by Rachel Vail
Daddy whispered loud in my ear, “Say you’re sorry.”
I scowled at him and whispered, “It was an accident.”
He gave me a look like, duh, I didn’t think you were trying to wound the guy. How little he knows.
“Sorry,” I said to Luke.
“Forget it,” Luke said, already leaning over the other side of the boat, away from me.
“Lucky Phoebe,” Fonso said. “She wins! First catch of the day!”
Everybody gave him a little chuckle and went back to fishing. As grateful as I was to good old Fonso, I could only keep reeling in and out for another few minutes after that, and not just because he and my father were not being as subtle as they thought they were at keeping an eye on me.
“Gonna take a break,” I said. Daddy and Fonso were all over my rod and reel before I got the words out, securing my hook. “Hungry,” I explained.
“Sure, sweetheart,” Daddy said encouragingly. “Why don’t you open those muffins and doughnuts we brought?”
I sat down on the seat and shoved a muffin in my mouth in almost one bite. The paper was off the second one before I swallowed the first. I love lemon poppy seed muffins and even the ruination of this last good day seemed unable to dampen my morning hunger pangs.
I stared at the backs of all the guys and wondered what in the world ever possessed me to make me think this would be a fun thing to commit to, a full day trapped with no possibility of escape. I chugged a full can of seltzer and when my eyes ran from the bubbles it felt good.
It started to drizzle around seven.
I went below deck to go to the bathroom and for a change of scenery from the thick gray up top. While washing my hands, I bared my teeth at myself in the mirror, Kirstyn’s habit. Oh, no. A poppy seed was trapped right between my two front teeth.
Great. I tried to dig it out with my pinky fingernail but only managed to wedge it in farther. No dental floss under the sink or in any cabinets in the kitchen, no toothpicks. I was starting to draw blood from my gums but that little black dot was cemented in there tight. Great. Stuck on a boat with the boy I love who hates me for a full day with a frigging poppy seed in my teeth.
Fine, so? I wasn’t planning to smile anyway.
In desperation I grabbed the only thing I could find, a corkscrew, and tried to brace myself against the rolling rhythm of the boat to work on the demented cemented poppy seed, using the mirror behind the downstairs bar, when Luke showed up.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as if he’d caught me torturing a puppy.
“Nothing!” I hid the corkscrew behind my back. Very mature, I know.
“Okay.” He turned away.
“Luke,” I said, careful to keep my lips over my teeth. Luckily his name is Luke, which makes you kind of pucker, and not Ezekiel.
“What?” He turned slowly back toward me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Doesn’t even hurt,” he said, turning away again.
“I didn’t mean the hook,” I said. “I mean, about everything. This weekend.”
He shrugged without looking back. “Whatever.” He went into the little bathroom and closed the door. I had maybe a minute to get the poppy seed out and think of something brilliant to say to him. Did he really mean whatever? That’s the exact thing he said after that day in seventh grade, when I…
When I did exactly what I did this time to him. Ugh. The problem was, I had gone away to camp the morning after Luke and I had our first-ever private kiss, in the back hall of my house, when he had come over to give me a going-to-camp-present of a box of stationery with a matching pen. As I was opening the wrapping paper, his dad and mine had wandered into the kitchen together and when I looked up at Luke to thank him for the gift, which was really cute though a little girlier than something I would normally buy, pink and purple stripes with hearts and flowers around the edges, he was blushing and staring at his feet. “I hope you like it,” he mumbled.
“I do,” I said, and without really thinking, I had leaned toward him, to kiss him thank-you the way I kiss like my aunt Tillie when she gives me a gift. But Luke is not my aunt Tillie. I had been aiming for his cheek, but he turned his face and met my lips with his own.
Our fathers were a few feet away; only a wall and an open door separated us from them. When I opened my eyes and then Luke opened his, we pulled back, but then just stood there staring softly at each other until our fathers came out talking loudly about the Yankees. Luke’s dad asked if he was ready to go. He whispered bye to me and left for the summer.
His family was invited over to our house for a barbecue on August 30. Allison put mascara on me. “He hasn’t seen you in more than two months,” she told me. “You have to look good.” But he hadn’t come. Just his parents did. They said he wasn’t feeling well, and apologized, but if he had been really sick, would they be out having fun at our house? I spent most of that night sulking in front of the TV, talking to Kirstyn on the phone. Allison brought up a pint of Rocky Road in solidarity.
So the first day of seventh grade I ignored him. The second day I was waiting for my friends on the upper field when Luke walked right up to me and said hello. Before I could answer, Kirstyn, Gabrielle, Ann, and Zhara were suddenly there, all around me.
“What are you doing?” Kirstyn asked me.
“Nothing,” I answered nervously, almost honestly.
“You don’t still like Luke, do you?” she demanded, as if it were laughable, almost ridiculous to ask such a thing.
What could I say? Saying yes was clearly the wrong answer, and was I really supposed to go way out on that limb? When he hadn’t even come over? When he had pretty much said, with actions if not words, that he didn’t like me anymore?
“Of course not!” I said, and Kirstyn, laughing with our friends and with me, led me away from Luke, who looked like he’d been punched in the gut. I never found out if he still liked me. I think he might’ve, and I know I still liked him. But I ran away laughing with my friends anyway. I know Kirstyn was totally trying to help me, keep me from making a fool of myself, but it felt wrong anyway.
And now I’d blown him off for my friends again. Well, and then impaled him with a fish hook. No wonder he hated me. I’d hate me if I were him. I was pretty close to hating me as it was and I’m me!
I heard the toilet flush inside the boat’s tiny bathroom and the water go on in the sink. I had maybe ten seconds. The poppy seed was vying for permanent residence between my teeth. The door swung out on its hinges.
“Luke,” I said, sucking my sore teeth and spinning to face him.
He looked at me coolly.
“I know you probably hate me,” I said. “But…”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
A choice, again. Be safe and cool, or tell the truth?
“But I still like you,” I said, and turned my back to him this time.
I waited for something to happen. All my senses were on alert: I could smell the salty water splashing on the sides of the boat, hear all the voices up above, feel the moisture in the air touching my skin. He hadn’t budged or made a sound. He could say it was too late, he could come to me and touch my arms with his hands. I heard a footstep, and then another. Just as I was giving myself permission to hope, I heard his foot hit the step. Up he went, up and up, away from me.
So that was that. After a few minutes mangling myself with the corkscrew without success, I hauled myself up the steps into the damp chill of the deck and took up my position again. There was nothing to do but fish, so I fished. Fonso moved the boat a couple of times before we landed I guess in the middle of a school of blues. We started hoisting them in one after another. I hooked a monster and reeled him in slow, letting him have some slack to tire himself out, then pulling him in again. When I finally got him, Fonso netted him and dumped him onto the deck and I shocked us all, wanting to pull the hook out myself. I won for biggest fish of the day, as well as first catch (with an asterisk for it having been a boy rathe
r than a fish), and on the way back in, I leaned against my father, feeling nothing more than smelly, damp, and tired. The wadded up $110 I’d won was zipped into the pocket of my fleece. Luke still hadn’t talked to me but at that moment I was willing to let go of it and just watch the wake spread out behind us.
After we docked, I was collecting my bag of filleted fish from the mate and, turning around, smacked into Luke. “Sorry,” I said.
“Hey,” he said.
I stopped.
“I don’t,” he said.
I felt myself deflate. But what did I expect? And why did he have to rub it in? He had made himself clear already with his silence.
“Whatever,” I said back.
“Wait,” he said, catching up to me on the dock where I was following my father.
“What? I got it. Okay already. You don’t like me. I don’t blame you.”
“No. I mean, I don’t…hate you,” Luke said.
I stopped. He was right behind me. My father kept walking, oblivious. I didn’t want to turn around, and not just because I had my hands full of fish and my teeth full of poppy seed.
“At all,” he whispered, his voice so close to my ear I could feel the breath that carried the words.
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he said, too.
Then I started walking again, and didn’t look back, even after I was in the car, heading toward home. He didn’t hate me. Not at all.
“You look happy,” Daddy said as we pulled up the driveway.
“I am,” I admitted.
“Me, too,” he said.
Luke doesn’t hate me, I stopped myself from explaining. Not at all.
Daddy cooked up the bluefish for dinner and everybody went nuts over how delicious it was. That’s all Mom and Dad and Quinn and Allison talked about, rather than everything that was actually happening. Any time there was a silence that threatened to let another topic slip in, one of them would combine the words bluefish and delicious in a slightly new variation. I hardly tasted it, myself. After all that wind on the boat all day, I could still feel the echo of Luke’s exhale across my left cheek.
21
TUESDAY MORNING, JUST AS the sky started pinking up, I tiptoed down to the kitchen and slid the $110 I had won into the emergency envelope. If it had been ten or twenty times that amount, I might have been tempted to keep it myself and use it to fund the party. Before all this happened, I would’ve just spent it on nothing. It was mine, after all. But it might help somebody in an emergency. That almost empty envelope kept bothering my mind; it felt better to have it filled. And maybe, even, to be the one filling it. I closed the drawer feeling a tiny bit better.
When I heard the new tea kettle already nearing a boil, though, I sprinted back up the stairs and crouched in the upstairs den until my heart stopped pounding. Then I went up to Gosia’s room and waited. When she came out I asked her to drive me to school. She looked at me sadly. I told her I had a really important early meeting before school for a project, which was kind of close to the truth. She said no problem, go get dressed.
I was taking my chances toasting a waffle when I heard footsteps behind me. Thinking, Thank goodness Gosia is fast, I said, “Great, I’m ready, just incinerating a waffle and I’ll eat it in the car.”
“Sounds delicious,” she said, only it wasn’t Gosia, it was Mom.
I spun around. “Oh,” I said.
Behind me the button popped up again. I spun back around, thankful for the distraction. Mom was in her suit already, briefcase in hand, beautiful as ever. The waffle, on the other hand, was still pale and sagging under the weight of its barely melting ice crystals. I opened the door and pulled it out. It crunched when I bit into it, still being solidly frozen beyond the limp damp outer edges. Not gourmet, but I wasn’t about to be forced to eat coal this morning. This morning was already going to be lousy enough.
Coming into the kitchen behind Mom, Gosia jiggled her keys and asked, “Ready?”
“Yeah.” I grabbed my bag with my other hand and rushed toward the back door. Allison was coming down the stairs, with Quinn right behind her. “I have an early meeting!” I said frantically, grabbing my flip-flops from the floor between them.
Allison raised one eyebrow.
“Me, too,” Mom said, head bent over her BlackBerry.
“With the lawyer?” Quinn asked her, pushing past me, but I didn’t wait to hear an answer. Instead I followed Gosia out to the car.
Gosia didn’t turn on her music as we drove and thankfully didn’t talk to me either. The day was gray and chilly and I sank down in my seat, not wanting to watch it go by out the window. At the red light just before school, Gosia held out her pack of gum to me. I took a piece as the light turned green.
“Tough day ahead?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Those are Allison’s flip-flops.”
I looked down. “Yeah.”
“Good luck,” Gosia whispered, slowing to a stop.
“Thanks.” I got out of the car in the deserted circle. After the taillights were gone around the corner, I stopped pretending to rush inside; I let go of the door handle at the front of school and went over to sit down against the brick wall near where the buses drop off. Waiting, I tucked my hands up into my jean jacket sleeves. Despite the gray of the morning, I slipped my sunglasses on. I needed to hide behind them, even if there was no sun. It was hard to believe it had been so hot I’d been sweating, swimming, when? Last week? Though not as hard to believe as the fact that I was sitting there thinking about the weather instead of what to say to Kirstyn, whose bus was pulling into the circle at that very second.
Where was Ann? No way was I doing this myself. How totally unfair!
Kirstyn got off our bus in front of Luke and William, who were deep in conversation, laughing together. They didn’t even glance my way. Kirstyn saw me immediately and ran right over. “Hey,” she said. “I thought you were sick or something. Why weren’t you on the bus?”
Before I could concoct an answer, Gabrielle, getting off the next bus, yelled, “Kirstyn! Phoebe!”
Luke had his back to me, talking to William, Dean, and a few other guys. Like he didn’t even notice me. Like nothing had happened, nothing was going on between us, he was just joking around with his buddies. Well, nothing actually was going on, nothing official. What had I expected? I had other stuff to deal with anyway so it was just as well that he hadn’t come over to say hello or how was the bluefish or will you go out with me or can you believe this weather.
“Good weekend?” I asked Kirstyn as Gabrielle made her way toward us. My voice had none of the casual lightness I’d been trying for.
Kirstyn tried to look into my eyes but luckily my sunglasses were a shield. “Not as good as it would’ve been if you’d been there,” she said. Smiling, she turned to Gabrielle. “Right?”
“Oh, definitely,” Gabrielle agreed. “We kept saying something is missing—oh, wait, I know! Phoebe!” Gabrielle and Kirstyn laughed together at the memory of that hilarious comment. “Seriously. I made my parents promise next time I won’t get shafted like that, so unfair. My brother had four friends there. Why couldn’t I? We brought you and Ann these.”
She held out two yarn bracelets, one pink and red, one yellow and green. I chose the pink and red and Kirstyn was tying it around my wrist when I noticed, first, that she and Gabrielle had yarn bracelets on, too, and second that Ann and Zhara’s bus was disgorging its passengers. Zhara looked more relaxed than ever, her dark hair down in back and the front just held back by a tiny clip. She was wearing a navy and turquoise yarn bracelet and, I noticed as she came closer, slightly sparkly gloss on her dark lips.
Ann, on the other hand, looked like a nervous wreck, her hair standing practically straight up, her face blotchy and puffy, brown eyeliner smudged under her left eye like a bruise.
Kirstyn and Gabrielle were immediately cooing over how pretty Zhara looked, asking if her mother liked her makeover. As Ann che
wed on her lower lip, Gabrielle said, “Oh, Ann, we brought you this!” and handed her the bracelet. Ann’s eyes, full of alarm, flicked up to mine. I shrugged; she let Kirstyn tie it on her.
The warning bell was ringing. I had six minutes to do this. Oh, dread. I stood up and glanced at Ann, which was a mistake; she interpreted it as a push to start, and she said, of all things, “Wait. Don’t go in yet. Phoebe and I have something to say.”
We all stared at Ann. Her neck was red and her face was bluish white. She looked dangerously ill. “You okay?” Zhara asked her, putting her hand on Ann’s shoulder.
Ann nodded, pleading with me with her eyes, which made everybody turn and look, horrifyingly, at me.
I tried to smile. “It’s nothing, it’s just…” Here we go. Do it. “We were talking about the party.”
“Oh, so were we!” Gabrielle answered, her huge smile lighting up the day. “We couldn’t stop talking about it, or at least Kirstyn couldn’t. I think she may even have roped one of my cousins into coming, and Miles said he’d definitely be there unless he has regionals that night.”
I closed my eyes behind my glasses.
“What?” Gabrielle asked.
Ann was clearly not going to be any help. She was barely breathing, leaning against the wall.
“It’s just…it’s starting to feel a little out of control,” I mumbled.
“Are you kidding?” Gabrielle asked. “It’s totally out of control! The invitations aren’t going out until today and everybody’s already booked hair appointments! Did you hear what those girls—”
“I mean,” I interrupted, “it’s starting to feel like, stupid. Too big, too much, nothing to do with us, really, I mean the five of us, and everybody in our grade and…It’s just like, I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong, Phoebe?” Zhara asked, looking concerned.
Kirstyn tilted her head at me and said softly, “It’s going to be great, Phoebe, don’t worry. It’s going to be the best night of our lives so far, just like you promised.” She put her arm around me, like comforting me, and that was more than I could take. I shook her off.
