“Who’s ever even heard of Serfopoula anyway?” I ask as I pace back and forth at the foot of my bed where my bright yellow rug used to be.
“Just think, Phoebe,” Cesca says. “You’ll be basking on the pristine white shores of the turquoise Aegean.”
Okay, she has me there. Beach runs are kind of my weakness, but that is so not enough to make moving worthwhile. There are plenty of beaches in California.
Cesca gazes dreamily up at my cloud-painted ceiling, like she’s picturing frilly umbrella drinks and hot cabana boys. Her sigh is positively envious. Fine. She can take my seat on the flight to Athens tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” Nola says. “A practically uninhabited Greek island with nothing on it but a private school and a tiny village? Suspicious, Phoebe.”
Nola—short for Granola, if you can believe it—is our resident conspiracy theorist. Her parents are hippies. Not were hippies . . . are hippies. As in they believe in free love, protest our school’s non-vegetarian lunches, and think the Cubans, the Mafia, and the CIA all conspired to kill Kennedy.
“Sounds like that tiny island in the Caribbean where the navy was bombing goats.” She flops onto my bed—sending three furry pillows bouncing to the floor—and folds herself into a yoga position. “Or maybe that was the island off the coast of California.”
“Either way,”—I snatch the pillows off the floor and stuff them into the nearest box—“tomorrow I’m going to be on a plane flying halfway around the world to live with a guy I barely met and now I’m supposed to call him Dad and pretend like we’re a big happy family.”
I realize I’m shoving the pillows so hard into Box Four of Six that I’m crushing the cardboard. Not smart, considering I don’t have any more boxes. Better that I take my frustrations out somewhere else than end up with one less box of necessities.
I stalk over to the desk and carve 3 Furry Pillows—Pink onto the contents list. It’s no fun having to account for everything I’m packing. Not when I can picture grimy customs officers pawing through my belongings to compare the list to the stuff in the box.
Cesca spins in my hot pink desk chair, her mind still on the turquoise Aegean fantasy. “I wonder if it’s near where they filmed Troy. Do you know which part of the Aegean Snarfopoly is in?”
“Serfopoula,” I correct, because Mom has drilled it into me. “And I don’t care how close it is to anything. It’s miles and miles away from here. A world away from you guys.”
My two best friends in the whole world—since the first day of kindergarten when Nola gave Cesca and me hemp friendship bracelets and Cesca taught me how to tie my shoes the cool way. We’ve been inseparable for the last twelve years and now there’s going to be an entire ocean and most of two continents between us.
How can I make it through my senior year without them?
Okay, now I’m close to tears. We’ve been locked in my room all afternoon, packing the last of my possessions into the six boxes I’m allowed to take. Six! Can you believe it? How am I supposed to condense a lifetime of living in the same house into just six boxes?
I understand leaving my furniture—my canopy bed, my dresser covered in bumper stickers, my antique desk with “I luv JM” carved into the bottom drawer and then scratched out—but six boxes will only hold about one-quarter of everything else. That means that for every one thing I put in a box, three get given to charity.
That makes a girl reevaluate her possessions.
The pink fur sticking out of Box Four catches my eye. I scowl at the offending pillows. Do I really want to waste space on pillows? Stalking back to the box, I jerk them out and fling them into the charity pile.
“Are you taking your curtains?” Cesca asks.
“Crap!” I swear, I’m going to forget something important—like those white gauzy panels covered with big, shiny sequins that reflect little dots of color all over my room when the sun hits them just right—and it’s not like I can buzz back home to pick up a few things.
My eyes are watering as I pull down the curtain rod and slide the curtains off one end. Although their gauzy quality didn’t do much to block out light, I now have an undiluted view of our neighbor’s house. More precisely, Jerky Justin’s bedroom window.
He’s probably in there with Mitzi Busch right now.
That’s the one, singular benefit of moving to the other side of the world. I won’t have to see his smug face in the halls of PacificPark anymore. There is no downside to being thousands of miles from the ex-boyfriend who delights in making my life miserable.
Like it’s my fault I won’t put out. Well, actually it is, but that doesn’t mean he needed to break up with me at junior prom and make a big show of sucking Mitzi’s tonsils whenever I’m around.
I turn from the window in a huff, inspired by the thought of never seeing him again. Nola and Cesca are standing right behind me, eyes wet and arms outstretched.
“Damn, we’re going to miss you,” Cesca says.
Nola nods. “Won’t be the same without your energy.”
I step into their arms for a group hug.
The thrill of leaving Justin behind evaporates and all I can think is how I’m never going to see my two best friends ever again. At least not until college—when we will all be together at USC.
No more holding back the tears. They stream down my cheeks, dripping off my chin onto my DISTANCE RUNNERS DO IT LONGER T-shirt, Cesca’s silk ruffled halter top, and Nola’s unbleached organic cotton peasant blouse.