Change Places with Me(18)

“I’m named after Gary Cooper. Though I think he was a lot taller.”

“Your name is Gary?” But that sounded wrong.

“Cooper,” he said.

“I’ll have cranberry pancakes,” Astrid broke in. “Double-shot latte. No, triple.”

Cooper took the rest of their orders; Rose got the steel-cut oatmeal. As Cooper left, he told Rose, “Sometimes they show that movie next door. Keep an eye out.”

“I will,” she said.

“I would never,” Selena said. “I only see holo-films. I like how you feel in the middle of everything. Though they make my cousin throw up.”

“Where’s Nick?” Rose said.

They all looked at one another.

“He had a late night,” Dylan said. “He’s sleeping it off.”

Selena’s fist came down on the table, knocking over the ketchup bottle again. “Can’t keep a secret, can you?”

“What’re you talking about?” Dylan said. “I didn’t say anything!”

Rose agreed. It was Selena who was giving things away. “He went out with someone after the party, didn’t he,” Rose said, stating it as a fact.

“Darcy Franzen,” Selena said.

Rose looked at the splotch of ketchup and didn’t clean it up.

“Are you seriously upset?” Selena said. “I mean, it’s Nick, so . . .”

Rose glanced over at Kim. The people on either side of her had left—they hadn’t been an aunt and uncle, after all. Kim was alone. “I have to talk to someone.”

“If you call Nick—” Selena said, alarmed.

“You always called him,” Astrid said, “and he always denied everything.”

“Nick never cheated on me!” Selena said. “Keep telling yourself that,” Astrid said.

“I’m not calling Nick,” Rose said. “I don’t even have my phone.” She headed over to Kim.

Kim was just finishing a stack of blueberry pancakes. She had on a paisley sweatshirt dress with metal clasps in the front. “Hey,” she said, offering Rose half an orange juice stick. “Want a bite?”

“I’m sitting with them.” Rose pointed to her table.

Kim glanced and made a face. She said, “You see who works here?”

“Cooper,” Rose said. “As in Gary Cooper.”

“Ha, I didn’t know that! Makes sense, though.” Kim waved an arm at the movie posters.

“I wanted you at my party. I know you only got a last-minute invite.”

“I couldn’t have gone anyway. Had to babysit. This family had a crazy basset hound. I was told it was in a locked room, but it got out somehow and chased me into the kids’ room. I was in there until midnight, with the dog outside, howling. The kids thought it was hilarious. How was the party?”

“Really great but—Nick Winter? He hung out with me, and I just heard he got together after with Darcy Franzen.”

“No big loss. Maybe for Darcy Franzen, but not for you.” Kim pointed her thumb at the poster for Ball of Fire. “You do look like Barbara Stanwyck.”

“There was a psychic at the party. Everybody said she was amazing, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She kept asking me questions about when I was little. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

Kim shrugged.

“I was spoiled,” Rose said, “wasn’t I? My dad spoiled me.”

A sort of sad smile spread across Kim’s face. “Your dad was a single parent practically since you were born. He did the best he could. He kinda had a hard time saying no to you.”

“I was a brat,” Rose said with conviction. Which meant that everything that had happened had been just what you’d expect, right? Her dad had been the way he was because she didn’t have a mom, and later she’d gotten sort of moody for a time because her dad was gone, too. It wasn’t that complicated, certainly nothing to dwell on.

“Yeah, you were the brat of Belle Heights,” Kim said. “I loved you anyway.” She hesitated. “I still love you.”

“Oh, I love you, too!” Rose beamed at her.

“So why are you with them?”

Rose kept smiling. “We could all be friends, though. Don’t you think? We could do so many fun things together.”

Kim said that wasn’t going to happen—and called her by her old name.

“It’s Rose. Don’t I look like a Rose? The lipstick, the hair?” She tucked some hair behind one ear. “I know I don’t have the exact right jean jacket—but I’ll find it soon.”

Kim got up. “Come over later. Doesn’t matter when. Just—drop by.”

Rose went back to her table, having to push to reclaim even her tiny portion of the bench. She half listened to a story about some girl who got her lips puffed and they looked horrible. She glanced out the window at stark branches against a swirling gray sky, clouds all smeared as if someone had tried to rub them out.

That was when she saw it—Forget-Me-Not.

There was a three-story brick building across the street, not the kind of building you’d ever look twice at. On the second floor, right above a cell phone store, were the words, not very big, in plain black on one of the windows—in the same lettering as on that receipt she’d found last weekend, for sixteen hundred dollars. Evelyn had said it was a flower shop. It didn’t look anything like a flower shop. There weren’t any flowers.