given name when I annoyed him, which meant I heard it a lot. I’d gone by Sasha for so long, I would’ve been surprised to find out that anyone except Granddad knew my full name. “And don’t change the subject. This boy. What’s his story? Are his parents professors?”
“His mom teaches at the law school,” I said. Granddad shrugged; he wasn’t interested in anyone who wasn’t a scientist. “His dad lives out in California.”
“And is he a nice boy?” He couldn’t quite meet my eyes. The conversation clearly embarrassed him. Granddad had a history of discomfort when it came to the girl stuff in my life, and I couldn’t blame him, but these moments always reminded me just how keenly I missed and needed my mother.
I had to wonder how my father would’ve reacted to me dating. Like a dad, probably. Cautious and overprotective, like Gina’s dad had behaved when she got together with her boyfriend, Jeff. But I couldn’t really know. My parents had been dead for almost a decade; I’d been seven at the time, so while I had memories of them, they were blurry and fragmented. It was hard to recall what they were like. Granddad was no help, because he almost never wanted to talk about them. Before the accident, his relationship with my parents had been distant; when I came to him, we were practically strangers. I’d never found the courage to ask him why that was, but over the years I’d pieced together what was probably obvious all along—he didn’t like my father. I kind of didn’t want to know why. I loved Granddad and my parents, and if there was something dark in their shared past that would change my opinion of any of them, I was happier not knowing the particulars. But still, the question lurked in the back of my brain. What about my dad had caused them to be estranged for so long? I couldn’t even venture a guess.
“Yes, Granddad,” I assured him. “He’s nice.”
“How well do you know him?”
“We’ve gone to school together for, like, ever.” It was best not to tell him that I didn’t actually know Grant that well; it would only feed Granddad’s suspicions, and lower my chances of being allowed to go to prom.
“Don’t say ‘like,’ ” he grumbled. “It makes you sound silly.” I rolled my eyes. “Well, all right. But I want to meet him before you go out. Do you need money for a dress?”
I braced myself. Prom dresses were expensive, and there wasn’t enough time to buy one online, so I’d have to troll the department stores for something off the rack—and on sale. At least I had Gina to help me in the search. She was aces at sniffing out good deals, and her taste was excellent, certainly better than mine. “Yeah, kind of.”
“How much?”
“A hundred, maybe?” I winced. I hated asking Granddad for money, but I didn’t have a lot of savings, and I’d had no reason to budget for a prom dress.
He plucked five twenty-dollar bills from his wallet, handing them over solemnly. “This is a reward for being so good and working so hard. You’re not entitled to this. You earned it.”
I took the cash and gave him my brightest smile. “Thanks, Granddad. You’re the best.”
THREE
The days leading up to prom passed in the blink of an eye. Gina and I gave ourselves blisters walking up and down Michigan Avenue before finding the perfect thing for me to wear, a short, strapless navy dress with a sweetheart neckline and a sparkly tulle overlay that was on clearance for $99.99. The dress wasn’t exactly my style—I was definitely more of a T-shirt and jeans kind of girl—but when I looked in the mirror, I had to admit, I felt beautiful in it. I hoped Grant would like it on me just as much as I did.
Before I knew it, it was Saturday evening, and Gina, Jeff, and I were gathered in the parlor of the Victorian, waiting for Grant to arrive.
“He’s late,” Gina said. She was sitting in Granddad’s armchair, wiggling with impatience, while her boyfriend loomed over her, taking nips off a flask he kept in his inside jacket pocket. Gina had met Jeff, a freshman at Northwestern, at a concert a few months earlier. Personally, I thought he was a little morose and weird, but he was really into Gina, so who was I to judge? Jeff was tall and lanky, and usually his clothes and his hair looked like they’d never been washed. Gina had managed to wrestle him into her brother’s old tux, even though it was a bit too short in the arms and legs and a bit too big everywhere else.
“He’ll be here,” I insisted. I paced the floor in front of the fireplace. My nerves were out of control. It was one thing to imagine this moment, to look forward to it, and quite another to find myself on the precipice of experiencing it. Plus, what if Granddad didn’t like Grant? I kept telling myself it was a silly thing to worry about—after all, I wasn’t marrying Grant, I was just going with him to one dance—but it was hard to banish it from my thoughts.
My eyes rested on the framed photographs that sat upon the mantle. Most of them were school photos that charted my evolution from a thick-haired, gawky child to a relatively pretty teenager, all things considered. There were also a few of me and Granddad together in various places, my favorite being one of us standing on a pier at Lake Okobogee, hoisting a ten-pound largemouth bass between us. I smiled at the memory. If it was possible for my parents’ deaths to have a silver lining, it was that I’d gotten a chance to know my grandfather. Even though he could be gruff, I knew that he loved me, and that I was lucky to have found a home with him when mine had been ripped from me.