Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Sunday, June 27Position: Window stool at the Apothecary.Cover: Trying out tinted moisturizer at the counter. Oddly (and to the saleslady’s obvious annoyance), none seem to exactly match my skin tone. Perhaps because the cheapest three-ounce bottle is priced at $22.50.Observations:1:05 p.m.: Subject Chloe Appleby arrives. Uniform: pink skirt, white T-shirt, silver thongs, ponytail, larger sunglasses than usual. (Assessment: Clearly mourning the death of her relationship with Hammond. Note: Confirmation of this was all over Twitter this morning. Ally has still not answered her phone.) Subject walks to the sunscreen aisle, stops, and stares at a Clinique bottle. (Note: Shisheido is her brand of choice. Assessment: She’s not handling this breakup well.)1:21 p.m.: Subject Chloe Appleby still staring at Clinique bottle. Subject Shannen Moore arrives. Uniform: cutoff shorts, rubber thongs, wrinkled Three Dots T. Subject freezes when she sees Subject Chloe, turns around, and walks out. Subject Chloe never sees her. Unless she hid her reaction behind those big-ass glasses and just faked it. (Assessment: Chloe totally saw her.) 1:45 p.m.: Subject Chloe has replaced Clinique bottle and moved on to nail polish. Subject Hammond Ross walks by the window. Uniform: plaid shorts, polo shirt, Nike sport sandals. Subject Hammond spots Subject Chloe. He stops. Turns. Hesitates. Walks in. Subject Hammond approaches his prey.Hammond: “Hey, babe.”Subject Chloe slams the NARS bottle she was considering down on the shelf and storms out. Several jars hit the floor and two of them break, ruining Subject Hammond’s Nikes. Pinched-face saleslady forces Subject Hammond to pay for two sixteen-dollar bottles of nail polish. He shoves the door open so hard on the way out, it smacks against the window, and the Botoxed customer next to me actually changes expression.(Personal Note: It’s a good day.)

“Don’t worry, bud. I have a plan.”My father sat down on one of the two stools at the breakfast bar in the one-bedroom apartment he’d invited me to come check out with him in downtown Orchard Hill. The stools were the only furniture in the entire place and the one he’d chosen tipped as he sat down on it, the legs clearly uneven. The kitchen behind him had four cabinets, one stove, and no dishwasher, and the living room carpet was dotted with several nonspecific stains. Still, my dad had just signed the lease that now sat on the countertop next to him, so apparently this square apartment, those ancient stools, and even the scary stains were somehow part of his plan.“A plan for what?” I said.For explaining why you left? Or why you’re back? A plan for winning Mom back? For getting her to break up with Gray? For winning me back? The words were on the tip of my tongue, but my lips wouldn’t open. I’d always been able to talk to my dad about anything. Just not, apparently, the most important things of all.“A plan for getting our lives back to the way they’re supposed to be,” he said, rubbing his hands together.“Oh,” I said. “Right.”I leaned back against the whitewashed wall of the living area, trying to figure out where to look. I couldn’t believe I felt this awkward around my dad. But then, when you don’t see someone for two years and they suddenly step back into your life, I suppose awkward makes sense. For so long I had wished he would come home, but now I could hardly wrap my brain around the fact that he was here.“First of all, I’ve got a new job. Two new jobs, actually,” he said. “Charles Appleby has decided to open a day-trader’s shop and he’s asked me to come on board. I’ll be starting at the bottom, of course, re-proving myself, but at least it’s a foot in the door. But before I can start making trades I have to retake my Series Seven Exam, which means taking night classes, so in the meantime I’ve landed a gig as manager at Jump, Java, and Wail!”I stared at my father. He couldn’t be serious. He was going to be working at the coffee shop where everyone from school and their parents bought their soy lattes and triple-shot espressos every day? Where the people whose money he’d lost two years ago—most of whom, by the way, had not gotten over losing it—popped by for their morning cup of joe? Did he not see a problem with this plan?“You’re kidding,” I said finally, because I had to say something.“I know. Charlie’s been amazing these past couple of years,” my father said, missing my point entirely. “He’s really been a true friend to me, putting me up in the city . . . giving me that job at the deli. And when I came to him a couple of months ago and told him I was going to try to start over, he really listened to what I had to say. It means a lot that he’s willing to give me this second chance.”It was so ironic I wanted to laugh. Chloe’s dad listening, giving him a second chance. Meanwhile, when I tried to explain to Chloe what had happened between me and Hammond over two years ago—why we’d kissed and how it had meant nothing—she didn’t want to hear a word.“Um, yeah, that’s amazing,” I said.I slowly crossed the room to the wall of windows—the tiny place’s best feature—which overlooked Orchard Avenue. Mature trees lined the sidewalks and there were flower boxes in front of almost every window. Down below, a white Mercedes pulled into a parallel parking space, hit the curb, pulled up and back, hit the curb again, then stopped. A woman got out, her dark hair perfectly framing her tan face and gold sunglasses. She looked at her back tire, which was half on the sidewalk, muttered something under her breath, and stormed through the front door of the Apothecary, which was right beneath my feet.The Apothecary, where all the wealthy Crestie moms went to procure their night creams and cellulite solutions and magic age-reversing vitamins.“And then, once I pass my Series Seven, I can start trading full time, making back all the money I lost,” my dad continued, strolling over to join me. “Who knows? Maybe one day we can even get our old house back.”My throat closed over and I hiccup-coughed into my hand. Jake Graydon and his family were currently living in our old house. I had a sudden vision of me reclaiming my old bedroom and tossing Jake’s stuff out onto the street, while he looked on, all helpless and dejected. In my current frame of mind, the image was highly gratifying. Impossible, I knew, but gratifying.“Shouldn’t you be telling Mom all this?” I said, glancing up at my dad.“I should be telling both of you all this,” my father said, putting his arm around my back and his hand on my shoulder. “Unfortunately, your mother won’t answer my calls.”I shrugged away from him, and his face fell, but just for a moment. “So . . . what? You want me to tell her all this?” I asked, sounding belligerent.“No. Of course not.” He took the apartment keys out of the pocket of his gray pants and fiddled with them. “Though it might be nice if you could, possibly, convince her to call me.”My teeth clenched as a surge of anger coursed through me. I turned to the window again and held my breath for as long as I could. I was not this person. I had spent the last two and a half years trying as hard as I could not to be this person. Trying not to think about my dad at all. Because whenever I did think about him, I felt this awful mix of rage and confusion and longing and sadness and insecurity burning inside my stomach. So I had just . . . put it aside. I’d just not let myself go there. And I’d become so good at it—the not thinking. So good that I’d actually been able to fool the world into believing I was a perfectly normal, well-adjusted, happy human being. I’d even kind of convinced myself.But now that he was here, it was impossible not to think about everything that had happened. And that meant feeling it. All of it. All the time. Well-adjusted? Ha. Try malfunctioning.My life was a total and complete wreck because of him. All my old friends hated me, which wouldn’t have even mattered if I still had Jake, but that blew up in my face, thanks to my dad, too. And now, what? He was asking me to do him a favor?The thing was, I’d also missed him. I’d missed him every single day and had daydreamed every other hour about what it would be like when he came back. And now here he was. So how was I supposed to deal with it? Was I supposed to be angry or happy? Excited or indifferent? Because right now, I was everything.I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Tried to choose to be hopeful. Because if he’d come back now with this elaborate plan, he must be serious about staying. He must be serious about trying to get things back to the way they’d been before—back when we were all one happy family. That was what I decided to believe.“I like the view,” I said, changing the subject.You could see the spire of the Episcopal Church down on the other side of Oak Street, which cornered the building, and the hills beyond were all green and rolling, like something out of a Thoreau poem.“It’s nice, isn’t it?” he said.On the sidewalk down below, Quinn Nathanson and her friend Lindsey walked along eating frozen yogurt, shopping bags swinging from their wrists, totally carefree. At that very moment, Quinn’s dad, Gray, and my mom were out shopping for new bedding for Gray’s shore house. For his bed. The bed they would share for the summer.Puke.Every time I thought about the two of them together—the way they held each other’s hands during dinner, how they were always exchanging knowing looks, how he touched the small of her back whenever they walked through a door together—I felt an awful panic rising up in my throat. Maybe I didn’t feel like doing my father any favors, but I had a bad feeling that my mother wasn’t going to be picking up the phone to talk to him on her own any time soon. And with Gray in the picture, the longer my mom and dad didn’t talk, the worse off we all were.“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll talk to her for you.”“Thanks, bud.” He leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “So!” He clapped his hands together and took a step back. “How’s everything been? How was school this year? I hope you’re still playing basketball.” He walked over to the counter again and picked up the lease.“Yep. We had a good season.”“And school?”“It was . . . good,” I lied.Except for the last few days. If I could just go back and make the last few days un-happen, I’d be fine. Then I wouldn’t go to Shannen’s party, she wouldn’t show that awful video, I’d never know that Jake knew all along where my dad was and didn’t tell me, and Jake and I would be together and happy right now, planning our two months down the shore.I opened my mouth, the fourteen-year-old in me—the one whose dad was her best friend—wanting to pour it all out to him. To tell him what had happened with the Cresties and with Jake Graydon, the guy who’d crushed my heart and had yet to call, text, or even e-mail to apologize. But I forced my lips shut again. Because I wasn’t that fourteen-year-old girl anymore. And he wasn’t my best friend anymore either.My dad shoved the papers into a brown leather messenger bag. I tugged my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen for messages. Not a one. Not from Jake, not from Chloe, not from anyone.“And I hear you’re going to be spending the summer down the shore?”His voice was excited. Maybe too excited. Like he was trying too hard to sound okay with it. I guess when you come back to town to win your family back it’s kind of a bummer to hear they’re moving away for two months. I wondered how he’d heard. Probably from Mrs. Appleby. The woman did love to gossip. I wondered why she hadn’t told him about Gray. Probably didn’t want to spoil the delicious surprise. Evil witch. I swallowed hard and tucked the phone away.“I don’t really want to go,” I told him.Understatement city. I loathed the idea of going down the shore, of spending the summer watching my mom and Gray live like a couple, of hanging out with the Cresties every day—them thinking I wanted to be there, that I still wanted, on any level, for them to accept me as one of their own again. Because I didn’t. I was over it. Why I’d ever wanted any of them back in my life was beyond me.But worst of all I’d have to see Jake all the time and deal with that spirit-shattering awkwardness. Deciding whether or not to go places based on whether or not he would be there. What to wear, how to act, what to say. Ugh.“But Mom is going so . . . I guess I have to.”Suddenly, my father’s face lit up. “Or maybe not.”“What?”“You could stay here!” he said, his eyes sparkling. “With me!”I stared at him, feeling a quick flutter of excitement. If he was inviting me to stay, then he couldn’t be planning on bailing again, right? “Really?”“Yeah!” He dropped his messenger bag and walked a few paces past me toward the bedroom. “You could have the bedroom for the summer and I’ll sleep on the couch.” He laughed and put his hands on his hips. “When I get one.”My throat tightened suddenly. I saw the entire summer play out before my eyes. Me and my dad in this tiny apartment, having shallow conversations and pretending everything was fine. Me wondering if he was ever going to explain. Him constantly asking me how my mother was doing. The whole thing seemed uncomfortable and sad.“Uh . . . yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ll have to ask mom,” I hedged.“This is going to be so great!” My father walked over and enveloped me in a hug. His signature, tight, no-holds-barred hug. He smelled different and suddenly it hit me like a speeding car to the chest. He’d been out there somewhere, all this time, working and talking to people and smiling at strangers and smelling of new cologne. All this time he’d been out there and I’d just been here. Waiting for him. When he released me, I felt relieved. “I’ll call your mom and leave her a message. Since we both know she won’t pick up,” he joshed, as if we were old pals telling an inside joke about a third buddy of ours.“Um, okay,” I heard myself say.“Great. We’ll spend the whole summer hanging out, catching up. We can go fishing! It’ll be just like old times.”My dad walked into the kitchen, pulling out his phone. I turned toward the window again and leaned my forehead against the cool glass. The Mercedes woman got in her car with her pink paper Apothecary bag, slammed the door, and peeled out, almost taking out a lady with a jogging stroller in the crosswalk.A summer down the shore with all my sworn enemies a shell’s throw away, or a summer in this apartment with the man I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust. As I heard my father start to leave a voice mail on my mother’s phone, I started to wonder . . .Was there an option C?