Free Going Vintage by Lindsey Leavitt

early sixties? Like when you were in high school? That’s, uh, why I wanted to look at your yearbook. For ideas.”
“Really?” Grandma stops shuffling through the patterns and peers over her reading glasses. “You don’t want something slinky? I bet Jeremy would appreciate a sexier style.”
“Jeremy isn’t—” Ginnie says.
“Into sexy. Um, obvious sexy,” I say. Grandma doesn’t need to know about Jeremy. You know, it’d be nice if someone in my life didn’t know all my business, or think they know all my business, or know how messy my business really is. At least when I come to see Grandma, my life can be viewed as put together. “He’ll be fine with vintage. We’ll find an old pattern to use. But will you help? Please?”
Grandma crosses the room and gives me a hug, her jasmine perfume strong as ever. Even in this new space, with her boring furniture and painfully beige walls, at least she still smells like the old Grandma. “Of course. I’ll fit you into my schedule.” She laughs. “Right after tennis.”

Tuesday is another school day of whispers and questioning glances, another lunch, this time spent with Ginnie on the theater bleachers. We discuss list battle strategies, which to Ginnie means recipes, and I point out boys who would make good boyfriends. She’s so against the idea that I decide I’ll have to go covert in my steady search. Drop a boy bomb on her when she isn’t looking.
After school, I escape to my room so I can comb through a set of encyclopedias I found in the garage. They’re twenty years old, so most of the information is outdated, but luckily history stays the same. I find the sixties in the S encyclopedia and skim through the stuff on hippies and Vietnam in hopes of getting a feel for the earlier, more innocent years of the decade. Like boy bands in slim ties and Jackie Kennedy wearing a pillbox hat. That’s another thing wrong with this century—no one wears dressy hats anymore.
There’s a knock on my door. “Mallory?” Mom calls. “Can we talk for a minute?”
I still have Grandma’s row of pictures on the ground from Sunday. Rather then shove everything back into the bin, I lay a blanket over the mementos. I do not want my mom to see this as a reason to discuss Grandma and the next phase in her life. She’ll try to make it this big moment, all sappy close-ups with one tear rolling down her cheek. My room/life is a mess right now, not something she can fix with some feigned empathy.
“Yeah?”
“Ginnie told me you and Jeremy broke up? I thought shewas joking, so I got on Friendspace and now I’m blocked from your account. What’s going on?”
I tilt my forehead against the door. Ginnie blocked her. Good move. But I wish she hadn’t told Mom about the breakup. I’m not ready for the inevitable mother-daughter bonding. “Ginnie told you. That’s great.”
“I’m hurt you didn’t tell me,” she says. “Are you okay?”
I unlock the door, only opening a crack. I swear I love my mom, but that doesn’t mean I want to do this now. My mom has the ability to take the tiniest bit of drama, explode it into a catastrophe, then somehow make the problem all about her. She’s got to be salivating over breakup news. Prime opportunity for a parental lecture.
“No, I’m not okay. But talking about it won’t change that. And I have homework.”
Mom’s face is shadowed, her hair backlit by the hall light. There’s a look of firm resolve on her face, never a good sign. “I’m not going to let you push me away. You’re in a crisis, and I’m your mother. It’s my job to help.”
Her actual job is to get all up in my business, and she’s a model employee when it comes to that.
“There’s nothing to help with. What happened happened.”
“You know what you need? A break. You need to go somewhere fun.”
“I’m not in the mood for fun. I just want to sit in my room—”
“And mope. Which is why we’re going to the happiest place on Earth