It Had to Be You Read online

  At that moment I wanted to reach into my beach bag and throw a piece of fruit at each of my brothers. This is the way it’s been my entire life. My three older brothers ganging up on me.

  Okay, so they were telling the truth, but still! They made it sound so nasty! They were twisting things around!

  At the beginning of the summer, my father had made a deal with the four of us. We’d each been given a paid chore to do and as part of the deal, we were given half of the money in June and would receive the rest once we had finished the task we were assigned. I had been putting off cleaning out the garage because I knew it was going to be dirty, sweaty work and I hated dirty, sweaty work.

  My father ignored my brothers’ comments. “Don’t you have plans for tomorrow?”

  “I do?”

  My father raised his cup of coffee to his mouth and took a sip. “That big clothing sale you’ve been talking about for weeks. I thought it started tomorrow. Weren’t you and Caitlyn going to be the first ones in line?”

  I slapped myself on the forehead. “Duh! That’s right, it is tomorrow.”

  “How could you forget?” Aaron asked. “There’s not much going on up there.”

  “Aaron, that’s enough,” my mother warned as she brought a second plate of blueberry pancakes to the table. Within seconds, my brothers’ forks had descended into the pile and the plate was empty. Amazing. Simply amazing. You would think they’d never seen food before! And thanks so much for saving some for me! But that’s always the way it is with them when it comes to food. They just scarf it down! I wanted to scream, “Taste it! Savor it! Experience the flavors! Food is meant to be enjoyed. Don’t just inhale it!” Argh! That’s why I don’t try my recipes out on them. What’s the point if they’re not going to try to figure out the ingredients I’ve used?

  “You can choose, Emma,” my father said, his voice breaking into my thoughts. “Either you can go to the beach today or you can skip the dress sale tomorrow. But you can’t do both, so it’s time to decide.”

  Fifty dollars was waiting for me once the garage was cleaned out. Fifty dollars I could spend tomorrow at H.O.F. This was a no-brainer. “I’ll skip the beach,” I said, dropping my beach bag to the kitchen floor and heading for the phone in the family room.

  “Hey! Princess!” Rob called out, using the nickname I hated. I was so not a princess! If I was, I certainly wouldn’t be stuck cleaning out the garage on a hot summer day!

  “What?” I called back, somewhat crabbily.

  “There’s no maid service here. Come back and pick up your bag.”

  I stormed back into the kitchen and picked up my bag, tempted to swing it over my head and bop Rob with it. Instead, I went to the family room and called Caitlyn, telling her I couldn’t go to the beach.

  “Bummer,” she said. “Do you need some help?”

  Part of me was touched by her offer to help. At the same time, I was a bit suspicious. Caitlyn and I had been friends for ten years. I knew everything there was to know about her and if there was one thing Caitlyn avoided at all costs, it was hard labor. This was going to require a test.

  “That would be great. Thanks. I was hoping Aaron might help but he’s not going to be around today. He’s going to an amusement park with some friends.”

  “Can you hold on a second, Em?” Caitlyn put down the phone and I could hear her shouting in the background. “What, Mom? You need me to babysit for cousin Angie? It’s kind of short notice, isn’t it? Okay, okay, since Angie can’t find anyone else, I’ll do it.” Caitlyn came back on the line. “Sorry, Em. Duty calls.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said knowingly. It’s nice to know I can figure Caitlyn out.

  “We’re still on for the sale tomorrow, right?”

  “Of course! You know I wouldn’t miss it for the world. We’ll talk later and figure out a strategy.”

  “Okay. Talk to you later.”

  After getting off the phone with Caitlyn, I went up to my bedroom to change my clothes. I was going to need my grungiest duds. I slipped into a pair of denim shorts with ripped pockets and an oversized T-shirt that had belonged to Rob. The front of the T-shirt said WHAT’S UP, DUDE? Definitely not my finest fashion moment.

  When I pushed open the door of the garage, my mouth dropped open. I knew we had been accumulating a lot of junk, but I hadn’t realized how much! Where had all this stuff come from?

  I didn’t know where to begin. There were stacks of magazines and newspapers. Boxes filled with empty bottles. There were old bicycles, sports equipment, cartons of broken toys—I gasped when I peeked into one carton and saw some of my old Barbies with scalped heads! Michael and Aaron had always loved kidnapping my Barbies and cutting off all their hair—trophies, Rollerblades, skateboards, surfboards, old clothes, and baby furniture.

  There was even a case of motor oil that had an expiration date of 2000!

  How was one person going to be able to handle all this?

  Obviously, the sooner I got started, the sooner I would be finished.

  Within seconds of lifting my first box, I was sweating. I could feel it dripping down my back and the sides of my face. Ick! The weatherman on the Today show had said it was going to go up to ninety degrees today. I could believe it. It already felt like it.

  I pulled my hair into two pigtails and tied them back with some string I found. Instantly the back of my neck felt cooler, but I knew that wouldn’t last long.

  As I kept lugging boxes to the curb, I could see the damage being done to the manicure I had given myself yesterday. The polish on my nails was already chipped. So much for truth in advertising! Then again, I don’t think they expected their consumers to be lugging cartons of junk to the curb!

  Whenever I was tempted to give up, I kept reminding myself of the prize waiting for me. Fifty dollars to spend tomorrow at H.O.F. Which would be air-conditioned as well! It gave me the strength to go on.

  It was after lunch when I decided to carry out the carton of motor oil. Big mistake. Because the cans were leaky. I discovered this when I lifted up the box and felt something oily dribbling down the front of my T-shirt and shorts, leaving two huge streaks.

  “Ugh!” I exclaimed, dropping the carton back to the garage floor and wiping my hands across the bottom of my shorts and then mopping at my sweaty forehead. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s getting dirty. And sweaty. And grubby. I was definitely all three. For the last hour I’d been daydreaming about the bubble bath I was going to give myself once this nightmare project was over. Note to self: Next time Dad asks me to clean out the garage, tell him I’ll do it in the winter.

  After dumping the carton of motor oil next to our recycling bin so that my father could take it to the gas station over the weekend, I went back to the garage and found a box of comic books to get rid of. Finding them surprised me. For years Rob had been collecting comics and had gone to all the comics conventions. When had he stopped being into them? I thought about it and realized I hadn’t seen him reading a comic book in months. I guess he’d outgrown them since he’d gotten so serious about sports.

  I was carrying Rob’s comics out of the garage when I started to hear a tearing sound.

  Somehow I knew what was going to happen next.

  I tried to race to the curb, but I wasn’t fast enough and the bottom of the carton broke, spilling comics all across our driveway.

  I let out an exasperated sigh before getting down on my knees. I had just started gathering up the spilled comics when I heard a voice ask, “Need some help?”

  My hands froze.

  I knew that voice.

  I instantly recognized it.

  No.

  No! No! No!

  It couldn’t be.

  Could it?

  I lifted my head up slowly, hoping against hope that I was wrong and the voice didn’t belong to who I thought it did.

  But it did.

  It was Kyle.

  Once again looking hunky-licious.

  While I, on the other ha
nd, looked like Cinderella before the arrival of her fairy godmother!

  I was a mess with a capital M!

  I wanted to disappear.

  I wanted a do-over.

  This was the second time I was meeting Kyle and I was looking my all-time worst.

  “It’s Emma, right?”

  “Right,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes glued to the comics I was collecting. What else was I supposed to do? I looked horrible! The less Kyle saw of me, the better! I just wanted to gather up the comics, throw them out, and then run inside. I’d finish cleaning out the garage later.

  But Kyle didn’t seem to get the message. Instead, he joined me on the ground and started collecting the spilled comics.

  “I’ve been looking for some of these for ages,” he said, his voice filled with excitement. “You weren’t going to throw them out, were you?”

  I shrugged. “Actually, I was, but you can have them if you want.”

  “Really?”

  There was no mistaking the happiness in Kyle’s voice. It made me feel good to make someone else that happy. Who would have thought some old comic books could do that?

  “Sure,” I answered. “Are you into comics? If you are, you should talk to my brother Rob. He used to go to all the comic book conventions.”

  Kyle nodded his head. “I’m a comic book junkie. I actually want to be a comic book illustrator one day.”

  “If comics are your thing, I’ve got plenty more that I could let you have. Follow me,” I said.

  As we headed back into the garage, I was having mixed feelings. I mean, in addition to being incredibly hot, Kyle seemed really nice. I was tempted to ask him more about his interests, but then I saw my reflection in an old mirror in a pile of furniture that still needed to be thrown out. I gasped at the image staring back at me, wanting to die of embarrassment!

  It was no surprise that I looked as bad as I had expected, but to make matters worse, there was a smudge of grease across my forehead. It must have come from the leaky can of motor oil I had thrown out earlier.

  “I need to head inside,” I told Kyle, wanting to get as far away from him as possible. It had also just occurred to me that I probably smelled a bit funky from all the hard labor I’d been doing. Not the best way to make a good impression on a guy. “The rest of the comics are in that box.” I pointed it out to him. “Just take what you want, okay?”

  And with those final words, I left Kyle, vowing that the next time I saw him, he was going to see the AFTER girl and not the BEFORE girl anymore!

  Chapter Three

  “Mission accomplished,” I proudly told my father that night, holding out a palm. “Time to pay up.”

  During the summer, my dad loves barbecuing. He owns one of those monster grills that all dads in the suburbs have to have. A Weber 3000? Is that what it’s called? I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that my dad loves it. And so does my mom because it means she can lounge inside while he cooks. My brothers were in our backyard, sitting around our redwood table, waiting for dinner. Dad was standing at the grill in his “Kiss the Cook” apron, flipping over hamburgers and slathering the spareribs with his supersecret barbecue sauce.

  “How about we eat first and then I do an inspection?” he asked. “Deal?”

  “Deal!” I agreed, knowing he was going to be pleased by the job I’d done.

  Cleaning out the garage had been hard, messy work, but it was over. After my run-in with Kyle, I’d stayed hidden inside for thirty minutes. Then, when I figured the coast was clear, I’d headed back outside and finished emptying out the garage. I’d even swept it clean! I’m very organized, so the rearranging had actually been kind of fun—or, at least, satisfying.

  “Wait until you see how much space we have now,” I said, pouring myself a glass of lemonade.

  “What did you do with my stuff?” Rob asked as he drizzled ranch dressing over his salad.

  “Your stuff?” I asked.

  “Yeah, my stuff.” He passed the bottle of dressing to Michael and started mixing his salad with a fork. “My old skateboard. My Rollerblades. And my comics.”

  “How about my stuff?” Michael chimed in as he shook the bottle of ranch dressing. “Where’d you put all my old baseball and basketball trophies?”

  “And mine?” Aaron asked while picking the tomatoes and red onions out of his salad.

  Suddenly I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as three sets of brown eyes stared at me, waiting for my answer.

  I gulped, knowing that what I was about to say was so not what my brothers were going to want to hear.

  “I got rid of it,” I whispered.

  Rob leaned across the table, cupping a hand to his ear. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. What did you say?”

  “She said she got rid of it!” Michael yelled.

  Rob shoved Michael in the shoulder. “I heard her the first time!”

  “Then why did you ask again?” Michael demanded.

  “Because I didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to throw out our stuff without asking.”

  “I’m not stupid!” I shouted, getting angry. Why was I suddenly the bad guy? This always happened. My brothers always ganged up on me! “You didn’t say that you wanted me to keep anything,” I tried to explain. “Otherwise I would have.”

  “Didn’t you stop to think that maybe, just maybe, we might want to keep some of our things?” Rob asked.

  “No, I didn’t! It’s not like I did it on purpose. I thought it was all junk!”

  “I bet you didn’t throw out any of your junk, did you?” Aaron accused, pelting me with a baby tomato that left a stain on my peach shirt.

  Actually, I hadn’t. I was amazed at some of the stuff I’d found. There had been my first teddy bear. I’d instantly hugged him and put him into an empty box. My Nancy Drew mysteries. I decided to save those, too. And my Little House novels! I had also found the diary I’d kept when I was ten years old. My mouth dropped open when I stumbled upon it. I hadn’t seen it in years. How had it wound up in the garage? Making sure no one was around, I had flipped through the pages, skimming over my innermost thoughts and secrets. Some of the things I’d written were so embarrassing! This diary was either going to be locked away or I was going to destroy it when I knew no one was around. I certainly didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands—my brothers’—so I had put it on top of the box that I had quickly filled, planning to take it up to my bedroom once I had finished.

  “She’s not answering,” Aaron accused. “She saved her stuff, but not ours! Princess Emma strikes again.”

  I hated when my brothers called me Princess or Princess Emma. It made it sound like I was spoiled rotten and I wasn’t.

  “Dad said to clean out the garage, so I cleaned it out,” I said, glowering at Aaron as I dabbed at the tomato stain on my shirt. It had better come out or he was going to pay to have it dry-cleaned. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late for saying sorry,” Rob said. “All our things have been carted off to the city dump.”

  That was true. The garbage men had taken everything away that afternoon. They hadn’t looked too happy when they’d seen the piles waiting for them, but that was their job.

  “I don’t know what else I can do,” I said.

  “I know what you can do,” Rob said. “You can pay me.”

  “And me!” Michael added.

  “And me!” Aaron shouted, pelting me with another baby tomato.

  I threw the tomato back at Aaron. I was outraged. “Pay you?! Are you all crazy? I don’t think so. Until today none of you cared about that stuff out in the garage. I’m not paying anything. If you want your things back so badly, you can dig through the city dump.”

  “You owe us!” Rob shouted.

  “I don’t owe any of you anything!” I shouted back.

  “Oh yes, you do!” Michael shot back.

  “Why don’t we sell some of her stuff on eBay?” Aaron said, getting up from the table. “Come on! Let’s go
through her room.”

  I jumped up out of my seat. “You’re not setting one foot in my room!”

  “Wanna bet?” Aaron challenged.

  Just then my dad returned from the barbecue with a platter of hamburgers and spareribs.

  “Aaron, sit down. Now,” he ordered. “You too, Emma.”

  Aaron and I both sat back down as my father took his place at the head of the table and started filling his dinner plate.

  “Emma is not to blame for your things being thrown out,” he said, staring sternly at my three brothers. “You were all sitting at the breakfast table this morning. You have no one to blame but yourselves. If there was anything you wanted saved you should have headed out to the garage and taken it or you should have told Emma not to throw it out. But the three of you didn’t do that. And your sister is not a mind reader. So now your things are gone.”

  “But Dad…” Aaron whined.

  “No buts!” Dad warned. “This discussion is over. I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  We ate in silence, my brothers all glaring at me. It wasn’t fair! In their minds, they were right and I was wrong. No one ever took my side! It was always me against them. If I’d had three older sisters, I bet none of this would be happening.

  After dinner, Dad and I headed out to the garage. He whistled in appreciation as he stared at the empty space. “Nice job, Emma. Very nice. I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “So impressed that I’m going to give you an extra twenty-five dollars for the sale tomorrow,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “I know I don’t, but I want to. Hard work deserves to be rewarded. And I think you’ve earned a bonus having to put up with your brothers.”

  “I really didn’t mean to throw their things out.”

  “I know you didn’t. Don’t worry, they’ll get over it.” My dad checked his watch. “I’m going to head inside. I brought some work home from the office.”

  I gave my dad a hug. “Thanks for the bonus, Daddy.”

  He kissed the top of my head as he tucked the money I’d made into my hand. “You earned it, Pumpkin.”