Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner Page B

dad,” I volunteered. “He could help us. He did Jon’s room last winter. I think that he rented a steamer from somewhere. You steam the paper first, and then you scrape it off, and then you paint the wal with white stuff. Primer, I think.”
    “Huh,” said Mrs. Adler. “This is starting to sound complicated.” Valerie, meanwhile, was staring at the half-painted wal with her chin trembling.
    “You STINK,” she said without looking at her mother. “You are the WORST MOTHER
    EVER. We’re doing this al wrong!”
    Mrs. Adler uncoiled herself from the bed, planted her feet on the floor, placed her hands on her hips, and leaned backward. Her hair spil ed out of the back of the bandanna, brushing the smal of her back.
    “You’re right,” she said, not sounding especial y concerned. “I have screwed this up completely. Then again, I never claimed to be a professional.”
    “You didn’t have to be a professional!” Val yel ed. “Al you had to do was read a book or something!”
    “You’re right,” Mrs. Adler said again.
    “Read an article, ” Val said miserably. “You could’ve just read an article. ”
    “Let me make it up to you,” said Mrs. Adler. She put her hand on Val’s shoulder. Val shook it off, rattling her mother’s silver bangles. “You can’t. This is a disaster. Al I wanted was a nice pretty room, with PINK
    and GREEN, a nice room like Addie has, and you said that I could…”
    “My dad can help,” I offered again, but no one was listening. I recognized that this was a bad situation, but I was stil flushed with pleasure: Val wanted a room like I had.
    “Disaster,” Mrs. Adler agreed. “You’re right. I vote we go clamming.”
    Valerie sniffled. “I don’t want to go clamming. I just want to paint my room, and you promised that I could.”
    “It’s one of the last nice weekends of the summer. We can paint your room anytime. But summer won’t last forever.”
    Valerie frowned. “How are we supposed to get to Cape Cod?”
    “We can drive.”
    I inched toward the bedroom door, unsure whether this was a private conversation, but reluctant to leave. Three years ago, my parents and Jon and I had driven to Lake Charlevoix and rented a cabin for a week. The cabin had been cobwebby and had smel ed musty, and on the way up I’d shared the backseat with Jon, who’d spent hundreds of miles farting and then categorizing the smel of each of his farts (“This one smel s like a McDonald’s ham-burger…ooh, here comes baby food”). I’d pinched my nose shut and kicked his legs, tel ing him to stay on his side of the seat. Jon had grabbed my seat belt and pul ed it until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My father had snapped at us (“That’s enough, you two!”), and my mother had tried to distract us with the license-plate game, which was hard to concentrate on when you were trapped in what smel ed like a bowel movement on wheels.
    “It’l take, like, two days,” Val was saying. She’d gotten an atlas from between her mattress and her box spring and spread it open on the floor. “You see? This, right here?” She stabbed the state with her finger. “That’s Il inois, and this…” She stabbed the map again. “Is Massachusetts. And this…” She whacked the page so hard that it rattled. “Is Cape Cod. Al the way up here at the top.”
    Mrs. Adler adjusted her bandanna. “When does school start?” She looked at her daughter. Valerie looked at me. I swal owed.
    “September third.”
    “That’s not for another week!” Mrs. Adler said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
    Val pouted. “We need a license.”
    “We’l use Poppy’s.”
    “And a canoe…”
    “We can borrow a canoe. Come on, come on, come on!” Mrs. Adler was saying. “It’l be an adventure! Go find your swimsuit!”
    “We should cal Poppy first.”
    “And a toothbrush! Pack your toothbrush!
    ”
    “Is there gas in the car? Do you have money for gas?”
    “Don’t be such a worrywart,” Mrs. Adler