Blaire Read online

  But not even a video called “Goats Wearing Pajamas” could cheer me up.

  I tossed and turned all night, then slept later than usual. It was midmorning before I finally got up and went outside. I wandered to the gazebo and was surprised to find Cat there, drinking a cup of coffee while gazing at the creek.

  “Hey, Sprout,” she said when she saw me. “Thanks for breaking that wedding gown tie yesterday. You were right. The first dress was The One. I bought it!”

  I sat down next to her. “That’s great.” But I realized that if I hadn’t been looking at the photos Cat sent me, Thea and I wouldn’t have had our fight.

  “I’m sorry. Are you Blaire Wilson?” Cat asked, peering into my eyes “The Blaire I know would be jumping up and down at the news that I bought a wedding dress.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Thea and I had a fight yesterday.”

  Cat put her coffee cup down. “Oh no. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  I shrugged. I did not want to tell Cat that it had anything to do with her wedding. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  “I get that,” Cat said. “Gabe and I had a bit of a disagreement yesterday, too.”

  “Wedding stuff?” I asked.

  Cat nodded. “What else? Planning something this big, this fast has put a lot of pressure on us.” Cat placed her arm around my shoulder. “On all of us.”

  I felt tears stinging my eyes. Maybe I could tell Cat about my fight with Thea. But before I could say anything, Gabe appeared.

  “There you are!” he said to Cat. “I have good news! Blaire—you’ll love this too. My mother called Empire State Weddings magazine and told them about the new Pleasant View Farm barn venue. And guess what? They want to write a review!”

  Empire State Weddings? I flashed back to that day at Kellenberger’s when I’d shown the magazine to Cat with Mrs. V right there. I never imagined Mrs. V would actually contact them!

  “Oh my gosh,” I said, suddenly feeling excited. “Mrs. V had an idea-spark!”

  But Cat looked doubtful. “Really?” she asked. “Is that okay with Daniel and Maggie? It’s their barn.”

  Gabe nodded. “I just told Daniel.” Gabe looked at me. “Your dad thinks it’s going to be great for the farm.”

  “What will they review, exactly?” Cat asked.

  “The barn, of course. But they want to see an actual wedding here, so they’re going to attend ours.”

  “Wow!” I said. “That’s so cool. Your wedding will be in a magazine, Cat!”

  “Wait a minute,” Cat said. “I don’t want my wedding in a magazine, and I don’t want some stranger taking notes on my wedding and—and—judging it for their magazine readers. Gabe, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “You don’t?” Gabe looked completely surprised. “I thought you’d be excited. I—I already said yes.”

  “You WHAT?” Cat exploded.

  Gabe’s eyes widened. “Well, it would be great publicity for the farm, so Mom and I assumed you’d want to—”

  “You and your mom made this decision?” Cat said. “Why didn’t you and I make this decision, Gabe?”

  Gabe and I looked at each other, too stunned to speak.

  “This is too much,” Cat finally said to Gabe. She shook her head. “You and I are taking a break. And this wedding?” Her voice broke. “This wedding is off!”

  Pleasant View Farm is like Earth: it keeps spinning no matter what happens, even on afternoons when weddings of my almost-big-sister get canceled. Mom and the kitchen staff were cooking. Dad was working on the barn. And I was cleaning out the chicken coop while the chickens grazed in the field.

  I was scooping straw out of the nesting boxes when Grandpa appeared. “Blaire!” he said, sounding concerned. “I just heard about Cat calling off the wedding. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  I dumped the old straw on the ground. “At least it means you’ll stay.”

  “Stay where?” Grandpa asked.

  “Here,” I said. “At the farm.”

  Grandpa’s brows knit together in confusion. “Huh?”

  “We can’t ruin Pleasant View Farm if the wedding never happens.” I sighed.

  “Blaire Wilson, I’m still not following.”

  I stopped scooping and turned to Grandpa. “You said weddings at the barn would ruin everything we spent so many years building. You said maybe it was time for you to retire. You said maybe you’d … move out if the first barn event was a failure.” My throat felt tight.

  “When did I say these things?” Grandpa asked.

  “At Freddy’s, the day we got Penny and Dash,” I said, picking up a clean mound of straw. “I heard you and Freddy talking in his living room.”

  Grandpa thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Oh, sweetheart! I didn’t mean I’d actually move out! I was grumpy and sad because my friend was losing his farm.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “So you won’t leave?” I asked. “No matter what happens with the barn?”

  “Blaire, I would never leave you or my family or our farm. This place, and the people here, are my life.”

  I was so relieved that I dropped my pile of straw and threw my arms around Grandpa. “You sounded so serious that day at Freddy’s. I believed you!”

  Grandpa wrapped his arms around me and laughed. “Well, you can’t believe everything you hear. Look, my job is to make sure we never lose sight of what this farm is about. I don’t like the idea of this new party barn, but I believe in our family, and I’ll always stick with you.”

  I was afraid I would cry if I said anything else, so I just gave Grandpa another ginormous hug.

  “Now,” Grandpa said, pulling away to look at my face. “What’s going on with you? You were in quite the mood when you got home from the fair yesterday.”

  I told Grandpa all about my fight with Thea. “She said I abandoned her this summer,” I said, picking up clean straw and filling a nesting box.

  Grandpa scooped up an armload of straw and filled another box. “Well, Thea’s right,” he said.

  “What?” I squealed.

  “You’ve gotten so wrapped up in barn renovations and wedding plans that you’ve stopped doing a whole bunch of stuff,” Grandpa said, reaching for more straw. “It’s good to have a passion that fires you up. But you have to find a balance. You need time to have fun, and time with your family and friends, too.”

  I started raking up the straw on the ground, thinking about how many times I’d changed or canceled plans with Thea or said no to invitations from her or our other friends. I shrugged. “Hanging out at the farm is just easier. Every time I go somewhere with my friends, there’s something I can’t eat. It makes me feel like I’m a blob of lactose intolerance instead of a person.”

  “Ah, I see.” Grandpa rested an elbow on the top of the nesting box. “I can only imagine how hard it is for you to adjust to your diagnosis, but retreating from your friends—or getting lost in that tablet of yours—won’t make your food issue go away.”

  I raked in silence until Grandpa said, “I believe you owe Thea an apology.”

  “Maybe I do.” I sighed. “But she owes me one, too. She promised she’d help with the wedding planning and she didn’t. It’s not okay.”

  “Then talk to her. I’m sure she has a good reason for that, just like you thought you had a good reason for putting all your time and energy into the wedding.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay. I’ll text her and—”

  “Not on that dang screen of yours,” Grandpa corrected me. “The real way. In person.”

  “Blaire!” Mrs. Dimitriou exclaimed. I was standing on their front porch “I haven’t seen you since Thea’s party. Come on in!”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Thea from the top of the stairs inside.

  “I brought you a peace offering.” I held out a pinwheel I’d made. I had tied a bow out of some leftover fabric from Thea’s birthday gift around the stick. “I was
hoping we could talk.”

  Thea came slowly downstairs and took the pinwheel. “Thanks,” she said, blowing on it to make it twirl. “Let’s go out back.”

  Thea’s yard was small, but it had a patio and a play set with two swings. When we were younger, we used to play there for hours at a time.

  After Thea stuck the pinwheel into the soil of a flower box, we both stood back to admire it. Then Thea took the swing she liked best. I sat down on the other.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Thea raised an eyebrow.

  “I know I’ve been obsessed with the wedding,” I continued. “But I didn’t mean to abandon you. Here’s the thing.” I explained how rough it had been getting used to my new normal. “Keeping busy at the farm was my way to just not deal with the fact that every time I went out, I was faced with stuff I couldn’t eat, and embarrassing conversations about it.”

  We swung back and forth for a few moments, the creaking of the chains filling the silence.

  “I didn’t think of that,” Thea finally said. “You just know so much about food that I figured it wasn’t a big deal.”

  After another few moments of silent swinging, I took a deep breath and said, “Why did you stop helping with the wedding?”

  “I’m sorry,” Thea said quickly. “I know I promised I would, and I bailed. I wanted to spend time with you, but Blaire, barn renovation really isn’t my thing, dahling.”

  I nodded.

  Thea jumped off her swing and stood facing me. “I started hanging out with Madison because it felt better to spend time with friends who were around. But I missed you so much!”

  I stopped swinging. “You did?”

  Thea nodded.

  “I missed you, too,” I said.

  Thea sat back down on her swing. “Sorry if you thought I didn’t miss you. I guess there’s only so much you can say with texting, even if you add emojis and GIFs.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Then I had an idea-spark. “Wait, what if we had a special secret emoji between us that we could use when we’re not sure what a text or email means? Like, a way to say, I don’t understand. Let’s talk in person.”

  Thea grinned. “Ha, I love it! How about …” Thea and I both thought for a few moments.

  “The speak-no-evil monkey!” we called out at the same time, slapping our hands over our mouths. Twin idea-sparks!

  “Perfect,” I said. “I think Cat and Gabe need a signal, too.”

  “What?” Thea asked. “Why?”

  “Cat called the wedding off.”

  Thea gasped. “No! Seriously? But why?”

  We climbed up to the little fort at the top of the play set, and I told her about Mrs. V inviting Empire State Weddings and how that was the last straw for Cat. “It’s sort of my fault.” I sighed. “Mrs. V and I kinda got carried away.”

  “Hmmm,” said Thea. “Do you think Cat still wants to marry Gabe?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She won’t talk to me about Gabe or the wedding.”

  “Do you think they still love each other?”

  “I do. But right now they’re not talking to each other.”

  Thea shook her head. “We have to change that.”

  Idea-spark! “Come inside,” I said to Thea, borrowing her evil villain voice. “I have a brilliant plan.”

  I got your text,” Cat said breathlessly as she jogged up to the orchard. “What’s wrong?”

  “We have a problem,” I said.

  “We wrote this play as an extra credit summer project for school,” Thea explained, waving a stack of papers. “But we need two more people to practice it with us.”

  Cat put her hands on her hips. “A PLAY? You said this was an emergency!”

  “It is!” I said.

  We heard the squeaking of bike pedals and turned to see Gabe riding toward us. When he spotted Cat, he screeched to a stop and hopped off.

  “Uh, where’s the emergency?” he asked, confused. “Cat, are you okay?”

  Cat nodded without looking at him. “There’s no emergency,” she said, sounding annoyed. “Just a play these two want us to help with.”

  Gabe looked confused.

  “Cat, please!” I said. “We worked hard on this play. We need your help!”

  Cat sighed. “I’ll give it five minutes.” She glanced at Gabe and he gave her a little smile.

  Aha, I thought. At least they’ll still look at each other.

  Thea passed out the scripts. “I’ll be Mia,” she said, “and Blaire will be Claire, and—”

  “Let me guess,” Gabe said, skimming the script. “Cat will be Nat, and I’ll be … Schmabe?”

  “Yup!” I said. “Okay, I have the first line. ‘Woe is me, dear Mia! The Lady Nat called off her wedding with Sir Schmabe.’”

  Thea started reading: “‘Oh, Lady Claire, what could possibly come between two people who are so happily in love?’”

  “‘Perhaps an evil curse,’” I said as Lady Claire. “‘But wait—here is Sir Schmabe now, riding his pegasus.’”

  I glanced at Cat out of the corner of my eye. Her face was flushed. Was she angry?

  “Gabe, it’s your line,” said Thea.

  Gabe cleared his throat and began to read. “‘Nat! Dear Nat! Wherefore art thou? We have not spoken in so long!’”

  I nudged Cat, because that was her cue. “‘I’m here, Sir Schmabe,’” she read in a flat voice. “‘I have been busy fixing my spacecraft so I can return to Earth …’” Cat looked up from her script. “Wait a sec. Where exactly does this take place?”

  “Not sure,” Thea said. “It’s a work in progress. Gabe. Line.”

  “‘Before you leave this planet,’” Gabe read, “‘would you join me for a farewell picnic lunch in the golden gazebo? I went to the deli on Planet Bluefield and got your favorite—’” Gabe’s voice caught. “‘Your favorite,’” he continued after he cleared his throat. “‘The Intergalactic Turkey Sub.’”

  “‘That does sound out-of-this-world delicious,’” Cat said as Nat. She looked over at me with an expression that said I know what you’re up to.

  “‘And perhaps after that,’” Gabe continued, “‘we could take a stroll around the Orbital Orchards, ours hands intertwined— ’” Gabe raised an eyebrow at Thea and me, then took a step toward Cat. “Um … it says here I’m supposed to take your hand. May I?”

  Cat hesitated. Thea and I looked at each other, holding our breath.

  Finally, Cat nodded.

  “‘Our hands intertwined like the branches of the trees above,’” Gabe finished.

  It was Cat’s line, but she just stood there, staring down at her hand in Gabe’s. “I think it’s your line, Nat,” Gabe whispered to her.

  Cat swallowed hard, then turned back to her script. “‘Oh, Schmabe! That would make me happier than …’” She dropped the script to her waist and looked up at Gabe. “Well, happier than I’ve been in a while.”

  I glanced at Thea. This wasn’t in the script, but I liked where it was going!

  Gabe put his script down. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” Cat said. “I’ve done a lot of thinking these last few days. I know for sure that I don’t want some over-the-top wedding. But I know something else for sure, too. Sir Schmabe,” she said, her voice strong, “would you do me the honor of —”

  “Wait thee a second, Nat,” Gabe said, improvising now. “Are you asking me if I want to marry you?”

  Cat nodded.

  “I do,” Gabe said, folding her in his arms. Then he pulled away quickly. “Oh, wait, I should save that for the wedding!” They both smiled. Then they hugged again, for real.

  Thea and I high-fived each other.

  “I like how this play ended,” Gabe said to me and Thea over Cat’s head, which was still resting on his shoulder.

  “You get an A-plus on your summer extra credit project,” added Cat, her voice muffled by Gabe’s shirt.

  “Blaire? Is that you?” M
rs. V’s face popped up on my tablet screen. She was wearing a towel wrapped around her hair and her skin was … green. “I’m doing a mint cucumber mask! I’ve been so upset since Cat called off the wedding, I’ve had to give myself a calming facial every night!”

  “Well then, I have some awesome news for you,” I said. “The wedding is back on.”

  “WHAT?” Mrs. V sat up so quickly that the towel almost fell off her head. “Oh my! That’s marvelous! But now we have so much to do!”

  “Actually …” I began, “Cat has changed the decor a bit. She and I will handle it all from here.”

  Mrs. V frowned. “Changed? Still ‘farm fancy,’ I hope?”

  “Of course. It’s going to be perfect. And with you there, Mrs. V, the ‘fancy’ part is totally covered.”

  Mrs. V broke into a big smile. Then her towel slid onto the phone and the screen went dark.

  It was all hands on deck. Or actually, all hands on barn.

  The wedding was in five days and we were racing against the clock. Dad had hired a crew to paint the outside of the barn, but we still had to paint the window trim and do some other finishing touches before we could decorate.

  Thea and I painted the trim with small brushes, making it fun by playing a real-life game of This or That. I set my watch so that every hour we would take a break to go see Dash and Penny.

  Halfway through the first workday, Grandpa came in and offered to help.

  “The finish on this part of the floor looks a little uneven,” he said to Dad. “Mind if I do some sanding?”

  “Do I mind?” asked Dad. “That would be fantastic, Ben. Please, do whatever you think needs to be done.”

  The next morning, Dad recruited Beckett to help with the painting. We’d been working for about an hour when there was a knock on the open doorway.

  “Helloooooo!” called a familiar voice.

  Mrs. V waved from the barn entrance. She was dressed in a long-sleeved white jumpsuit with a rhinestone-studded belt, and a white leather cap.

  “Mom?” Gabe said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard you were painting, so I’m here to help. Look, I found the perfect outfit for it.”