chapter twenty-four
The next day, nothing. It wasn’t that he ignored me, because that would have been something. Some kind of proof that it had happened, that something had changed. But no, he treated me the same. Like I was still little Belly, the girl with the messy flyaway ponytail and the bony knees, running after them on the beach. I should have known better.
The thing was, whether he was pushing me away or pulling me toward him, I was still going in the same direction. Toward Conrad.
Cam didn’t call me for a few days. Not that I blamed him. I didn’t call him either—although I thought about it. I just didn’t know what to say.
When he finally called, he didn’t bring up the party. He asked me to go to the drive-in. I said yes. Right away I worried, though—did going to the drive-in mean we were going to have to make out? Like, crazy make out, steamed windows and seats all the way back?
Because that was what people did at the drive-in. There were the families, and then there were the hot and heavy couples toward the back of the lot. I’d never been part of a couple before. I’d gone as a family, with Susannah and my mother and everyone, and I’d gone with the boys, but never as a couple, like on a date.
Once, Jeremiah and Steven and I went and spied on Conrad on one of his dates. Susannah let Jeremiah drive us, even though he only had a permit. The drive-in was three miles away, and at Cousins, everyone drove, even kids on their parents’ laps. Conrad had been furious when he’d caught us spying on him. He’d been on his way to the concession stand when he saw us. It had been pretty funny—his hair was all messed up as he yelled at us, and his lips were rosy and they had a glossy sheen. Jeremiah cracked up the whole time.
I wished Steven and Jeremiah were out there in the dark somewhere, spying on us and cracking up. It would make me feel comforted somehow. Safer.
I was wearing Cam’s hoodie, and I kept it zipped all the way to my neck. I sat with my arms crossed, like I was shivering. Even though I liked Cam, even though I wanted to be there, I had the sudden urge to jump out of the car and walk home. I’d only ever kissed one boy, and that hadn’t been for real. Taylor called me the nun. Maybe I was one, at heart. Maybe I should have joined a convent. I didn’t even know if this was an actual date. Maybe he’d been so turned off by me the other night that all he wanted was to be my friend.
Cam tuned the radio until he found the right station. Drumming his hands on the steering wheel, he said, “Do you want any popcorn or anything?”
I kind of did, but I didn’t want it to get stuck in my teeth, so I said no, thanks.
He was pretty into the movie, the way he leaned up close to the windshield to get a closer look sometimes. It was an old horror movie, one that Cam told me was really famous, but I’d never heard of it. I was barely paying attention anyway—I felt like I was watching him way more than I was watching the movie. He licked his lips a lot. He didn’t look over and laugh with me during the funny parts the way Jeremiah did. He just sat on his side of the car, leaned up against the door, as far away from me as possible.
When the movie was over, he started the car up. “Ready?” he said.
I felt a wave of disappointment. He was taking me home already. He wasn’t going to take me to Scoops for an ice cream cone, or a hot fudge sundae to share. The date, if you could even call it that, had been a failure. He didn’t try to make out with me once. Not that I knew if I’d even have let him, but still. He could’ve at least tried.
“Um-hmm,” I said. I felt like I might cry, and I wasn’t quite sure why, when I hadn’t even been sure if I wanted to kiss him in the first place.
We drove home in silence. He parked the car in front of the house—I held my breath a little, my hand on the door handle, waiting to see if he’d turn off the ignition or if I should hop out. But he turned it off and leaned his head back against the headrest a second.
“Do you know why I remembered you?” he asked me suddenly.
It was a question so out of nowhere that it took me a little while to figure out what he was talking about.
“You mean from Latin Convention?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it my Coliseum model?” I was only half-joking. Steven had helped me build it; it had been pretty impressive.
“No.” Cam ran his hand through his hair. He wouldn’t look at me. “It’s because I thought you were really pretty. Like, maybe the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.”
I laughed. In the car, it sounded really loud. “Yeah, right. Nice try, Sextus.”
“I mean it,” he insisted, his voice rising.
“You’re making that up.” I didn’t believe it could be true. I didn’t want to let myself believe it. With the boys any compliment like this would always be the first part of a joke.
He shook his head, lips tight. He was offended that I didn’t believe him. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. I just didn’t see how it could be true. It was almost mean of him to lie about it. I knew what I looked like back then, and I wasn’t the prettiest girl anybody had ever seen, not with my thick glasses and chubby cheeks and little-girl body.
Cam looked me in the eyes then. “The first day, you wore a blue dress. It was, like, corduroy or something. It made your eyes look really blue.”
“My eyes are gray,” I said.
“Yes, but that dress made them look blue.”
Which was why I wore it. It was my favorite. I wondered where it was now. Probably packed up in the attic back home, with all my winter clothes. It was too small now anyway.
He looked so sweet, the way he watched me, waiting for my reaction. His cheeks were flushed peach. I swallowed hard and said, “Why didn’t you come up to me?”
He shrugged. “You were always with your friends. I watched you that whole week, trying to get up the nerve. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you at the bonfire that night. Pretty bizarre, huh?” Cam laughed, but he sounded embarrassed.
“Pretty bizarre,” I echoed. I couldn’t believe he’d noticed me. With Taylor by my side, who would have even bothered to look at me?
“I almost messed up my Catullus speech on purpose, so you’d win,” he said, remembering. He inched a little closer to me.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. I reached out and touched his arm. My hand shook. “I wish you had come up to me.”
That’s when he dipped his head low and kissed me. I didn’t let go of the door handle. All I could think was, I wish this had been my first kiss.
chapter twenty-five
When I went into the house, I was walking on cotton candy and clouds, replaying everything that had just happened—until I heard my mother and Susannah arguing in the living room. Fear seized up inside of me; it felt like a fist clenched tight around my heart. They never fought, not really. I’d only ever seen them fight one time. It was last summer. The three of us had gone shopping to this fancy mall an hour away from Cousins. It was an outdoor mall, the kind where people bring their pocket-size dogs on fancy leashes. I saw this dress—it was a purpley plum chiffon, with little off the shoulder straps, way too old for me. I loved it. Susannah said I should try it on, just for fun, so I did. She took one look at me and said I had to have it. My mother shook her head right away. She said, “She’s fourteen. Where will she wear a dress like that?” Susannah said it didn’t matter, that it was made for me. I knew we couldn’t afford it, my mother was newly divorced, after all, but I still pleaded with her. I begged. They got into an argument right there in the boutique, in front of people. Susannah wanted to buy it for me, and my mother wouldn’t let her. I told them never mind, I didn’t want it, even though I did. I knew my mother was right, I’d never wear it.
When we got back from Cousins at the end of summer, I found the dress in my suitcase, wrapped in paper and packed neatly on top like it had always been there. Susannah had gone back and bought it for me. It was so like her to do that. Later, my mother must have seen it hanging up in my closet, but she never said anything.
Standing there in the foyer, listening, I felt like the spy Steven was always accusing me of being. But I couldn’t help it.
I heard Susannah say, “Laurel, I’m a big girl now. I need you to stop trying to manage my life. I’m the one who gets to decide how I want to live it.”
I didn’t wait for my mother’s response. I walked right in and said, “What’s going on?” I looked at my mother when I said it, and I knew I sounded like I was blaming her, but I didn’t care.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine,” my mother said, but her eyes looked red and tired.
“Then why were you fighting?”
“We weren’t fighting, hon,” Susannah assured me. She reached out and smoothed my shoulder, like she was ironing out wrinkled silk. “Everything really is fine.”
“It didn’t sound like it.”
“Well, it is,” Susannah told me.
“Promise?” I asked. I wanted to believe her.
“Promise,” she said without hesitation.
My mother walked away from us, and I could see from the stiffness of her shoulders that everything was not fine, that she was still upset. But because I wanted to stay with Susannah, where everything really was fine, I didn’t follow her. My mother was the kind of person who would rather be alone anyway. Just ask my father.
“What’s the matter with her?” I whispered to Susannah.
“It’s nothing. Tell me about your date with Cam,” she said, leading me to the wicker couch in the sunroom.
I should have kept pressing her, should have tried to figure out what had really happened between the two of them, but my worry was already fading away. I wanted to tell her everything about Cam, everything. Susannah had that way about her, where you wanted to tell her all your secrets and everything in between.
She sat on the couch and patted her lap. I sat down next to her and put my head in her lap and she smoothed my hair away from my forehead. Everything felt safe and cozy, like that fight hadn’t happened. And maybe it hadn’t even been a fight, maybe I’d misread the whole thing. “Well, he’s different from anyone I’ve ever met,” I began.
“How so?”
“He’s just so smart, and he doesn’t care what people think. And he’s so good-looking. I can’t even believe he pays me any attention.”
Susannah shook her head. “Oh, please. Of course he should pay you attention. You’re so lovely, darling. You’ve really blossomed this summer. People can’t help but pay you attention.”
“Ha,” I said, but I felt flattered. She was so good at making people feel special. “I’m glad I have you to talk to about this kind of stuff.”
“I am too. But you know, you could talk to your mother.”
“She wouldn’t be interested in any of it, not really. She’d pretend to care, but she wouldn’t.”
“Oh, Belly. That’s not true. She would care. She does care.” Susannah cradled my face in her hands. “Your mother is your biggest fan, next to me. She cares about everything you do. Don’t shut her out.”
I didn’t want to talk about my mother anymore. I wanted to talk about Cam. “You’ll never believe what Cam said to me tonight,” I began.
chapter twenty-six
Just like that, July turned into August. I guessed summer went by a lot faster when you had someone to spend it with. For me, that someone was Cam. Cam Cameron.
Mr. Fisher always came the first week of August. He’d bring Susannah’s favorites from the city, almond croissants and lavender chocolates. And flowers, he always brought flowers. Susannah loved flowers. She said she needed them like air, to breathe. She had more vases than I could count, tall ones and fat ones and glass ones. They were all over the house, flowers in vases in every room. Her favorites were peonies. She kept them on her nightstand in her bedroom, so they were the first thing she saw in the morning.
Shells, too. She loved shells. She kept them in hurricane glasses. When she’d come back from a walk on the beach, she’d always come back with a handful of shells. She’d arrange them on the kitchen table, admire them first, say things like, “Doesn’t this one look just like an ear?” Or, “Isn’t this one the perfect shade of pink?” Then she’d put them in order from biggest to smallest. It was one of her rituals, something I loved to watch her do.
That week, right around when Mr. Fisher usually came, Susannah mentioned that he couldn’t get away from work. There had been some sort of emergency at the bank. It would just be the five of us finishing out the summer. It would be the first year without Mr. Fisher and my brother.
After she went to bed, early, Conrad said to me, conversationally, “They’re getting a divorce.”
“Who?” I said.
“My parents. It’s about time.”
Jeremiah glared at him. “Shut up, Conrad.”
Conrad shrugged. “Why? You know it’s true. Belly’s not surprised, are you, Belly?”
I was. I was really surprised. I said, to both of them, “I thought they seemed like they were really in love.”
Whatever love was, I was sure they had it. I thought they had it a million times over. The way they gazed at each other at the dinner table, how excited Susannah got when he came to the summer house. I didn’t think people like that got divorced. People like my parents got divorced. Not Susannah and Mr. Fisher.
“They were in love,” Jeremiah told me. “I don’t really know what happened.”
“Dad’s a dick. That’s what happened,” Conrad said, getting up. He sounded so blasé and matter-of-fact, but that didn’t seem right. Not when I knew he adored his dad. I wondered if Mr. Fisher had a new girlfriend the way my father did. I wondered if he’d cheated on Susannah. But who would ever cheat on Susannah? It was impossible.
“Don’t tell your mom you know,” Jeremiah said suddenly. “Mom doesn’t know we know.”
“I won’t,” I said. I wondered how they’d found out. My parents had sat Steven and me down and told us everything, explained it all in detail.
As Conrad left, Jeremiah said to me, “Before we left, our dad had been sleeping in the guest room for weeks. He’s already moved out most of his clothes. Did they seriously think we wouldn't notice?” His voice cracked at the last part.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He was really hurting. I guessed maybe Conrad was too, even if he didn’t show it. It all made sense, when I thought about it. The way Conrad had been acting, so different, so lost. So un-Conrad-like. He was suffering. And then there was Susannah. The way she’d been spending so much time in bed, the way she seemed so sad. She was hurting too.
chapter twenty-seven
“You and Cam have been spending a lot of time together,” my mother said, looking at me over her newspaper.
“Not really,” I said, even though we had been. At the summer house one day just kind of melted into the next; you didn’t notice time passing. Cam and I had been hanging out for two weeks before I realized it: He was kind of my boyfriend. We’d spent practically every day together. I didn’t know what I’d done before I’d met him. My life must have been really boring.
My mother said, “We miss you around the house.” If Susannah had said it, I’d have been flattered, but from my mother it was just really annoying. It felt like recrimination. And anyway, it wasn’t like they’d been around so much either. They were always off doing things, just the two of them.
“Belly, will you bring this boy of yours to dinner tomorrow night?” Susannah asked me sweetly.
I wanted to say no, but for me, saying no to Susannah was impossible. Especially with her going through a divorce. I couldn’t say no. So instead I said, “Um … maybe …”
“Please, honey? I’d really like to meet him.”
I caved. “All right, I’ll ask. I can’t promise he doesn’t have plans, though.”
Susannah nodded serenely. “As long as you ask.”
Unfortunately for me, Cam didn’t have plans.
Susannah cooked; she made a tofu stir-fry because Cam was a vegetarian. Again, it was something I’d admired about him, but when I saw the look Jeremiah gave me, it made me shrink a little. Jeremiah cooked hamburgers that night—he liked any excuse to use the grill, just like his dad. He asked me if I wanted one too, and I said no even though I did.
Conrad had already eaten and was upstairs playing his guitar. He couldn’t even be bothered to eat with us. He came down to get a bottled water, and he didn’t even say hello to Cam.
“So why don’t you eat meat, Cam?” Jeremiah asked, stuffing half his burger into his mouth.
Cam swallowed his water and said, “I’m morally opposed to eating animals.”
Jeremiah nodded seriously. “But Belly eats meat. You let her kiss you with those lips?” Then he cracked up. Susannah and my mother exchanged a knowing kind of smile.
I could feel my face getting hot, and I could feel how tense Cam was beside me. “Shut up, Jeremiah.”
Cam glanced at my mother and laughed uneasily. “I don’t judge people who choose to eat meat. It’s a personal choice.”
Jeremiah continued, “So you don’t mind when her lips touch dead animal and then they touch your, um, lips?”
Susannah chuckled lightly and said, “Jere, give the guy a break.”
“Yeah, Jere, give the guy a break,” I said, glaring at him. I kicked him under the table, hard. Hard enough to make him flinch.
“No, it’s fine,” Cam said. “I don’t mind at all. In fact—” Then he pulled me to him and kissed me quickly, right in front of everyone. It was only a peck, but it was embarrassing.
“Please don’t kiss Belly at the dinner table,” said Jeremiah, gagging a little for effect. “You’re making me nauseous.”
My mother shook her head at him and said, “Belly’s allowed to kiss.” Then she pointed her fork at Cam. “But that’s it.”
She burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said, and Susannah tried not to smile and told her to hush. I wanted to kill my mother and then myself. “Mom, please. You’re so not funny,” I said. “No more wine for Mom.” I refused to look anywhere near Jeremiah’s direction, or Cam’s, for that matter.
The truth was, Cam and I hadn’t done much else besides kiss. He didn’t seem to be in any big hurry. He was careful with me, sweet—nervous even. It was completely different from the way I’d seen other guys behave with girls. Last summer I caught Jeremiah with a girl on the beach, right outside of the house. They were frantic, like if they hadn’t been wearing clothes, they’d already have been having sex. I gave him hell for it the whole rest of the summer, but he didn’t really care. I wished Cam would care a little more.
“Belly, I’m kidding. You know I’m open to you exploring yourself,” my mother said, taking a long sip of chardonnay.
Jeremiah busted out laughing. I stood up and said, “That’s it. Cam and I are eating our dinner on the porch.” I grabbed my plate and waited for Cam to stand up too.
But he didn’t. “Belly, calm down. Everybody’s just joking around,” he said, loading up his fork with rice and bok choy and shoveling it into his mouth.
“Way to keep her in check, Cam,” Jeremiah said, nodding at him. He really did look kind of impressed.
I sat back down, although it killed me to do it. I hated losing face in front of everyone, but if I did walk out by myself, I knew no one would come after me. I would just be little Belly Button, off pouting again. That was my name when I was being a baby, Belly Button—Steven thought he was such a genius for thinking that one up. “No one keeps me in check, Jeremiah. Least of all Cam Cameron.”
Everyone hooted and hollered then, even Cam, and all of a sudden, it was all very normal, like he really belonged there. I could feel myself start to relax. It was all going to be okay. Great, in fact. Amazing, just like Susannah had promised.
After dinner, Cam and I took a walk on the beach. For me there was—is—nothing better than walking on the beach late at night. It feels like you could walk forever, like the whole night is yours and so is the ocean. When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can’t say in real life. In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.
“I’m really glad you came,” I told him.
He took my hand and said, “Me too. I’m glad you’re glad.”
“Of course I’m glad.”
I let go of his hand to roll up the bottoms of my jeans, and he said, quietly, “It didn’t seem like you were that glad.”
“Well, I am.” I looked up at him and gave him a quick kiss. “See? This is me, being glad.”
He smiled and we started walking again. “Good. So which one of those guys was your first kiss?”
“I told you that?”
“Yup. You said your first kiss was a boy at the beach when you were thirteen.”
“Oh.” I looked up at his face in the moonlight, and he was still smiling. “Guess.”
Immediately he said, “The older one, Conrad.”
“Why’d you guess him?”
He shrugged. “Just a feeling, the way he looks at you.”
“He hardly looks at me at all,” I told him. “And you’re wrong, Sextus. It was Jeremiah.”
chapter twenty-eight
AGE 14
“Truth or dare?” Taylor asked Conrad.
“I’m not playing,” he said.
Taylor pouted. “Don’t be so gay,” she said.
Jeremiah said, “You shouldn’t use the word ‘gay’ like that.”
Taylor opened her mouth and closed it. Then she said, “I didn’t mean anything by it, Jeremy. I just meant he’s being lame.”
“Well, ‘gay’ doesn’t mean ‘lame,’ Taylor, now does it?” Jeremiah said. He spoke in a sarcastic tone, but even mean attention was better than no attention. Probably he was just mad about all the attention she’d been giving Conrad that day.
Taylor heaved a great big sigh and turned to Conrad. “Conrad, you’re being very lame. Play truth or dare with us.”
He ignored her and turned the volume on the TV up louder. Then he pretended to mute her with the remote, which made me laugh out loud.
“Fine, he’s out. Steven, truth or dare.”
Steven rolled his eyes. “Truth.”
Taylor’s eyes lit up. “Okay. How far did you go with Claire Cho?” I knew she’d been saving that one up for a long time, waiting for the exact moment she could ask. Claire Cho was a girl that Steven had dated for most of freshman year. Taylor swore Claire had cankles, but I thought Claire’s ankles were perfectly slim. I thought Claire Cho was kind of perfect.
Steven actually blushed. “I’m not answering that.”
“You have to. It’s truth or dare. You can’t sit here and listen to other people tell secrets if you’re not going to,” I said. I had been wondering about him and Claire too.
“Nobody’s even told any secrets yet!” he protested.
“We’re about to, Steven,” Taylor said. “Now man up and tell us.”
“Yeah, Steven, man up,” Jeremiah chimed in.
We all started to chant, “Man up! Man up!” Even Conrad turned the TV on mute to hear the answer.
“Fine,” Steven said. “If you shut up, I’ll tell you.”
We shut right up and waited. “Well?” I said.
“Third,” he said at last.
I relaxed back into the couch. Third base. Wow. Interesting. My brother had been to third base. Weird. Gross.
Taylor looked pink with satisfaction. “Well done, Stevie.”
He shook his head at her and said, “Now it’s my turn.” He looked around the room, and I sank deep into the couch cushions. I really, really hoped he wasn’t going to pick me and make me say it out loud—how I hadn’t even so much as kissed a boy yet. Knowing Steven, he would.
He surprised me when he said, “Taylor. Truth or dare?” He was actually playing along.
Automatically she said, “You can’t pick me because I just asked you. You have to pick someone else.” Which was true, that was the rule.
“Are you scared, Tay-Tay? Why don’t you man up?”
Taylor hesitated. “Fine. Truth.”
Steven grinned evilly. “Who would you kiss in this room?”
Taylor considered it for a few seconds, and then she got that cat-that-ate-the-canary look on her face. It was the same look she’d had on her face when she’d dyed her little sister’s hair blue when we were eight. She waited until she had everyone’s attention, and then she said, triumphantly, “Belly.”
There was a stunned kind of silence for a minute, and then everyone started to laugh, Conrad loudest. I threw a pillow at Taylor, hard.
“That’s not fair. You didn’t answer for real,” Jeremiah said, shaking his finger at her.
“Yes, I did,” Taylor said smugly. “I pick Belly. Take a closer look at everybody’s favorite little sister, Jeremy. She’s turning hot before your very eyes.”
I hid my face behind a pillow. I knew I was blushing even harder than Steven had. Mostly because it wasn’t true, I wasn’t turning hot before anyone’s eyes, and we all knew it. “Taylor, shut up. Please shut up.”
“Yes, please shut up, Tay-Tay,” Steven said. He looked kind of red too.
“If you’re so serious, then kiss her,” said Conrad, his eyes still on the TV.
“Hey,” I said, glaring at him. “I’m a person. You can’t just kiss me without my permission.”
He looked at me and said, “I’m not the one who wants to kiss you.”
Hotly, I said, “Either way, permission not granted. To either of you.” I wished I could stick my tongue out at him without being accused of being a big baby.
Taylor broke in quickly. She said, “I picked truth, not dare. That’s why we’re not kissing right now.”
“We’re not kissing right now because I don’t want to kiss you,” I told her. I felt flushed, partly because I was mad, and partly because I was flattered. “Now let’s stop talking about it. It’s your turn to ask.”
“Fine. Jeremiah. Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” he said, leaning against the couch lazily.
“Okay. Kiss somebody in this room, right now.” Taylor looked at him confidently and waited.
It felt like the whole room was sitting on the edge of its seat while we waited for Jeremiah to say something. Would he actually do it? He was not the kind of guy to pass up a dare. I, for one, was curious about what kind of kisser he’d be, if he’d go for a French or if he’d give her a quick peck. I also wondered if it would be their first kiss, or if they’d kissed sometime earlier in the week, like at the arcade when I wasn’t looking, maybe. I was pretty sure they had.
Jeremiah sat up straight. “Easy,” he said, rubbing his hands together with a smile. Taylor smiled back and tilted her head to the side so her hair fell in her eyes just a little bit.
Then he leaned over to me and said, “Ready?” and before I could answer, he kissed me right on the lips. His mouth was a little bit open, but it wasn’t a French kiss or anything. I tried to push him off, but he kept on kissing me, for a few more seconds.
I pushed him off again, and he leaned back into the couch, as casual as can be. Everyone else was sitting there with their mouths hanging open, except for Conrad, who didn’t even look surprised. But then, he never looked surprised. I, on the other hand, was finding it kind of hard to breathe. I had just had my first kiss. In front of people. In front of my brother.
I couldn’t believe that Jeremiah had stolen my first kiss like that. I had been waiting, wanting it to be special, and it had happened during a game of truth or dare. How unspecial could you get? And to top it all off, he had only done it to make Taylor jealous, not because he liked me.
It had worked. Her eyes were narrowed, and she was staring at Jeremiah like he had thrown down some kind of gauntlet. Which, I guess he kind of had.
“Gross,” Steven said. “This game is gross. I’m outta here.” Then he looked at all of us disgustedly and left.
I got up too, and so did Conrad. “See ya,” I said. “And, Jeremiah, I’m getting you back for that.”
He winked and said, “A back rub should make us about even,” and I threw a pillow directly at his head and slammed the door behind me. The fact that he was being fake-flirty was the worst part. It was so patronizing, so demeaning.
It took me about three seconds before I realized that Taylor wasn’t coming after me. She was inside, laughing at Jeremiah’s dumb jokes.
In the hallway, Conrad gave me his trademark knowing look and said, “You know you loved it.”
I glared at him. “How would you know? You’re too obsessed with yourself to notice anybody else.”
He walked away from me and said over his shoulder, “Oh, I notice everything, Belly. Even poor little you.”
“Screw you!” I said, because that was all I could think of. I could hear him chuckling as he shut his bedroom door.
I went back to my room and got under the covers. I closed my eyes and replayed and replayed what had just happened. Jeremiah’s lips had touched my lips. My lips were no longer my own. They had been touched. By Jeremiah. I had finally been kissed, and it was my friend Jeremiah who’d been the one to do it. My friend Jeremiah who had been ignoring me that whole week.
I wished I could talk to Taylor. I wished we could talk about my first kiss, but we couldn’t, because right this minute she was downstairs kissing the same boy who had just kissed me. I was sure of it.
When she came back upstairs an hour later, I pretended I was sleeping.
“Belly?” she whispered across the room.
I didn’t say anything, but I stirred a little, for effect.
“I know you’re still awake, Belly,” she said. “And I forgive you.”
I wanted to sit right up and say, “You forgive me? Well, I don’t forgive you, for coming here and ruining my whole summer.” But I didn’t say any of it. I just kept fake-sleeping.
The next morning I woke up early, just after seven, and Taylor was already gone. I knew where she was. She’d gone to watch the sunrise with Jeremiah. We’d been planning to go watch the sunrise on the beach one morning before she left, but we always overslept. It was her second to last morning, and she’d chosen Jeremiah. Figured.
I changed into my bathing suit and headed for the pool. In the mornings it was always a little cold outside, just a little bit of bite to the air, but I didn’t mind. Swimming in the mornings made me feel like I was swimming in the ocean even when I wasn’t. In theory swimming in the ocean sounds great and all, but the salt water burned my eyes too much to do it every day. Plus, the pool was more private, more my own. Even though everyone else swam in it too, in the mornings and at night I had it pretty much to myself, besides Susannah.
When I opened the gate to the pool, I saw my mother sitting in one of the lounge chairs reading a book. Except she wasn’t really reading it. She was more just holding it and staring off into space.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, more to break her out of her spell than anything else.
She looked up, startled. “Good morning,” she said, clearing her throat. “Did you sleep well?”
I shrugged and dropped my towel onto the chair next to hers. “I guess,” I said.
My mother shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at me. “Are you and Taylor having fun?”
“Tons,” I said. “Buckets full.”
“Where is Taylor?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Who cares?”
“Are you two fighting?” my mother asked casually.
“No. I’m just starting to wish I hadn’t brung her, is all.”
“Best friends are important. They’re the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have,” she told me. “Don’t squander it.”
Irritably I said, “I haven’t squandered anything. Why do you always have to put the blame on me for everything?”
“I’m not blaming you. Why must you always make things about you, dear?” My mother smiled at me in her infuriatingly calm way.
I rolled my eyes and jumped backward into the pool. It was freezing cold. When I came up to the surface, I yelled, “I don’t!”
Then I started my laps, and whenever I thought about Taylor and Jeremiah, I got madder and pushed harder. By the time I was done, my shoulders burned.
My mother had left, but Taylor and Jeremiah and Steven were just coming in.
“Belly, if you swim too much, you’ll get those broad swimmer’s shoulders,” Taylor warned, dipping her foot in the water.
I ignored her. What did Taylor know about exercise? She thought walking around the mall in high heels was exercise. “Where were you guys?” I asked, floating on my back.
“Just hanging out,” Jeremiah said vaguely.
Judas, I thought. A bunch of Benedict Arnolds. “Where’s Conrad?”
“Who knows? He’s too cool to hang out,” Jeremiah said, falling onto a lounge chair.
“He went running,” Steven said, a tad defensively. “He has to get in shape for football season. He has to leave for practice next week, remember?”
I remembered. That year Conrad had to leave early so he could get back in time for tryouts. He’d never seemed like the football type to me, but there he was, trying out for the team. I guessed Mr. Fisher had a lot to do with it; he was exactly the type. So was Jeremiah. Although he’d never take it seriously. He never took anything seriously.
“I’ll probably play for the team next year too,” Jeremiah said casually. He sneaked a peek at Taylor to see if she looked impressed. She didn’t. She wasn’t even looking at him.
His shoulders sagged a little, and I felt sorry for him despite myself.
I said, “Jere, race me, okay?”
He shrugged and stood up, taking off his shirt. Then he walked over to the deep end and dove in. “You want a handicap?” he asked when he emerged up top.
“No. I think I can beat you without one,” I said, paddling over. “Whoo-hoo! Let’s see.”
We raced across the length of the pool, freestyle, and he beat me the first time, and then the second. But I wore him down by the third and fourth and beat him too. Taylor cheered me on, which only annoyed me more.
The next morning she was gone again. This time, though, I was gonna join them. It wasn’t like she and Jeremiah owned the beach. I had just as much right as they did to watch the sunrise. I got up, put my clothes on, and headed outside.
I didn’t see them at first. They were farther down than usual, and they had their backs to me. He had his arms around her, and they were kissing. They weren’t even watching the sunrise. And … it wasn’t Jeremiah, either. It was Steven. My brother.
It was just like in those movies with the surprise ending, where everything falls into place and clicks. Suddenly my life had become The Usual Suspects, and Taylor, Taylor was Keyser Soze. The scenes ran through the mind—Taylor and Steven bickering, the way he had come to the boardwalk that night, Taylor claiming that Claire Cho had cankles, all the afternoons she’d spent at my house.
They didn’t hear me walk up. But then I said, loudly, “Wow, so first Conrad, then Jeremiah, and now my brother.”
She turned around, surprised, and Steven looked surprised too. “Belly—,” she started.
“Shut up.” I looked at my brother then, and he squirmed. “You’re a hypocrite. You don’t even like her! You said she bleached out all her brain cells with her Sun-In!”
He cleared his throat. “I never said that,” he said, glancing back and forth between Taylor and me. Her eyes had welled up, and she was wiping her left eye with the back of her sweatshirt sleeve. Steven’s sweatshirt sleeve. I was too angry to cry.
“I’m telling Jeremiah.”
“Belly, just freakin’ calm down. You’re too old for your temper tantrums,” Steven said, shaking his head in his brotherly way.
The words came out of me, hot and fast and sure. “Go to hell.” I had never talked like that to my brother before. I don’t think I’d ever talked like that to anyone before. Steven blinked.
That’s when I started to walk away, and Taylor chased after me. She had to run to catch up, that’s how fast I was walking. I guess anger gives you speed.
“Belly, I’m so sorry,” she began. “I was going to tell you. Things just happened really fast.”
I stopped walking and spun around. “When? When did they happen? Because from what I saw, things were happening so fast with Jeremy, not with my older brother.”
She shrugged helplessly, which only made me madder. Poor helpless little Taylor. “I’ve always had a crush on Steven. You know that, Belly.”
“Actually, I didn’t. Thanks for telling me.”
“When he liked me back, it was like, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think.”
“That’s the thing. He doesn’t like you. He’s just using you because you’re around,” I said. I knew it was cruel, but I also knew it was true. Then I walked into the house and left her standing outside.
She chased after me and grabbed my arm, but I shrugged her off.
“Please don’t be mad, Belly. I want things to stay the same with us forever,” Taylor said, brown eyes brimming with tears. What she really meant was, I want you to stay the same forever while I grow bigger breasts and quit violin and kiss your brother.
“Things can’t stay the same forever,” I said. I was saying it to hurt her because I knew it would.
“Don’t be mad at me, okay, Belly?” she pleaded. Taylor hated it when people were mad at her.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said. “I just don’t think we really know each other anymore.”
“Don’t say that, Belly.”
“I’m only saying it because it’s true.”
She said, “I’m sorry, okay?”
I looked away for a second. “You promised you’d be nice to him.”
“Who? Steven?” Taylor looked genuinely confused.
“No. Jeremiah. You said you’d be nice.”
She waved her hand in the air. “Oh, he doesn’t care.”
“Yeah, he does. It’s just that you don’t know him.” Like I do, I wanted to add. “I didn’t think you’d ever act so—so …” I searched for the perfect word, to cut her the way she’d cut me. “Slutty.”
“I’m not a slut,” she said in a tiny voice.
So this was my power over her, my supposed innocence over her supposed sluttiness. It was all such BS. I would’ve traded my spot for hers in a second.
Later, Jeremiah asked me if I wanted to play spit. We hadn’t played once all summer. It used to be our thing, our tradition. I was grateful to have it back. Even if it was a consolation prize.
He dealt me my hand, and we began to play, but both of us were just going through the motions. We had other things on our minds. I thought that we had this unspoken agreement not to talk about her, that maybe he didn’t even know what had happened, but then he said, “I wish you never brought her.”
“Me too.”
“It’s better when it’s just us,” he said, shuffling his stack.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
After she left, after that summer, things were the same and they weren’t. She and I were still friends, but not best friends, not like we used to be. But we were still friends. She’d known me my whole life. It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.
Steven went right back to ignoring Taylor and obsessing over Claire Cho. We just pretended like none of it had ever happened. But it did.
chapter twenty-nine
I heard him come home. I think the whole house must have—except for Jeremiah, who could sleep through a tidal wave. Conrad made his way up the stairs, tripping and cursing, and then he shut his door and turned on his stereo, loud. It was three in the morning.
I lay in bed for about three seconds before I leapt up and ran down the hallway to his room. I knocked, twice, but the music was so loud I doubted he could hear anything. I opened the door. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, taking his shoes off. He looked up and saw me standing there. “Didn’t your mom teach you to knock?” he asked, getting up and turning down the stereo.
“I did, but your music was so loud you couldn’t hear me. You probably woke up the whole house, Conrad.” I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t been in his room in a long time. It was the same as I remembered, perfectly neat. Jeremiah’s looked like hurricane season, but not Conrad’s. In Conrad’s room there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. His pencil drawings, still tacked onto the bulletin board, his model cars still lined up on the dresser. It was comforting to see that at least that was still the same.
His hair was messed up, like someone had been running their hands through it. Probably Red Sox girl. “Are you going to tell on me, Belly? Are you still a tattletale?”
I ignored him and walked over to his desk. Hanging right above it there was a framed picture of him in his football uniform, the football tucked under his arm. “Why’d you quit, anyway?”
“It wasn’t fun anymore.”
“I thought you loved it.”
“No, it was my dad who loved it,” he said.
“It seemed like you did too.” In the picture he looked tough, but I could tell he was trying not to smile.
“Why’d you quit dance?”
I turned around and looked at him. He was unbuttoning his work shirt, a white button-down, and he had on a T-shirt underneath.
“You remember that?”
“You used to dance all around the house like a little gnome.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Gnomes don’t dance. I was a ballerina, for your information.”
He smirked. “So why’d you quit, then?”
It had been around the time my parents got divorced. My mom couldn’t pick me up and drop me off twice a week all on her own. She had a job. It just didn’t seem worth it anymore. I was bored of it by then anyway, and Taylor wasn’t doing it anymore either. Also, I hated the way I looked in my leotard. I got boobs before the whole rest of the class, and in our class picture I looked like I could be the teacher. It was embarrassing.
I didn’t answer his question. Instead I said, “I was really good! I could have been dancing in a company by now!” I couldn’t have. I wasn’t that good, not by any stretch of the imagination.
“Right,” he said mockingly. He looked so smug sitting there on the bed.
“At least I can dance.”
“Hey, I can dance,” he protested.
I crossed my arms. “Prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove it. I taught you some moves, remember? How quickly we forget.” Conrad jumped up off the bed and grabbed my hand and twirled me around. “See? We’re dancing.”
His arm was slung around my waist, and he laughed before he let me go. “I’m a better dancer than you, Belly,” he said, collapsing onto his bed.
I stared at him. I didn’t get him at all. One minute he was broody and withdrawn, and the next he was laughing and twirling me around the room. “I don’t consider that dancing,” I said. I backed out of the room. “And can you keep your music down? You already woke up the whole house.”
He smiled. Conrad had a way of looking at me, at you, at anybody, that made everything unravel and want to fall at his feet. He said, “Sure. Good night, Bells.” Bells, my nickname from a thousand years ago.
He made it so hard not to love him. When he was sweet like this, I remembered why I did. Used to love him, I mean.
I remembered everything.
chapter thirty
AGE 11
The summer house had a stack of CDs that we listened to, and that was pretty much it. We spent the whole summer listening to the same CDs. There was the Police, which Susannah put on in the morning; there was Bob Dylan, which she put on in the afternoon; and there was Billie Holiday, which she put on at dinner. The nights were a free-for-all. It was the funniest thing. Jeremiah would put on his Chronic CD, and my mother would be doing laundry, humming along. Even though she hated gangster rap. And then my mother might put on her Aretha Franklin CD, and Jeremiah would sing all the words, because we all knew them by that time, we’d heard it so much.
My favorite music was the Motown and the beach music. I would listen to it on Susannah’s old Walkman when I tanned. That night I put the Boogie Beach Shag CD on the big stereo in the living room, and Susannah grabbed Jeremiah and started to dance. He’d been playing poker with Steven and Conrad and my mother, who was very, very good at poker.
At first Jeremiah protested, but then he was dancing too. It was called the shag, and it was a 1960s kind of beach dance. I watched them, Susannah throwing her head back and laughing, and Jeremiah twirling her around, and I wanted to dance too. My feet positively itched to dance. I did dance ballet and modern, after all. I could show off how good I was.
“Stevie, dance with me,” I demanded, poking him with my big toe. I was lying down on the floor, on my stomach, looking up at them.
“Yeah, right,” he said. Not that he even knew how.
“Connie, dance with Belly,” Susannah urged, her face flushed as Jeremiah twirled her again.
I didn’t dare look at Conrad. I was afraid my love for him and my need for him to say yes would be written on my face like a poem.
Conrad sighed. He was still big on doing the right thing then. So he gave me his hand and pulled me up. I got to my feet shakily. He didn’t let go of my hand. “This is how you shag,” he said, shuffling his feet from side to side. “One-two-three, one-two-three, rock step.”
It took me a few tries to get it. It was harder than it looked, and I was nervous. “Get on the beat,” Steven said from the sidelines.
“Don’t look so uptight, Belly. It’s a relaxed kind of dance,” my mother said from the couch.
I tried to ignore them and look only at Conrad. “How did you learn this?” I asked him.
“My mom taught both of us,” Conrad said simply. Then he brought me in close and positioned my arms around his so we stepped together, side by side. “This is called the cuddle.”
The cuddle was my favorite part. It was the closest I had ever been to him. “Let’s do it again,” I said, pretending to be confused.
He showed me again, putting his arm over mine. “See? You’re getting it now.”
He spun me around, and I felt dizzy. With pure, absolute joy.
chapter thirty-one
I spent the whole next day in the ocean with Cam. We packed a picnic. Cam made avocado and sprout sandwiches with Susannah’s homemade mayonnaise and whole wheat bread. They were good, too. We stayed in the ocean for what felt like hours at a time. Every time a wave began to crest, one of us would start to laugh, and then we’d get overtaken by the wave and water. My eyes burned from the salty seawater, and my skin felt raw from scraping against the sand so many times, like I’d scrubbed my whole body with my mother’s St. Ives Apricot Scrub. It was pretty great.
After, we stumbled back to our towels. I loved getting cold and wet in the ocean and then running back to the towels and letting the sun bake the sand off. I could do it all day—ocean, sand, ocean, sand.
I’d packed strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups, and we ate them so quick my teeth hurt. “I love Fruit Roll-Ups,” I said, reaching for the last one.
He snatched it away. “So do I, and you already had three and I only had two,” he said, peeling away the plastic sheet. He grinned and dangled it above my mouth.
“You have three seconds to hand it over,” I warned. “I don’t care if you had two Fruit Roll-Ups and I had twenty. It’s my house.”
Cam laughed and popped the whole thing into his mouth. Chewing loudly, he said, “It’s not your house. It’s Susannah’s house.”
“Shows how much you know. It’s all of our house,” I said, falling back on my towel. I was suddenly really thirsty. Fruit Roll-Ups will do that. Especially when you have three in about three minutes. Squinting up at him, I said, “Will you go back to our house and get some Kool-Aid? Pretty please?”
“I don’t know anyone who consumes more sugar than you do in one day,” Cam said, shaking his head at me sadly. “White sugar is evil.”
“Says the guy who just ate the last Fruit Roll-Up,” I countered.
“Waste not, want not,” he said. He stood up and brushed the sand off his shorts. “I’ll bring you water, not Kool-Aid.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and rolled over. “Just be quick about it,” I said.
He wasn’t. He was gone forty-five minutes before I headed back to the house, loaded up with our towels and sunscreen and trash, breathing hard and sweating like a camel in the desert. He was in the living room, playing video games with the boys. They were all lying around in their swimming trunks. We pretty much stayed suited up all summer.
“Thanks for never coming back with my Kool-Aid,” I said, tossing my beach bag onto the ground.
Cam looked up from his game guiltily. “Whoops! My bad. The guys asked me to play, so …” He trailed off.
“Don’t apologize,” Conrad advised him.
“Yeah, what are you, her slave? Now she’s got you making her Kool-Aid?” Jeremiah said, jamming his thumb into the controller. He turned around and grinned at me to show me he was kidding, but I didn’t grin back to show him it was okay.
Conrad didn’t say anything, and I didn’t even look at him. I could feel him looking at me, though. I wished he’d stop.
Why was it that even when I had my own friend I still felt left out of their club? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Cam was so grateful to be a part of it all. The day had been so good, too.
“Where’s my mom and Susannah?” I snapped.
“They went off somewhere,” Jeremiah said vaguely. “Shopping, maybe?”
My mother hated shopping. Susannah must have dragged her.
I stalked off to the kitchen for my Kool-Aid. Conrad got up and followed me. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was him.
I went about my business, pouring myself a tall glass of grape Kool-Aid and pretending he wasn’t standing there watching me. “Are you just going to ignore me?” he finally said.
“No,” I said. “What do you want?”
He sighed and came closer. “Why do you have to be like that?” Then he leaned forward, close, too close. “Can I have some?”
I put the glass on the counter and started to walk away, but he grabbed my wrist. I think I might have gasped. He said, “Come on, Bells.”
His fingers felt cool, the way he always was. Suddenly I felt hot and feverish. I snatched my hand away. “Leave me alone.”
“Why are you mad at me?” He had the nerve to look genuinely confused and also anxious. Because for him, the two things were connected—if he was confused, he was anxious. And he was hardly ever confused, so then he was hardly ever anxious. He’d certainly never been anxious over me. I was inconsequential to him. Always had been.
“Do you honestly care?” I could feel my heart thudding hard in my chest. I felt prickly and strange, waiting for his answer.
“Yes.” Conrad looked surprised, like he couldn’t believe he cared either.
The problem was, I didn’t entirely know. I guessed it was mostly the way he was making me feel all mixed-up inside. Being nice to me one minute and cold the next. He made me remember things I didn’t want to remember. Not now. Things were really going well with Cam, but every time I thought I was sure about him, Conrad would look at me a certain way, or twirl me, or call me Bells, and it all went to crap.
“Oh, why don’t you go smoke a cigarette,” I said.
The muscle in his jaw twitched. “Okay,” he said.
I felt a mixture of guilt and satisfaction that I had finally gotten to him. And then he said, “Why don’t you go look at yourself in the mirror some more?”
It was like he had slapped me. It was mortifying, being caught out and having someone see the bad things about you. Had he caught me looking at myself in the mirror, checking myself out, admiring myself? Did everyone think I was vain and shallow now?
I closed my lips tight and backed away from him, shaking my head slowly.
“Belly—,” he started. He was sorry. It was written all over his face.
I walked into the living room and left him standing there. Cam and Jeremiah stared at me like they knew something was up. Had they heard us? Did it even matter?
“I get next game,” I said. I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.
chapter thirty-two
Cam came over again, and he stayed till late. Around midnight I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk on the beach. So we did, and we held hands, too. The ocean looked silver and bottomless, like it was a million years old. Which I guessed it was.
“Truth or dare?” he asked me.
I wasn’t in the mood for real truths. An idea came to me, from out of nowhere. The idea was this: I wanted to go skinny-dipping. With Cam. That was what older kids did at the beach, just like hooking up at the drive-in. If we went skinny-dipping, it would be like proof. That I had grown up.
So I said, “Cam, let’s play Would You Rather. Would you rather go skinny-dipping right this second, or …” I was having trouble thinking of an “or.”
“The first one, the first one,” he said, grinning. “Or both, whatever the second one is.”
Suddenly I felt giddy, almost drunk. I ran away from him, toward the water, and threw my sweatshirt into the sand. I had on my bikini underneath my clothes. “Here are the rules,” I called out, unbuttoning my shorts. “No nakedness until we’re fully submerged! And no peeking!”
“Wait,” he said, running up to me, sand flying everywhere. “Are we really doing this?”
“Well, yeah. Don’t you want to?”
“Yeah, but what if your mom sees us?” Cam glanced back toward the house.
“She won’t. You can’t see anything from the house; it’s too dark.”
He glanced at me and then back at the house again. “Maybe later,” he said doubtfully.
I stared at him. Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to be convincing me? “Are you serious?” What I really wanted to say was, Are you gay?
“Yeah. It’s not late enough. What if people are still awake?” He picked up my sweatshirt and handed it to me. “Maybe we can come back later.”
I knew he didn’t mean it.
Part of me was mad, and part of me was relieved. It was like craving a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich and then realizing two bites in that you didn’t want it after all.
I snatched my sweatshirt from him and said, “Don’t do me any favors, Cam.” Then I walked away as fast as I could, and sand kicked up behind me. I thought he might follow me, but he didn’t. I didn’t look back to see what he was doing either. He was probably sitting in the sand writing one of his stupid poems by the light of the moon.
As soon as I got back inside, I stormed into the kitchen. There was one light on; Conrad was sitting at the table spooning into a watermelon. “Where’s Cam Cameron?” he asked wryly.
I had to think for a second about whether he was being nice or making fun of me. His expression looked normal and bland, so I took it as a little of both. If he was going to pretend our fight from before hadn’t happened, then so would I.
“Who knows,” I said, rummaging around the fridge and pulling out a yogurt. “Who cares?”
“Lover’s spat?”
The smug look on his face made me want to slap him. “Mind your own business,” I said, sitting down next to him with a spoon and a container of strawberry yogurt. It was Susannah’s fat-free stuff, and the top looked watery and solid. I closed the foil flap on the yogurt and pushed it away.
Conrad pushed the watermelon over to me. “You shouldn’t be so hard on people, Belly.” Then he stood up and said, “And put your shirt on.”
I scooped out a chunk of watermelon and stuck my tongue out at his retreating figure. Why did he make me feel like I was still thirteen? In my head I heard my mother’s voice—“Nobody can make you feel like anything, Belly. Not without your permission. Eleanor Roosevelt said that. I almost named you after her.” Blah, blah, blah. But she was kind of right. I wasn’t giving him permission to make me feel bad, not anymore. I just wished my hair had at least been wet, or I’d had sand in my clothes, so he could have thought we’d been up to something, even if we hadn’t been.
I sat at the table and ate watermelon. I ate it until I had scooped out half of the middle. I was waiting for Cam to come back inside, and when he didn’t, I only felt madder. Part of me was tempted to lock the door on him. He’d probably meet some random homeless guy and become best friends with him, and then he’d tell me the man’s life story the next day. Not that there were any homeless guys on our end of the beach. Not that I’d ever seen a homeless person in Cousins, for that matter. But if there was, Cam would find him.
Only, Cam didn’t come back to the house. He just left. I heard his car start, watched from the downstairs hallway as he backed down the driveway. I wanted to run after his car and yell at him. He was supposed to come back. What if I’d ruined things and he didn’t like me anymore? What if I never saw him again?
That night I lay in bed, thinking about how summer romances really do happen so fast, and then they’re over so fast.
But the next morning, when I went to the deck to eat my toast, I found an empty water bottle on the steps that led down to the beach. Poland Spring, the kind Cam was always drinking. There was a piece of paper inside, a note. A message in a bottle. The ink was a little smeared, but I could still read what it said. It said, “IOU one skinny-dip.”
chapter thirty-three
Jeremiah told me I could come hang by the pool while he lifeguarded. I’d never been inside the country club pool. It was huge and fancy, so I jumped at the chance. The country club seemed like a mysterious place. Conrad hadn’t let us come the summer before; he’d said it would be embarrassing.
Midafternoon, I rode my bike over. Everything there was lush and green; it was surrounded by a golf course. There was a girl at a table with a clipboard, and I went over and told her I was there to see Jeremiah, and she waved me in.
I spotted Jeremiah before he saw me. He was sitting in the lifeguard chair, talking to a dark-haired girl in a white bikini. He was laughing, and so was she. He looked so important in the chair. I’d never seen him at an actual job before.
Suddenly I felt shy. I walked over slowly, my flip-flops slapping along the pavement. “Hey,” I said when I was a few feet away.
Jeremiah looked down from his chair and grinned at me. “You came,” he said, squinting at me and shielding his eyes with his hands like a visor.
“Yup.” I swung my canvas bag back and forth, like a pendulum. The bag had my name on it in cursive. It was from L.L.Bean, a gift from Susannah.
“Belly, this is Yolie. She’s my co-lifeguard.”
Yolie reached over and shook my hand. It struck me as a businessy thing to do for someone in a bikini. She had a firm handshake, a nice grip, something my mother would have appreciated. “Hi, Belly,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“You have?” I looked up at Jeremiah.
He smirked. “Yeah. I told her all about the way you snore so loud that I can hear you down the hall.”
I smacked his foot. “Shut up.” Turning to Yolie, I said, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She smiled at me. She had dimples in both cheeks and a crooked bottom tooth. “You too. Jere, do you want to take your break now?”
“In a little bit,” he said. “Belly, go work on your sun damage.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and spread out my towel on a lounge chair not too far away. The pool was a perfect turquoise, and there were two diving boards, one high and one low. There were a ton of kids splashing around inside, and I figured I’d swim too when I got too hot to stand it. I just lay there with my sunglasses on and my eyes closed, tanning and listening to my music.
Jeremiah came over after a while. He sat on the edge of my chair and drank from my thermos of Kool-Aid. “She’s pretty,” I said.
“Who? Yolie?” He shrugged. “She’s nice. One of my many admirers.”
“Ha!”
“So what about you? Cam Cameron, huh? Cam the vegetarian. Cam the straight edge.”
I tried not to smile. “So what? I like him.”
“He’s kind of a dork.”
“That’s what I like about him. He’s … different.”
He frowned slightly. “Different from who?”
“I don’t know.” But I did know. I knew exactly who he was different from.
“You mean he’s not a dick like Conrad?”
I laughed, and so did he. “Yeah, exactly. He’s nice.”
“Just nice, huh?”
“More than nice.”
“So you’re over him, then? For real?” We both knew the “him” he was talking about.
“Yes,” I told him.
“I don’t believe you,” Jeremiah said, watching me closely—just like when he was trying to figure out what kind of hand I had in Uno.
I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eye. “It’s true. I’m over him.”
“We’ll see,” Jeremiah said, standing up. “My break’s over. Are you okay over here? Wait around and I’ll drive us home. I can put your bike in the back.”
I nodded, and watched him walk back to the lifeguard chair. Jeremiah was a good friend. He’d always been good to me, watched out for me.