Surprised? Read online

  Surprised?

  Summer Road Trip

  Written by Nick Day

  Copyright © 2018 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Published by EPIC Press™

  PO Box 398166

  Minneapolis, MN 55439

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  International copyrights reserved in all countries.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

  written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark

  and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Christina Doffing

  Images for cover art obtained from iStock

  Edited by Rue Moran

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Day, Nick, author.

  Title: Surprised?/ by Nick Day

  Description: Minneapolis, MN : EPIC Press, 2018 | Series: Summer road trip

  Summary: Sara is nearing the end of her first year at college, and can’t wait for summer vacation. But out of nowhere she gets a surprising phone call: her estranged father is getting remarried—and he wants her at the wedding. Sara’s best friend Pete volunteers to drive to Texas with her. What follows is a summer Sara will never forget—for better or for worse.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016962618 | ISBN 9781680767261 (lib. bdg.)

  | ISBN 9781680767827 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Adventure stories—Fiction. | Travel—Fiction. | Stepfamilies—Fiction.

  | Best friends—Fiction—Fiction | Young adult fiction.

  Classification: DDC [FIC]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016962618

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  To my family

  THE SUN WAS PEEKING OUT FROM BEHIND THE HIGH clouds as I pushed open the heavy wooden doors of Harris Hall. I had just finished my last final and my freshman year in college was officially behind me.

  “Sara!” came a familiar bright voice from behind me. I turned to see Pete, smiley as ever, striding toward me. “Not bad, right?”

  “Yeah, not too brutal! Except that last question,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, nobody ever knows what E. E. Cummings poems mean,” Pete said, laughing.

  Pete was one of only three guys in our poetry class. I was sure the only reason he enrolled was because he knew I’d be there. He claimed otherwise (“I just like learning about new things!”) but I’ve always been a little skeptical of his intentions. Not that I really mind. He’s one of my best friends, after all.

  “So, whaddya wanna do to celebrate?” Pete asked me, stuffing his hands in the front pocket of his purple Northwestern Wildcats sweatshirt. Pete wears Wildcats stuff every single day, rain or shine.

  “I dunno—maybe get something to eat that’s not Allison Hall powdered eggs?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Pete grinned at the idea. Though we’d been friends for an entire school year, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him frown.

  “Hey, nerds!” I spun around to see my roommate, Maria, bounding toward me. “Finally done? I’ve been waiting to hang out all week!” She was a theater major. They got off easy. “Let’s do something fun, I have to leave for the airport in an hour!”

  “What, already?” I gasped. “I thought you guys were leaving tomorrow?” Maria was starting summer by going on tour to California with her a cappella group, the Undertones.

  “Naw, man, the time approacheth. So let’s go to the lake. People are hanging out and I’m sure like five hipsters are playing guitar.” She took off and Pete and I followed.

  Our last final had ended only a few minutes before, and we were already on our way to the lakeshore. A perfect summer was already underway.

  The waves of Lake Michigan lapped gently at the rocky shore, sparkling in the sun. The day was warm and breezy, as spring moved into summer.

  “My tour is gonna be so crazy!” Maria yelled. “Ugh!” She had repeated this exact same thought again and again on our way to the lake, and a few more times after we sat down.

  “We heard you the fifth time,” I said, winking.

  “Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Pete said.

  “Actually, I think I’ll do the opposite of what you’d do, Grandpa!” Maria smirked. This was their relationship. They were constantly teasing each other, like siblings who have spent too much time under one roof. I’d always wondered if there was another layer to that teasing, if there were some pheromones in the air. But I tried not to dwell on that.

  “What are you doing this summer anyway, Pete? You didn’t really say,” asked Maria.

  “Eh, I dunno,” Pete shrugged. His smile faded a little. We waited for him to say more. Instead, we just listened to the lake breeze brush through the grass, and gently rattle the tree branches above us, just beginning to bear buds. “I think I might do a few weeks at the camp I worked at in high school. But other than that . . . ”

  “Well, even just sleeping for three months sounds pretty thrilling to me,” I offered.

  “Totally,” Pete said, a smile returning to his face, though it looked a little forced. I knew he was from the wealthier North Shore suburbs of Chicago, but otherwise Pete hadn’t said much about his hometown or his home life. I was never sure if he just found it boring, or if there was something really unpleasant about it.

  “You know, it’s so weird, I’m only about forty miles from home, but I feel like it’s a world away,” I said. Barrington, Illinois, my hometown, was where I felt far more comfortable than anywhere else. Northwestern was pretty good, but it wasn’t home. Not yet. “I can’t wait to see Cooper and Ian!” I said, beaming. I imagined how it would feel, opening the door to my house tomorrow, and having those two golden doodles bound into my arms. They still behaved like the little puppies they once were, though by now they each weighed almost eighty pounds.

  “And your mom,” Pete said. I looked at him, and met his glance. It always amazed me, how much he remembered about me, how much he listened when I talked. He was right. I was excited to see my mom—and I knew how excited my mom was to see me. She was still adjusting to being totally alone—a single mom and an empty nester. She’d gotten used to being a single mom by now—it had been twelve years, after all—but with me, her only child, out of the house, all she had was Cooper and Ian. And that wasn’t quite enough for her. In fact, I realized, she might beat those two dogs to the door and leap into my arms first.

  “When do you start working with Professor Grady?” Pete asked me. My summer wasn’t going to be as chill as Pete’s. I would be working with my favorite English professor, Catherine Grady, on a piece she was writing for The Atlantic about safe spaces and free speech on campus. She was a great writer, but she needed a research assistant. Luckily I’d made a good enough impression on her over the year that she trusted me now.

  “Like, next Monday,” I said. “Ten days.” I grimaced a little. The thought of my summer being so compressed wasn’t great.

  “Ouch,” Maria said, wincing.

  “It’ll be worth it, though,” Pete said warmly. “She really likes you, and she’s a big deal.”

  I nodded, thankful for Pete’s encouragement. The three of us fell silent again—until a Frisbee sailed over towards us and perfectly smacked Pete in the face.

  “Agh!” Pete yelled.

  “My bad, guys!” came a full-throated baritone voice I knew all too well. It was Anthony Troy, a junior English major who rode around campus on a skateboard carrying well-worn copies of Dostoyevsky and Thomas Hardy. One of those guys. I’d never had a boyfriend before, and I didn’t know Anthony well enough to see him that way . . . but I did feel like I understood thousands of cheesy songs on the radio whene
ver he was around.

  “No prob, Bob,” Maria said. She grabbed the Frisbee and tossed it back to him as he walked toward us.

  “Thanks,” Anthony said. “You okay, bud?”

  Pete blushed. “Oh, definitely! That was funny,” he sputtered.

  “For sure, for sure,” Anthony said in his easygoing SoCal twang. “Hey—I know you, right?”

  I looked up. Anthony was looking at me. And he was expecting some kind of response. I certainly knew him, but . . .

  “Yeah, uh, Morson’s Russian Lit, fall quarter. We were in the same discussion section.”

  “Oh God, yeah,” Anthony said, smiling. “That TA was such a jerk.”

  I laughed—way too loud. “Right?!”

  He nodded. “Um, for sure—hey, we’re just tossing over here, you guys wanna join?”

  Some guy in a frat tank bellowed from the Frisbee crowd. “Troy, what’s happening over there? We gonna keep playing, or—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Anthony yelled back. “Come on, guys.”

  We looked at each other, all silently assented, and went with him.

  I’m probably the least athletic person ever, but after eighteen years of being the least athletic person ever, you get good at laughing about it. Every single time somebody threw me the Frisbee, I dropped it. Every time I threw it, it went about six feet before angling sideways and kamikaze-ing straight into the ground.

  “Came in fourth in the Olympic trials!” I yelled, smiling. “Twenty-twenty’s my year!” Everybody laughed. Anthony bent down and picked up the Frisbee (I wasn’t even trying to throw it to him, but of course that’s where it went).

  “For sure,” Anthony said. That was when I looked over at Pete next to me. Suddenly his Wildcats sweatshirt, which usually fit well around his wiry frame, looked big on him. He looked like a little boy wearing his dad’s old clothes. He wasn’t smiling much, either.

  “Hey,” I whispered, “you okay?”

  He looked back at me. “Fur shur” Pete muttered, in a dead-on impression of Anthony Troy. He smirked.

  Is he jealous? I wondered. He can’t be . . . why would he be? I looked back to the group of Anthony Troy’s friends, still passing the Frisbee around. Suddenly I felt weird about being there.

  “I’m gonna go, I think,” I muttered, feeling flustered.

  “I’ll come with you,” Maria said. Pete followed right behind her.

  We quietly walked back to our spot on the grass, and started packing up our stuff. I could just sense Pete’s tension.

  “What time is it?” Maria asked. “I should probably jet.” I took out my phone to check—only to find six missed calls, all from the same number. A number I didn’t have in my phone. A number that was apparently from Dallas, Texas.

  “What the—?” I started.

  “What?” asked Pete, coming over to me. I showed him the phone. “Whoa,” he said, his mouth agape. “You know anybody in Texas?”

  “Texas?” Maria asked. “Wait, what’s up?”

  “I have all these missed calls, all from the last like ten minutes,” I said. “But there’s no . . . ”

  “There’s no what?” Pete asked.

  “I thought there wasn’t, but . . . it just showed up. There’s a voicemail. That number just left me a voicemail.” This was confusing. Telemarketers don’t usually leave voicemails.

  “Snap, it’s two-thirty,” Maria said. “Gotta go. Bye, loves!” She hugged Pete and me quickly.

  “Bye, Maria. Have a great time,” Pete said. “Don’t do—”

  “Anything you would do, yep, got it,” Maria said, smiling. “Good luck with your stalker or whatever.”

  “Ha, thanks,” I managed. “Text us sometime, okay, we want to know you’re alive.”

  Maria nodded, flashed her trademark peace sign, and was gone. Pete and I were quiet. I just kept looking at my phone. The little red “1” floating above the voicemail had put me surprisingly on edge.

  “You gonna listen to that?” Pete asked.

  “I guess. Stay here with me?” I said. I knew Pete would. Pete always stays.

  “Whatever you need,” he said. I pressed play on the voicemail and put the phone up to my ear.

  “Hi there, Sara,” a man’s voice began. I thought I recognized it, but . . . no way, that would be crazy. “Hope you’re doing all right—you know, your voicemail message was the first time I’ve heard your voice in twelve years. And I guess it’s been that long since you’ve heard mine. Anyway—”

  I dropped the phone. My hands were weak. My blood ran cold. Pete grabbed my shoulders. “Whoa, whoa, what’s up?” he stammered. I couldn’t respond. My jaw felt frozen shut. I just stared ahead. “Sara?” Pete was panicked. “Sara?”

  I heard myself start to speak, as if I were very far away. “That was . . . that was my dad.”

  “YOUR WHAT?” PETE EXCLAIMED, HIS MOUTH AGAPE. “But you haven’t heard from him in—”

  “I know,” I snapped. And I did know, I knew exactly how long it had been since I had last spoken to him—twelve years, almost to the day. The day he walked out of my house, carrying everything he owned in two big suitcases. Hot tears streamed down my face as I watched him climb into his truck and pull away. It was a sunny summer morning—a day that everybody else in the neighborhood was thrilled about. Our street echoed with the giggles of kids chasing each other through well-mown lawns, and the raised voices of moms calling after them.

  The memory of that morning came rushing back to me as Pete stared into my eyes. I couldn’t help it. The pain, the confusion, the feeling that my childhood had been cut short in one instant—

  My phone rang again, buzzing frantically in my hand. It was that number again: Dallas, Texas. I looked back at Pete, wild-eyed. He met my gaze, and his green eyes were amazingly calm. With Pete’s strength at my back, I pressed the green button and held the phone up to my ear.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  “Sara! Oh, thank goodness,” my dad blubbered. “How are you?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I was a lot of things, but I had no words to describe them.

  “Of course, I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. “I know.” I nodded my head in silence, forgetting he couldn’t see me. He sounded different. Twelve years in Dallas had given him a twang I didn’t like.

  “Yeah,” I managed to say.

  “So,” he said after a pause, “you’re probably wondering why I called. I’ll keep it brief, I promise, but—”

  “What is wrong with you? It’s been twelve years!” I blurted out. It was out of my mouth before I even thought it. He went silent on the other end of the line. Pete’s jaw fell open. A couple girls a few feet away looked over at me.

  “I know,” he finally said. “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you ever call?”

  “You think I didn’t want to?” he asked. I could already hear my dad’s fire coming out in his voice. He’s always been quick to anger.

  “So why didn’t you?” I shot back.

  “Well, honey,” he said, “let’s just say your mother didn’t make it easy.”

  I wasn’t going to back down. “Okay, that’s fine, but I’m an adult now. She doesn’t make all my decisions for me anymore.”

  “Well, your mom presented one major obstacle along the way. She wouldn’t give me your phone number. So that made it hard to reach out.”

  “Well, you got my number somehow, I see.”

  He sighed. “She relented. Because this . . . this isn’t just any old phone call. This is pretty important, and she came around to see my side of things.”

  A shiver ran up my spine. Did I actually want to know why he was calling? A voice in my head told me to hang up right then and there and block his number. But, nonetheless, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “So, what’s so important, then?”

  A heavy silence hung between us. Right when I was about to ask if he was still there, he stammered, “Um, well, honey . . . I’m getting married.”
<
br />   I almost dropped my phone again. Two big surprises in as many minutes were making my head spin. Pete saw my reaction in my eyes. He lurched forward to catch me if I fell.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “I know, it’s a shock,” Dad said. “But I want you to know—and this is why I called—I really want you to be there, Sara. Both Teresa and I—”

  “Teresa?”

  “Teresa, my fiancée. She and I really want you to be there, honey. And like you just said, you’re all grown up now. You can make your own choices. You can come down here on your own without your mother.”

  “You already called Mom. What did she say?”

  “You can imagine how that went,” he said darkly.

  I could, he was right. It was probably a thirty-second conversation filled with four-letter words you can’t say on TV.

  “Well . . . ” I started. “This is a lot.”

  “Of course it is. I wanted to tell you, so you have at least a little time to make this decision, and be down here in time—which, again, Teresa and I would love nothing more.”

  “When is it?” I asked. Something told me that—

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s on Sunday,” he said. I laughed, loudly. It was all I could do. Of course it is!

  “It’s Wednesday!” I yelled.

  “Look, it’s no big thing, we’re not planning a huge bash or anything. Just a small family affair in a park by our house. But it’s exactly what we want.”

  I felt like I had been thrown onto a carousel spinning at a thousand miles an hour. “Dad, I have to go,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. He sounded hurt.

  “But I’ll think about it,” I offered. I wasn’t sure I actually would, or that I even could without feeling sick.

  “Well, I guess that’s all I can ask for.”

  “ . . . Okay then,” I said. “Bye.” I hung up, put my phone in my pocket, and shuddered. What just happened?

  Pete stood stock-still, his face frozen in an expression of total confusion. And as always, he said exactly what was in my head. “What just happened?”

  “I know, right?” I said. Somehow, I smiled. I looked at Pete, for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Thank God he’s here, I thought. He smiled back, and I laughed. “This is too crazy!” I shouted. “You can’t write this stuff!”