“I t
hink I need some help with the math homework,” Lana told me when we were back in the living room. “Think you’ll have some time tomorrow?”
“Sure. Call me in the morning, and we’ll figure it out.”
Suzette was always the nosiest of the three of us. She looked around the living room and then began to flip through the magazines. I started toward her, but she saw the diary.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I scooped it up. “My diary,” I said.
“You keep a diary?” Suzette looked at Lana, who shrugged.
“I used to,” Lana said, “but after my brother found it and read it aloud, I burned it.”
“So are we in it?” Suzette asked.
“You’ll never know,” I said. “A diary is personal.”
“We know who’s mainly in it by now, anyway,” Lana said. “His name starts with K.”
Suzette continued to look at me and the diary suspiciously.
“That looks pretty old,” she said.
“It is. It belonged to my mother, but she never used it.”
“Oh. Well, whatever floats your boat,” she quipped, and they headed for the front door.
I followed but not too closely. I know I was clutching the diary so tightly that I made them suspicious, but I couldn’t help it.
“Have a great time,” Suzette said.
“Yeah. Whatever you do, do it for me, too,” Lana added, and they walked out.
I stood in the doorway watching them get into Suzette’s car. I waved, and they waved back. I could see they were talking a mile a minute as they drove off.
“Like I’d let anyone else touch you,” I told the diary, and hurried upstairs to put it under my pillow. It was getting late, and I had a lot of preparing to do, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation. Had I done or said anything to give them a hint at what was really in this diary? Had they bought my story? They couldn’t possibly imagine what I had. Could they? It would be like some sort of a betrayal if I let anyone else read it or even know about it. Christopher would hate me, I thought, which was a silly thought, of course. He didn’t even know I existed.
Suddenly, that idea passed through my mind like lightning. What if he did know? What if I could meet him? What would I say? What would he say to me? Would he be terribly embarrassed that I had read his diary or terribly angry? I would give it back to him, of course, but he would know that I knew his deepest, most intimate thoughts, and the truth was, no matter how honest we wanted to be, none of us wanted anyone to know all our deepest, most intimate thoughts.
I literally had to shake myself to get back to what I was doing, but I put those images on a back burner. As Dad would say, “I’ll be coming back to them . . . someday.” I started rushing to get ready again.
My father came home only a little while before Kane was due to pick me up for dinner. I was already dressed, my hair and makeup done, when I heard him come into the house. I couldn’t remember being more nervous about anything than I was when I stepped out of my room and started to descend the stairs. Dad was at the bottom looking up at me. The expression on his face stopped me cold. It was an expression I had never seen. He didn’t look upset exactly, and he didn’t exactly look pleased. I think it was more a look of shock and surprise.
“For a moment . . .” he began, and then stopped himself and brought up his smile. “That dress . . .”
“It’s Mom’s. I went through her things in the attic and chose it. We’re about the same size now. Is it all right for me to wear it?”
“Sure,” he said. “She’d want you to wear it. She’d be proud of how you look. You look very beautiful, Kristin, and very grown-up.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I said, and continued down.
He stepped back. “I like what you’ve done with your hair, too. Reminds me a lot of her. I bought her that dress for our tenth-anniversary dinner. I still remember how other people at the restaurant stopped talking or doing what they were doing when we walked in and they saw her. She hated being the center of attention, but I got her laughing about it, claiming they were really looking at me. Where did you say he was taking you?”
“The River House.”
“Right.” He laughed.