The Last Song(21)

She didn’t even want to dignify his comment with a response, so she stormed down the hall, determined to have nothing more to do with him.

“Good night, sweetheart,” he called out. “I love you.”

There was a moment, just a moment, when she cringed at what she’d said to him; but her regret vanished as quickly as it had come. It was as if he hadn’t even realized she’d been angry: She heard him begin to play the piano again, picking up exactly where he’d left off.


In the bedroom—not hard to find, considering there were only three doors off the hallway, one to the bathroom and the other to her dad’s room—Ronnie flipped on the light. With a frustrated sigh, she peeled off the ridiculous Nemo T-shirt she’d almost forgotten she was wearing.

It had been the worst day of her life.

Oh, she knew she was being melodramatic about the whole thing. She wasn’t stupid. Still, it hadn’t been a great one. About the only good thing to come out of the whole day was meeting Blaze, which gave her hope that she’d have at least one person to spend time with this summer.

Assuming, of course, that Blaze still wanted to spend time with her. After Dad’s little stunt, even that was in doubt. Blaze and the rest of them were probably still talking about it. Probably laughing about it. It was the kind of thing Kayla would bring up for years.

The whole thing made her sick to her stomach. She tossed the Nemo shirt into the corner—if she never saw it again, it would be too soon—and began slipping off her concert shirt.

“Before I get too grossed out, you should know I’m in here.”

Ronnie jumped at the sound, whirling around to see Jonah staring at her.

“Get out!” she screamed. “What are you doing in here? This is my room!”

“No, it’s our room,” Jonah said. He pointed. “See? Two beds.”

“I’m not going to share a room with you!”

He tilted his head to the side. “You’re going to sleep in Dad’s room?”

She opened her mouth to respond, considered moving to the living room before quickly realizing she wasn’t going out there again, then closed her mouth without a word. She stomped toward her suitcase, unzipped the top, and flung open the lid. Anna Karenina lay on top, and she tossed it aside, searching for her pajamas.

“I rode the Ferris wheel,” Jonah said. “It was pretty cool to be so high. That’s how Dad found you.”

“Great.”

“It was awesome. Did you ride it?”

“No.”

“You should have. I could see all the way to New York.”

“I doubt it.”

“I could. I can see pretty far. With my glasses, I mean. Dad said I have eagle eyes.”

“Yeah, right.”

Jonah said nothing. Instead, he reached for the teddy bear he’d brought with him from home. It was the one he clutched whenever he was nervous, and Ronnie winced, regretting her words. Sometimes the way he talked made it easy to think of him as an adult, but as he pulled the bear to his chest, she knew she shouldn’t have been so harsh. Though he was precocious, though he was verbal to the point of annoyance at times, he was small for his age, more the size of a six- or seven-year-old than a ten-year-old. It had never been easy for him. He’d been born three months prematurely, and he suffered from asthma, poor vision, and a lack of fine-motor coordination. She knew kids his age could be cruel.

“I didn’t mean that. With your glasses, you definitely have eagle eyes.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good now,” he mumbled, but when he turned away and faced the wall, she winced again. He was a sweet kid. A pain in the butt sometimes, but she knew he didn’t have a mean bone in him.

She went over to his bed and sat beside him. “Hey,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m just having a bad night.”

“I know,” he said.

“Did you go on any of the other rides?”

“Dad took me on most of them. He almost got sick, but I didn’t. And I wasn’t scared at all in the haunted house. I could tell the ghosts were fake.”

She patted him on the hip. “You’ve always been pretty brave.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Like that time when the lights went out in the apartment? You were scared that night. I wasn’t scared, though.”

“I remember.”

He seemed satisfied with her answer. But then he grew quiet, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Do you miss Mom?”

Ronnie reached for the covers. “Yeah.”

“I kind of miss her, too. And I didn’t like being here alone.”