Autumn Falls

The day it happened, Jenna warned me it would end in disaster. “Seriously, Autumn,” she said, sitting down at my kitchen island and helping herself to an apple. “I think this is going to be a tragedy.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, reaching for the glass mixing bowls on the top cabinet shelf. “I appreciate it.” But it wasn’t like she was crazy for saying it. Because first of all, I didn’t know how to cook. Second of all, I was attempting one of my grandmother Eddy’s trickiest Cuban recipes,
boniatillo
. And finally, I needed the outcome to be absolutely perfect so my father would understand that I was sorry.

I hadn’t seen him in a month. He had his own business, and he traveled a lot. The company had something to do with computers, and I was vague about it not because he hadn’t explained it to me, but because the explanation involved him speaking in technobabble, which was a
language I didn’t understand. Big picture, he made secure storage systems for companies with huge amounts of massively important data that couldn’t be lost or stolen without the world pretty much coming to an end.

Usually when he was away we’d have great nightly conversations. But during this trip I’d spent our phone convos accusing him of ruining my life and not caring about anybody but himself. And he wasn’t away for work; he was in Florida, where his mom had had a stroke. He’d flown there the minute we heard the news, and stayed with her in the hospital for a full week on deathwatch.

Eddy made it, but she couldn’t live by herself anymore, so Dad put her in assisted living. That should have been the end of it. Instead, he and Mom had a family meeting and decided we’d move from our suburb outside Baltimore to Aventura to be closer to Eddy and keep an eye on her.

Let the record show that this meeting included neither Erick nor me, even though together we made up half the family.

I didn’t want to move. I’d lived in Stillwater all my life. Everyone I’d ever known and every memory I’d ever made was here. Stillwater was where I’d gone to elementary and middle school. Where I spent weekends hanging out with my friends at their houses and ordering pizza and Snapchatting silly photos of each other. It was where my best friend, Jenna, was—the one person who had seen me make a fool of myself during volleyball in sixth-grade gym
class and risked her own popularity to sit with me at the lunch table. And shared her bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. If Eddy needed help, why couldn’t
she
move near
us
?

Of course Dad had a list of reasons. Eddy couldn’t handle the cold winters, she needed familiarity, the cost of living was cheaper in Aventura, my parents had always talked about moving south one day, blah blah blah. It all meant the same thing: ripping me away from everything I loved in the middle of sophomore year without giving me any say.

So every time Dad called and tried to get me excited about the beaches and the food and our beautiful new house with a pool, I’d scream, beg him to change his mind, or go silent so he would really know how heartbroken and betrayed I felt. “If you loved me,” I’d told him for the zillionth time the day before, “you wouldn’t do this to me.”

“I do love you, Autumn,” he’d said, “which is why I made a decision.”

“We’re not moving?” I asked hopefully.

“We’re still moving, but I’m stepping down as CEO. I’ll consult, but I hired somebody to oversee the day-to-day stuff, including most of the traveling.”

“You mean you’ll stay home with us?”

The words had sounded unreal coming from my mouth. My whole life I’d been dying for Dad to do just that. To be there to high-five me when I got an A on a quiz, or drive me
and Jenna to Target. To laugh at one of my jokes, or make me and Erick his famous banana-nut pancakes. To participate in my life instead of just being a bystander.

“But you always said no one else could handle things as well as you.”

“Maybe I’m not as indispensible as I like to think,” he said wryly. “I love you guys. I want this move to be a new beginning for us.”

And suddenly I’d regretted all the grief I’d been giving him. I wasn’t happy, but I could at least stop torturing him like a brat. I wanted to welcome him home with a grand gesture to show him how sorry I was. Hence the
boniatillo
.

“Okay,” I said, checking out my staged tableau in the kitchen. “Three hours before we have to leave to get Dad at the airport. I’ve got the sweet potatoes, sugar, lime, cinnamon, and eggs. What else?”

Jenna tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear and looked down at my grandmother Eddy’s long-ago-scrawled recipe. “A bottle of Manz … I have no idea what this means.”

“Manzanilla.”
I pronounced it with a perfect Spanish accent. “It’s a kind of wine.” I opened the pantry door and clanked through the zillion dust-covered bottles.

“Party?” Jenna asked, waggling her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

I rolled my eyes. Jenna would never in a million years taste a drop of alcohol. It has nothing to do with the fact that we’re only fifteen. Jenna’s a runner. It’s her Thing.
That’s why she never wears more makeup than a little eyeliner and lip gloss, why her dark hair’s always in a ponytail, and why she owns twenty pairs of sneakers. Sorry,
running shoes
. She doesn’t eat and drink, she fuels and hydrates. Tainting her body with alcohol would be as great a sin as spilling a tanker full of oil into the ocean.

Me? I don’t drink because my dad would kill me.

“Got it.” I’d had to crawl into the pantry to dig out the bottle, and by the time I backed out, Erick had come downstairs and was filming while Jenna made goofy faces for the camera.

“Perv, cut it out,” I said, pushing past him.

“What? I’m filming Jenna.”

“And if I watched that, you’re telling me I’d see her face and not her boobs?”

Erick gaped at me. “Well—”

“Seriously?” Jenna grabbed the camera. “Deleted,” she announced as she erased it, then turned to me and added, “That I won’t miss.”

She wouldn’t, but Erick would. He’s four years younger than me, and Jenna and I have been friends since sixth grade, so he’s known her for years and had a crush on her just as long. It used to be cute. Then he turned hideously prepubescent and became obsessed with … ugh.

“You have to stop, Icks,” Jenna said as she handed him his camera. “I’m like your sister.”

“You’re
nothing
like my sister,” Erick gushed.

“Gross. Hormone Boy, camera over here.” I waited until
he had the lens aimed at me. “You want to catch this, because I, Autumn Falls, am about to cook.”

“You want to get the fire extinguisher or should I?” Jenna asked Erick, causing him to crack up a lot longer than was really necessary.

“Laugh all you want,” I said, ignoring them. “This could be a life-changing moment for me. Cooking could be my Thing.”

I desperately needed a Thing. I was the only one in my house without one. Oh, sure, I had my Kyler Leeds obsession, but Jenna and I had a clear rule: people cannot be Things. Even if they could, it would take an actual boyfriend to qualify, not a rock star with whom I’d been hopelessly in love for two years.

Jenna and my family, meanwhile, were chock-full of Things. Mom had Catches Falls, her rescue organization for homeless dogs; Erick was all about his cameras; Dad had computers. Even my grandmother had a Thing. She’d been a potter back in Cuba. She gave it up when Dad was a baby and the family emigrated to the U.S. but took it up again after my grandfather died a couple of years later. She apparently supported the family selling her clay pots, which I find shocking. She gave Erick and me pots every year when we visited her in Florida, and honestly, they didn’t seem so great. Not like something you could support a family on.