“Mom,” I say, trying to sound as mature as possible, “there has to be some other way. Can’t he move here?”

“No,” she says with a sad laugh, “he definitely cannot.”

“Why not?” I ask. “Is he wanted by the law or something?”

Mom gives me an of-course-not look. “His work demands he remain in Greece.”

Work! There’s something I can use.

“What about your work? Your practice?” I inch closer. “Won’t you miss your daily dose of crazies?” Not a PC term, I know, but I’m operating in desperation mode.

“Yes. I will.”

“Then why are you-”

She looks me straight in the eyes and says, “Because I love him.”

For what feels like forever, we just stare at each other.

“Well I don’t see why I have to go,” I say. “I could stay with Yia Yia Minta and finish off my year-”

“Absolutely not,” Mom interrupts. “I love your grandmother like my own mother, but she is in no position to care for you for an entire year. She’s nearly eighty. Besides,”-she nudges me in the ribs-“you hate goat cheese.”

“I know, but-”

“You’re my baby girl.” Her voice is determined. “I refuse to lose you a year early.”

Great, Mom has separation anxiety, so I have to leave the hemisphere.

“Are you trying to ruin my life?” I demand, jumping up and pacing back and forth on the bare linoleum floor. “What, was everything going too smoothly? Worried that I didn’t have enough teen angst to work with? That I wouldn’t need therapy when I hit thirty?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Me? I’m not the one who flew off to a family reunion and came back with a fiance-wait, he’s not family is he? That would be beyond ew, Mom.”

“Phoebe.” Her voice is laced with warning, but I’m building up steam.

“I’ve heard about these spur-of-the-moment European marriages.

Are you sure he’s not just using you to get his green card?”

“Enough!” she shouts.

I stop cold and stare at her. Therapist Mom does not shout. I’m in serious trouble.

“Damian and I love each other.” She stands up, tucks my blanket under her arm, and hangs the strap on my duffel over my shoulder.

“We will be married next weekend. He will return to Greece. At the end of the month you and I will move to Serfopoula.”


“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 Pacific Park 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 LONGERT-shirt, Cesca’s silk ruffled halter top, and Nola’s unbleached organic cotton peasant blouse.

Trying to salvage some degree of cool, I wipe at my tear-puffed eyes and say, “At least we get Internet on the island.”

That would have been a deal breaker.

No Internet, no Phoebe.

Cesca wipes at her own tears, usually only called upon when she had to convince her dad she needed something really expensive.

“Then you have to e-mail every day.”

“Maybe,” Nola says, her face glowing as she embraces the raw emotion of her tears, “we can have a regular IM meet.”

“As if,” I say. “There’s a ten-hour time difference.”

“We’ll just have to work something out,” she persists.

Nola is nothing if not persistent.

“You’re right,” I manage, if only because I want to put on a brave face until they’re gone, when I can cry my eyes out on my stripped to-the-mattress bed.

“Okay, enough blubbering,” Cesca says. “Let’s get your junk packed so we can watch The Bold and the Beautifulbefore I have to head home.”

“Yeah,” I say, tossing the curtain panels into Box Four, “it’ll have to sustain me for the next year. You’d think we could at least get satellite on that stupid island.”


There’s not much to do on a ten-and-a-half-hour flight from L.A. to Paris while your mom is sleeping in the next row of a nearly empty plane. The movie selections were repulsive at best and the line at LAX security was so long I didn’t have time to buy the latest Runner’s World.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a French-accented male voice announces, “we have begun our final descent into Charles de Gaulle airport and should be on the ground in approximately thirty minutes.”

That was another thing. Our flight to Athens routed through Paris, but did I get to hop out and see the city of lights? No. We have forty-five minutes to get to our connecting flight and I’ll be lucky if I have time to look out the window at the clouds over Paris.