by Lexa Hillyer
He responds right away. Right away!
haha. Good ole cruz. Sure thing bender.
He called her Bender. This basically seals it. He has called Tali this ever since she used to be into gymnastics. She did all the tumbling programs at Okahatchee for the third through sixth graders. And he remembered.
She takes a breath. Tonight it’s going to happen. Blake Green and Tali Webber. Okahatchee’s golden boy and ugly-duckling-turned-swan. Finally.
Half an hour later, Tali slows her new red BMW—a gift from Dad, symbolizing her strength and independence—and pulls off the highway exit just past Roxy’s Diner, where for years she and her parents stopped for chocolate-chip pancakes before they left her at camp. The sun’s only just starting to set, sending a cherry-red glare through her windshield; it looks briefly like the mountains are on fire, angry and majestic. Even though it’s hidden by trees, she can actually smell the lake now with her window down, that mossy, mineral scent that always seems even stronger at night.
Her phone beeps and her pulse reacts. But as she grabs it, she sees it’s not a message from Blake. It’s a text from a random 603 number.
Wait. A number she remembers. Zoe. She doesn’t keep Zoe in her phone anymore, not after she rebooted all her contacts after she dropped her last phone in the toilet at the Goose, Liberty’s one townie bar. This was sometime during winter of junior year, when Tali started spending more time with Ashlynn Dermott, and Zoe accused Tali of becoming too “cupcake” for her (all frosting, no nutritional value). But Tali’s pretty sure their friendship actually expired around the time Zoe started flaking on every single one of Tali’s invitations to hang out. It seemed like she was more into holding burping contests with bad musicians in the school parking lot and analyzing her geeky sci-fi novels than spending time with people like Tali, who preferred to, well, grow up.
Funny that she still knows Zoe’s number by heart, though. Same with Luciana’s and Joy’s. Force of habit, even after all this time. She pops open the text with her right hand while steering with her left.
Joy called. She’s coming 2 the reunion. C u there?
Tali feels a quick stab of envy. Of course Joy would call Zoe and not Tali. Even when all four girls were inseparable, Tali was always tumbling, or later, running track, while the other three girls were huddled together on Zoe’s bunk bed, whispering.
She starts to type a response when her tires hit something and the car thumps. The wheel practically jerks out of her hand, and she gasps, dropping her phone, her heart staggering in her chest. She grabs the wheel, slamming on the brakes, while the car shudders like a wild beast in a panic. The guardrail races toward her as the car skids into the gravel on the side of the road and finally comes to a complete stop.
Holy fuck. What just happened?
The text. Zoe fucking Albright. Zoe and Joy, and probably Luce, too. They’re all going to be there tonight. She did not plan for that. She had only planned for Blake. And now this. If Zoe hadn’t texted her completely out of the blue, she wouldn’t have been so thrown off, wouldn’t have lost control.
Tali opens the car door and stands up. Her legs are shaking just slightly, but otherwise she’s fine. No injuries. No big deal. But the car hasn’t fared so well. The right front tire is totally busted—it looks like a saggy black carcass.
Okay, think, she commands herself. It’s only a flat tire. How hard can it be to change a flat tire? She pops the trunk, but there’s no spare in there. She remembers taking it out because it didn’t leave enough room for her and Ashlynn’s shopping bags.
Crap.
Her first instinct is to call her parents. She starts to dial, then remembers they obviously can’t help; they’re in Belgium. She’s tempted to call anyway, but it’ll just worry her parents too much—her mom cried before she left for Europe this summer; even though they’re always traveling, she never seems to get used to leaving Tali behind. But Tali’s usually fine with it—she adores her parents, they’ve always been there for her when she really needed them, but it’s kinda nice to have a big house to herself and the freedom to party and go out whenever she wants.
She sighs. The best option at the moment is to call a tow company and wait for them to come.
Luckily her phone has service. With a quick online search she finds the closest place and calls, keeping her voice steady and professional, like she’s heard her mother do a zillion times when she wants something. After she hangs up, she gets back into the car, turning on her lights and radio to drown out the sound of other people racing by her, toward their own destinations, totally oblivious to the girl sitting alone as night comes.
The sun has completely sunk and Tali’s starting to get creeped out by the time the tow truck finally shows, its wheels making a hungry crunching sound against the gravel. When the driver pulls over and climbs out, she’s surprised to see he’s not that much older than she is. Maybe nineteen or twenty. Scruffy facial hair. Clear green eyes. Grease-stained T-shirt and ratty jeans. Blue baseball hat. He smells like car oil.
He squints at her, then gapes a little.
“Don’t I know you?” he asks as he loads up her car, then opens the passenger side of his truck for her.
“I seriously doubt it,” Tali replies, hardly giving him a second glance. She climbs in while he’s obviously getting a good look at her ass. Guys always say shit like that to her—ever since she sprouted the twins, boys will say anything just to get a conversation going.
“I’m not hitting on you,” the guy says, looking faintly amused, and basically reading her mind. “You just look really . . . familiar.” She stares at him for a brief second. He’s actually a little cute, if it weren’t for the grease stains and facial hair, and there is something vaguely recognizable about his features, but she can’t pinpoint it. How would they know each other? He’s a tow-truck driver! It’s possible he’s hit on her before, at the Goose or somewhere, not knowing she’s a minor. In that case, best to let it drop.
When she still doesn’t respond, he shrugs. “My mistake.”
Tali ducks her head over her phone, both so that Tow Boy can’t see her blush and so she doesn’t have to deal with pretending to be nice to a random townie. Fortunately, Tow Boy gets the hint, and they spend the rest of the ride in silence.
The garage is closed, which means the car will have to wait there overnight. Of course. Just her luck. “Don’t worry about me,” she says to Tow Boy. “I’ll get a ride from here.”
“Whatever you say.” He shrugs and heads back toward his truck. She whips out her phone and calls Kingston Cars, where she has an account. Her parents set it up so she’d never have to drink and drive.
“I’m sorry.” The receptionist has a nasally voice and sounds bored. “The Webber account? It has been temporarily suspended. There was a problem with nonpayment.”
“Impossible.” Tali’s hand begins to sweat. She’s stranded a fifteen-minute drive from Camp OK and, more important, from Blake. With her free hand, she fishes out her AmEx and rattles off the number.
There’s a long pause. “I’m sorry, miss. The card is declined.”
What. The. Hell.
“Run it again,” Tali says desperately.
But after another short pause, the receptionist just sighs. “Declined,” she repeats.
Tow Boy’s truck door slams and his engine starts.
“It must be a mistake,” she hisses into the phone before hanging up. Then she waves an arm at Tow Boy. “Hey, wait!”
He rolls down his window. “What’s up?”
“Actually . . . if you don’t mind, I could use a ride.”
The guy raises his eyebrow. “Going somewhere special?”
Tali hesitates. She is not about to roll up to the reunion in a crappy tow truck. What if Blake sees? But she’s not giving up on this night, either. No way.
She wipes her palms on her white jeans and squints out
at the dark mountains, looming calm and definitive, like an enormous blanket tucked up to the neck of the navy-blue night.
Luciana lives nearby and is almost definitely going—after all, the camp director, Bernadette Cruz, is her mom. Even if Luce weren’t forced to attend, she wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to show off all of her awards and prizes. Valedictorian of her high school! Nationally ranked debater! Princeton-bound!
But Tali is no closer to Luce these days than she is to Zoe or Joy. Luce has a billion and one extracurriculars at Brewster and a perfect boyfriend. And she’s made it clear in a thousand ways, big and small, that her old friends have no place in her annoyingly structured life.
Then again, anything is better than destroying Tali’s last chance with Blake. So she takes a deep breath and climbs back into the grungy cab of the tow truck.
“I’ll tell you how to get there,” she says to Tow Boy, then sits back and stares out the window, watching the road curve beneath them like a black snake, winding its way into the mountains, and into her past.
3
Luciana lights the last of the standing oil lamps in the Cruzes’ big, sloping backyard. It’s cooler now that the mountains have devoured the daylight already—a harbinger of fall. Harangue, harbinger, haughtiness. Angry lecture, indicator, arrogance. The SATs are long over, but after hours of tutoring the juniors this spring, the mantras have stuck. She can’t believe it’s one of the last Fridays of the summer, before her life completely changes.
She carefully picks up a pile of rose petals that have clumped together on the iron garden bench and scatters them to look more natural. She lights the citronella candle in the glass hurricane lantern and centers it on the round, iron table. She swats a mosquito away from her face and straightens out her glossy black bangs, then steps back to survey her work. Perfect.
She checks her phone, loaded up with the playlist—or sexlist, as her friend Tanya has coined it—all primed and ready to go. It starts first with the sentimental songs, stuff she and Andrew have sung together in karaoke or danced to at homecoming, plus the corny James Blunt song that was playing when they first said I love you. Then the smoother, subtle tunes, which were hardest to pick out. Since Luce has never actually had sex before, it’s hard to imagine what kind of music’s appropriate.
But tonight is the night. In just a week, Andrew will be at Bates and she’ll be at Princeton, and the only times they’ll see each other will be long weekends and breaks.
Quickly, as though someone might be watching, Luce checks behind the garden gnome to make sure the awkward, lumpy package of condoms is still there, tucked carefully into her bright yellow pencil case. Up until recently, she actually used the case for pencils—she likes them standardized-test perfect—and it still carries that freshly shaven No. 2 scent. She has a brief and disturbing image of a condom being not unlike a large eraser, then closes the case, heading back inside the house, marveling in the silence as she slides open the screen door. Dad’s at work. Mom’s at camp. Julian and Silas are also at camp, thankfully—she doesn’t want to even have to think about dealing with her rambunctious twin brothers. Amelia’s with her weekend sitter—even though she’s twelve, and Luce outgrew sitters by that age, Amelia’s a special case. Having a sister prone to seizures means having a mother prone to being too stressed and busy to handle everything all the time. Which means some things fall to Luce. A lot of things, in fact.
But not tonight.
Tonight is her night.
In the kitchen, the strawberries are halved and sugared and locked in Tupperware next to her mother’s stack of labeled, premade dinners for the rest of the week, and a creepy-looking bag of pork knuckles her dad must have gotten for one of his “traditional” recipes. The Peppermint Patties—Andrew’s favorite—are in the freezer.
The stove clock blinks 8:02, and she feels a nervous flutter in her stomach. Andrew will be here any minute. She hasn’t seen him all summer—he’s been at lacrosse training camp at Bates, trying to get a leg up on the competition, while she stayed in Wolfeboro for one last summer, helping out with Amelia, boning up on the reading list for Freshman Comp, and, well, planning for tonight.
And then the doorbell rings. Her stomach flutters again. He’s here.
“Lulu,” Andrew says, dropping his duffel bag when she opens the front door.
“Happy belated anniversary!” she squeals, practically lunging toward him.
Her inner butterflies instantly fly away as he wraps her in a hug, lifting her off the floor, then setting her back down and kissing her. She gives in to the familiar warmth of his lips as they do their usual—four kisses: one gentle, one deeper, another gentle one, and then a final parting peck. It’s practically their secret handshake, except that she’s pretty sure he doesn’t realize they’re doing it. Everything they do is kind of like that—it fits.
“I missed you so much,” he says, flicking her ponytail. His blond hair looks a tiny bit overgrown and the stubble along his jaw is still as faint as ever, which is just how she likes it.
“Me, too,” she says, feeling strangely shy. “I have a whole plan for tonight.”
Andrew smiles. “You always have a plan.” He wraps his arms around her waist. “I thought we were hitting up the reunion so that your mother doesn’t have us assassinated.” They got together at Camp Okahatchee, midway through that last summer, two years ago, (July 17, to be exact, three o’clock in the afternoon, during free swim, when he hit her with one of the little kids’ floaty noodles to get her attention), and it only makes sense for them to go back for reunion night. Also, her mom would kill her if she missed it.
“We are. But first I have a surprise for you outside.”
He grins as she grabs his hands and leads him toward the back patio.
“Close your eyes,” she orders, then directs him through the back door. “Ta-da! And I found this in Dad’s stash.” She extracts a bottle of white wine from a cooler hidden behind a big oak tree. “I don’t know if it’s any good, but—”
Andrew draws her toward him. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.” He leans down to kiss her again, then takes the wine in his other hand and leads her toward the table. They pour wine into plastic cups, and he moves so that he’s sitting beside her on the garden bench. He wraps his arm around her and she leans into his chest, breathing in his familiar smell. The summer so far without him has felt like an eternity. She drinks more quickly than she would normally, trying to calm her nerves—it’s just Andrew, this is right, this is perfect—and a warm glow spreads from her stomach up through her head. Soon her cup is empty and she feels loose and happy and giggly.
She puts down her wine cup, then gets up and faces him, moving his cup aside. Then she sits down on his lap, straddling her golden-brown legs around him, and starts to unbutton her plaid shirt. She’s not wearing a bra—she rarely needs one.
“Whoa,” Andrew says. “Are you sure?”
“What, you don’t want your anniversary present?” she teases him. This isn’t so difficult. She can do this. She hasn’t even started her playlist.
“No, no, I definitely want it. I’m just . . . happy. Happy you want it.” He finishes his sentence with a murmur, kissing her neck, while helping her unbutton the rest of her shirt. There’s a faint breeze on her collarbones. Andrew groans, low and soft, and she feels a tingle of heat in her stomach.
She runs her hands through his hair, then tilts his face up so she can kiss him again. Long, soft, trying something different. And then, she hears a rustling in the woods beyond the patio. She turns—just as a person stumbles out from between the trees.
“Oh shit!” Andrew stands up quickly as Luce shrieks, too loud, wrapping her now fully open shirt tight around her chest.
“Chill. It’s me,” says a slightly annoyed female voice. And then some branches part, and there, standing in front of Luce and Andrew in tight white jeans and a blue-str
iped top, is Tali, looking expensive as always, and even taller and more gorgeous than her Facebook photos suggest.
“Tali?” Luce gapes, half-expecting her old friend to dematerialize again. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” Tali says, not sounding sorry at all. “Am I interrupting something?”
Luce glares at her, trying to telegraph the fact that she is obviously interrupting. But Tali has already plopped down in a chair and picked up the bottle of wine. “Hmmm, I hate chardonnay but it’ll do if we’re pregaming. It’s good to see you, Luce! And you, too, Andrew. Like the hair. Are there any more cups?”
“You came over to pregame?” Luce crosses her arms. She can’t remember the last time Tali came over. She can’t remember the last time she and Tali even talked.
“Actually, I had some issues with my ride to the reunion. You’re going, right?” Tali puts her feet up on the other chair and, apparently forgetting about her request for a cup, takes a slug right from the bottle. “My freaking tire popped and then this semi-hot grease monkey had to come to the rescue. My credit cards were acting funny so I couldn’t take a car service. I didn’t want to show up in a tow truck, and I figured since your place is close by we could just go together and I would look slightly more like a normal human being. I rang the bell for, like, an hour, but clearly you guys were too busy to hear it.” And taking another sip, she adds, “This wine isn’t that bad, actually.”
Luce feels the usual combination of envy and annoyance—invidiousness?—she always experiences around Tali. She really wants to tell Tali to leave. To stop talking to her boyfriend. To stop drinking her booze. To stop resting her cute yellow peep-toes on Luce’s mom’s old patio furniture.
Instead, she clears her throat and says, “Well, you should probably call your credit card company and figure out what’s wrong. Fraud is a big problem nowadays.” Immediately, she hates herself. She sounds like a mom. Like her mom.
“What?” Tali squints at her.
