The Rest of the Story

by Sarah Dessen

  The first I saw was a school picture of Roo, from what looked to be maybe second grade. Smaller and skinnier, he was still unmistakable, with that same white-blond hair, cut short and sticking up in the back. The grin on his face showed he was missing a top tooth, a gap in its place.

  A little over from that one was a shot of who I assumed were his parents. Chris Price, shirtless and with the same blond hair and squinty smile, was sitting on a bench on the dock, a pretty girl with short red hair in cutoffs and a bathing suit top on his lap. He was looking right at the camera, while she had her head thrown back, caught in the middle of what looked like a big belly laugh.

  Picture three, a little lower down, was of Roo and his mom, and more recent. Dressed in a gray EAST U sweatshirt, he was taller than her. She had on a black dress, her hair shorter now, one hand resting on his chest as she smiled proudly.

  The last one was the oldest of the group, stuck high in one corner of the fridge door with thick brown tape. There are those pictures that are clearly posed, where the subjects were told to stop what they were doing and gather together. Then there were the ones when the photographer just aimed and shot. This had to be why Roo’s dad, in shorts and a baggy T-shirt, was slightly blurred: he’d been in the process of moving. The girl in the picture, though, was still facing him, and in profile, one hand held up as if making a point. She had blond hair spilling down her back and blue eyes with long lashes. My mom.

  I leaned in closer, startled and not sure why. She was everywhere at the lake so far, so why not here as well? Maybe because you never think, leaning into a snapshot in a stranger’s kitchen, that you’ll see the person who probably knew you better than anyone. Like she’d been waiting there for me all this time, and now here I was.

  “That’s one of my favorites,” I heard someone say. “It’s such a lousy picture, but so real.”

  I turned, facing Roo, who was now standing right behind me, a power strip in his hands. “That’s your dad, right?”

  “Yep.” He squinted, leaning in a bit closer. “My mom says it was at a cookout at someone’s house. She’d just gotten into photography and was driving everyone crazy snapping pictures. That’s why Waverly isn’t even looking. She’d had enough.”

  I looked at my mom again. She had on white shorts and a blue halter top, drugstore flip-flops on her feet. “Mimi said they were inseparable, her and your dad.”

  “Yeah.” I watched as his gaze flicked to the other pictures, then came back to the one of our parents. “But our moms were actually super close as well. When mine moved here senior year, Waverly was the first person she met. She introduced her to Chris.”

  “Where’s your mom now?” I asked.

  “In the bedroom,” he said.

  I looked at all the beers on the table in panic, not to mention the mess we’d made moving things around. “Seriously?”

  “No.” He grinned at me. “She’s an ER nurse in Delaney and works nights. She’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Ah,” I said. I looked at the shot of Chris, the redhead in his lap. “It must have been hard for your mom, losing a husband and one of her closest friends.”

  “Yeah.” He was quiet for a second. “It was.”

  I looked at the picture again. It seemed crazy that after all these years, I had never known about the accident until this summer. For so long I’d questioned why she was in such pain, what could have been so awful that haunted her. The answer, like this picture, had been here all along. I’d just had to come find it.

  “You going to wear that?” Roo asked me now.

  I blinked, unsure what he was talking about until he nodded at the corsage I was somehow still holding in my hand. “Well, it is a dance,” I said.

  “You don’t put on your own corsage, though.” He placed the power strip on the kitchen counter, then reached out, taking the gardenia bundle from me. “Stand super still so I don’t stick you, though. I can’t take the sight of blood.”

  “Blood?” I repeated, but he just smiled, gesturing for me to step closer. So I did.

  And then he was reaching out to me, sliding a finger under my dress strap and putting the corsage flush against it. Then, with his other hand, he carefully removed the pin before sticking it into the stem and around it. It all happened so quickly, but I was aware of every single detail. His hand against my skin, the way his eyes narrowed, lashes lowering, as he concentrated on fixing it tight. In movies and in life whenever I’d seen this done, it had been awkward, but here, now, the action felt almost sacred in a way I couldn’t explain. Which was maybe why I felt like I had to make a joke.

  “Thanks, Corsage Buddy,” I said.

  “Safety first,” he replied, his eyes right on mine.

  I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He turned around, grabbing the power strip. To April he said, “Where do you want this?”

  “Um,” she said, looking at me, then him. “By the door.”

  “Got it,” he said, walking over and bending down. He got it set up, then started plugging in the lights one strand at a time. We stood there watching, the tiny dim room coming alive as they came on, soft and white and twinkling, all around us.

  “It’s beautiful,” April sighed. “If I may say so myself.”

  “Looks great,” Taylor agreed. “Clearly, you are learning something in college, party planner.”

  “You doubted that?” April replied, giving her an indignant look. “I’ll remind you I’ve got a 3.9 this semester. I contain multitudes.”

  I glanced over at Bailey, still on the couch, her feet now tucked up underneath her. She looked at the decor but didn’t say anything, instead taking a sip of her beer as she turned back to the water.

  “How’s the prep coming?” Jack asked as he came through the kitchen door, pitching a beer can into the bag for empties there.

  “You mean the stuff you guys have been absolutely no part of?” Taylor said.

  “Not true. We moved the couch,” Vincent told her as he joined us. “And if you are lucky, I will bless you with one of my playlists.”

  “No!” Taylor and Jack said in unison. April snorted.

  “What?” Vincent said, pulling out his phone. “It’s a dance. I have great dance music.”

  “What you have,” Jack told him, “is heavy hair metal. No one wants to dance to that.”

  “Heavy metal is great for dancing!” Vincent said. “It’s loud, there’s a beat, and you can scream. What’s not to love?”

  “You scream while you dance?” Roo asked him.

  “Sure,” Vincent said easily. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Here’s what I think we should do,” April said. “Let’s set up the room, then go outside and come in again.”

  “It will still be Roo’s living room,” Jack pointed out.

  “Yes, but it will feel different,” she told him. She reached down for a bag hanging off one of the chairs, digging around for a moment, then pulled out a bottle of liquor. “Especially if we take a shot first.”

  “Now, I’m in,” Jack said.

  “You’re driving,” Bailey said.

  “Actually, I’m not,” he told her. “I’m staying with Roo. But even if I wasn’t, I could walk home. Just like you did the other night.”

  “That wasn’t my choice,” she said, glaring at him. “It was because you were being an—”

  “And we’re going outside!” Taylor announced in an enthusiastic voice, getting to her feet. She gathered up the corsages in her hands, holding them against her. “Everyone, follow me.”

  We all traipsed out the door and gathered around the couch, where Bailey still sat, her expression dark. Roo fetched some plastic cups, pouring a little bit from the bottle—rum, I saw now—into seven and lining them up on the porch rail. When everyone took one, only a single cup remained.

  “Who are we missing?” April said, glancing around.

  “Saylor doesn’t drink,” Jack told her.

  “Oh. Sorry!”
Taylor said. “I’ll just—”

  Before she could finish this thought, Bailey reached over and picked up the shot. Then, as we all watched, she threw it back, then tossed the cup over the rail.

  Taylor raised her eyebrows. “O-kay then. What should the rest of us drink to?”

  Roo handed me an empty cup, then held out his own shot to the middle of the circle. “To summer. And to us.”

  Even though I’d never been one to imbibe, I knew that normally, toasts were taken all at once. Here, though, like so much else, it was different. Lake rules.

  “To summer,” Jack repeated, pressing his own cup against Roo’s. “And to us.”

  Slowly, we went around the circle to April, Vincent, and then Taylor, each of them following suit. Then it was Bailey’s turn.

  “Fine,” she said, adding her own shot to the cups pressed together.

  “Do it right or don’t do it at all,” Roo told her.

  She sighed, rolling her eyes, then said, “To summer and to us.”

  Now, I was the only one. From where I was standing, through the nearby window, I could see the fridge and the picture of my mother, although the specifics were blurry at a distance. Still, I knew she was there, caught in that beat of time as I was in this one.

  I held out my empty cup, putting it in the circle. “To summer, and to us.”

  Everyone drank. Then April put her hand on the doorknob. “Okay. Everyone ready?”

  “Yes!” Taylor said.

  “No,” Bailey grumbled at the same time.

  Ignoring her, April opened the door. “Welcome,” she said, “to the first annual North Lake Prom.”

  She stepped back, waving an arm for the rest of us to enter: Jack and Taylor first, laughing, then Vincent, with Bailey, Roo, and me bringing up the rear.

  “We were just in here,” Bailey said. “How different can it really look?”

  A lot, actually. Maybe it was really the change in scenery. Or the fact that I’d been busy examining the pictures and worrying about Bailey instead of watching April and Taylor work their decorating magic. But as I came in, Roo’s living room seemed transformed.

  There were the lights, of course, tiny and white and strung across all four walls, then meeting in the center of the ceiling, where they were bound with gardenias. The furniture had been pushed to the corners and covered with white sheets, leaving an empty stretch of hardwood floor. Off to one side was the kitchen table, which held a speaker, a punch bowl, and the rest of the corsages, laid out neatly in a row. To someone else, maybe it could have been a room where we’d just been. But I was new here, and could see it as something special. Because it was.

  “Is this a punch bowl?” Jack asked, peering down at the table. “Seriously?”

  “Formals always have punch!” April told him. “Take it from a party planner. It’s like a rule.”

  “Right,” he said as he picked up a corsage, holding it out to Taylor. She grinned, then stepped closer, watching as he affixed it to her tank top. “Hey, does this mean we can skip your prom this year now? Because that would be—”

  “No,” she replied flatly. She took his hand. “Dance with me.”

  “There’s no music.”

  “I can fix that,” Vincent, by the door with Bailey, offered.

  “No!” Roo and April said together. Then she pulled out her phone and tapped it a few times. A moment later, as a pop song filled the room, Taylor stepped into the center of the floor, pulling Jack with her and grabbing April with her other hand. As she began to shimmy, grinning, and he clapped his hands, April let out a whoop.

  I could feel my cheeks flushing as the small room got warmer and louder. Vincent slipped around me to the table, picking up a corsage, which he then brought back to Bailey, holding it out to her.

  “You don’t have to,” she told him.

  “I want to,” he said. “Okay if I put it on?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  Vincent carefully removed the pin, then attached the small bundle of flowers and stems to her dress as she watched. This was not the corsage she’d wanted, nor the place she’d planned to get it. Still, I hoped so much she could still see it for the sweet act it was.

  “Wanna dance?” he asked her once he was done.

  Bailey looked at her brother, who was spinning Taylor out as she tilted her head back and laughed. To Vincent she said, “Are you going to scream?”

  “I’ll try not to,” he replied.

  They joined the group, Vincent pumping his hands over his head while Bailey, less enthused, shifted from side to side. When April saw her and stuck out a hand, however, she took it, doing a little spin. When everyone else applauded, I saw her smile, but just barely.

  Back against the wall, alone, I wished I could have captured this moment like those ones on the fridge. Posed, or spontaneous, I wouldn’t have cared. I just wanted to remember it, every detail, long after this night was done.

  “Saylor.”

  I looked up: Roo was standing in front of me. “Yeah?”

  “Want to dance?”

  I felt myself blink. Of course he’d think I’d want to be part of this: I was here, too. But all my life I’d felt more like an observer than an active participant. Beside the wheel, not behind. It was safer there, but could be lonely too, or so I was now realizing. Maybe there was a middle ground between living too hard and living at all. Maybe, here, I was finding it.

  “Sure,” I said. Then he stuck out his hand, I took it, and he pulled me in.

  I danced. We all did, there in that small dark room lit with tiny white lights, spinning and bumping each other and laughing. We made our way through a couple of April’s playlists, then one of Jack’s, before finally Vincent was allowed to take over DJ duty. Two songs later, when my head was throbbing with happy screaming and my dress literally stuck to me with sweat, April threw open the door and announced we were going swimming. No one hesitated except for me.

  “But you can swim,” Roo said. “Right? Because if not, you should have told us that first night out at the raft. Strong lake rule, that one.”

  “Yes, I can swim,” I told him. “I just haven’t here. Yet.”

  And why was that? Because no one else had been swimming and invited me. Once again, it was all the actions of other people, like Bailey, that made my own life happen: Blake, my first kiss, even the prom I’d almost attended that night. I was like those pieces of litter I sometimes saw swept up on windy days and carried down entire streets. You just look up and there you are.

  I watched now as Taylor took off her corsage, carefully laying it on a porch rail. “I’m going in,” she announced before shaking her hair back and running down the grass to the dock. At the end, she leaped off with a shriek before disappearing into the dark water. We all cheered.

  “My turn,” April announced, kicking off her shoes. “Dare me to belly flop?”

  “Don’t do it,” Vincent said. “Remember last time!”

  “What happened last time?” I asked as she barreled down the dock before launching outward flat, arms outstretched, with a scream. A beat later, we heard the slap of skin against water.

  “She’ll feel that tomorrow,” Roo said.

  “She’s not the only one,” Jack said, turning to look behind him at Bailey, who was sound asleep on the couch, her dress tangled around her legs and bare feet dirty, flecked with sand. All the time and money she’d spent to make this night perfect, only to end it passed out, alone.

  “She’ll be okay when she sleeps it off,” I said, to him as well as myself. Then I stepped inside the door, grabbing a blanket I’d seen earlier from a chair there. When I shook it out over Bailey, she slapped it away, muttering as she curled deeper into the cushions. I left it at her feet in case she changed her mind.

  “Hey!” April called out from the water. “Y’all coming in or what?”

  “On the way,” Jack replied, then pulled off his shirt, dropping it to the grass. After a quick check on Bailey—I saw it, if no one
else—Vincent did the same. Those already in increased their volume as Jack dove in sideways and Vincent did his own cannonball. Splash. And then there were two of us. Who were conscious, anyway.

  “You know I was just giving you a hard time before, right?” Roo said as I watched Taylor splash Jack, and him dunk her in return. “I understand not wanting to swim in that dress.”

  I looked down at it, the corsage he’d pinned on now wilted, hanging feebly by its pin. Like it, my dress had lived the evening hard, the hem now dirty and one strap, loosened by a particularly enthusiastic conga line, hanging down over my shoulder. I pulled it back up; it fell again. This time, I just left it there.

  “It’s not the dress,” I said, looking back at the water. “I think it’s more that it’s nighttime. I’ve never gone swimming in the dark.”

  “Some people might say night swims are a lake rite of passage,” he pointed out.

  “I guess.” I crossed my arms. “But maybe my mom did it enough for both of us.”

  He bit his lip, ducking his head as he turned to look at the water, dark except for the moon and thrown light from the motels and houses along the shore. “Right,” he said finally. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. Didn’t mean to make it awkward.”

  “You couldn’t,” I said, and smiled, to prove I meant it.

  Behind us, Bailey shifted, talking in her sleep, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  “You know,” Roo said, once it was quiet again, “I’m really glad you came this summer.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “I always wondered, you know? What happened to you. Because I remembered that time you came when we were kids.”

  “I wish I remembered,” I said. “I lost a lot. Like, everything from this place.”

  “Wasn’t lost,” he said. “You just left it here. You know what Mimi says: the lake keeps us.”

  “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Sure you have,” he replied. “Just now.”

  He smiled at me then, and as I felt myself smile back, I wondered if our parents, the best of friends, had ever stood in this same spot. There were so many stories here, like every moment had already been lived once before.