by Benway,Robin
“Have you considered a different sport?” I asked him, once he had gathered up his board and swum back out to where I was waiting. “Badminton, maybe? Or, wait, I know! You would be great at shuffleboard.”
He grinned and splashed water in my direction. “We can’t all be superhero badass surfers,” he said as I splashed him right back. “Think of it this way: I make you look even better.”
“I don’t need you to make me look good!” I protested, sending a huge amount of water his way. “I looked good before you showed up.”
The double entendre hung between us and I was grateful that the sun was in Oliver’s eyes so that he couldn’t see me blush. “I mean—you know what I mean. Right?”
Before he could answer, though, a round of catcalls started up from the beach. Three guys were walking toward a spot farther down on the beach, but all of their heads were turned in our direction. “You don’t need that wet suit, baby!” one of them yelled, sending his friends into a round of hysterics.
I raised my middle finger at them, making them laugh even harder, and if I had been blushing before, now my face was ablaze. “Assholes,” I muttered.
Oliver’s spine was straight, his head turned resolutely toward the shore. “Who are they?” he asked, his voice sharper and harder than before. “Do you know them?”
“No, they’re just tourists.” I waved my hand in their direction as if to sweep them away. “Dudes. Jerks. Whatever. Most guys around here aren’t like that, don’t worry.”
Oliver was still staring at them, though. With his damp hair and Drew’s wet suit just a little too tight on his body, he reminded me of a panther in an old storybook I used to have, poised in the trees and ready to pounce. “Oliver, seriously,” I said. “Ignore them. Please don’t do something stupid like avenge my honor or whatever.”
He finally looked away. “I’m not,” he said. “You can probably avenge yourself much better than I could, anyway.”
I smiled despite myself. “Well, yeah, duh. Your upper body strength is terrible.”
“Does that happen a lot, though?” Oliver said.
“Not really. I mean, once in a while, yeah. But not really.” I ran my fingers back and forth in the water, watching the sand particles and seaweed strands dance between them. “Like, if you’re wearing a wet suit instead of a bikini, they say shit. If you wear a bikini instead of a wet suit, they say shit. But it doesn’t matter. They just do it to make up for the fact that they suck and I’m better than them.”
“How do you know they suck?” Oliver asked.
I gestured to the empty water around us. “Do you see anyone else out here besides us today? These waves are baby waves, everyone good is probably up at Newport.”
Oliver had ducked under the water to smooth back his hair, but came up sputtering, mock-indignant. “Wait, are you saying I suck?” he said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No!” I cried. “Wait, don’t—!” But it was too late. He pulled me off my board and straight into the water, me laughing so hard when I went under that I came up coughing, eyes and nose stinging with salt water.
“Is that any way to speak to your teacher?” I gasped, trying to wipe my nose in the most discreet way possible. “Disrespectful!”
Oliver laughed at me trying to push my wet hair out of my face. “You look like you got attacked by seaweed,” he said, then reached over and tried to help me. “Here, sorry. But you had it coming.”
I let him move a lock of wet hair out of my eyes, his thumb just brushing my forehead as he swept it back. I had a comeback on the tip of my tongue, but when he looked at me and smiled again, it melted away in my mouth, leaving nothing but a smile behind.
“I don’t think I’m gonna go to Drew’s party,” he said.
“Wait, what?” The conversation had suddenly taken a drastic turn. “Why? What just happened here?”
“I don’t know.” Oliver shrugged and looked over his shoulder toward, I suddenly realized, the same guys who had harrassed me a few minutes earlier. “I just . . . I’m not really good at parties. With, you know, other people.”
Realization dawned. “Oliver, how many parties have you been to?”
“Um.”
“That’s what I thought,” I replied. Of course, Oliver hadn’t been going to ragers while his dad kept him hidden from the world. For years, even though he was living in the biggest city in the world, it was probably Oliver and his dad—only Oliver and his dad.
“You have to come tonight,” I told him. “It’ll be fun, and Caro and Drew and I will all be there.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know anyone else.” He scratched at his arm and looked down at his board, avoiding my gaze. “I mean, I barely know them.”
“Well, you’re not going to get to know them if you stay home with your mom and Rick and the twins,” I pointed out. “And they’re great, but I can’t lie, it’s not exactly Social City over at your house.”
Oliver stared out at the horizon.
“Just come on,” I urged. “You said yourself that you didn’t want to be stuck at home with the twins watching you. Look, if you hate it, we can leave. If people are mean to you, I’ll beat them up.” I lifted my arm and flexed my muscle. “See? I’m pretty strong. And intimidating, too.”
“Really.” Oliver seemed both amused and deeply unimpressed.
“Really,” I told him as we bobbed in the water, listening to the small waves crash behind us.
“Fine,” he finally said, then pushed himself back up on his board. “You win. I’ll go. Now c’mon, the towering surf awaits!” He gestured toward the (very flat) ocean and I hopped up on my board next to him.
“You really do suck at this,” I teased him as we started to paddle out farther. “I’m just taking pity on you.”
“We shall see!” he yelled. He paddled faster, just out of my reach, the way he always seemed to be.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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After surfing, we went over to Caro’s so I could give her a ride to the party. “Come up!” she yelled from her balcony, half of her head in hot rollers and only one eye completely made up. “I’m not ready yet! Tell David to let you in!”
“Caro’s older brother,” I filled in when Oliver gave me a questioning look. “He’s cool. He’s mostly stoned.”
“Ah,” Oliver said as David opened the door. His eyes were heavy, like a basset hound who desperately needed a nap. “Hey, dudes,” he said to both of us. “Oliver! Cool. Good times.”
Oliver looked at me again but I just brushed past David, grabbing Oliver’s wrist and dragging him behind me. “Hey, David,” I said, then whispered to Oliver, “Hurry, before he starts a conversation.”
“He can have a conversation?” Oliver asked.
We went upstairs to Caro’s room that she shared with her older sister, Heather. There was a pile of laundry in the hallway, right next to an empty laundry basket. We stepped around it and went into Caro’s room.
It was always easy to tell Caro’s side of the room: it was organized to an alarming degree. Drew once asked Caro if she used a ruler to make sure everything was at right angles. When she just blinked at him and said, “Obviously,” we became a little worried. But if you shared a room with Heather, you would probably be a complete neatnik, too.
Because Heather, like I said before, is a natural disaster disguised as a human being.
“Welcome to hell!” Caro said cheerfully, waving us in and around a pile of shoes, none of which matched. She gestured to a bottle of hand sanitizer that was on her desk. “Use it if you feel like you have to,” she told us. Oliver was still in the doorway, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. “I know,” Caro said when she saw his face. “It’s a lot to contemplate.”
“It’s like watching two movies at the same time,” he replied.
“Right?” Caro cried. “I mean”—she gestur
ed to Heather’s side of the room, where there was a huge pile of sheets and blankets that presumably hid a bed—“she could have a family of kangaroos under there and I wouldn’t know. If I don’t show up to class next week, just assume that it’s because I’ve been stampeded by kangaroos.”
I gingerly stepped around the shoes and went over to Caro’s side, sitting on the floor next to her desk. (The bed was so neatly made that I was afraid of mussing the hospital corners.) There were pens and pencils lined up in alternating order on her desk and highlighters in ROYGBIV formation in a plastic cup next to them. I didn’t need to open the drawer to know that her Post-it notes were organized in the exact same way.
“So, are you so psyched?” Caro said, heading back to the bathroom. “First school party, Oliver. Get ready for . . . well, nothing really. We just hang out. It’s not like the movies.”
“Can’t wait,” he said. I could tell he was still a little freaked out by the difference between the two bedroom halves and I patted the floor next to me. “It’s safe down here,” I said.
“I’m actually afraid to touch things anywhere,” he whispered, stepping around the shoes. “Do any of those even match?”
“Nope!” Caro called from the bathroom without even looking to see what he was talking about. “If Heather’s limbs weren’t attached to her body, she would just leave them lying around wherever. It’s a little frightening. And she has a driver’s license, so steer clear.”
“No pun intended,” I added, tracing a circle with my fingertip into the worn carpet. The room had been Caro’s older brothers’ before they moved out, and it showed. There were even some Batman stickers on Caro’s bed frame, which she had artfully hidden with pillows.
“I’m counting down the days until one of us moves out of here,” Caro called from the bathroom, then stuck her head out the door and pointed at me. “You plus me plus community college equals apartment.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Like my mom would ever let me move out. You should hear her speech about how dorms are dangerous because of meningitis. It’s a party-killer.”
“Your mom loves me,” Caro said, ducking back into the bathroom. “Tell her I’ll have hand sanitizer in every room. No one’s getting meningitis, not on my watch.”
Oliver was still making his way through the room and I started to say something when I saw him pick up Caro’s old baby doll. Alice had been around since Caro’s first days on earth and it also showed: there was a skid mark on her nose from where one of Caro’s brothers had used her in a game of catch (and missed); a coffee stain on her cloth arm; and one button eye completely missing, thanks to their old Labrador, Noodle, who apparently had a thing for buttons. Caro never said this, but I knew she put Alice on the bed with her good eye facing Caro’s side of the room, sparing her the indignity of having to spend eternity staring at Heather’s disaster area.
“Alice,” Oliver said.
Caro immediately stuck her head out of the bathroom door, her eyes wide as she looked at me, then Oliver. “You remember Alice?” she asked.
Oliver nodded, carefully smoothing down Alice’s threadbare dress before setting her back down. “You brought her to show-and-tell,” he said, then huffed out a little laugh. “Sorry, I just made things super weird, didn’t I?”
“No, no,” both Caro and I started to say. And he hadn’t, but I still felt a tiny chill run across my arms, like a seven-year-old Oliver had hovered in the doorway for a second and I had only just missed seeing him.
“It’s not weird,” Caro continued. “It’s sweet. Alice appreciates it.”
It’s weird, Oliver mouthed to me as he sat down on the floor. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I whispered back, making room for him. “Don’t worry so much.”
“What happened to her other eye?” Oliver asked, but before I could answer, Caro came back in the room.
“Ems, what are you wearing?”
I looked down at my jeans and top. “This? We just got back from surfing and I already know everyone at this party, so I don’t have to dress to impress.”
Caro gestured to her closet. “Feel free to borrow something. Please.”
I sighed and got up. At least she wasn’t saying anything about my hair, which was still damp with salt water and up in a bun. “Fine. Where’s that sweater you got last week?”
Caro poked her head out of the bathroom again, this time with an eyelash curler clamped around her left eyelashes, and jabbed a finger in the direction of Heather’s bed. “Don’t even talk to me about it,” she muttered.
“What is that?” Oliver suddenly asked.
We turned to look at him as he gestured to Caro’s eye. “Are you, like, plucking out your eyelashes or something?”
I was the first one who started laughing. Caro, out of self-preservation, waited until she had released the curler. “What?” Oliver said, smiling a little like someone who suspected there was a hidden camera nearby. “Is this something I should know?”
“It’s an eyelash curler,” Caro told him. “It makes your eyelashes . . . swoopy.”
“It’s sort of redundant to define ‘eyelash curler,’” I pointed out. “It’s pretty evident what it is from the name.”
Oliver got up and walked over to take it from Caro. He was taller than both of us and in the bathroom doorway, he seemed impossibly large. Didn’t Caroline feel crowded? “This is medieval,” he said, opening and closing it. It looked a lot smaller in his big hand than it had in Caro’s. “You actually use this? What if you blink?”
“You don’t,” Caro and I chorused.
“What if, like, someone slams the door while you’re using it and you blink just because that’s what you do when someone slams the door?”
“Then your eyelid is bald and you have a psychopath living in your house,” I said, taking it back from him and giving it to Caro.
“That is some Game of Thrones–level shit right there,” he said.
“You’ve seriously never seen one of those before,” I said. “How is that possible?”
He shrugged. “Two guys living together for ten years without a mom or sister. You do the math.”
“You had a mom!” Caro called out from the bathroom. I could tell from her voice that she was applying mascara now, her voice blithe and oblivious to Oliver’s small wince. “You just didn’t know where she was!”
Time to intervene.
“Can I borrow that after you?” I yelled to her, examining my nail polish.
“My mascara?”
“Yeah!”
“You’re not supposed to share eye makeup! What if I have pinkeye?”
“It’d be an honor to share pinkeye with you, Caro.”
The tube came flying out of the bathroom a few seconds later.
“Thank you!”
Finally, after Caro had finished her eye makeup and I found a shirt in her dresser (folded as neatly as an envelope, of course), we were ready to go. “What about me?” Oliver teased, holding out his arms. “Now I’m really self-conscious about how straight my eyelashes are.”
I tugged at his shirt and rolled my eyes as we left behind the half-Pollock, half-Mondrian bedroom. “Embrace your uniqueness,” I told him. “And watch out for those shoes.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The thing with Drew’s house is that it’s sort of ridiculous.
It’s in Canyon Crest, which is this really nice neighborhood set on a hill a few miles away from my and Oliver’s neighborhood. My dad’s theory is that they set it on a hill so that no matter where you are in our town, you can see the mansions, which sounds about right to me. “We enjoy watching the serfs,” Drew said when I floated that theory past him, and I’ve known Drew long enough to recognize the sarcasm in his voice.
I can’t say that’s not how other Canyon Crest residents actually feel, though.
; We drove past Drew’s driveway, which was U-shaped and long, and Oliver glanced up at the Tudor-style windows that seemed to be glaring down at us. “I feel like I should be remembering this,” he said.
“You don’t?” I asked.
“Nope.” He shook his head as he looked out at the neighborhood.
“Where are you going?” Caro asked from the backseat, where she was struggling to buckle her open-toed high-heeled sandals.
“I’m not going to park my car in the driveway!” I told her. “What if my parents drive by and see it? Or friends of my parents?”
“You live your life like you’re under surveillance,” Caro muttered, now propping her foot up on the passenger seat.
“Those look painful,” Oliver commented, trying to avoid Caro digging her heel into his shoulder. “Why does everything you do look like it hurts?”
“Because!” Caro huffed with a final shove. “You guys want us to look natural and there’s nothing natural about looking natural.”
I could see the confusion cross Oliver’s face and stifled my own smile.
“Those shoes don’t look natural,” Oliver pointed out.
“Yes, but they’re three-inch heels, which make me look like I’m an average height of five five. See?” she explained. “Natural.”
“Why do you want to be average?” I asked her, scanning the street around the corner for a place to park. I wasn’t the only person who had had that brilliant idea, apparently. I recognized more than a few cars from the school parking lot.
“I said natural, not average.”
Oliver and I exchanged glances, both of us trying to hide our amusement.
“How far away are we?” Caro looked out the window as I parallel parked the minivan. (Which, might I add, is not easy to do, considering that the trunk is big enough to hold a few surfboards.) “Do I have to hike in these spikes?”
“Naturally,” Oliver said, earning himself a gentle shoulder shove from Caro.
“But it’s dark and there’s gravel! What if I trip?”
