Page 80 of 16 Forever

We ordered. “I want to hear all about camp!” Vivian said, straining to scoop my chocolate chip cookie dough. “Was it good?”

“It was.” The invincibility I’d felt a mere five minutes earlier was nowhere to be found. “Really good.”

“Yay! That’s the best news. You need to tell me all about it when I get home.”

“Definitely.”

“My shift ends at five, but then I seriously need to know everything.”

Vivian didn’t get home until ten that night. She thought she’d end up hanging out with Carter for a little first and completely lost track of time. I, meanwhile, spent the evening pitying myself, bingeingFuller Housewhile trying to tune out the sound of Mom and Dad arguing about money, specifically Dad’s inability to make enough of it.

Thus began the Days of Vivian and Carter. My sister was around far less than usual the rest of the summer. The silver lining was that her cameo appearances were always accompanied by a disturbingly good mood. Her absence was a buzzkill, though, not helped at all by Mom and Dad sitting us down on the couch the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, less than a week before the start of school, to let us know they were going to separate. Mom would stay with Vivian and me in the house; Dad would get a nearby apartment and visit a lot.

Vivian was upset. I waswrecked.

Somehow, in spite of the perpetual cloud of snark and resentment that had settled in our home, I hadn’t seen it coming. Divorce was something on TV, something for other people, not forus.

It was a tough fall. As if seventh grade wasn’t already a struggle without throwing a divorce into the mix.

One of the worst parts was that, once school started, Vivian—who’d never encountered an extracurricular activity that didn’t appeal to her—was around evenless, which I hadn’t thought possible. So there was a lot of me and Mom hanging out. We’d transformed,practically overnight, from a vibrant family of four into a wisecracking mom-and-daughter duo. Like a poor man’sGilmore Girls.

Mom seemed sad but mainly relieved. “It was really for the best,” she’d say. “Your father and I have different ideas of what it means to be an adult, if that makes sense. We weren’t a good team anymore.”

For some reason I always pictured my parents in field hockey jerseys when she said that, shouting at each other while flailing their sticks around.

Some of my favorite moments during that lonely time were when Vivian was home long enough to hang out with me, even if we were just lying on a couch watching movies we’d seen a zillion times already, likeLove, Simonor either of theFrozens. I could temporarily forget that we’d undergone this wrenching shift, what felt like a prank: me coming home from camp, thinking I’d changed and then realizing it was actually the rest of my family that had.

Ha ha. Good one.

Myotherfavorite moments that fall were when Carter came over for dinner.

It only happened twice, but those meals—with him, Mom, Vivian, and me—were, I don’t know... fun. Bright. A lovely distraction.

“Do you think I can balance this on my finger?” Carter asked at one of them, holding out the plastic ketchup bottle he’d just used to squirt a splotch next to his fries.

“Which finger?” I asked. “Like, your index finger?”

“Probably start with that, yeah. Then work up to doing it with my pinky.”

“No,” I said, smiling. “I don’t think you can.”

“Cart, don’t actually do it,” Vivian said, laughing.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Carter said, putting out a calming hand, directed mostly toward Mom, who was giving him a skeptical look. “I’m very experienced.”

He stuck his pointer finger up in the air and, like a professional magician, slowly lowered the bottle of Heinz onto it.

“Voilà!” Carter shouted, releasing his hand. The bottle balanced there for almost a full second before toppling over and landing with a thud in the Caesar salad.

“Carter!” Vivian shouted with glee.

“Oh god, sorry,” Carter said, genuinely mortified. “That’s never happened before. I seriously practice all the time.”

“All the time?” Vivian asked, cracking up.

She and I couldn’t stop laughing the rest of the meal. Even Mom, who was obviously annoyed, eventually laughed too.

I definitely wouldn’t call what I felt for Carter at that time a crush. I mean, he was four years older than me and dating mysister, so the wordcrushdidn’t even really occur to me. I just liked when he was around.