The Mosts Read online

  Like Sabrina, Sam wanted to be a vet. For horses and cows and goats, not house pets. This was why he preferred to rake manure and lead the cows out to pasture in his free time. Anyone at the high school could earn three science credits by working at my parents’ small dairy farm in an internship program for an entire school year, including the dead of winter, which in Maine was pretty brutal. My mom and Mac had four interns this year—in addition to two full-time farmhands. They mostly cleaned up cow poop (which meant raking it into the gutters in front of the cow pens), made sure the cows and calves had fresh water, fed the calves from their bottles, put out the feed for the cows, and did some light grooming and cleaning. Sam was the only hot intern. The rest looked like … well, like farmers.

  “Where is it?” I asked Sabrina, dumping my messenger bag on a chair.

  “Where’s what?” she asked, taking a bite of her taco.

  I rolled my eyes. “The invitation!”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  Grr! She infuriated me. Could we be any more different? Don’t care in the slightest was her response to making the Not list again last year. Like I care what some shallow, vapid airheads in fancy clothes think of me. Why would I?

  Sometimes I thought her attitude was a good thing, mostly because, like my aunt Darcy said, people were who they were and should be celebrated for their uniqueness, not ridiculed. Sabrina, according to Aunt Darcy, was her own person and could one day be president. I wasn’t sure about that. Maybe president of the Future Farmers of America Club.

  I glanced around the kitchen, in the usual spots that our mother left things for us, like notes and ten-dollar bills, but I didn’t see anything resembling a fancy envelope.

  “Well, do you know where Mom is?” I asked.

  “In the calves’ barn.”

  I exchanged my silver sandals—you couldn’t not step in something gross at the farm, especially in the barns—for my Crocs and headed out to the calves’ barn. It was around fifty feet from the house. It wasn’t one of those old-fashioned red barns like in children’s picture books. It was just an ugly weathered shingled structure, somewhere between brown and gray, with corrals and pens, lots of hay, and rakes. You had to hold your nose when you entered. Well, I did.

  I didn’t see my mother, but I did see Elinor at the far end. She was sitting on an upside-down metal bucket and feeding a calf, but she was also staring at Sam as he raked out a stall. She didn’t seem to notice that Weasley was sucking on air, and even I knew that that wasn’t good for a calf.

  I heard Sam say to her, “Did you know the bottle’s empty? Boy, Weasley sucks fast.”

  Instead of answering him, Elinor froze; she looked like she had in Latin 1 the day before when she’d stood up to present her Greek myth. She’d had to sit back down and try again later. Elinor dropped the bottle and ran past me toward the house, presumably to ask Mac for more milk, but I knew she was probably standing outside the barn, breaking into hives.

  “Oh, Madeline, there you are,” my mother said, coming around the side of the barn. She tightened the ponytail holder on her long braid, then pulled a large envelope from the sling she always wore across her chest.

  Yes! California, here I come!

  “Someone’s excited,” my mom said with a smile, but then one of the farmhands called her for help; she was having trouble moving a cow. “Show me later,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried off.

  In the middle of the stinky barn, two ever-present giant ducks waddled past me as I tore open the envelope. There was no point in opening it with Sabrina, since she hated our dad’s guts at the moment. It had been a long moment—since he’d moved to California three years earlier.

  I pulled out the invitation, a cream-colored card with fancy calligraphy.

  Tiffany Alison Bluthwell and Timothy Lee Echols cordially invite you to share in the celebration of their wedding … .

  I flipped through the layers of see-through tissue paper. But there were only two little cards, one with directions to the wedding and one a reply card. No note about having booked the airline tickets?

  I rushed inside. “Look, the invitation to Dad’s wedding,” I said to Sabrina. “I guess he’ll book our plane tickets when we know exactly when we want to leave and return, right?”

  She glanced at the address on the outer envelope. “Sabrina and Madeline Echols? He couldn’t even send us each our own invitation,” she grumbled over a mouthful of food. She shook her head. “Nice, Dad. So fatherly.”

  “We live in the same house, Sabrina,” I pointed out. She was such a downer. “We’re going to L.A.! Sabrina, we’ll see A-list celebrities in line at Starbucks!” And Thom, I added to myself.

  “No we won’t,” she said. “Because we’re not going. I wouldn’t go if he sent us tickets, which I assume he won’t. And you won’t go because you can’t afford a ticket from Maine to L.A. And you’re not asking Mom and Mac. They can’t afford it either. So don’t be a total brat and ask, Maddie.”

  I hated, hated, hated being called Maddie. And Sabrina knew it. I was Maddie before freshman year, before my European transformation. Maddie was a different girl.

  I searched the envelope again for a personal note from our dad saying that he’d book e-tickets, that we could, of course, stay in their gorgeous condo (which I got a glimpse of in their last Christmas card photo, with my dad and Tiffany and her little white dog in front of a white Christmas tree), which wasn’t on the beach, but close. But there was nothing. “I’m sending this back with a ‘Miss Madeline Echols will attend.’”

  “I’d change my outfit if I were you,” Sabrina said, eyeing my white capris. “You’ll be working the farm every minute until the wedding. Not that you’ll earn enough to pay your way. Just forget it. He doesn’t even care if we come, Madeline.”

  “I think he does,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt.

  And I was confident about something else, too: I was going to that wedding.

  “I wish I could, sweetie,” my father said on the phone. It was four o’clock in Maine but one o’clock in California. I imagined him at his desk, eating lunch. My dad built food courts in airports. He used to build cafeterias in schools. When I was the new kid in middle school and sitting alone pretty much all the time for lunch, I would imagine that he’d made the cafeteria, and I’d feel comforted. “But every cent is going to pay for the wedding. I mean, the cake alone cost a fortune—it has, like, ten layers or something. You know I’d love for you and Sabrina to come, Mads, but I just can’t swing the fare. A one-way ticket is over three hundred, honey. I checked. It’s just going to be a small ceremony, anyway. You can see it all on video.”

  How personal.

  I wouldn’t tell Sabrina this. It would only fuel her hatred.

  “But I haven’t even met Tiffany,” I reminded him, dropping onto the edge of my bed. “You’re marrying someone I haven’t even met. And you’ve been together over a year.” I’d been so focused on going to California to be with Thom that I hadn’t even realized until now how much I wanted to go for my dad, to spend some time with him on his turf, to feel a part of his life. To get back what we’d had before the divorce.

  “I know, hon,” he said. “Once we’re back from the honeymoon, maybe we can plan a trip to Maine. Tiff’s never been to Maine. She wasn’t even sure if Maine was part of Canada or the U.S. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Amazingly stupid. I’d never been to California and I knew it wasn’t part of Mexico.

  My father would marry Tiffany, who I’d never met, and she would never want to come to Maine, because she already lived on a gorgeous coast. I got the point of traveling from Maine to California: for L.A., Hollywood, movie stars, palm trees. But in Maine, there was only good lobster. And according to my father, Tiff was not only a vegetarian, but a vegan, which meant she didn’t eat anything that came from a cow or a chicken or a goat, like milk or cheese or eggs. I could forget her ever setting foot on a dairy farm.
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br />   I could also forget about moving to California. I could forget about Thom.

  We talked for a few minutes and then he had to go. I lay down and covered my face with a pillow, then bolted up. No way. My aunt Darcy always said that when life handed you a box of chocolates with the gross pink cream stuff inside that you hated, you could either throw out the whole box and be depressed or you could bite around the pink cream and be in chocolate heaven. According to Aunt Darcy, there was a way around every hurdle.

  I sat down at my desk and turned on my laptop. A quick check of e-mail—two short but very sweet messages from Thom. He’d gotten lost on the way to Western civ, but he’d already been befriended by some of the popular people.

  I immediately thought of a beautiful blonde in a pink bikini.

  I clicked onto Google and typed cheap airline tickets into the search box. Apparently the cheapest airline ticket from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles, California, on June fifth was $332 one way. Just like my dad had said.

  At least he had looked into it. That was something.

  And at least I only needed a one-way ticket. Well, to get there. I was pretty sure my father would be happy to have me move in with him and Tiffany. It wasn’t like I was a little kid who needed their attention. I could take care of myself. I wouldn’t be in the way of their newlywed whatever. I’d be out with Thom all the time, anyway.

  And if my dad wasn’t into the idea of having me move in, he’d have to pay for a return ticket to get rid of me, wouldn’t he?

  But how was I going to come up with $332? And as we got closer to the travel date, the fare would likely go up. I’d need to come up with $400 just to be safe. But how?

  I wasn’t sixteen yet, not until October, so I couldn’t even vow to pay my parents back with the money from the summer job I wouldn’t be able to get.

  I flopped back onto my bed with my favorite photo of me and Thom, the one taken the previous winter break in his backyard. It was just us and the snowman we’d built; I was on one side and Thom was on the other and we were hugging each other through it, snow all over us. Thom looked happy. And so did I.

  There was no snow in California. No snow to remind Thom of that day.

  Channel Aunt Darcy, I told myself, eyes closed, photo clutched against my chest. My amazing aunt’s face floated into my mind, her chic swingy bob, her red lipstick that no one else could pull off, her incredible sense of style. What would Aunt Darcy do?

  She would think of something. And so would I.

  Chapter 5

  I flipped to a blank page in my English notebook and wrote WAYS TO EARN LOTS OF MONEY FAST across the top. Ten minutes later, I still had nothing. Babysitting at the going rate of eight dollars an hour would get me as far as New Hampshire, maybe. Working at the farm every day after school and on weekends at the non-intern rate of five bucks an hour would get me—

  “Hello? Madeline? It’s me, Elinor. Espinoza?” This was followed by three quick knocks on my closed bedroom door.

  Elinor Espinoza? Why? And why was she everywhere? This time I had no intimidating friends to send her running away.

  There was another series of knocks. “Madeline?”

  Sigh. I closed my notebook and threw it aside, then got up and opened the door. Elinor, clutching a red backpack with raccoons all over it and EE monogrammed in purple thread, stood in the doorway.

  “There’s something else I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I mean, besides this morning.”

  I waited, watching the way one of the frizz puffs bounced with her every breath.

  “Can I come in?”

  I held the door open and she stepped in and glanced nervously around, like she expected Caro or Fergie to pop out and grab her.

  “It’s about the list. The Not list.”

  “Okay,” I said, waiting. Actually, I was about to explode. Get to the point.

  She took a deep breath. “I have exactly one hundred dollars in here,” she said, pulling wads of cash from the backpack. “Is that enough?”

  “Enough for what?” I asked.

  She took another deep breath, and then her words came out in a rush. “To keep me off the Not list. Most Nerdy. Most in Need of an Extreme Makeover. Most in Need. Most Not Cool. You know.”

  “To keep you off the list? What are you talking about?”

  “Fine, I’ll just say it. I’ll pay you to keep me off that list. So is a hundred enough?” she asked, staring at me. Her lower lip started to tremble.

  I couldn’t believe she was bribing me. “Elinor, honestly, I have nothing to do with the list. I’m not lying.”

  “Well, you have influence with your friends, I’m sure.”

  I dead-eyed her. “So you want to pay me a hundred bucks to tell my friends not to put you on the list.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I want.”

  If a hundred bucks would get me to California, I would almost consider doing it. But I’d need an entire backpack full of those crumpled ones and fives that she’d clearly taken out of her piggy bank that morning.

  “Elinor, if you want off the list so badly, why not just take your hundred dollars and get a makeover? Just go to the mall.” I stared at the horizontal frizz puff. “Start with a hair salon. A lot of them even offer brow waxing, too. Then go to one of the makeup counters in a department store. You don’t even have to buy anything. Oh, and you could get new glasses, too. And new clothes at the outlets in Freeport. A whole new look.”

  “Riiiight,” she said slowly. “So all it takes is a new hairstyle and a few new outfits and suddenly I’m in?”

  Well, not in so much as not on the Not list. Some girls faded into the woodwork and were sort of invisible, which meant they never appeared on the Not list. The ones who stood out for being noticeably weird were the ones who made the list. Like Elinor. And Sabrina.

  “That’s how I did it,” I reminded her.

  She stared at me for a moment, then shook her head. “No, Madeline. That’s not how you did it. You didn’t just change your hair and get expensive jeans and cool shoes. You changed yourself. Big difference.”

  Actually, I hadn’t. I had always been me. I’d just changed the outside to match the inside, which was what my aunt Darcy had taught me how to do that summer I visited her in Rome.

  The moment Aunt Darcy’s little car had zoomed into the city, I had been transfixed. And when she took me to an outdoor café, where she introduced me to real cappuccinos, I couldn’t take my eyes off a table of Italian girls nearby. The way they were dressed. The way they wore their hair. They way they laughed and enjoyed themselves. And when a group of boys came over, I studied the way the girls flirted yet remained mysterious. In control. Unattainable.

  And I told my aunt Darcy I was meant to be an Italian girl. She was delighted, and all day we people-watched and then she took me shopping in boutiques, where the saleswomen taught me how to put together an interesting outfit that was chic and smart. I watched Italian girls without having any idea what they were saying in their beautiful language. I didn’t need to know. I just needed to study them. By the end of the month, in my new clothes with European flair, and with long layers cut into my formerly blah straight brown hair that now shone and swung with the right hair products, and with the new, confident way I spoke to waiters and hotel staff and Aunt Darcy’s friends, I was an Italian girl. Add to that the transformation my body underwent that summer—finally, from lanky and flat-chested to slightly curvy with an almost–B cup (pure biology)—and I was unrecognizable when I went home to Maine.

  My mother and Mac had been quite amused when they’d picked the new me up from the jetport. They were big believers in becoming the you-est you, and if being a glamour queen like Aunt Darcy was the me-est me, so be it. They wanted only people who loved the farm to work the farm. People who loved the herd, loved the ducks and hens and chickens, loved the smell of wet hay, loved even the machinery. They thought the animals, and the very minerals in the land, knew. So I was ex
empt from farm duty.

  “Anyway, I thought you said you just want off the list, Elinor. That’s a lot easier than becoming a Most. You just have to not stand out so much.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door. “So help me. Fix me. Tell me how.”

  How could I tell her to change every single thing about herself and sound like a decent human being? Everything, from the frizz puffs to the socks she wore with her granny sandals to what she talked about, was just wrong.

  I let out a deep breath. “Elinor, I’m sorry, but I’m just not the right per—”

  “So you won’t take the money?”

  “No, I won’t take the money.”

  She glared at me, looking like she was about to cry. “God, it must be nice to live such a charmed life that you can turn down a hundred bucks to do something so simple and easy, something that would make such a big difference in someone’s life. Thanks a lot.”

  What did she know? “Oh, yes, Elinor, my charmed life. I can’t even get to my own father’s wedding because a ticket costs over three hundred bucks. Which means I can’t ask him if I can live with him. Which means I can’t—”

  What was I doing? Why was I telling Elinor Espinoza my life story? I shut up fast.

  “You’re going to ask your dad if you can live with him? Do you think he’ll say yes?”

  I shrugged. “Of course. He’s my dad, right?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “And you’d just leave your friends? Your great life here? Just like that?”

  “Sometimes a change is just what a person needs,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  I didn’t comment. She glanced around. “You changed your room since I was here last. I like it.”

  She’d been “here last” three years before, when she’d first started interning. When we’d moved here, I was obsessed with having a giant rainbow painted on the big wall, lots of pictures of unicorns, and a pink bed with white furniture. By the time I returned from Rome, my room seemed so babyish. Now it was painted a pale blue, and there were a Japanese rock garden and bamboo. It was all very Zen and supposed to make me think calm thoughts.