Boys of Summer

by Jessica Brody

  “Yeah, like you drink tea,” I say snarkily, hoping to trigger her.

  It works. She sets the kettle back down with a clank. “How do you know what I drink? You don’t know me.”

  I snort in response.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she barks.

  I raise my hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You snorted. It’s worse. It implies something.”

  “I wouldn’t dare imply anything.”

  “No, you just call me a slut to my face.”

  Suddenly, in one fell swoop, the tables have turned and I’m the one feeling guilty. I know exactly what she’s talking about. It was three summers ago, the last time I saw her, before she stopped coming to Winlock Harbor. I was fifteen and she was fourteen and I . . . Well, let’s just say I wasn’t very nice to her. Grayson, Mike, and I were hanging out in the living room, watching the first season of Crusade of Kings with a naïve optimism (before we realized that the writers would eventually kill off every character we ever loved), and she came out of her room dressed like a medium-class hooker. She said she was going out with friends. Grayson barely noticed how incredibly inappropriate her clothes were. He was far too invested in the episode. It was the one where the heir to the House of Develin started plotting with his sister/lover to murder their father at the subtle behest of their manipulative mother. But I noticed. She looked ridiculous. I might have made some snide, sarcastic remark about her outfit, but it was just a joke. And she didn’t seem to care. She just rolled her eyes like she does at all my sarcastic remarks. Then she lobbed some snippy retort back at me and left.

  I didn’t think she actually remembered that.

  “I didn’t call you a slut. I never used that word.”

  “That’s right,” she says, crossing her arms and looking smug. “You implied it.”

  I shake my head, laughing under my breath. “Why are you even back here? Did Dolce and Cabana close or something?”

  “It’s Dolce and Gabbana, you moron. And it’s none of your business why I’m here. This is my house. I can come whenever I want. Why are you here, is the better question. Don’t you have a house on the other side of the island?”

  I lower my gaze to the floor and fight back the rolling tidal wave of emotion that threatens to suck me under. “I like it better here.” I glance at her. “Or at least I did until five minutes ago.”

  She huffs. “Nice to see you again too.”

  She pushes past me and starts in the direction of her room. I back up to give her a wide berth. Whitney Cartwright may be shaped like a supermodel, but she takes up a lot of space.

  “Wait,” I call out to her. She stops halfway to the hallway and turns back around.

  “What?”

  I’m actually not sure what I’m going to say to her. I didn’t really think it through. I’m not even sure why I stopped her. To apologize? To clear the air? To thank her for offering to make me tea?

  “When did you start wearing glasses?” I ask.

  She reaches up to touch them, as if she forgot they were even there. And in that briefest moment the Whitney Cartwright facade slips ever so slightly and I see a flicker of self-consciousness underneath. But it’s gone just as quickly as it came.

  “Fifth grade,” she says shortly.

  Fifth grade?

  How is that possible? I would think I would’ve remembered her wearing glasses all those years. She must usually wear contacts.

  “How come I never noticed them before?” I ask.

  She smirks. “I bet there are a lot of things you never noticed before, Ian.”

  And with that, she continues down the hallway, her bare feet padding unusually loudly on the hardwood floors. A few seconds later I hear her bedroom door slam.

  I’m about to follow her down the hall, in search of an empty bedroom to crash in, but my gaze lands on the kettle she was holding just a second ago, and I suddenly have a really strange craving for tea.

  CHAPTER 7

  GRAYSON

  Of course I land on my right arm. The pain is so intense, I can actually feel it traveling through my body. As if it’s too big for just one location and it has to spread. Move. Light fire to everything.

  I bite my lip hard to keep from crying out. I taste blood.

  It takes me a moment to get to my feet. I rest on my knees, taking deep breaths that do absolutely nothing. That’s what my physical therapist told me to do. Take deep breaths. But unless the air is laced with morphine, it’s not gonna do much good.

  To be fair, however, I lied about how much pain I was actually in.

  Every time I stepped into my PT’s office, she would hold up the pain chart. You know, the one with the little faces and corresponding pain numbers on it, ranging from shit-eating grin (1) to “I want to kick someone’s teeth in” (10). I always pointed to somewhere around the three or four mark—the faces that looked like they’d just swallowed something unpleasant—when in reality I was at an eleven.

  Fake it till you make it.

  “If you’re about to give me another one of your Grayson lectures, you can save it. I’m not in the mood.”

  That’s Harper. I almost forgot she was there.

  “Nice to see you too, Harper,” I say, cringing at how strained my voice sounds. Like I just finished an Iron Man race.

  She must hear it. She’d have to be deaf not to. And I interpret her silence as confusion. Grayson Cartwright sounding weak? Winded? What planet is this?

  “Are you okay?” she finally asks. “You didn’t even fall that hard.”

  Another lightning bolt of pain shoots through my body, and I suck air in through my teeth. I finally give up on standing and just roll over so that I’m sitting next to her.

  She didn’t even move to try to help me when I fell. Typical Harper. Always too wrapped up in her own drama to bother with anyone else around her.

  “I’m fine,” I say, but it’s the worst lie in history.

  I cradle my throbbing arm in my other hand like a makeshift sling.

  “Did you really hurt yourself?” There’s concern on her face, but I don’t believe it for a second. If I’ve learned anything from watching her lead Mike on all these years, it’s that she’s one hell of an actress. In fact, I bet she makes it in New York. Those skills have got to be useful for something.

  “No,” I retort bitterly. Harper Jennings is about the last person I want to confess my pain to.

  The concern on her face doesn’t fade, though. It actually deepens. She’s suddenly moving, kneeling in front of me and gently placing a hand on my arm.

  I wince, and she whips her hand back, like my skin is on fire. “Yikes. That bad? Should we get you to the hospital?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve already been.”

  Now she just looks confused.

  “It’s an old injury,” I explain.

  She nods knowingly. “Football?”

  My head jerks up, and I catch her eye for a moment. So she doesn’t know. And here I thought word of my accident had already spread through the entire island.

  Maybe I’m better at faking it than I thought.

  I wonder who else doesn’t know. Ian? Mike? I certainly didn’t tell them. I just assumed word would get out somehow, that I would arrive on the island to a pity party of frowny faces. And when they didn’t say anything or ask about it, I figured they were just being polite.

  My father and I agreed a few weeks ago that we would keep it under wraps. All of it. My mom’s departure, my accident, the broken arm. Actually, we didn’t agree on it. My father suggested it, and I didn’t disagree.

  “Why burden other people with our problems when they have their own?” he said.

  Which is code for “Why let other people see our weakness when we can just as easily hide it?”

  I think he’s still convinced that my mom is coming back. I think he still believes this will all blow over.

  I’m pretty sure it’s that same blindness that made her leave
in the first place.

  But I keep those thoughts to myself.

  “Yeah,” I say numbly to Harper. “Football.”

  Let her think this was a heroic injury. Let her think I busted my arm getting sacked in the end zone as I scored the winning touchdown and won the national championship. Let her spread that rumor around. It’s better than the alternative. It’s better than the truth.

  She nods, and in that moment her face catches a glint of moonlight. I can see the tear streaks on her face. The smears of black around her eyes. The redness of her nose.

  “What happened?” I ask. The question surprises her. It seems to take her a second to remember she’s been crying, because she eventually reaches up and runs a fingertip under each eye.

  “Oh,” she says, forcing a laugh. “Nothing. Just, you know, trying to figure out why I’m so fucked up.”

  I laugh too, because the way she says it, like it’s just a normal everyday activity (like gardening), is actually kind of funny.

  “Come up with anything?” I ask.

  She plops down onto the sand next to me again with a heavy sigh. “No.”

  “Damn. I was hoping to cheat off you.”

  She cocks an eyebrow.

  “You know, copy down your answers. So I don’t have to come up with any myself.”

  She scoffs. “Yeah, right. Grayson Cartwright already has all the answers. Grayson Cartwright was born with the answers.”

  “I think you’re confusing having all the answers with never asking any questions.”

  She doesn’t seem to follow this. I’m not sure even I know what I’m saying. I kick at a pebble lost in the sand. “Never mind.”

  I’m afraid she’s going to press the issue, and it makes me regret even opening my mouth in the first place, but thankfully, she doesn’t. She falls quiet. We both stare at the waves, and for the first time in history, I wonder what Harper Jennings is thinking.

  “Mike and I are done,” she blurts out.

  The sound of my best friend’s name on her lips makes me uncomfortable, and I instantly remember why I don’t like her. I mean sure, when we were kids, it was all fun and games. She was almost one of the guys. She’d go swimming with us in the ocean, skip rocks with us in the creek, race homemade sailboats with us in my family’s pool. She even joined in on a few of our pranks. Then we hit puberty and Harper got boobs—nice ones at that—and everything changed. She and Mike started having “special alone time” together. There’d be days on end when Ian and I wouldn’t see either of them. Mike lost his virginity to her, and then he lost his mind to her too. That was when the games started. That was when Ian and I stopped knowing which Mike we would be getting each day. The happy-go-lucky, carefree, hopelessly-in-love Mike. Or the one who was waiting for Harper to come back.

  That was when I stopped liking Harper Jennings.

  “So I’ve been told,” I mumble.

  “No,” she clarifies, her voice leaden. “Like, for good. I ended it.”

  I chuckle skeptically. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.”

  She doesn’t respond. She’s silent for a long moment. And then she breaks into tears, dropping her face into her hands and sobbing uncontrollably.

  I’m so taken aback by the outburst, I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I completely freeze. What is the best friend of a girl’s ex-boyfriend supposed to do in this situation? Pat her on the back? Hug her? Let her cry on my shoulder?

  She just admitted she broke my best friend’s heart . . . again. Comforting her should be the last thing I want to do. And yet I can’t just sit here like an asshole while she cries. She seems genuinely upset. It’s confusing the hell out of me.

  In all the years that I’ve seen Mike broken up and conflicted after Harper said she needed space, or felt suffocated, or didn’t want to be tied down, I’ve always pictured Harper skipping off into the sunset to find some hunky tourist to grind up against at a beach party.

  I never pictured her crying over him.

  I never pictured her heartbroken too.

  It doesn’t make any sense. If she’s this torn up about losing Mike, why did she break up with him in the first place?

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” she says, but the sobs swallow up her words and I’m barely able to understand them. She sniffles. “Sometimes I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Who the hell is that? And why is she screwing up my life?’ Do you ever feel that way?” She picks up her head and looks at me. Her face is so red. Her nose is so runny. She looks nothing like the pretty, blond, breezy Harper Jennings that lives in all of my summer memories.

  I open my mouth to tell her that yes, I feel that way every single day, in every single mirror, but she doesn’t give me the chance. She barks out a sharp laugh. “You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.” She buries her face in her hands again. “God, I’m so pathetic. Why can’t I just get my shit together? Why can’t I just let myself be happy?”

  I can’t fight it anymore. I have to do something. I reach out to put my good arm around her shoulders, but before I can make contact, she suddenly leaps to her feet. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m such an idiot.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” I say, but maybe it comes out too softly, because she barely seems to acknowledge that I spoke.

  “Don’t tell Mike about this, okay?”

  And there’s his name again. There’s the reminder of what this is all about.

  She has broken Mike’s heart a thousand times. She doesn’t deserve my arm around her, telling her it’s going to be okay. She doesn’t deserve my sympathy.

  “Okay,” I mutter. Not because I’m on her side. Not because I owe her anything. But because I know that telling Mike about this will only make it harder on him. It will only make it that much more difficult for him to move on.

  And I think it’s about damn time he moved on.

  CHAPTER 8

  MIKE

  I fight to break free from the grasp of whatever is pulling me under the water. It’s too dark to see what I’m dealing with, but I can’t shake the hunch that it feels human. Like a hand. No, an entire arm. It snakes around my chest and yanks me back hard and fast.

  My head dips under the surface and I hold my breath, but I’m too late. I swallow a mouthful of seawater and immediately start coughing.

  “Don’t worry!” a voice says from somewhere behind me. It’s unmistakably female. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay!”

  I feel myself being dragged from behind. Confused, I try to turn around, but her hold on me is too tight. I struggle to break free.

  “Relax!” she screams over the rush of the waves. “I’ve got you!”

  “I don’t need you to get me!” I call back, finally breaking away with one final shove. “I’m not drowning!”

  I tread water and use my hands to spin my body toward my unwelcome savior. It’s a girl I’ve never seen before. She’s cute, in an elfish sort of way. Her short dark hair is wet and plastered against her forehead. She pants and pushes it clumsily away, reminding me of the way Jake and Jasper brush hair from their eyes in the bathtub.

  “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry! I saw you go under from my front porch. I totally thought you were drowning.” She spits out water. “Well, this is awkward.”

  I peer down into the water we’re both treading furiously. I can only see her from the chest up, but it looks like she’s wearing pajamas.

  “Sorry to scare you,” I say, my pulse finally starting to slow.

  “No! I’m sorry!” she’s quick to retort. “I’m a lifeguard. But I just finished training, so I’m still in that extra paranoid mode where I assume everyone is drowning. They kind of drill that into you. Better safe than sorry, you know?”

  She’s talking a lot. And very fast. It’s kind of cute. Not to mention impressive. That she can talk that fast and tread water at the same time.

  I laugh. “It’s fine. I just lost my board. I was looking for it.”

 
“Oh!” she exclaims. “I’ll help you look!”

  “You don’t have to—” But it’s too late. She’s already dived under the water like a dolphin and is swimming away from me. I stare after her for a second, a little speechless, before taking off in the other direction.

  I swim a couple laps back and forth in a small area before finally giving up. I’m sure it’s washed up somewhere by now. But just as I’m about to head back to shore, I hear the girl call out, “Found it! I’ll bring it in!”

  I try to yell back “Thanks,” but a big wave takes me by surprise, splashing into my mouth, and I start choking again.

  “You okay?” I hear her call. “Are you drowning this time?”

  I manage to cough the remainder of water from my lungs and yell, “No!”

  “Just checking!”

  When I finally reach the sand, she’s sitting next to my board like she’s been waiting for hours. She pops up as I pull myself from the water and tug at my twisted swim trunks, which have ridden up so high that they’re practically a Speedo.

  “So sorry again,” she says, and I now have a full view of her. She’s definitely wearing pajamas. And not just, like, a random tank-top-and-shorts combo like Harper always wears to bed, but full-on, matching-top-and-bottom pajamas. They’re soaking wet and clinging to her body, which I admit is kind of a turn-on. And I can’t be sure, but are those little ducks on the fabric?

  She notices me looking and glances down, like she forgot what she was wearing. I half expect her to blush and try to cover herself up. Most girls would if they were caught out of their house in duck pajamas. But she doesn’t. She just laughs.

  “I was about to go to bed,” she explains. “I stepped out onto the porch to say good night to the ocean, and that’s when I saw you, you know, not drowning.”

  I shake my head, certain I misunderstood. “I’m sorry, did you say you were saying good night to the ocean?”

  Once again she shows no embarrassment. “Yeah. You know, like ‘good night, room; good night, moon; good night, cow jumping over the moon.’ ”