Shining On Read Free Page A

door, or she might just have got tired of sleeping on the little daybed in the studio. Or maybe she even missed us. Who knows.
    But that night, around ten p.m., we saw lights on in the studio, and later found a handwritten note pushed through the letter box.
    It read,
I'll think about it. Love, Mum.
    And I guess she thought about it all day Sunday, be-cause it was teatime on Sunday when she finally knocked on the door like a visitor, and when we let her in, she looked around in every room, and nodded every now and then, and finally she sat down at the (immaculate) kitchen table and said, OK, I'll come back.
    We all started cheering and surrounded her and hugged and kissed her, but she held up one hand and continued.
    On one condition. At which point she pulled out a sheaf of papers that looked a little like the Treaty of Ver-sailles, and handed one set to each of us, and on it was a schedule of who did what job on what day and, to be fair, she had written herself into the list occasionally too.
    So this is where I'm supposed to say we all lived happily ever after, but in fact we didn't—at least, not quite in the way we expected to. Nobody really stuck to the jobs listed on the piece of paper, including Mum, because she was away a lot suddenly due to her business being so successful at last, but the good thing was she seemed to care a lot less about the house being as clean as it was before, and we learned one important lesson—not to push her past a cer-tain point—so we did pitch in more than we ever had, with the possible exception of Alec. Then Mum really started raking in the dough and Dad quit his job and stayed home,doing most of the cooking and cleaning and gardening and seeming strangely happy about it. So in general, things worked out more or less peacefully for a while.
    But a few months later, we noticed Mum was spending a lot of time talking to the young guy next door, and one day she gathered us together and said she was moving out for good. We just stood there stunned and completely freaked out, and Moe began to cry, and Mum grabbed him up in her arms and said stop crying, Moe, and come look at my new house.
    Then she opened the front door, and jumped over the little wall by the front path and pulled a key out of her pocket and opened the door of the house next door. And while we were staring at her trying to figure out what had happened, she was grinning ear to ear and said I've finally sorted it.
    So that's the end of the story. Mum bought the house next door from the young guy, and though we have to take our shoes off when we go visit her, she almost never shouts at us anymore, and she never complains about the mess in our house, not ever. And when I get fed up living with Dad or if I can't stand another minute with Moe and Alec, I move in with Mum for a few weeks and we have a great time staying up late and talking and just getting on. And sometimes we rent a movie and make popcorn and invite Mum round to our house to watch it and she stays over, and we make her breakfast in the morning before she goes back to work.
    And whenever anyone asks us in a polite concerned voice why we don't live with our mother, we put on mournful faces and sigh and say, Well, she just walked out on us one day, but we're pretty much resigned to it now.
    And then we fall about laughing, and go and tell Mum.

Meg Cabot

    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Saturday, November 3, 3:00 p.m.
    I know you've been seeing that freak Greg Harding behind my back. Don't try to deny it. Steve Dewitter's little brother Jeff said he spied you and Greg through the living room window while he was mowing the lawn, and that Greg had his tongue down your throat (while he was supposed to be “tutoring” you in geometry). Truthfully, Allie, I really never thought it would end this way. But maybe it's all for the best. Anyone whowould go out with a geek like Greg deserves what she gets.
    Been nice knowing you. Oh, and