“Maybe I’m sick of being a stupid old Bradshaw. What is so great about being a Bradshaw anyway? If I want to have a boyfriend, I’ll have a boyfriend. You and Missy are just jealous because you don’t have boyfriends.” She glares at me, runs to her room, and slams the door.
I find my father in the den, sipping a gin and tonic and staring at the TV. “What am I supposed to do?” he asks helplessly. “Ground her? When I was a boy, girls didn’t act like this.”
“That was thirty years ago, Dad.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, pressing on his temples. “Love is a holy cause.” Once he goes off on one of these spiels, it’s hopeless. “Love is spiritual. It’s about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline. And respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you’ve lost everything.” He pauses. “Does this make any sense to you?”
“Sure, Dad,” I say, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
A couple of years ago, after my mother died, my sisters and I tried to encourage my father to find someone else, but he refused to entertain the idea. He wouldn’t even go on a date. He said he’d already had the one big love of his life, and anything less would feel like a sham. He felt blessed, he said, to have had that kind of love once in his life, even if it didn’t last forever.
You wouldn’t think a hard-boiled scientist like my father would be such a romantic, but he is.
It worries me sometimes. Not for my father’s sake, but for my own.
I head up to my room, sit down in front of my mother’s old Royale typewriter, and slide in a piece of paper. The Big Love, I write, then add a question mark.
Now what?
I open the drawer and take out a story I wrote a few years ago, when I was thirteen. It was a stupid story about a girl who rescues a sick boy by donating her kidney to him. Before he got sick, he never noticed her, even though she was pining away for him, but after she gives him her kidney, he falls madly in love with her.
It’s a story I would never show anyone, because it’s too sappy, but I’ve never been able to throw it away. It scares me. It makes me worry that I’m secretly a romantic too, just like my father.
And romantics get burned.
Whoa. Where’s the fire?
Jen P was right. You can fall in love with a guy you don’t know.
That summer when I was thirteen, Maggie and I used to hang out at Castlebury Falls. There was a rock cliff where the boys would dive into a deep pool, and sometimes Sebastian was there, showing off, while Maggie and I sat on the other side of the river.
“Go on,” Maggie would urge. “You’re a better diver than those boys.” I’d shake my head, my arms wrapped protectively around my knees. I was too shy. The thought of being seen was terrifying.
I didn’t mind watching, though. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sebastian as he scrambled up the side of the rock, sleek and sure-footed. At the top, there was horseplay between the boys, as they jostled one another and hooted dares, demanding increasing feats of skill. Sebastian was always the bravest, climbing higher than the other boys and launching himself into the water with a fearlessness that told me he had never thought about death.
He was free.
He’s the one. The Big Love.
And then I forgot about him.
Until now.
I find the soiled rejection letter from The New School and put it in the drawer with the story about the girl who gave away her kidney. I rest my chin in my hands and stare at the typewriter.
Something good has to happen to me this year. It just does.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rock Lobsters
“Maggie, get out of the car.”
“I can’t.”
“Please—”
“What’s wrong now?” Walt asks.