Page 3 of Not So Goode

“What you need is intermittent fasting and some salad,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” She peered at me through narrowed eyelids. “I missed that, Char. What’d you say?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Go shower. I’ll get the donuts. But we’re leaving, yes? Shower, dress, and pack.”

She shrugged. “Moira said she’d pack for me and ship it all to me in Alaska. I’m not coming back here. Ever.”

I frowned. “You’ve been talking about going from U-Conn to Sarah Lawrence since you were in eighth grade.”

“Yeah, well…sometimes dreams die,” she said, and left.

I cleared a space on her bed and sat down, pulling my phone from my back pocket. As I did so, it began to vibrate:Mom, it said, accompanied with a thumbnail photo of Mom.

“Crap,” I muttered. Warily, I answered. “Hello?”

“Charlie,” Mom said, breezy, happy. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

I sighed, not knowing how to start. “I…um.”

“Oh shoot,” she murmured. “What now?”

“Have you talked to Lexie?”

A pause. “Lexie? What’s wrong with Lexie?”

“Um. I don’t actually know. And I don’t want to say too much, you know how she is.”

“There’s a crisis, though?”

“Yeah. I’m with her in New York right now, actually. She called me, hysterical, at three thirty this morning. But I have no clue what’s going on—I mean that, I really don’t know, so don’t try wheedling it out of me. I just got here.”

“So what’s the plan, then?”

I sighed again. “I’m going to take her on a road trip. We’ll eventually end up in Alaska, I’m guessing. Somehow, at some point. Hopefully along the way I’ll be able to help her figure out whatever her issue is.” I bit at a fingernail. “And my own, I guess.”

“So you’re not calling Poppy?”

My youngest sister, Poppy—Mom had been after me for months to get together with Poppy, since we were both going through crises of life and work and men, but I didn’t get along with Poppy very well under the best of circumstances, and these were far from that, so I’d been avoiding doing so.

I growled. “Mom, god. I’m dealing with my own life crisis. Now I’m here with Lex, and she wascrying, Mom. Begged me to come get her.”

“Lexie was…crying?”

“Worse than Poppy cried when she burned herself on the bonfire that one summer.”

“No,” Mom breathed, in utter disbelief. “You’re serious?”

“I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You don’t joke about anything,” she teased.

“Oh shut up, Mother. I do too. Just not about Lexie crying.”

“She’s pregnant, I bet.”

“Mom!”

There was a silence, and I could all but see her rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Okay, okay. I won’t push. Just…” She seemed to be trying to figure out what to say.