3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows by Ann Brashares

two,” Polly said to the kids, with the kind of enthusiasm guaranteed to catch their attention. “It’s time for me to wreak my revenge in Tumblin’ Monkeys. Come on.”
    Nicky and Katherine easily took her bait and scuttled down the stairs after her.
    A few minutes later, Polly had to run back upstairs to get a roll of toilet paper from the linen closet, and she quietly passed Tibby’s room again.
    Through the half-open door she saw Brian sitting in the dim light on the edge of Tibby’s bed. His head was bowed and his elbows rested on his long legs. He held the discs he’d come to find in one hand and his head in the other.
    He didn’t look up or notice Polly as she hurried along on silent feet, and Polly understood that he sat on Tibby’s bed like that because he missed her.
    Brian left soon after, and Polly spent the remainder of the afternoon in a trance. Her mind took up its perch near the ceiling and watched her body conduct games of Ants in the Pants and Go Fish.
    For some reason she thought mostly about her newly discovered grandmother who was a model and looked like Sophia Loren, and wondered if that grandmother had ever been loved the way she imagined Brian loved Tibby.
    “I don’t want to go, but I have to,” Jo explained, talking to Bryn on her cell phone while sitting on a bus headed back to Bethesda. “I had to trade shifts with Brownie.”
    “Brownie’s such a loser,” Bryn declared. She was never one to forget about the social hierarchy, however much or little it applied.
    “Maybe so, but he was -willing to give me his shift.” Jo’s ear -was getting hot, so she switched sides. “I’ll work lunch tomorrow instead.”
    “I’m sure he was happy that you even talked to him,” Bryn said confidently. She put the phone down for a moment to yell at her brother. “So why are you going back to Bethesda?”
    “I’m—I’m having dinner -with my dad.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “He … he can’t come out to the beach because he’s … you know, on call at the hospital. And he … just wanted to see me, I guess.”
    Jo had worried about how to phrase this. She didn’t really understand, herself, why her dad wanted to have dinner, just the two of them, in Bethesda—why he’d almost insisted on it. She didn’t want Bryn to push her on this question. Luckily it didn’t sound like Bryn -was paying close attention. It sounded like she was chewing on something and also possibly typing on her computer.
    “Did he just see your report card?” Bryn asked dis tractedly.
    Jo laughed. “Yeah. Maybe that’s it.” She looked out the window and watched the beach traffic piling up across the highway. She didn’t really think that was it.
    “I should go,” she said. “My phone’s gonna die.”
    “Okay. See ya. Have a blast on the bus.”
    “You mean luxury motor coach.”
    “Yeah, that too.”
    Jo leaned her forehead against the window, watching the deep red sun. Usually it spread its glow all around the sky, but tonight it kept all the color to itself. It looked like it was burning up, falling only a matter of miles to the west of her, on Bethesda maybe, maybe even on her house.
    She hadn’t called Polly back yet. She should really call Polly. If she told Polly that she was coming home on the bus from Rehoboth to have dinner -with her dad, Polly would pay attention and she would instantly see how weird that was.
    She remembered, maybe a year ago, when Polly had been talking about her own father, -whom she’d never met. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, my father is lost too,” Jo had said. She’d felt slightly surprised to hear herself say it. She had been in a reckless mood.
    “Your dad’s not lost,” Polly had been quick to say, always literal. “He lives in your house.”
    “I know,” Jo had said, not wanting to say more, but she could see from Polly’s face that she did understand, at least partly, what Jo meant.
    Jo’s dad was a surgeon. When Jo was little, he was still