158 Days Before

Labor Day weekend. My father knocked on my door as I was binge-reading The Great Gatsby, my summer homework for junior year. The first part of the summer, Declan and I had spent all of our time together. But by August, he’d begun making weird excuses about why he couldn’t see me. After that big sex talk, when he’d told me he wanted to wait…something had changed. He stopped coming around and didn’t invite me to his room, even when his parents were away. When I climbed up to see him, he was gone, the window locked.

All I could think was that I was losing him.

I’d never been so afraid. So hopeless.

So out of control.

I moped constantly, wondering what I’d done. Had I turned him off somehow? By that last weekend, I checked the calendar and realized that I was well and truly screwed, summer-homework-wise. Most of the stuff I’d been skimming about Daisy and Nick and Jay was bouncing right out of my brain, which was too overcrowded with thoughts of Declan. So by the time my father came in and told me he had something to show me, I was happy for the distraction.

The fact that my dad was at my door was weird enough. When I was a kid, he’d done all the good stuff dads did—carrying me on his shoulders around Disney so I wouldn’t have to walk, buying me SpongeBob pops from the ice cream truck, taking twelve hours to set up the outdoor jungle gym so I could play with it for three minutes until I got bored. Now we were virtual strangers without much in common. Weirder still was that he was actually smiling. Usually when my parents were home all day together they were at each other’s throats by this time of night.

Holding my copy of Gatsby open with my finger to mark the page, I jogged down the stairs after him. He took me to the garage. I thought he was going to show me something out in the driveway—like a nice sunset, or a hot-air balloon, or a turtle he’d found while mowing the lawn—since that’s what our interaction boiled down to these days.

It was a bright-red Jeep Wrangler, all shiny and new, with the top down.

All I could think was boss. I didn’t even know if that was a cool thing to say anymore. I didn’t care. The Jeep was boss.

My father and mother stood together, smiling, for once in their lives. “It’s yours,” my dad said.

My jaw dropped. “Really?”

My mom nodded. “You’re going to start your junior year on Tuesday. And we thought you should have your own car, instead of having to take the bus.”

Yes. Hell, yes.