My life is such a mess. I mean, it’s a good kind of mess. It’s just very confusing. I guess it’s better to have three guys to worry about rather than none, which is how many I had before I got here. It’s like God suddenly realized I’d managed to get through my whole life without very many romantic problems and decided to make up for it all at once.
I went out with Adam tonight. You would not believe it, Jen. It’s too dark for you to see my face, but I have this silly grin on it because it was this totally excellent evening.
But right before I left, I had this huge dumb fight with Seth. So, even while I was with Adam, sometimes even while Adam was kissing me, I would be thinking about Seth. Or other times Diver would suddenly pop into my head.
What is going on with me? You know me better than anyone. I’m just me. Normal old me. This is too much.
I asked Marquez about it, you know, how you can tell who is the right guy? I figured she would know because she had this long-term one-on-one thing with this guy named J.T. But that’s when Diver poked his head through the floor and that was the end of that conversation.
So, I’m sitting here, whispering like an idiot, talking to a little camera with a stupid blinking red light on it, trying to figure things out. How can I feel so…so wonderful when I’m with Adam? And at the same time be feeling mad and guilty because of Seth? And at the same time wondering, Hmmm, I wonder if Diver has a real name, and I wonder if he ever wears real clothes? It doesn’t make sense, does it?
Aaargh! This is so confusing. Why aren’t you here to straighten me out? You always know everything.
All I know is that this vacation is working out very differently than I expected. It’s like I got on the plane at the airport there, normal Summer Smith, and by the time I stepped off the plane here I was someone different. Like not only did the place change, but I changed too.
Maybe that’s the way it always is, Jen. Maybe when I’m in Bloomington, I’m part of Bloomington. And when I came here, I had to be part of this island.
Or maybe I’m just this wispy little wimp who gets blown back and forth depending on who I happen to be with.
Or maybe everyone there in Bloomington is just so used to me being a certain way that I was already different, only no one there noticed. See?
I know what you’re saying, Jen. You’re saying, “Summer, shut up already, you’re giving me a headache. Quit all your whining and just go for it, girl.”
That’s easy for you to say. You’re more experienced than I am. Maybe I’m just emotionally retarded. Remember how you got your period six months before I did? Maybe I’m just slow at everything.
Shhhheeeeesh. Ghaaaarrrr. Aaaaaaaargh.
There, I feel better now. Now you can see just how insane your best friend has become.
22
All About Deep Holes and Cold Hearts
Diana woke in the hole.
It happened sometimes. Sometimes not. But she could always tell, as soon as her eyes opened.
The hole was blackness inside of blackness. It was a place where no light entered. It was a place of dull, relentless pain.
It happened sometimes. She wished she knew why. Why one day she felt okay, and the next she felt hopeless. The night before she had watched from her balcony as Adam had driven Summer away in his boat. And returned her hours later.
But that wasn’t why she was in the hole. She wasn’t jealous. Jealousy was too active an emotion to exist in the hole. There had been another emotion that came from watching Summer with Adam—a sense of loss, a realization that Diana had once been…happy?
Maybe not happy. Certainly not for a long time.
She kicked at the sheet that covered her, but it just tangled around her legs. She didn’t want to get up, but she had to pee. Peeing right there in the bed was a bad idea. She would have to get up. Eventually.
If she just stopped eating and drinking, she could lie there without having to get up. If she did that, though, she’d die.
Yes.
After a while she got up and slumped toward her bathroom.
She saw herself in the mirror and leaned close, closer, till the outlines of her face blurred and all she could see there was the reflection of her own eyes. Eyes looking at eyes looking at eyes.
“Hi, there,” she said to the reflection. “Having a good time? No? You’re in the hole today? Me too.”
Eyes looked at eyes looking at eyes.
“You’re pathetic, you know that, right? Pathetic. You make everyone sick. You make me sick.”
The eyes were crying now. Tears were welling and spilling, welling and spilling.
And Diana didn’t care.
There was a knock.
“Go away,” Diana whispered.
The knock came again. “Hey, Diana? Are you up?”
“Am I up?” Diana asked herself, viciously parodying Summer’s chipper voice. “Am I up? No, I wouldn’t say up.”
“Diana? Are you on the phone? Can I come in? I just want to ask you something.”
“I just want to ask you something,” Diana muttered. “I just want to ask you something.”
Now there was a knock much closer, louder. She was knocking on the bathroom door.
“Diana, are you okay?”
Concern now. Definite concern in Summer’s voice. And just what the hell was little Summer going to do if cousin Diana wasn’t okay?
“Go away,” Diana said.
“Diana, are you all right?”
“I said go away. Leave me alone.”
Silence. But not the sound of a person walking away.
“Look, Diana, I’m not going away till I’m sure you’re all right.”
Diana snatched at the door handle and threw it open. “Here I am, see?” Diana said. Her voice was guttural. “You happy now?”
Summer’s eyes were wide with shock. There was fear there, too.
“Get out,” Diana snapped. “Just get out. Go away.”
Summer didn’t move.
Suddenly Diana emitted a short laugh. “Fine. Stand there. I don’t care. This is what you came to see, all the way from Cowtown, all the way from the biggest mall in the whole wide world, Summer? Great, now you’ve seen it, Summer. You can go tell my mother, ‘Yes, Diana looks like she might be a little strange,’ Summer.”
“Diana, what’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” Diana mimicked. Then her voice became low, almost sultry. “You want to know what’s the matter? I’m in a big, deep hole, and no matter what I try, I can’t get out.”
“What are you talking about?”
Diana felt the energy drain out of her. Her shoulders sagged. She hung her head. She ran her fingers back through her lank hair.
“Diana?” Summer said. She reached out and took one of Diana’s hands.
Diana stared blankly at her own dark hand, held in a web of Summer’s almost translucent white fingers.
“It’s just PMS,” Diana said. She managed to plaster on a false, shaky smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m just not feeling all that great this morning.”
Summer didn’t look convinced. She kept her grip on Diana’s hand, and Diana didn’t have the will to pull away.
I would give anything to be you, Diana thought. To have those contented blue eyes, even now touched by concern. To be a creature of light and sun and hope.
“Are you upset over Adam?” Summer asked. “I mean, because I’m seeing him?”
It was almost funny. Another time it would have made Diana laugh. “I think I’ll just go back to bed.” She disengaged her hand.
“I really like him, but if it’s hurting you…” Summer said.
Diana took a closer look at Summer. She was wearing her stupid waitress uniform. She must be on her way to work or else on her way back. “It’s over with me and Adam,” Diana said wearily.
“But you still care about him, don’t you?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe
you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Diana walked to her bed and flopped facedown, arms at her side.
“I have to get to work,” Summer said. “But I want you to tell me something before I go. I want you to tell me why you and Adam broke up.”
Diana stared at the pillow an inch from her face. It was a color called salmon. Fish-colored pillow.
Summer came and sat beside her. “Tell me.”
“Tell you?” Diana muttered. “Tell you. I’ll tell you just one thing.”
“What?”
Diana sat up, hunched over the pillow, hugging it to her. “Just remember you’re nothing to any of them. Just remember that. You’re nothing. Not to Adam Merrick, not to his father, not to his…any of them. You’re less than nothing.”
Summer looked disappointed. Her mouth was in a tight line. She stood up. “I don’t know why you’re so mad at me, Diana. And I don’t know why you’re so sad. If you won’t tell me anything, how am I supposed to help?”
“You’re not supposed to,” Diana said. “You can’t.”
“I have to go to work.” She headed for the door.
“Summer,” Diana called suddenly.
Her cousin turned back, questioning.
Diana felt her throat clutching up. The panic feeling was rising in her. Soon it would sweep over her. She tried to speak and nothing came out. She took a deep breath and tried again. Her voice belonged to someone else, but the words came out. “Look out for Ross,” Diana said.
“The soup is conch chowder, and we have blackened redfish for the special, $10.95,” J.T. said.
Marquez dutifully wrote this information down with a red dry marker on a white board.
“Make sure everyone knows we only have three lobsters. We didn’t get the shipment today,” J.T. added. He was standing behind the line in the kitchen, arms folded over his white cook’s shirt.
“Anything else?” Marquez asked.
“You’re so tough, aren’t you?”
Marquez looked up from the board. She could feel the blood rushing to her face. “Excuse me?”
“I said you’re real tough, real cold, Marquez.”
“We are not going to do this here in front of everyone,” Marquez said firmly.
“Walk in,” J.T. said, pointing toward the walk-in refrigerator.
“This is work here,” Marquez said. “You want to talk to me, maybe you should do it some other time.”
“I’ve had almost two weeks of your attitude,” J.T. said.
Marquez saw Summer come into the kitchen. Skeet was looking down at her work, pretending to be totally absorbed in wrapping bacon around shrimp.
Without a word Marquez stomped to the walk-in. It was chilly inside and not exactly roomy as she stood between bins of chopped lettuce and shelves loaded with salad dressing, sliced vegetables, and trays of fish filets lined up in neat rows.
J.T. closed the walk-in door and stood there, glaring at her. “You didn’t take my name off your wall.”
“I haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Marquez said. “But if it bothers you, I’ll make sure I paint over it this afternoon.”
“Yeah, you would,” he said.
“You’re the one who started this, J.T.,” Marquez pointed out. “Was it me saying I wanted to see other guys? No.”
“I told you I was sorry about that. It was just something I said because I was upset.” He straightened a tray of tomatoes. “I was freaked, and you were giving me nothing. As usual.”
“Oh, and so I’m supposed to just forget it?”
“No, you’re supposed to realize that I’ve been going through some stuff, all right?” he said.
“Why is that my problem?”
He rolled his eyes. “Why is it your problem? I don’t know—maybe because you supposedly love me.”
Marquez winced. She rubbed her bare upper arms. The cold was beginning to have an effect. “Look, J.T., I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry you found out some stuff you weren’t supposed to know. If it hadn’t been for bad luck, you’d be happy and normal, right? Your mom would be your mom, your dad would be your dad. So why not just forget it? Lots of people are adopted.”
“Man, Marquez, is that really the way you think? Are you really that cold?” He threw up his hands. “Of course you are. How stupid of me.”
“Are you done? Because, speaking of cold, this is a refrigerator.”
“I just wanted some sympathy, you know?” he pleaded. “I wanted you to be there for me.”
“Yeah? When was I supposed to be there for you, J.T.? When you were throwing things around my room and yelling about how you were going to go find some other girl? How easy it would be for you to find someone else?”
“I told you, I was freaked. I was messed up. I needed some understanding from you, and I wasn’t getting it, so what else was I going to say?”
“Great. Cool. No problem,” Marquez said. “You want to talk a lot of crap, fine. Only don’t expect me to take it.”
J.T. was silent, hanging his head. He picked at a loose label on a jar of blue cheese dressing. Marquez shivered and stopped her teeth from chattering.
“There hasn’t been anyone else,” J.T. said. “You know that, right?”
“How would I know that?” Marquez said. But her anger had begun to ebb.
“Well, I’m telling you. There hasn’t been anyone else.” He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
“I haven’t had time to be out picking up new guys,” Marquez admitted.
His answer was a gentle wisp of a smile.
“J.T., you have to get over this now. Your parents lied. It happens sometimes. They didn’t lie in order to hurt you. You should be proud you’re adopted. That means they had to really want you.”
J.T. nodded. “I don’t have a birth certificate,” he said in a conversational tone. “I needed one to get a social security card, right? Last summer, when I first started here. So I asked my mom. She gets me down a baptism certificate instead. She says that will do just as well, and she was right, they accepted it.”
“So?”
“So I was two and a half when I was baptized,” J.T. said. “In our religion you get baptized when you’re a few days old.”
“Maybe your real mother, your birth mother, didn’t baptize you and your mom and dad wanted to make sure.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. But after I found out, you know, about all this, I checked. See, when you get adopted, they issue you a new birth certificate showing the names of the adoptive parents. It’s like they rewrite the record, so that adopted kids have a birth certificate.”
“Is there a point to this story? I have side work to do.”
“The point is, why don’t I have a birth certificate? Why isn’t there a record of me until I was more than two years old?”
“I don’t know,” Marquez said impatiently. J.T. nodded. “Sorry to lay it on you. I know you don’t give a damn.” He forced a grim, angry smile and threw open the walk-in door.
23
Marquez’s Walls, Summer’s Floor, and Adam’s Many Bathrooms
“Twenty-seven dollars even,” Marquez said. She had the money arranged in neat stacks on the counter in her room: two fives, a number of singles, quarters, dimes, and nickels.
“Thirty-four dollars and forty cents,” Summer reported. Her stack was mostly singles.
“You made more than me?” Marquez demanded. “On your first real day?”
“I guess so.”
Marquez shrugged. “Well, I was in a lousy mood. People may have picked up on that.”
“I wasn’t in a great mood either,” Summer said. “I told you about my little encounter with Lianne at work. She just kept apologizing, like it was all her fault, and I’m the one who was barging in on her.”
Marquez gave a noncommittal nod.
“And the day started out even worse,” Summer said. “Diana yelled at me this morning before I went to work.”
“Diana
yelled?” Marquez asked sharply. “Why?”
“I don’t know. She said it was PMS. But I think she may be messed up over something. I mean, real messed up.”
Their eyes met. Summer could see that Marquez didn’t dismiss this possibility.
“She shouldn’t rag on you about it,” Marquez said. “You bring a suit?”
“In my bag,” Summer said. She began stripping off her uniform. “Maybe she had to take it out on someone. Her mom isn’t around for her. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s your problem,”
Summer was looking at her thoughtfully.
“What?” Marquez demanded.
“I’m wondering if Diana’s PMS is catching.”
Marquez rolled her eyes but laughed. “I guess you heard about me and J.T. playing rock-’em sock-’em robots in the walk-in.”
Summer wasn’t sure how to answer that question. The gossip machine at the restaurant worked at the speed of light. “Skeet may have mentioned something about it.”
“Uh-huh. Skeet’s your friend now, huh? Don’t go leading her on.”
“Very funny.” Summer tied on her bathing suit top. She pulled the side of her suit bottom away an inch, hoping to see some evidence that a tan line was developing. There was none.
“I can’t believe how polite you are,” Marquez said. “You aren’t going to ask me what J.T. and I were fighting about?”
Summer batted her eyes. “I’m too polite.”
“It was the same stuff. He did apologize for what he said about wanting to see other girls. He said it was because I wasn’t supportive. Do you think I’m not supportive?”
“I don’t really know you all that well, Marquez,” Summer said, evading the question.
“Don’t give me that. You don’t think I’m supportive?” Marquez was standing with hands on hips, looking intense.
“I don’t know about supportive. I know you kind of intimidate people. At least me you do. Not that you try to intimidate, it’s just that you’re so—”
Beach Blondes Page 15
