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  The Only Exception

  Copyright © 2014 by Abigail Moore

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  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Abigail Moore

  Moon Flower font copyright © 2013 Denise Bentulan

  To the many people who have shown me that there is always an exception— Even to the idea that 15-year-old girls can’t publish novels.

  “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our mark too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

  —Michelangelo

  The Only Exception

  One

  A high pitched shriek pierces the silence of the back hallway at Allerton High School. “Shhh! Amy! Shut up!” I whisper harshly. My voice reverberates vociferously off the blue and white walls. “You’re going to get us thrown in detention on the last day of school! I have a flight to catch, remember?”

  “How could I forget when you never shut up about it?” Amy retorts, momentarily lapsing out of her ecstatic state of cardiac arrest.

  Allow me to introduce myself: Andrea Kailani Maverick. Seventeen, eleventh grade here at Allerton High, divorced parents from Hawaii, surfer/skateboarder/snowboarder (both competitively and for kicks). That about covers my life. Nothing quite so exciting as a romantic young girl getting swept off her feet by a handsome stranger or even a dog getting rabies, but that’s life. I’ve never even had a pet, even though that’s all I’ve ever asked for for birthdays and Christmases and Easters and all those other holidays.

  Anyway, my friend here is currently suffering from an apparent heart attack behind the science labs. Oh, sheesh, it reeks back here. The freshmen must be dissecting fish in Biology. Lucky them. I hate the smell of formaldehyde.

  The reason Amy is about to pass out is because the “love of her life” (or the past month, same difference) just texted her to ask her to come on a weekend long camping trip with his family. I can’t help but laugh, because the last time Amy went camping, she ended up burning out the battery in our car because she couldn’t live without air conditioning for more than two hours. Then again, she’d sooner bungee jump off the Empire State Building than turn down a date with Logan Cross.

  “So, what do I say?” she asks despairingly, staring at me with her pleading blue eyes. Amy can manipulate her eyes more than anyone I’ve ever seen. She’s made them striking and sharp before, but now, they’ve turned soft and innocent to coerce me into aiding her. I raise an eyebrow quizzically.

  “You really expect me to know?” I question skeptically. “You didn’t have a stroke or anything, did you?”

  “I’m desperate here!” Her voice sounds as panicked as if she were about to be pushed off a cliff (or something to that effect). Oh, Amy. I love her, but she can be a bit of a drama queen sometimes.

  “Well, you might want to check with your mom before running off into the woods with Logan,” I point out.

  “See? You’re a genius,” she replies, tapping out a text to her mother. I swear, that girl’s thumbs are going to fall off her hands if she texts much faster.

  “Alright, well, I’ve gotta get out of here. I have to turn in that last paper to Mr. Clarke before I can run off to catch my flight,” I remind her, walking towards my advanced english class. Heels clicking on the tiled floor alert me to Amy’s presence staying close behind me. The vibration of her cellphone when her mother responds even echoes back here.

  “She said we have to talk about it when I get home,” Amy updates me after a moment of the clack of her heels and the smack of my rubber slippers (or flip-flops as mainlanders call them here in New York. Flip-flops? Really? You couldn’t have come up with a more creative name than that? I know, rubber slippers are “meh”, but really?).

  “Blah,” I respond. “Text me after the talk to let me know the verdict.”

  “So, excited about Grammy and Papaw’s?”

  “More than you know,” I reply truthfully. “A whole summer of sun, surf and no parents.”

  “And…”

  “And my eighteenth birthday,” I add with a nod. She grins as we make a sharp right into Mr. Clarke’s classroom and she flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Mr. Clarke?” The balding, fifty-something man looks up from several papers with a red pen in his hand.

  Mr. Clarke is by far my favorite teacher. He’s witty, sarcastic and goes out of his way to help his students. It’s not often you find a high school teacher willing to give you one on one help with a paper during lunch.

  “Ah, Andrea, thank you,” he says, extending his hand to take my paper. “I trust you missing our last class has to do with summer plans?”

  “Hawaii to visit my grandparents,” I reply, nodding. He smiles.

  “Well, I suppose we shall see you next year?” he asks.

  “Unless something drastic happens, I’ll be back,” I promise, grinning.

  “Until then, Miss Maverick,” he bids. I nod and head back out into the hall. Amy throws her arms around me in a brief hug and then pulls back, thrusting a dense package into my arms.

  “I was going to tell you not open it until your birthday, but I want to watch you,” she chatters eagerly. I smile and tear the paper off the rectangular parcel.

  “Amy! You got me This Present Darkness?” I squeal. “Thank you!”

  “It’s the double volume,” she adds. “With Piercing the Darkness too.” I squeak again. I do that when I’m excited for some odd reason. An old habit I never grew out of, I guess.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I can read this on the plane!” I engulf her in a hug and, pulling back, slap her one more high five.

  “Just do me two favors: call me if you meet any cute guys and hang loose out on those waves,” she requests, flashing me the “hang loose” sign, also known as a shaka. I stick my tongue out and flash one right back at her, smiling. I’ve always thought it was ironic that a shaka sign is basically the sign for “play” in sign language, only rotated side to side instead of flicked downward, since telling a surfer to hang loose is like telling a kid to go play after opening presents on Christmas morning. She laughs and I turn away from the last look at my only New York friend I’m going to get for the next three months.

  Outside in the parking lot, the backseat of my mother’s pink Mary Kay Cadillac is stuffed with luggage. She got the car for being the top Mary Kay seller two years ago. I wonder if a car is enough to make up the fact that she ruined her family over it. Well, the job that gave it to her. I’m not saying my dad isn’t to blame or anything, it’s just— Oh, never mind. Parent-issue-free summer. Sun. Surf. Grammy and Papaw. Nothing will ruin my summer. (If this was a made-for-TV movie, this would be where my mom says “Sorry sweetheart, change of plans. The trip is off.” Thank God my life is not a made-for-TV movie.)

  I pop up the bubblegum-colored trunk lid and stuff my backpack in the compartment, happy to switch it for my favorite canvas hobo bag, which is all packed up for the plane ride from New York City, New York to Los Angelos, California, where
I’ll transfer to another flight to Oahu, Hawaii. I’ll practically fly over my dad’s house in South San Francisco.

  If I weren’t going to the famous North Shore of Oahu, I would be disappointed I’m not staying with my dad. It’s just thirty-one minutes away from Mavericks (a super amazing world famous surf spot, in addition to my last name). I get to drive out to the spot as often as I can and watch some of the best surfers alive take on the monster waves. As often as I can, though, usually means about five times all summer, due to daddy-daughter time or daddy-daughter time gone wrong thanks to my dad’s company and all it’s stupid meetings.

  “Of course. Of course, Bella! We need our ladies to look their best!” my mother gushes into a bluetooth earpiece. Her phone is in her hand and her fingers rapidly tap out an email to one customer or another. “Alright. I will have your shipment to you as soon as I get the list. Okay. Ciao!” She taps the earpiece and cuts the call. She doesn’t look up as she finishes her email and I slide into the passenger seat. “Hello sweetheart, how was school?”

  “Fantastic as always,” I quip sarcastically. “Amy gave me that Frank Perretti book I was wanting as an early birthday present, and the sequel, too.”

  “Well, that was sweet of her,” she replies. “All ready for your flight?”

  “Yeah,” I say, itching to finish rereading Three Hours Too Soon by Adam Reed so I can begin This Present Darkness. “I’ll miss you though.”

  “Aw, I’ll miss you too, honey,” she says absently, touching her earpiece and answering another call. I sigh and reach for my novel. Three Hours Too Soon is about a terminally ill girl named Jane and her friendship with a boy named Lucas Blake. It’s dreadfully tragic, yet such a good story that I want to read it again and again.

  Still talking, my mother bats away the book and gives me what my father would call her Disney Villain Evil Eye. It’s that look that Disney villains get when they’re about to go bezerk, like before Maleficent turns into the dragon or the evil queen gives Snow White the apple. She probably thinks her phone call is going to end in time to have a conversation with me for more than five minutes. I roll my eyes and turn on the radio instead, which she promptly turns down and goes back to her conversation.

  Some people pity me. Whenever I say “my parents are divorced,” the only people that get it are the other kids with separated or divorced parents. Everyone else looks at me like I’m a lost kitten or something, and for me, even some of the kids with broken families don’t get it. I get it that my parents don’t love each other anymore. No, the part that I hate about all this is that my parents are workaholic divorced parents who could care less about my existence most of the time and when they do care about my existence, they care too much. I think I might be the only teenage girl in the world who’s not happy about getting entire designer clothing lines and a new Macbook or iPad for every other holiday. It’s like they compete with each other. Like, if I like one parent’s presents better than the other’s, I love that parent more than the other. Like I said before, all I ever wanted was a puppy.

  Quick explanation of my parents’ abundant wealth: My dad started some business when he was twenty-two and my mother became a Mary Kay consultant around that time. Then, my mom had me, worked her tail off to be a good Mary Kay seller and a good mom, got a ton of promotions and suddenly Mary Kay was a higher priority than little me, practically living at my grandparents’ house. My dad’s company took off and is now one of the biggest names in business in a bazillion countries.

  Fast-forward to after the divorce and my father has been named every other magazine’s Businessman of the Year or whatever title they can give him, made a ton of money (like, in the seven figures a year for going on six years) and my mother is one of the top two Mary Kay Cosmetic sellers (Not to mention they’ve ruined their marriage and all that, but you know, “details, details, darlings” as my mother’s fashion designer friends would say). Since she became known in the Mary Kay world as “Charlotte Maverick,” she kept the name.

  About twenty minutes later, we pull up in front of John F. Kennedy airport. My mother’s conversation is finally over and she hops out of the car, her heels clicking neatly on the blacktop. Often, I have moments when I just can’t believe the casual woman in my baby photos is the same woman I see before my eyes. This is definitely one of those moments. 42 years old with not a grey hair in sight, always made over, never a hair out of place. Today, she’s dressed in a chic black pencil skirt, an off-white ruffly blouse and a pair of red, pointed toe Christian Louboutin pumps. A string of pearls hangs around her neck, matching the pearl and gold teardrop earrings just above it. Her perfectly manicured hand opens the back door and pulls out my entire set of matching rainbow striped Jenni Chan luggage. She bought it for me just after the divorce when my father decided to move to California. Before the divorce, my parents and I lived in a house near my grandparents on Oahu. I was thirteen when my mom and I moved.

  Even though moving away from Dad and my favorite place in the world was hard, Amy made it a little easier. We wore the exact same Peter Pan t-shirt, similar colored skinny jeans, and black Converse on the first day of school and got paired up as lab partners. We’ve been practically inseparable ever since, even though our outfits and some of our movie taste were where the similarities ended. Amy has an older brother in college and two younger brothers. Her parents have been happily married for 25+ years. Amy is also a believer in all those common lies about love. True love, happily ever after, love at first sight, all that stuff. She’s also suffering from a disease that’s known commonly as CBCS (Cute Boy Craziness Syndrome).

  Do I believe in that stuff? Short answer: no. Long answer: N-O. No. Have you been paying attention? My parents fell in love, got married and had me. For about the first eight years of my life, it seemed like they loved each other. I mean, they fought, but who doesn’t fight? Then, about after the time I turned nine, the fights started escalating. No longer simply heated conversations, but screaming, insulting and bringing up everything including the kitchen sink. They started over the littlest things, too. For four years, they tried to patch things up, but it just got worse. They tried counseling, they tried a “mommy/daddy vacation” for two weeks in the Bahamas, they tried living separately for a little and then getting back together, they tried everything. Eventually, they just went down to the courthouse and signed the papers. My point is that between seeing my parents’ relationship fall apart and seeing Amy or my friends in Hawaii break their hearts time and time again, I’ve discovered that even the strongest of bonds break. I don’t want that. Fine with me if someone else wants to take that risk, but I don’t. I don’t ever want to do to a child what my parents have done to me. I don’t want to do to a man what my mother has done to my father. I don’t want what happened to my mother to happen to me.

  My mother takes two of the suitcases by the handles and rolls them in to the airport, with me trailing behind her, towing another suitcase. She checks them at the desk, checking me in for my flight simultaneously. I carry my purse and my black Nike duffel bag over my shoulder and watch people mill around in the lobby. Families greeting kids home from college, a husband returning home from a trip to his wife and daughter, a few people obviously going on business trips and several families prepped and ready for the same thing I am: Summer vacation.

  “Alright, tell Grammy and Papaw I said hi,” my mother reminds me. “And call me when you get to L.A. And when you arrive on Oahu. And if anything happens.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I reply. “See you in September.”

  “Be careful with your knee,” she warns. “Remember what Maria told you during therapy. Use your tape if you need, wear the brace if it’s tired, and don’t get in trouble.”

  I have chondromalacia (also known as runner’s knee) in my left knee, and have for a long time. Basically, chondromalacia is when the cartilage at the bottom of your kneecap softens or deteriorates. When that happens, your knee slides around in the joint to sides or a
ngles it’s not supposed to. Wearing a brace that holds your kneecap in place helps a lot of people, which I do sometimes, but it’s never been bad enough to need surgery. Corrective surgeries exist, but physical therapy works well enough for me. I wear a heavy-duty brace during snowboard and skateboarding competitions and training as extra reassurance, but I can’t wear one in the water. Instead, I just use a water-resistant tape that pulls the muscles into position, which relieves some tension in my leg.

  “I won’t, Mom. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  “I love you, sweetheart,” she croons. She pulls me in for a hug and I echo her words.

  “I love you too, Mom.” At that, I tote my duffel bag and gigantic purse back to security, thinking only of the summer ahead of me. With my shorts, teal rubber slippers and bright green “GEEK” sleeveless tee, I’m ready. Come at me, summer.

  Once through security, I walk past all the little shops, restaurants and gates, coming to my own gate soon enough. I pass a Starbucks and a Panda Express, both of which I strongly consider buying something from, but decide against it when I glance at the clock. Not bad. Half an hour to spare. I sit down at the gate and pull my book out, wondering when Amy’s going to text me. Only thirty pages left, if that. Oh, wait. If my calculations are correct, the last thirty pages of the book are the also the saddest pages of the book. Great, I’m going to be sobbing like a crazy person in the middle of this airport terminal. Oh, well. Who cares if they think I’m insane?

  So, of course, I sit here in my blue leather airport chair for the next twenty minutes, alternating between reading, trying to find a comfortable spot in these stupid chairs, crying and dreaming about the movie that comes out in a week until the gate agents call the economy plus passengers.

  Ever since I had this big fight with both of my parents about flying first class every time I fly, they’ve put me in economy plus, which is about six inches more leg room than coach, but essentially the same thing. It’s the closest they can get to first class without me blowing up. Even so, sometimes, they still spring for first class around holidays, saying it’s “for a special occasion.” NEWS FLASH: It’s not special if it happens every other time I fly somewhere.