Kiss Her Goodbye by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

out, Amber.” Erin flashes a sympathetic look at Jen.
    Grateful they’ve reached her locker, Jen turns her back and works the combination with her right hand, clutching her books against her pounding heart with her left. Suddenly, she feels like crying.
    â€œSee you tomorrow, Jen,” Erin says, behind her.
    â€œSee you tomorrow,” Amber the trained parrot echoes.
    â€œSee you,” Jen manages.
    She opens her locker, blindly shoving her books into the backpack hanging on a hook. Oblivious to the din around her, she wishes they’d never moved here. Back in Indiana, she had plenty of friends. Friends who had known her—and her family—their whole lives. Friends whose parents were as overprotective as Jen’s.
    No they weren’t , she contradicts herself. Not all of them. Nobody else had to be home by nine o’clock on a weekend night in Indiana, either. And almost everybody got to go to the Dave Matthews concert in Chicago last February. Everybody but Jen.
    Her mother wasn’t swayed by the fact that Dana Markowitz’s parents were driving them into the city and staying for the concert.
    Erin’s words echo in her head. I feel so sorry for you.
    Suddenly, Jen feels sorry for herself, too.
    You never get to go anywhere or do anything.
    Anger seeps in. Anger at her mother, and at herself, for allowing her mother to shelter her to the point where people are making fun of her.
    Jen grabs her backpack and her barn coat, then slams the locker shut and looks around. Erin and Amber have stopped at Erin’s locker at the end of the corridor.
    Jen’s sneakers carry her in that direction even as her mind wrestles with temptation. When she arrives at Erin’s locker, she steps out of character long enough to say, “Is it too late to change my mind and tag along?” before wondering what the hell she’s getting herself into.
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    Carrying a stack of still-warm-from-the-dryer jeans, Kathleen opens the bottom drawer of her dresser, then pauses in dismay.
    The thing about getting caught up on laundry is that there’s not enough storage space for clean clothes, towels, and sheets. What this house really needs, Kathleen decides, trying to jam the jeans into the already crowded drawer, is a large walk-up attic like the one in their old house. She used to be able to store off-season clothes up there in cedar-lined wardrobes. In this house, there’s an attic, but it’s more of a crawl-space, really, accessible only by a pull-down ladder through the ceiling in Jen’s closet.
    Kathleen forces the bureau drawer closed, then opens a top drawer to make room for her clean socks. It, too, is full already.
    You could always clean out the clutter , she reminds herself as she rummages past several single socks whose partners vanished into clothes dryer oblivion.
    Like these dressy black trouser socks—when does she ever wear them? And some of her gym socks are wearing thin at the toes. She removes several pairs from the drawer, then catches a glimpse of pink fuzz tucked into the back corner.
    Kathleen’s heart beats a little faster as she pulls out the familiar bundle: a hand-knit pale rose-colored blanket and a single matching baby bootee with lacy white trim. Swallowing hard over a sudden lump in her throat, she clutches the soft yarn against her cheek, remembering . . .
    Until the faint, muffled sound of a ringing telephone startles her out of her reverie. She reaches for the bedside extension, only to find that the cordless receiver isn’t in its cradle.
    Damn it. Jen must have taken it into her room again last night to have a private conversation with one of her friends.
    Frustrated, Kathleen hurries back down into the kitchen, but by the time she reaches the phone there, it’s fallen silent.
    Four rings, and it goes into voice mail—that’s the new system. In Indiana, they had a good old-fashioned answering machine, but that broke and