No Place Like Homecoming, Dallen, Maggie [beach read book .TXT] 📗

Messner. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that.”

Callie’s brows shot up. “Don’t tell me you want to be a prince!”

I jerked back as if I’d been slapped. “What? No. Definitely not.”

Willow snickered at my loud and insistent rejection of that idea. I lowered my voice. “I just meant…” I cleared my throat and glanced around again. I couldn’t believe I was actually going to try and work for the troupe.

I’d thought cleaning up smeared birthday cake and pouring lemonade was as low as I’d go, but clearly I was wrong. “Do you know if she found a replacement for Ruby?”

“Another photographer?” Callie asked. It was a rhetorical question. We all knew who Ruby was. She’d been the troupe’s in-house photographer for years before she graduated and left for college a couple days ago.

I shrugged. I hated being stared at, and I hated talking this much to anyone. Even to two girls I considered friends. Sort of. As much as I had any friends, I supposed.

Willow seemed to recover from the shock first. “I don’t think she has. And I’d bet she’d hire you in a second since she knows you and likes you—”

“And you can’t be worse at photography than she is,” Callie interrupted with an impish grin.

Willow and I laughed because Mrs. Messner’s one and only attempt to play photographer had been an epic fail, and no one let her live it down.

“It would mean spending even more time with the Princess Troupe,” Callie teased. “Do you think you can handle even more of us?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I think I can handle it.”

“Hopefully you can handle yourself better than the new girl,” Willow said with a wince.

I found my gaze wandering to the far side of the room despite myself.

Isla looked like she might start trying to climb the wall as the little girl shoved a glitter-covered, still-wet painting in her direction, coming dangerously close to that sexy sundress of hers.

“Um, some help please?” Her gaze was pleading as she shouted over to us, and for the first time in a long time, some of the stress and weight I’d been drowning under these past few months eased as I fought another laugh.

This girl was trouble...but she was pretty freakin’ hilarious to watch.

Three

Isla

The only sound in my aunt’s kitchen Monday morning was sipping and slurping.

Aunt Lucy sipped her coffee and I slurped the cereal she was forcing me to consume despite the fact that it contained more carbs than I’d eaten all of junior year.

Fun times.

“You nervous?” Her gruff voice broke the sipping and slurping like a gunshot, and my gaze darted up from my phone to see her studying me closely.

“Nope.” I went back to eating and scrolling. It was a bad combo, to be honest. Nothing like scrolling through pictures of my former life to ruin an appetite.

I froze with my spoon halfway between the bowl and my mouth as Taylor posted a selfie from the steps in front of our school. The caption was some maudlin crap about senior year and time going by so fast—Taylor always had been a sap. But it was the face next to hers that gave me pause.

Logan.

Handsome as ever with his blond hair slicked back and his mom’s Swedish supermodel cheekbones.

Did he miss me? Was he as bummed as I was that I wasn’t there?

Today was also their first day of school back home. Thanks to the time difference, they had a two hour head start, so I was basically watching my life go on without me in real time.

“You know, it’s normal to be nervous on the first day at a new school,” my aunt said.

I ignored her. Tuning her out seemed like the best policy to survive my time here. I had nothing against this lady who’d offered to let me crash in her spare room. I mean, aside from her rules and her desire to make me fat, she wasn’t the worst. She was just misguided.

I was going to be eighteen in a few months, but the lady seemed to think I still needed a nanny and a pep talk over Cheerios.

She didn’t seem to get that this was only temporary.

I shook my head as she continued, giving me a rundown of how to get to school—as if I might get lost on the three-block walk. On who to check in with when I got there—because apparently she thought we didn’t have principals offices on the East Coast.

“Got it,” I mumbled.

But she wasn’t done.

Luckily for me, my phone buzzed and my mom’s face filled the screen. I held it up to Aunt Lucy as an excuse before darting away from the table to take it.

“Hi, honey. Are you ready for your big day?” My mom had her phone propped up on her vanity as she did her makeup.

“Any luck with Dad?” I asked.

Her sigh was answer enough. “Oh honey, give him time.”

That was what she’d said a month ago when he’d come up with this ludicrous plan. “School starts today, Mom. I’m missing my first day of senior year—”

“You’re still getting a first day of senior year, it’s just at a different school.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, sweetie, but I need you to be patient.” She set down her eyeliner to turn and face me. “You know how important this year is for your father. He’s so close to making partner at the new practice, and with my new obligations on the board for the nonprofit—”

“I know, I know.” My dad’s new job was all anyone talked about in our house. I’d been dragged along to countless parties this past summer, and all in the name of presenting an image of the perfect family.

Did his partners know that he’d shipped his perfect daughter off to a relative he’d never even met?

Doubtful.

“Isla, I promise you, I’m working on it. You’ll be home soon enough.”

I huffed in acknowledgement. I’d believe it when I saw it. She’d said she would put an end to this before I even