She took a moment and forced a deep, even breath from her abdomen. It didn’t help. She took another.
“You in labor?” Avery asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Nina’s mom paused with a spoonful of sorbet halfway to her mouth, obviously trying to figure out if jokes about pregnancy were funny or not.
“I’m just so happy to see you,” Nina said, steadying herself and forcing a wry smile. “I can barely breathe.”
“Yeah,” Avery replied. “I have that effect.”
11
Stickboy,
Back twelve hours and already busy. Everything feels off.
I just did the math, and guess what? If we arrive at Stanford this time next year, then we will be back together in 8,736 hours. I know that sounds like a lot, but I always feel better when I have exact figures and know what I’m up against. Besides, we can watch the number go down every day and feel a real sense of progress.
Do you know how much I miss you? No. You have no idea.
Neen
It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Nina’s body was still on California time and she’d slept three hours later than normal. This left her with very little time to get ready, since she had to go to school for the first council meeting of the year. She had just enough time to take a quick shower (ah … privacy at last—that was a perk), throw on a sundress, and grab her keys.
It was a little creepy going into the quiet school. The air was hot and still. The secretaries were casually dressed in shorts and playing music in their offices, and some of the teachers were in their classrooms, pulling things out of cabinets. No one seemed to notice that Nina was walking around the halls, which were freshly polished and as glossy as decade-old linoleum could be. The lockers had been repainted in the same range of brown, putty, and salmon. The bathroom doors were propped open, and Nina could see that all of last year’s damage was gone. All was white and sterilized.
“Bermudez!”
Okay. Someone noticed her.
Nina spun around and saw Georgia, the council secretary, heading for her. Georgia Barksdale was a large girl, both tall and broad, with chestnut-colored hair. Her family lived in and operated a bed-and-breakfast, so she’d grown up eating huge country breakfasts every morning at a grand Victorian table and collecting dried wood from the yard for the farmhouse’s seven fireplaces. There was just something solid and warm about Georgia. She had been on the council from her freshman year. She seemed to know everyone in the school and was a walking, talking database.
“Sucks to be back, huh?” Georgia said, wrapping Nina in a huge hug. “You look great. How was California?”
“It was amazing,” Nina said.
“Come on. Wakeman’s waiting for us in the office.”
“Tie?”
“Of course.”
Nina had never known what to make of Devon Wakeman, her VP. For a start, he had worn a tie every single day since mid—sophomore year. At first people just thought that this was sarcastic fashion. But Devon pushed it further, past joke, statement, and quirk, taking it all the way to trademark. He was wearing one today—a nice maroon one with a gold stripe—even though it was hot.
“So,” he said.
“So” was Devon’s traditional greeting.
“Hi,” Nina replied. She tried not to notice that he’d gotten a little better looking over the summer. He was the renaissance man of AHH: the reigning king of the photography lab, track and field star, coffeehouse guitarist, peer counselor, and vice-president of the AHH’s National Honor Society. He was also physically distinctive, with his thick, wavy blond hair and long eyelashes. (Those eyelashes were enviably long, real eyebrow-sweepers. There wasn’t a mascara in the world that could produce the Wakeman effect.) He had always managed to sweep elections, and he’d dated an entire cross-section of the AHH female population, from cheerleaders to the library volunteers. (None of his relationships lasted for more than a few weeks, so he also had the tragic romantic thing going on.)
Perhaps, to offset the Wonderful Factor of all of the above, he also wore a permanent scowl—he constantly looked like he’d just been told that his car had been towed. For some reason (even though she was not one of the Wakeman exes), Nina felt like she and Devon had never gotten along. They’d never had an argument. It was nothing specific. He was one of the few people who really put Nina on her guard. She’d always tried to avoid him. Now she was going to see him constantly.
“Chocolate cheesecake muffins,” Georgia said, pushing a box of baked goods at Nina. “Jeff’s late. Shock. Amazement. I guess we should wait.”
“I guess,” Nina said. She had wanted to start the first meeting of the year on time (which set a good precedent, according to her instructor over the summer). Still, Jeff Burg was the treasurer, and it didn’t seem right to start the meeting with him missing. Jeff’s claim to fame was that he made piles of cash selling stuff online—making him Alexander Hamilton High’s resident entrepreneurial genius. He was so famous for doing this, he’d actually been banned from bringing his laptop to school, since he used to spend most of his time monitoring his auctions. (He had what Avery called “fetal motherboard syndrome": he had to be touching some kind of online device at all times or he became skittish.)
For the next twenty minutes Georgia talked nonstop about a torrid affair she’d had with a handyman that her parents had hired and how they’d spent most of the month of July making sweet handyman love in the back cottage. (The whole thing sounded unlikely; then again, you never knew with Georgia.) Devon read his e-mail, but Nina knew that he was listening. It had to be hard to tune out this conversation. Nina noticed a slight shift that might have been a stifled laugh as Georgia described one encounter where she had to work around her lover man’s tool belt.
Jeff chose this moment to finally come running through the door. His hair had grown a lot over the summer—it was almost down to his shoulders. He’d also dyed it a particularly bad shade of blond, Nina noticed. This might have been to cover up the fact that he was pale as a ghost and probably hadn’t been in the sun for the last three months.
“Am I late?” he asked.
“What do you think, Burg?” Georgia threw open the three notebooks that she had spread out on the table in front of her and clapped. “Okay! Rundown of the year. September is freshman welcome week. October is homecoming and the hayride. November is the Thanksgiving food drive, the sophomore dance, and freshman rep elections. December is the toy and clothes drive and the holiday dance. January is nothing major. February is black history month and the Valentine’s Day dance. March is women’s history month and the junior prom. April is the senior prom. May is Senior Day, which the juniors will handle.”
She took a breath and moved over to another book of notes.
“We’ll have time- and stress-management workshops, suicide prevention skits, and college application preparation sessions. Coffeehouse is every other week. Each one needs a current event or specific topic for a theme. That’s it, along with some other stuff. Nina talks now.”
“Okay,” Nina said slowly, taking out her final project from the summer (“Good Council: A Strategic Plan for Alexander Hamilton High”), which she’d chopped down into meeting-friendly notes. “We’ll start with the September activities. Freshman welcome week.”
“Haze week,” Jeff said, keeping one eye on his phone. He had made no attempt to hide the fact that he was somehow monitoring an auction.
“Right,” Nina said. “I was thinking, though, that we could plan some other stuff. Have workshops every afternoon about different aspects of high school. How to study. How to handle peer pressure. Things like that.”
“People are going to haze anyway,” Devon said.
“That may be true,” Nina said. “But if we held events that freshmen could go to, they’d be less likely to be targets. Plus we could give them some good advice.”
“Everyone loves haze week, Neen,” Georgia said. “Nobody’s going to go to five days’ worth of worksho
ps.”
Jeff had totally detached himself from the conversation. Devon shifted around in his seat and pulled on his earlobe.
“What?” Nina asked.
“Nothing.”
“If you have something to say, say it, or we won’t get anywhere.”
“This is student council. We’re not the guidance department. We’re not running classes.”
“So we shouldn’t try anything new?” Nina asked.
“We’re already busy,” Devon said. “Can we just get through what we have to? Maybe talk about extra stuff later?”
Jeff seemed very pleased by what he was looking at.
“What are you selling?” Devon asked.
“Donnie Darko promotional sticker I got off some guy in England.”
Nina sighed.
“I’m listening,” he said, correctly interpreting the noise.
“Okay,” Nina said, “let’s move on….”
Despite what she’d been taught over the summer—that you could never judge a project by the tone of one meeting—Nina had the distinct feeling that running council was not going to be quite as she’d imagined it.
Nina came home that afternoon and put herself to work. She emptied her bags, finished the last load of wash, moved her fall clothes to a more prominent place in the closet. She cleaned her already-immaculate desk and restocked it with new school supplies for the year. These were normally some of her favorite activities, but they felt hollow.
She went downstairs and turned on the TiVo, flipping through all of the shows that it had saved for her in her absence. Days’ worth of Trading Spaces, Clean Sweep, and What Not to Wear were waiting for her. These shows were Nina’s way of rewarding herself—watching people rip down bad decorations, dump out contents of closets, cast aside bad clothes—these things soothed her. She never tired of them.
Except for today. She didn’t feel the slightest twinge when the paint cans were dramatically opened and the room’s new colors were revealed.
Maybe she was sick. She felt her head. It was cool.
Only 8,728 hours left until she saw Steve. She wondered if she should adjust that amount for the time difference. Maybe it was only 8,725 hours. It made no sense, but it was a small improvement, anyway.
She would never live that long. She might be able to make it to the end of the week, and then she’d be on her knees, begging for some of her dad’s frequent-flyer miles.
“You’ve got that look,” her mother said, glancing into the room. Today her mother had on a crisp yellow blouse, a white skirt, and a delicate pearl necklace. Since her home was her office, Nina’s mom was always dressed up—this was a big part of the reason that Nina always dressed carefully, too. Her home wasn’t like Avery’s or Mel’s, someplace where you could just do whatever you liked. Nina always had the lingering feeling that she was somehow on display. Like now. Apparently, she had a look.
“What look?” Nina asked.
“The ‘I’m back from college’ look. It’s always a little strange at first.”
“I felt like Mel and Avery were …” Nina searched her brain. “… mad or something. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“They’re not mad,” her mom said. “You’ve been away from your friends. They’ve been doing things here that you weren’t a part of. You three have never been apart for that long. I went through it with my friends when I came back from school the first time. You need a girls’ night. To catch up.”
“They’re at work,” Nina said dully. “Besides, I have to finish getting my speech ready.”
“You went right back to work this morning. You need to give yourself a break every once in a while, Nina. Trust me. I know. I’ve made that mistake before. I’m giving you the AmEx, and I’m telling you to go have some fun.”
Her mom was probably right. Maybe she just needed to get up and put herself back in circulation.
12
Nina had never been to P. J. Mortimer’s before. It sprang up in the middle of a shopping center parking lot, and it had opened while she was away. She sat in her SUV with the engine off and stared at it. The building was dark brick and had green awnings and seemed kind of sunless and prisonlike. Her own summer had been so academic and Californian, with the bay and palm trees and beautiful buildings—she’d never thought about the fact that her friends had spent most of their time cooped up. No wonder they had so little exciting news to report. It wasn’t exactly a romantic hot spot. She would have hated to spend the summer at a place like this.
It was very dark inside. She approached a guy in a green shirt who was standing at the host stand. He didn’t notice her at first because he was trying to assemble a little tower out of match-books and had already gotten up to the fifth level.
“Welcome to P.J. Mortimer’s, where our Irish eyes are always smiling!” he said, his head jerking up as Nina approached. He was a tall guy with a young, smooth face—he looked like he only had to shave once or twice a week. Though his eyes were small and dark brown, they shone brightly.
“Can I talk with Mel and Avery?” she asked.
“Um … sure.” He looked around, as if checking to see if he could leave his post.
“I don’t want to bother you….”
“No,” he said, holding up his hand. “Hold on.”
He opened up a cabinet behind him, hit a button, then quickly closed it and spun around. There was a strange winding noise, like the cranking of an oversized jack-in-the-box, then a heavy, pounding drumbeat. After a minute, somewhere in the depths of the restaurant, a piano started playing some kind of Irish tune. Then there was a ripple of sound, like someone running their finger down the keys, and the music stopped.
“I know who you are,” he said, yelling slightly over the noise. “You’re on the council, right? You’re Nina.”
Nina didn’t want to yell, so she nodded back.
After a moment Avery came striding over. She wore a similar outfit, except her suspenders were laden with small pins, which Nina guessed were for various bands.
“What the hell?” Avery said angrily. “Nobody has a birthday.”
He smiled innocently and knotted his hands together in a prayerlike fashion, setting them primly on the host stand.
“I hit it by accident,” he said, straight-faced. “I was trying to get to the CD player. I thought it was skipping.”
“Liar. I will get you, Park.”
He nodded toward Nina. Avery turned around in surprise.
“Hey,” Avery said, “we were going to call….”
“We’re going out,” Nina said with enthusiasm. “My treat. You still off at nine?”
Normally the words going out and my treat practically caused Avery to break out in applause. Now she just pulled on her suspenders and gave a half smile.
“Yep. Only twenty minutes left,” she said.
“Can you tell Mel?” Nina asked. “I can wait here until you’re done.”
“Sure.”
Avery disappeared into the back, and the guy leaned over the stand.
“You’ve got very cool friends,” he said.
Nina couldn’t help but smile at that. It was true.
Mel came around a moment later and greeted Nina with a huge hug.
“This is Parker,” Mel said, indicating the guy at the stand. Parker nodded and waved, then seemed to notice something going on back where the tables were. He disappeared into the restaurant.
“Can we bring him?” Mel asked quietly.
“Who? That guy?”
“He’s off in a few minutes too,” Mel said, nodding.
Nina was about to say that this was their night and that she wanted to spend time with her best friends, but there was an eagerness in Mel’s eyes that told her there had to be a good reason for her to ask.
“Sure,” she replied. “Great. Bring him.”
Nina decided to wait outside for Mel, Avery, and Parker. Avery escaped first. She yanked off her green shirt to reveal a Ramones T-shirt underneath and pulle
d a pack of cigarettes from her apron pocket.
“I was hoping you’d quit,” Nina said, stepping back. “I thought smoking was just an experiment.”
“Those public service announcements don’t lie,” Avery said, lighting up. “It really is addictive. Don’t start.”
Nina looked through the front door to make sure the coast was clear, then she stepped a bit closer to Avery, trying to stay downwind of the smoke.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“With what?”
“With Mel and that guy? Or is it you? I thought you said there was nothing.”
“Who, Parker?”
“Why did she ask him to come?”
“Oh …” Avery turned around and stared at the front door. “I didn’t know she asked him.”
“He’s cute.”
“Park? Park’s great.”
Avery was sucking so hard on her cigarette that Nina could actually hear it burning down with a little sizzling sound. She seemed a little edgy now. Before Nina could ask anything else, Mel and Parker joined them. Avery threw her cigarette to the ground and hurried over to her old blue Volvo.
“Meet you at the theater,” she said, waving Mel in. Parker and Nina were left staring at each other.
“I guess I’ll follow you,” he said. “Unless you want to ride in the Roach.”
“The Roach?”
Parker pointed to a corroded red VW Bug with a taped-up back window.
“Why do you call your car the Roach?”
“She will outlive us all,” he explained, swinging his key ring around his finger. “In the end, it’ll just be some rocks, Styrofoam, and-my car.”
“Right,” Nina said. “I’ll just take my car.”
By the time Nina got to the theater, Avery had already chosen a movie for them and she and Mel were in line for snacks. Once they got these, they handed them over and she and Mel headed off for the bathroom. Nina and Parker were left behind again. This felt very odd to Nina, but Parker didn’t seem to notice a thing. He simply suggested that they go into the theater to stake out their seats.
The Bermudez Triangle Page 7
