Timekeeper (29 page)

“See that I’m everywhere, everywhere, shining down on you …”

The pulsing hip-hop beat of the Lupe Fiasco song “Shining Down” blared from Michele’s iPod alarm the next morning. She unearthed her head from the covers and pressed the Snooze button. How could it already be morning? It felt like just moments earlier that she had managed to fall back to sleep.

“Michele!” a voice sang out from across the hall. “Are you up? I made pancakes, come eat them before they get cold.”

Michele’s eyes flickered open. Sleep or pancakes? That was a no-brainer. Her mouth was already beginning to water at the thought of her mom’s specialty. She threw on a robe and fuzzy slippers and padded through the modest house until she reached the cozy kitchen. Marion Windsor was in her usual morning mode, sipping coffee while studying her newest clothing designs in her sketchbook. The crinkly sound of Marion’s favorite old jazz record, by none other than her grandmother Lily Windsor, echoed from their vintage record player.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Marion greeted her daughter, looking up from her sketchbook with a smile.

“Morning.” Michele leaned over to give her mom a kiss and glanced at the sketch she’d been working on. A long, flowing dress with a bit of a Pocahontas-circa-2010 feel, it was right
in keeping with the other bohemian-chic pieces in her mom’s line, Marion Windsor Designs.

“I like it,” Michele said approvingly. She settled into her seat in front of a plate of golden pancakes topped with strawberries. “And
this
, I definitely like.”

“Bon appétit.”
Marion grinned. “Speaking of food, do you have lunch plans with the girls today?”

Michele shrugged as she inhaled her first forkful of delicious pancake. “Just the usual, nothing special.”

“Well, I have a free afternoon, so I was thinking I could pick you up at lunch and we could go for burgers at Santa Monica Pier,” Marion suggested. “What do you say?”

Michele gave her mom a sideways look. “You still feel sorry for me, don’t you?”

“What? No!” Marion said innocently.

Michele raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay, fine,” Marion said, relenting. “I don’t feel
sorry
for you, because I know you’re so much better off without him. But I can’t stand to see you hurt.”

Michele nodded, looking away. It had been two weeks since her first real boyfriend, Jason, had broken up with her on the eve of the first day of school. His exact words had been “Babe, you know I think you’re the best and all, but it’s my senior year and I can’t have the baggage of a relationship. I gotta live it up, play the field. You get it, right?”
Uh, not exactly
. So Michele had to begin her junior year with a broken heart, which grew all the more painful last week, when word spread that Jason was hooking up with a sophomore, Carly Marsh.

Marion reached across the table and squeezed Michele’s
hand. “Sweetie, I know how hard it is to see your first boyfriend with someone else. It’s just going to take a little time to heal from this.”

“But really, I
should
be over it,” Michele vented. “I mean, all he ever talked about was water polo, and he was about as romantic as a toothpick. I just really miss—I don’t know.…”

“That butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling of wanting to be with someone, and knowing they feel the same way about you?” Marion guessed.

“Yeah,” Michele admitted sheepishly. “Exactly.”

“Well, I can promise that you’ll have that again, but with someone so much better,” Marion said intently.

“How do you know that?” Michele asked doubtfully.

“Because we mothers have an intuition about these things. So when you see Jason with Carly, do your best to just shrug it off and think how lucky you are to be free for a guy who’s actually worthy of you.”

Michele shook her head wonderingly. It never ceased to amaze her that her mom had such an optimistic outlook on Michele’s love life—or even still
believed
in love—after all Marion herself had been through in that department.

“I’m serious,” Marion insisted. “And in the meantime, are you using all this as fodder for your writing?”

“Oh, you know it,” Michele said wryly. “Lots of angsty song lyrics and poems.”

“That’s my girl,” Marion encouraged. “You’d better let me read some of it soon.”

“Once I edit everything down to perfection? Sure,” Michele
said with a grin. “And I think I will take you up on burgers at the beach.”

Even though she was more than a little skeptical of Marion’s predictions about her love life, Michele always felt better after confiding in her. It had been the two of them against the world since Michele was born, and there was never a problem or a heartache that Marion couldn’t fix with her stubborn resolve and humor.

“Honey, you’re looking pretty pale,” Marion noticed, eyeing her with concern. “Did you sleep well last night?”

“Not really. I woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming about Mystery Man, and then it took me forever to fall back to sleep.”

“So you saw him again,” Marion said, her eyes lighting up. “Do tell.”

“Mom, I know you think the dreams are cool and all, but I can never meet this guy in real life,” Michele reminded her. “So the whole thing is actually really irritating.”

“Well, I think it’s romantic. Maybe it’s your subconscious telling you not to worry about Jason, that you
will
find someone special.” Marion glanced at her watch. “Yikes, it’s seven-thirty! You’d better go get ready.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in fifteen.” Michele hurried to her room and changed into a fitted white tee, Abercrombie jeans with a skinny metallic belt, and a pair of black flats. She quickly ran a brush through her hair and dabbed on some concealer and lip gloss before tossing the three beauty essentials into her messenger bag.

Michele found Marion waiting in their Volvo outside the bungalow. As they set off toward Santa Monica, Marion flicked on the CD player. “I want you to hear my latest discovery,” she said. “Well, maybe that’s not the most accurate description, since she’s a Grammy-winning artist who’s been around for decades. But I only recently heard about her, and she just might be my new favorite singer—after my grandmother, of course.”

Michele curiously waited for the music to start. Her mom had such eclectic taste she never knew what to expect. This music surprised her. It managed to be heavy and light all at once, both breezy and aching. As soon as she heard the opening chords of the two Spanish guitars and the swaying Brazilian rhythm, Michele felt like she was transported to an exotic paradise. But when a woman with a deep, husky voice began to sing in Portuguese a melody rich with minor keys, Michele instantly knew that she was singing about pain. And yet the song wasn’t sad, exactly.

“Nostalgia,” Marion explained. “That word she keeps singing,
sodade
—it’s the Portuguese word for a nostalgia so intense we don’t have a direct translation for it in English.”

“Wow.” Michele picked up the CD case and looked at the cover photo of the singer, who appeared to be in her sixties or seventies. Her name was Cesaria Evora. Michele and her mom listened to the rest of the song in silence, and as the final chords played, Michele asked, “What does it make you think of?”

Marion paused. “Home,” she said so quietly that Michele almost wondered if she had misheard.

She stared at her mom. “Really?”

But they had just pulled up in front of her school, Crossroads
High. Marion didn’t answer; she just smiled at Michele and smoothed back her daughter’s hair. “See you at lunch, honey.”

“Bye, Mom.” Michele gave her a quick hug. “Love you.”

“I love you too. Good luck with—you know.” Marion gave her a meaningful smile before zooming off, her long auburn hair flying behind her.

Excerpt copyright © 2011 by Alexandra Monir. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.