Read Online All You Need Is Love by Emily Franklin - Free Book Online Page B

you’re past that moment, there’s not that much left.
    I mean, at the end of Grease last night I got to thinking: if Danny Zuko and Sandy really had to be separated like during the plot scam at the beginning when Sandy says she might have to go back to Australia, would they really have lasted? If Danny had gone to visit her at Christmas (after, I don’t know, saving enough money for airfare by drag racing), would they have clicked again? Or was their love circumstantial?
    The phone rings and I walk in my movie haze to answer. “Hello?”
    “I thought you were coming to visit me!” Mable says.
    “I am! I am — I got a slow start.” Instant guilt. Mable’s probably been waiting for me for ages and I’ve left my only aunt sitting alone in her hospital room.
    “No prob, the coffee twins were here, delivering their most recent anal spread sheet from Slave. They’re really something.”
    “They seem kind of mean,” I say, not editing myself. “At least Ula does.”
    “Doug’s the good cop, she’s the bad.” I can imagine shaking her scarf-covered head. “But Ula’s just trying to set a good example.”
    “For whom?”
    “Oh, are we formal now? For whom is she setting an example? You, probably. They’re both going to be sort-of supervising Slave II this summer.”
    “Oh,” my voice comes out small, disappointed.
    “Love — you’re great and very responsible but let’s be real. You’re seventeen.”
    “I’ll be eighteen in the fall,” I say, pathetically fighting for my maturity.
    “Look — it’s all set. You and Arabella will be the primary people, okay? You’ll open and close in shifts and handle all the press. You can even come up with clever marketing campaigns and everything. I just need Ula to run the books and check in on things.” She doesn’t say chaperone, but I know that’s what she means.
    “It’s not like I’m a raving party machine, Mable.”
    “I know, believe me. But it’s protocol. I have to have someone of age there just in case.” Mable sighs. “Are you angry or will you still visit?”
    My shoulders slump. “Of course I’ll visit. I just need to let the grumpiness shake off.”
    “Like dandruff?”
    “Yes — just like flaky scalp.”
    “Gross.”
    “You’re gross.”
    “Bring me flowers?” Mable asks, hopeful.
    “Sure.”
    “From my favorite place?”
    “For you, anything,” I say and mean it.
    The Flower Market is where the flower dealers get their goods. In the morning, the place is a mad house with bursts of blooms everywhere. Daring pink dahlias, delicate day lilies, roses in all shades of the color spectrum and petals carpeting the ground. I park between hell and gone and way far away and carry a straw basket over to the stalls. Most of the crowds are gone, off to sell their wares to the weekend shoppers, but a few vendors remain. I search for lilies of the valley, small slender green stalks with tiny white blossoms hanging off; Mable’s favorite flower. They remind me of a story or a song from my childhood, but one I can’t remember. I make a mental note to ask Mable about that — sometimes she acts as my memory, retrieving facts I’ve lost or misplaced.
    “Hey stranger,” Harriet Walters sidles up to me, carrying an armful of daisies. “Less than half-price.” She brags to me about her bargaining prowess and sticks a white daisy behind my ear. “You’re a vision of near-summer.”
    “Thanks,” I say and put my basket down for a second to take off my sweater and tie it around my wait. “I’m so hot — I can’t believe it’s this late in the school year.”
    “I know. Almost senior year.” Harriet doesn’t say anything else but I gather from her facial expression that she’s thinking what I am — where will I be at the start of senior year? What will have changed? Or will everything have stayed the same?
    “Are you going to college?” Harriet asks. She managed to sound so focused all the time, not overly academic, just like