Dear Sweet Pea
Dedication
For Vivienne and Aurelia, my sweet peas
Epigraph
Sometimes, what you’re looking for is already there.
—Aretha Franklin
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One: The Cat’s Out of the Box
Chapter Two: The Most Important Meal of the Day
Chapter Three: The Comeback Kid Minus the Comebacks
Chapter Four: AKA Patricia
Chapter Five: One Size Does Not Fit All
Chapter Six: The Difference Between Like and Like-Like
Chapter Seven: Good as Gravy
Chapter Eight: By Invitation Only
Chapter Nine: The Witching Hour
Chapter Ten: 100% Duck
Chapter Eleven: It’s the Thought That Counts
Chapter Twelve: Our Very Best Life
Chapter Thirteen: The Life of the Party
Chapter Fourteen: Ask and You Shall Receive
Chapter Fifteen: R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Chapter Sixteen: Neutral Territory
Chapter Seventeen: A Girl on a Mission
Chapter Eighteen: Paper, Paper, Get Your Paper!
Chapter Nineteen: Risky Business
Chapter Twenty: No Right Choice
Chapter Twenty-One: The Kind of Promise You Can Keep
Chapter Twenty-Two: Behind Door Number Three
Chapter Twenty-Three: Common Ground
Chapter Twenty-Four: Back on the Market
Chapter Twenty-Five: Let It All Out
Chapter Twenty-Six: My Calling
Chapter Twenty-Seven: First-Date Jitters
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Home Sweet Home
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Causing a Scene
Chapter Thirty: A New Kind of Normal
Chapter Thirty-One: Stuck in the Middle
Chapter Thirty-Two: Three Legs Are Better Than Two
Chapter Thirty-Three: Project BFF
Chapter Thirty-Four: Lip-Synching for My Life
Chapter Thirty-Five: Dear Sweet Pea
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
The Cat’s Out of the Box
I’ve counted my birthday savings three times, and at this rate, I don’t think I’ll ever have enough money to clone myself. I guess it doesn’t help that cloning people isn’t really a thing yet. Trust me, if it was, my mom would’ve already taken me in to make an identical model. One for her. One for Dad. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.
But since there can only be one Sweet Pea, my parents have decided that the next best way to deal with their divorce is to have two houses. Two completely separate houses on the same street that look just about as identical as two different houses could. Similar paint and rugs and even furniture. Mom gets the original, and Dad gets the dupe, which makes sense since the old house belonged to Nana—Mom’s mom—before she died.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about which of my things to take to Dad’s house, but I’m what Mrs. Young calls a “visual learner,” so this morning Oscar Rivera, my best (and only) friend, and I took an old roll of Dad’s blue painter’s tape and split my room in two. It reminds me of the blue line down the middle of the gym that Coach Jeffers uses for dodgeball, which, if you ask me, is even crueler than the section on rope climbing we did last fall. Not only do your classmates have a popularity death match picking teams, but then they get to peg you with rubber balls too. Hopefully packing up my room won’t be quite as traumatic.
“What’s your mom gonna say when she comes home and finds your room like this?” Oscar asks, his shiny black hair swirled into a perfect mold, using his latest discovery from the drugstore: pomade, a sticky hair product that comes in a glass jar and Oscar swears is a miracle.
I shrug as I take a second to process the damage. My room looks like someone came in with a giant eraser and just wiped away half of the whole place, leaving the other side in its usual state of perfectly organized mess—unmade bed, mismatching socks stuffed under the bed, and stacks of old homework and newspaper clippings piled up on my nightstand. “I won’t be home to find out. It’s Dad’s night.”
Since there are only seven days in a week, every other week Mom and Dad take turns with who gets me for three nights and who gets four nights. Mom says it’s “imperative” that neither of them is perceived as the “dominant parent,” but if you ask me, all you have to do to figure out which of my parents is in charge is ask yourself who’s making the rules to begin with. If you guessed Mom—ding, ding, ding!—you’re right.
I split the books by alphabetical order. Mom’s house gets A through M and Dad’s house gets the rest. The division of all my other belongings was much slower and more snooze-worthy. But as Oscar constantly reminds me, if I ever need anything, I’ll be two houses down the street, separated only by Miss Flora Mae’s hulking two-story house.
“At least you didn’t cut your sheets in half,” he says and reaches down for a box with SWEET PEA’S DESK STUFF scrawled across the side.
“Lift with your knees!” I say, mimicking what I’ve heard Mr. McMullan shout at his employees from behind his desk at Love’s Hardware.
“I wasn’t built for grunt work,” says Oscar as he heads for the door. “You got the last box?”
“Yup. See you over there.”
I squat down to tape the flaps of the final box shut before standing, doing my best to lift with my knees. What does that even mean anyway? And why did I cram so much stuff in this box?
But then, just as I steady myself, a growling meow vibrates from inside the box.
“Holy crud!” I snap and drop it on the rug. Another meow, this one a little softer. “Oh, Cheese! I’m so sorry.” I rip the tape from the box. “Cheese, you gotta forgive me, buddy.”
Cheese is my fifteen-pound orange tabby. No wonder the thing was heavier than I expected! He leaps from the box full of random desk clutter and saunters out of my bedroom, his tail slapping the door frame.
“Cheese!” I call once more. “I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.” What can I say? The cat can hold a grudge. Like kitty, like owner.
I tap my index finger to the side of my head, hoping I’ll remember to give him a few extra treats tonight to make up for my rude behavior. Cheese was our big family Christmas present when I was six years old. I was given the honor of choosing his name and decided to call him Cheese, because he . . . looked like cheese? I don’t know. I was six, okay? In hindsight, I should have named him after my favorite cheese: Havarti.
With a sigh, I give up on the tape and fold the flaps of the box over before taking one last glimpse at my room. Crisp white trim with peach wallpaper and newspaper and magazine clippings pinned randomly all over every surface. A few Miss Flora Mae I? advice column classics, neat pictures of places I can’t even believe exist from Dad’s National Geographic subscription, and a few strips from the comics section of the Valentine Gazette. I still remember painting the trim with Mom and Dad and the way Mom squealed when Dad ran a wet paintbrush down her back.
I think I sort of get what adults mean when they say, “If these walls could talk.” Let’s be real, though. The thought of talking walls spooks me out big-time.
As I step backward out the front door of the house, the screen door creaks as it shuts behind me. “Goodbye, home,” I whisper mournfully.
“A tad dramatic, don’t you think?” calls Oscar.
I whirl around.
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t need any more help.” He stands on the sidewalk. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your big moment.”
I huff, blowing my thick black bangs into the air. “I wasn’t having a moment.” I look back at the house—a redbrick one-story with white trim and a bright-blue door (Mom’s addition)—only slightly different from every other house on the block except Miss Flora Mae’s. “Okay, maybe I was.”
“And the Academy Award goes to . . . Sweet Pea DiMarco!”
I look off into the distance. “I’d like to thank the little people—and by little people, I mean my best friend, Oscar. My Academy Award is the most exciting thing to ever happen to him, so let’s have a moment of silence for how sad that is.”
“Har, har,” he says. “You know I’m the talent in this relationship.”
I laugh. “If you’re the talent, I’m the brains.”
He swings the gate open for me. “Well, let’s get a move on it. I’m starved. And I was promised pizza in exchange for physical labor.”
“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have done it for free,” I say, walking through the gate. “You love me. I’m your best friend.”
He laughs dryly. “You’re my only real friend.” He points to Cheese sitting in the window. “Did you hear that, Cheese? I’m her best friend!”
That gets a real laugh out of me. One time when Oscar was spending the night, Cheese fell asleep on his face. Oscar woke up sneezing every five seconds. I explained to him that it was a sign of affection, but Oscar, who is just a little bit allergic to just about everything, swore that Cheese had a jealous vendetta against him.
Outside of Cheese, though, Oscar is my best friend and I’m his, but since my parents announced their divorce—or as my mom called it, their “mindful division”—he’s been there every step of the way, and somehow it’s brought us even closer.
We walk in silence past Miss Flora Mae’s house, where we can see her sitting in her sunroom on her typewriter, watching us over the top of her gold reading glasses. Her long silver hair is wrapped into a bun on the top of her head, and her white skin is soft with wrinkles that I used to always want to trace with my finger when I was little.
Miss Flora Mae’s house is the only two-story house on the block. A long time ago it was a pure white with black shutters, but now it’s a little dingy, with graying edges and chipping paint. The big wraparound porch and the second-floor balcony are still a pretty incredible sight. But I guess people figured out that scientists weren’t lying when they say heat rises, because out here in Valentine, Texas, where it looks like someone just plopped our town down in the middle of a desert, no one really messes around with tall buildings unless they have to. So Miss Flora Mae owns one of the few two-story houses on this side of town, which was mostly built up in the last fifty or sixty years.
Oscar looks away quickly, careful not to make eye contact with my neighbor.
“She’s not gonna put a curse on you,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “That lady knows everyone’s dirt. She’s like your mom, except your mom actually has to keep everyone’s secrets. It’s her job. But people just write Miss Flora Mae and dump out all their feelings for her advice column. She’s bound to know something awful about everyone in this town.”
He’s right. Mom’s obligated to keep secrets in a way Miss Flora Mae isn’t. Mom calls it “doctor-patient confidentiality.” Heck, even when someone says hi to her at the grocery store and I try to nose around to find out if they’re even a client of hers, she winks and says something about everyone knowing everyone in this town.
“Well, you’ve never written to Miss Flora Mae,” I tell him, “so you’ve got nothing to worry about—unless there’s something you’re not telling me . . .”
He rolls his eyes. “Trust me. I’m not that desperate.”
His reaction makes me clam up. I’ve written Miss Flora Mae three times in my life, and not once has she ever written back. It’s the kind of thing I try to push to the furthest corner of my brain along with every other unanswered question I have.
Dutifully, Oscar opens the gate to the house just on the other side of Miss Flora Mae’s, and I trudge up the steps to my dad standing in the doorway.
This house was only empty for two weeks after the Cordova family moved out before Mom came up with her “genius” idea for Dad to live on the same street as us. For the last four months, Dad lived in the El Cosmico Hotel in a room with two double beds so that I could come over and stay with him. During the day the El Cosmico is a pretty run-down place, but at night, when it was harder to see the dust and dead roly-polies in the windowsill, I actually sort of liked sitting out by the pool with Dad under the glow of the flashing hot-pink letters and neon-green cactus of the sign. But I know Dad was getting pretty down with motel life and not having a real kitchen to cook in.
“It’s a big night,” Dad says. “First night in the new house.” He throws his arms up, gesturing to the house behind him. “Not too shabby, huh, Sweet Pea? And I’ve got some curry chicken pot pie in the oven.” Dad pushes his fingers through his hair. Mom used to call it one of his nervous tics—fidgeting with his hair. I’m white, like both my parents, but like Dad I’ve got an olive-y undertone and have the same black hair as he does. It’s wiry and thick, like his bushy eyebrows, which it looks like he passed on to me too.
I give the tiny porch one good look, trying my best to give this place a chance. The only thing that makes this house feel more like home than Mom’s place is Dad’s beat-up work truck out front—a black pickup with a bed full of scaffolding and painting supplies. “Same street. New house.”
“I even painted the door to match,” he points out. And sure as heck, he did. “I was thinking we’d get a porch swing just like—”
“Mom’s,” I say flatly. I shake my head and point to the door. “You got the wrong shade of blue.” I feel immediately bad as I turn to Oscar and say, “Let’s go.”
Sometimes Oscar says the wrong things at the wrong times, but right now he’s got my back and follows me into my room in my new second home. And because he’s a true best friend, he even slams my bedroom door for me because my hands are full.
Chapter Two
The Most Important Meal of the Day
“Sweet Pea?” asks my dad as he knocks on my bedroom door the next morning. “First breakfast in the new house! How do you want your bacon?”
“You can come in,” I tell him, the covers pulled up over my face. In the last year, Dad has gotten a little weird around me. He’s careful about giving me plenty of time to answer him before he comes into my bedroom, and the last time I had to dress up for Easter Sunday, he said my dress was flattering. Flattering! What kind of word is that?
It started two years ago when he was pulling the laundry out of the dryer and held up my training bra for both me and my mom to see. He laughed and told my mom he must have accidentally shrunken one of her sports bras. The laughter stopped immediately when he noticed the color draining from my face. I yanked it out of his hands and marched to my room, slamming the door behind me. (I guess you could say I’ve got a thing for slamming doors.) It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know. But the whole suddenly-having-to-wear-a-bra thing is bad enough without making it Dad’s business too.
I moan from beneath the covers. Spending the night without Cheese felt just plain wrong. After Oscar and I shared a pizza with Dad, I tried bringing Cheese over here to stay with me, but he kept pawing at the screen door. Mom even bought him an identical litter box for Dad’s house and went through the effort of sifting out clumps from his old litter box to mix in with his new litter so he’d recognize his scent. That’s real dedication. But it’s like Cheese is staging his own one-cat revolution and he’s the only one who’s not playing along with this “mirror living” nonsense.