by Jenny Han
“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 wip
ing 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.
