How My Summer Went Up in Flames Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgments

  About Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

  For my parents, Grace and George Salvato.

  Thank you for a lifetime of love, support, and family adventures.

  I love you.

  Chapter 1

  I wasn’t always the kind of girl who wakes up on the first day of summer vacation to find herself on the receiving end of a temporary restraining order. But things got ugly when Joey, my ex, came to an end-of-the-school-year party on Friday night with his new girlfriend—the bleach-blond freshman ho bag he’d been cheating on me with. Until I saw them together, I didn’t know he and his indiscretion had become an actual item. It felt like someone had knocked all the air out of my lungs with a blunt object. What can I say? First I lost my heart. Then I lost my mind.

  I stare out the screen door and watch as the patrol car drives away, my face burning with embarrassment. What if Mrs. Friedman is watching from across the street? She doesn’t miss a thing, ever. What a crappy start to a Monday morning.

  “This cannot be happening,” I say.

  “Rosie, you blew up your boyfriend’s car. What did you expect?” says Matty, our next-door neighbor.

  “For the last time, I did not blow up Joey’s car. It caught fire!”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Hello, there was no explosion. I was just burning all the stuff he gave me in his driveway.” Why doesn’t anyone understand this? I’ve spent all weekend trying to explain it. “The box wasn’t even near Joey’s car. He was standing right there. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Lighter fluid and stuffed animals. Bad combination,” Matty says.

  “Shut up, Matty! I need to think.”

  “The thinking ship sailed when you lit that match.”

  “It was a lighter and—what are you doing in my house, anyway?” It’s like he doesn’t even pretend to go home anymore. When Matty was six, my mother offered to let him come over after school so his mom didn’t have to pay for child care. Apparently Matty thought that meant forever.

  Matty extricates himself from the couch and walks toward the front door, where I’ve been rendered immobile by this latest turn of events. “Take it easy, all right? I’m not the problem, your bad temper is.”

  “I don’t have a bad temper.” I look down at my purple toenails, away from Matty’s beady blue-eyed stare. “I’m passionate.”

  “Call it whatever makes you feel better. I’ve grown immune to your acerbic wit and biting sarcasm, but lately it’s like you’re . . . I don’t know, hostile?”

  Hostile? Where does he get hostile? Okay. Maybe I’m high-strung. I’ll give him that. But at our house, we yell when we’re happy, we yell when we’re upset, we yell when we want someone to pass the remote. It’s what we Catalanos do.

  I look down at the paper in my hand. “I guess Joey must’ve called the cops.”

  “Ya think?”

  I feel like I’ve just done a belly flop on dry land. My parents are going to freak. They already grounded me, indefinitely, after Joey’s mom called Saturday morning to scream about the postparty car fire caused by yours truly. And now there’s a restraining order. At this point, my parents will lock me in a tower until I graduate from high school next June. For a brief second I wonder if I can keep the whole thing a secret. Yeah, right, like that’ll ever work. I couldn’t even burn a box of memories without the police getting involved. I don’t know what’s happening with me lately.

  “Maybe it’s a mistake,” I say.

  Matty grabs the three-page document from me. “Right. This is for the other Rosalita Ariana Catalano Joey dated, who also blew up his car.”

  I cross my arms and scowl as Matty scans the page. “I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “You’re to stay away from Joey’s house, his job. There’s to be no written, personal, or electronic communication with the complaining witness by you or anyone you know.” He pauses. “It actually says you are prohibited from returning to the scene of the violence.”

  “I’ve got to talk to him,” I repeat.

  “Have you been listening?” Matty waves the papers in my face. “Restraining order.”

  “But if I can just explain—”

  “Save it for your court date in two weeks.”

  “What?” Court date? I snatch the papers from him and start flipping through the pages, but my eyes won’t settle on any words. Fruity Pebbles rise in my throat and I start to sweat. I suddenly want to throw something at the TV screen. The View is on—leave it to Matty. Now I have the urge to throw something at the whiny one’s head. Maybe I do have anger issues.

  I hand the TRO back to Matty. “I can’t find it.”

  “Right here,” he says, pointing to the correct page. “You’ve been ordered to appear before Superior Court Judge Tomlinson in Essex County, New Jersey, to address the allegations of, let’s see, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, harassment, and stalking. Stalking?”

  I cover my eyes with both hands. I think I’m either going to vomit or cry. At the moment, I can’t decide which would make me feel better. I part my fingers to look at Matty. “It was only a few e-mails and texts.”

  “A few?”

  “And maybe I showed up at ShopRite once or twice when he was getting off work.”

  “Good way to keep busy after a breakup. Hoping incarceration would fill those empty hours?” Matty says.

  He looks as pained as I feel, which is why I need food. I walk into the kitchen and begin opening cabinets in search of the perfect snack to calm me down. Let’s see. Temporary restraining order . . . I bypass the pretzels and head straight for the Double Stuf Oreos. I tear open the new package, which rouses Pony, our ninety-pound Lab mix, who’d been sleeping under the kitchen’s central-air duct. I smile when he turns his head quizzically as if to say, “Did I hear food?”

  “Some watchdog,” I say in the baby-talk voice I use when speaking to my pooch and for which Eddie, my brother, always makes fun of me. “Where were you ten minutes ago when the police were at the door? Cookies are a different story, huh?”

  Pony saunters over to the counter and nudges my elbow with his big wet nose until I relent. Sugary foods are bad for dogs, but I can’t resist his pleading eyes. “Only one, big guy,” I say. He gently takes the Oreo and swallows it in a single gulp. Matty comes into the kitchen just as I’m about to pour myself some milk.

  “I think I know how to handle this,” he says.

  Matty is always trying to handle things. Most of the time, it makes me sad that he thinks he has to. I blame his absent father, not that Matty and I ever talk about him. Still, I know one of the reasons Matty likes hanging out at our house so much is that he gets to be a kid here. At sixteen, Matty is a year younger than me, the same age as my brother, and at least a foot taller than us both. When I was in middle school, Eddie and I finally stopped arguing about who Matty “belonged” to. He’s our Matty. I love him like a second brother, and unfortunately, sometimes I fight with him like he’s one too.

  Lately, most of our spats are my fault. I know I’ve been impossible to
be around since just after Memorial Day weekend. That’s when I went away with my family and Joey cheated on me with the freshman slut. To his credit, he told me. He begged me to forgive him. He said all they did was kiss. That it was a huge mistake, a onetime thing, blah, blah, blah. As much as I wanted to believe him, I was hurt, angry, and completely shocked. I couldn’t get over it and consequently, my entire relationship imploded. Since then, if I didn’t know me, I’d think I was a bitch too. And that’s why at this moment especially, it’s best if Matty leaves. I don’t want to cause an argument.

  “I’m gonna call my girls,” I say. “Wait until they hear this.” My best friend, Lilliana, and the rest of our group will understand. I wasn’t stalking Joey—right? I honestly don’t know what I thought I was doing. Looking for evidence that Joey’s fling was a one-night stand? Hoping to find him moping around town wearing an I ROSIE T-shirt? Whatever it was, I certainly didn’t think it was illegal. If only it hadn’t culminated in an accidental car fire.

  I swallow my last bite of Oreo and start dialing. Matty takes my phone from me.

  “I think you need to get out of town for a while,” he says.

  I grab my phone back. “I think you need to get out of my house for a while.”

  “I’m serious. I’m leaving for Arizona on Saturday with Spencer and Logan. You should come.”

  Okay. Here’s where my curiosity trumps my need for him to go home. “Who are Spencer and Logan?”

  I know some of Matty’s friends, but not all. Matty goes to public school, the same school as my ex and his new chicken-head girlfriend. Oh, and my brother, Eddie, of course. My parents thought it was best for me to attend an all-girls Catholic high school because it’s every teenage girl’s dream to dress like a Scottish bagpipe player. All because I got busted at an eighth-grade graduation party playing seven minutes in heaven with Armand DelVecchio, who, by the way, kisses like a seal. It wasn’t even worth it.

  “Spencer Davidson. We’re in robotics club together.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Logan’s his older brother. He got accepted to ASU.”

  “Okaay, so why’s he leaving now?”

  “He has to be there for this special summer session. Logan wants his car in Tempe, so he figured he’d make a road trip out of it. Me and Spence are flying home.”

  Has Matty told me all this before? Did the information get lost in my I-just-broke-up-with-my-boyfriend haze? I’m feeling a bit guilty.

  “So, why did Spencer ask you to go?”

  “He’s afraid to fly.”

  Of course he is. So now I’m picturing the scene: me, trapped in a car with three nerds. Doubtful. “And I should go because—”

  “It will keep you out of trouble for nine days. You can’t stalk anyone in New Jersey while traveling seventy-five miles per hour in a vehicle headed west.”

  I pretend to think about this for a second. “Right. Sure, I’ll go.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  • • •

  After filling in Lilliana on the whole restraining-order ordeal, I spend the rest of the day trying to distract myself, which is what I’ve been trying to do every day since Joey and I broke up. Today, it got a lot harder. I take Pony for a long walk before attempting to read one of my romance novels. Usually I plow through them to get to the happy ending, but today, only five pages in, I toss the book aside. Lately, everything—books, song lyrics, movies, even Yankee games—reminds me of Joey.

  Eventually, I settle for mindless eating and cable TV. I just want to feel normal again. I love, love, love those shows where they help women find wedding dresses. The gowns are so gorgeous, and I always seem to know which dress the bride-to-be is going to pick. That inspired me to get a part-time summer job at Something New Bridal Boutique downtown. I start next weekend and I cannot wait. I’ve got a definite knack for knowing what people look good in and think I have untapped potential for designing clothes. I smile as I remember this fashion studio drawing set I had when I was a kid. It had a light board, colored pencils, and all these traceable patterns. I spent hours mixing and matching the templates for tops and bottoms, hairdos and shoes, to create my own sketches. I kept my designs in a folder. My mom, who used to pretend to be a client, wrote ROSIE COUTURE on it for me. I wonder if I still have that folder somewhere.

  Around three in the afternoon, I decide to lay out on the deck. The whole world just seems better when I’m tan. I love how my skin smells after I come in from the sun. Pony whines to come outside with me—he always follows me around when I’m home. But after five minutes, he starts panting and stands by the back door.

  That’s when I remember I forgot to put on sunscreen. I get up to let him in, find a bottle in the kitchen cabinet, and return to the deck. My olive skin is immune to sunburn, but I’m paranoid about skin cancer and premature wrinkling. As soon as I open the bottle, I wish that I had risked it and done without my SPF 50. The tropical scent immediately takes me back to the first time I saw Joey. He was standing on the boardwalk near the pirate-themed mini-golf course. It was September, a warm Indian summer day, and me and Lilliana’d crammed in one last beach day. I was balancing on one foot, dusting the sand off my toes so I could put my flip-flop back on, when I spotted him. He caught me staring, but I never even had a chance to be embarrassed.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he said. I couldn’t believe this beautiful boy was talking to me. “Your brother goes to Chestnutville High, doesn’t he?” I was totally self-conscious because my long hair was all frizzy after a day of sun and salt water. I tried to casually smooth it down while I talked to him, but then he reached over and brushed a stray ringlet away from my eye, like he was already used to invading my personal space, and said: “I love your curls.”

  A week later, we were a couple.

  I think about our first date a lot, remembering how I watched from my bedroom window as he pulled into the driveway. I had been ready for an hour, but I figured I’d let Joey ring the bell and sweat out the first meeting with my family before I went downstairs. If he was going to be a keeper, my family needed to like him and he needed to like my family.

  I stood on the upstairs landing, out of sight, and listened to the introductions, followed by easy laughter when my brother said, “There’s still time to back out, man. I don’t think Rosie knows you’re here.” When I walked down the stairs a few seconds later wearing a yellow silk tank top that contrasted nicely with my dark eyes and hair (I had worn it curly for him), I could tell he had no intention of bailing. He was all in. Neither of us said a word, but we were both smiling like it was yearbook picture day. People think those time-stands-still moments only happen in movies. They don’t. It sounds cheesy, but everyone else just faded away and it felt like we were alone.

  “Do you two know each other?” my dad said, breaking the spell. Everyone laughed and then we walked out the door.

  As Joey opened the car door for me, he leaned down and whispered in my ear: “You’re even prettier than I remembered.” A chill rippled from my neck and spread across my body.

  Before my date, Matty and Eddie did try to warn me that Joey had a love-’em-and-leave-’em rep around school. But that night, Joey seemed more like an anxious little boy than some arrogant Casanova. He asked me a ton of questions and wanted to know everything about me. It was like I really, really mattered. And he seemed so worried about whether or not I was enjoying myself. I lost count of how many times he asked if my tortellini with pesto sauce was any good. When he spilled his water and his entire face turned red, my heart went out to him. I was making him nervous. Me. I didn’t care what Eddie and Matty said about how Joey treated girls in the past. I could tell I was going to be different.

  Ha! What a joke. I put the cap back on my sunscreen, lie down, and close my eyes. Forget it. I already got burned.

  • • •

  At five o’clock, I change back into shorts and a tank top and brace myself for what’s coming. At dinner
, the tiny lift I got from a healthy dose of vitamin D is gone. Probably because we’re having pork cutlets and salad with a heated family discussion about criminal mischief on the side.

  “Say that again, Rosie,” Mom says. “It sounded like you said ‘restraining order.’”

  “I did. ‘Temporary restraining order.’”

  I hold out the document halfheartedly. My mother takes it from me, stares at it, closes her eyes, and passes it to my father.

  “Oh, Dios mío,” Mom says. “Are you trying to kill your father and me? This business with Joey keeps getting worse.”

  Here we go with the Spanglish. Worrying always transforms my mom into George Lopez. Predictably, the veins in my dad’s neck bulge out as he reads the restraining order. Let’s hope he doesn’t transform into the Incredible Hulk.

  “I don’t know you anymore,” Dad says. He’s got the papers rolled up and waves them around like a light saber. “My daughter would never do these things.”

  Well, your daughter did, apparently, says the Rosie in my head. He’s right, though. I hate to disappoint my dad. I pick at my food as he gets up and starts pacing. I waited until after he ate to tell everyone. Low blood sugar tends to fuel my father’s anger. My mother just rubs her temples. Pony, who had been under the table waiting for scraps, slinks out of the room. Smart dog.

  “I’d better not find out you slept with this boy,” my father shouts.

  “Oh my God, Dad! You did not just say that.” I cover my ears. Eddie looks mortified. So does Mom.

  That’s when Matty materializes at the back door. I spot him first and can tell he’s afraid to knock. I’m guessing he’s waiting for a pause in my dad’s tirade. Finally, Matty taps on the door. His arrival is a welcome diversion—my parents adore Matty.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Matty says. “Did Rosie tell you about my plan?”

  Wait, what? Why would I? I had practically forgotten until this very second that he’d gone all road trip on me. Okay, maybe Matty isn’t a good diversion, but it’s too late, he’s already pulling up a chair. So, ten minutes later, after he shares his whole getting-out-of-Dodge scheme (he actually calls it that), my parents have fallen into an eerie trance.